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The purpose of this paper is to argue for the widening of attention in healthcare improvement efforts, to include an awareness of the humanity of people who work in the sector and an appreciation of the part human connection plays in engagement around good quality work. Theoretical frameworks and research approaches which draw on action-based, interpretive and systemic thinking are proposed, as a complement to current practices.

The paper describes the early stages of an action research (AR) project, which used the appreciative inquiry “4D” framework to conduct participative inquiry in Hamad Medical Corporation’s ambulance service in Qatar, in which staff became co-researchers.

The co-researchers were highly motivated to work with improvement goals as a result of their participation in the AR. They, and their managers, saw each other and the work in new ways and discovered that they had much to offer.

This was a small-scale pilot project, from which findings must be considered tentative. The challenges of establishing good collaboration across language, culture and organisational divides are considerable.

Appreciative and action-oriented inquiry methods can serve not only to find things out, but also to highlight and give value to aspects of humanity in the workplace that are routinely left invisible in formal processes. This, in turn, can help with quality improvement.

This paper is a challenge to the orthodox way of viewing healthcare organisations, and improvement processes within them, as reliant on control rather than empowerment. An alternative is to actively include the agency, sense-making capacity and humanity of those involved.

The purpose of this paper is to report and reflect on a decade‐long action experiment to devise a form of business education for sustainability that helps managers act as “pro‐sustainability” agents of change. It offers one example of practice in this evolving field, for scholarly scrutiny and discussion.

The paper draws on action research principles, which engage theory with practice, and action with reflection. It is written as a reflective account of the author's experience.

This educational programme for managers locates itself as a form of business education for sustainability whilst simultaneously acknowledging that the managerialist assumptions underpinning this aspiration are part of the problem that change for sustainability needs to address. This raises challenges both for the tutor team and participants. Tentative conclusions are reached about the paradoxical nature of educational practice in this contested space, in the light of current trends in higher education.

The paper explores an innovative educational experiment in which the questions raised have wider significance for how managers are helped to bring about pro‐sustainability change.

This paper seeks to review the potential gendering of leadership in the emerging field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores whose voices are becoming dominant, how leaders speak, and what forms men's and women's leadership take.

The paper is a self‐reflective inquiry, analysing observational and secondary data to explore leadership and its gender patterning. It reflects on its approach and the voice in which it is written.

Women and men are often differently placed to work within the emerging dominant logics of CSR. The gender patternings considered are skewed rather than clear‐cut. In relation to organization‐based discourses and practices, leadership is dominated by white men. Some men are tempered radicals, inside‐outsiders acting for change. Some women leaders question the foundations of business and global power relations, and point to fundamental gender inequalities. Whilst they are recognised figures, they are operating at the margins, self‐identified as activists. Other influential women provide training in the alternative practices of leadership they advocate. Systemic theories of gendering are employed to review these findings.

Explores some of the dynamics through which leadership can become gendered, in the challenging realm of how ecological sustainability and global social justice are addressed.

This article argues that strategies to promote gender equity in organizations need to focus on assumptions in the organizational culture that underpin work practices and behaviors. An analytic case is used to demonstrate the importance of bringing cultural assumptions to the surface during the organizational change process and examining their implications for both gender equity and organizational effectiveness. Initial efforts aimed at changing work practices were disappointing. However, the understanding that cultural assumptions had unintended consequences for both gender equity and organizational effectiveness provided a foundation for the organization to continue to experiment after the initial intervention. The article argues that linking changes in work practices and processes to underlying assumptions provides a basis for the organization to engage in an on‐going and iterative process of inquiry, experimentation, reflection, and learning that can generate surprising and positive outcomes over time.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate governance on working capital management efficiency. This study also seeks to extend the findings of Gill and Shah.

This study applied a co‐relational research design. A sample was selected of 180 American manufacturing firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for a period of 3 years (from 2009‐2011).

The findings of this study indicate that corporate governance plays some role in improving the efficiency of working capital management.

This is a co‐relational study that investigated the association between corporate governance and working capital management efficiency. There is not necessarily a causal relationship between the two, although the paper provides some conjectures to the findings. The findings of this study may only be generalized to firms similar to those that were included in this research.

This study contributes to the literature on the factors that improve the efficiency of working capital management, and in particular on the association between several features of corporate governance and the efficiency of working capital management. The findings may be useful for financial managers, investors, financial management consultants, and other stakeholders.

The fundamental premises of three different models of diffusion of new technologies are described; the similarities and differences in prediction which are derivable from the three perspectives are highlighted. These perspectives include (1) diffusion of innovation; (2) technology transfer; and (3) critical mass theory. The article examines these predictions within the context of the unique social, cultural and political environments of developing countries. To illustrate the results of this approach, these theories are applied retrospectively to three technologies introduced into developing countries. They differentially explain diffusion and the subsequent use of these technologies. Implications for change management and technology policy are presented and future research is suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover attitudes of physical therapists (PTs) who treat vegetative state (VS) patients, and to raise awareness to ethical and professional dilemmas: Are PTs influenced by ageist perceptions? Do they consider physiotherapy to be effective or futile?

Ethical questions and complex dilemmas are by and large subconscious and rarely explicitly voiced, but can be identified by revealing implicit therapists' personal and professional approach to patients. A quantitative six‐point Likert scale questionnaire was developed, which presented two VS cases – young and old, followed by practical‐ethical questions concerning key issues including: treatment choices, quality of life, prolongation of life, futile treatment (n=101, 68 percent return rate).

The results reveal a complex reality: on the one hand PTs expressed a positive perception of their profession, and consider all treatment components important for VS patients and their families regardless of age; on the other hand, significant preference for treating the younger VS patient was found.

There is a need for raising awareness of physiotherapists to the social phenomenon of ageism and its implications on daily professional and ethical conduct.

While other studies revealed ageism in various health care settings, this study was original both in its methodology (examining implicit ageism via contrasting vignettes), and its unique context (VS patients) which in theory could be viewed as “ageless” in light of the patients' permanent condition.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how suspicion that leads to a police stop is developed by police officers in Belgium, and the way in which police department culture influences the creation of suspicion.

The data on which this article is based are the result of an ethnographic study within two local Belgian police forces. In total, the researcher has observed for a total amount of 750 h the day-to-day practices of police officers in different police services. Next to that, 37 in-depth interviews were taken from police officers employed in the same services that participated in the observations.

While the creation of suspicion in a police officer's mind is a complex process that is influenced by various factors such as the individual characteristics of the police officer and the applicable legislation, the impact of police department culture is equally important and can be responsible for maintaining discriminatory and stereotypical mindsets.

The originality of this paper lies in the fact that it offers insight into the Belgian police stop practice, a topic about which not much is known on an international level. In addition, it also focuses on the role of departmental cultures in the actions of police officers.