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This chapter describes pre-service teachers' teaching practices of didactic methods based on cognitive apprenticeship. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate potential of Second Life® as a space for teaching practices of pre-service teachers. The participants were 160 college students who were completing a practicum at Korea National University of Education. These students enrolled in four sections of teaching methods and educational technology, which was one of the requirements for their teaching certificate. The students were placed in groups of three to five students according to their majors. In Second Life, they practiced their teaching and participated in the evaluation of other groups' teaching. They discussed Second Life's potential, such as a space for expanding their teaching experiences and explored possibilities for using it as an environment for teaching practices. The authors believe that readers will find that Second Life can offer a valuable environment to promote pre-teachers' understanding of teaching techniques.

Researchers recommend a reorganization of the medical profession into larger groups with a multispecialty mix. We analyze whether there is evidence for the superiority of these models and if this organizational transformation is underway.

We summarize the evidence on scale and scope economies in physician group practice, and then review the trends in physician group size and specialty mix to conduct survivorship tests of the most efficient models.

The distribution of physician groups exhibits two interesting tails. In the lower tail, a large percentage of physicians continue to practice in small, physician-owned practices. In the upper tail, there is a small but rapidly growing percentage of large groups that have been organized primarily by non-physician owners.

While our analysis includes no original data, it does collate all known surveys of physician practice characteristics and group practice formation to provide a consistent picture of physician organization.

Our review suggests that scale and scope economies in physician practice are limited. This may explain why most physicians have retained their small practices.

Larger, multispecialty groups have been primarily organized by non-physician owners in vertically integrated arrangements. There is little evidence supporting the efficiencies of such models and some concern they may pose anticompetitive threats.

This is the first comprehensive review of the scale and scope economies of physician practice in nearly two decades. The research results do not appear to have changed much; nor has much changed in physician practice organization.

This study aims to examine how a collaboration technology is used by three organizational groups. The main focus is on the interplay between the users’ perceptions (of the technology and of the knowledge shared) and the material properties of the collaboration technology.

Two theoretical frameworks (social representations and sociomaterial practice perspective) examine collaboration technology use to better understand the underlying dynamics. The research is conducted as a case study in a US company where a collaboration technology was being implemented.

The findings reveal a process model showing how social dynamics and users’ perceptions of what the collaboration technology can do and cannot do to share the users’ knowledge influence the users’ behaviour. Based on these perceptions, users will twist or amend their interpretation of the reality (the material properties of the technology) to justify their use of the collaboration technology.

This research is conducted as a single case study. However, the significant amount of time spent at the research site allowed for a very rich description of the events and processes involved.

This study offers guidelines on what influences use and adoption of collaboration technologies. It highlights the importance of providing more than just training, as social dynamics and users’ perceptions continuously influence users’ behaviour.

By combining two complementary theoretical frameworks, this study provides a novel and more in-depth explanation of collaboration technology use (or lack thereof).

The chapter defines practice approaches and considers the several ways the concept of practice has functioned in the academic and practitioner literatures. As “practice” has been a minor term in prior group studies, the next section argues that foregrounding practice in future group research is a promising direction. Not only does a practice approach privilege interactional messages, which are at the heart of communication, but foregrounding practices can help actual groups function better. A practice approach to group research can accomplish three things: (1) offer guidance about how to design and implement sensitive activities; (2) identify contextual aspects of dispersed practices such as giving information; and (3) make visible how key group norms are interactionally accomplished in nonstraightforward ways. Examples of each of these activities are illustrated.

Since its conception, the community of practice (CoP) theory has become a popular framework in a plethora of disciplines and settings. In the field of higher education, this versatile social theory of learning and identity that is compatible with theories of language and discourse has been used for the exploration of a variety of topics such as quality assurance, language socialisation in study abroad, medical student workplace learning and the learning of science. This theoretical model offers a framework based on collectives attached by their practice and mutual relations, which suits a priori some institutionally recognised clusters within higher education, such as research groups (RGs). These groupings, composed of pre- and post-doctoral researchers, form a domain of sustained relations and interactions through which learning may occur, but the extent to which the RG constitutes a CoP remains uncertain. This chapter discusses the suitability of the CoP model for the study of RGs in the light of ethnographic data gathered from two RGs.

This study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of the underlying dynamics of an emergent shared information practice within a Facebook group, and the resources the group develops to sustain this practice.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with twenty members from the group. The findings are based on comparative analysis combined with narrative analysis and were interpreted using theories of situated learning and Community of Practice.

The study shows that although members of this multicultural mothers group endorsed different, sometimes opposing parenting practices, the group had to find common ground when sharing information. Managing these challenges was key to maintaining the group as an open information resource for all members. The group produced a shared repertoire of resources to maintain its activities, including norms, rules, shared understandings, and various monitoring activities. The shared online practice developed by the community is conceptualised in this article as an information practice requiring shared, community-specific understandings of what, when, and how information can or should be sought or shared in ways that are valued in this specific community. The findings show that this shared information practice is not static but continually evolves as members negotiate what is, or not, important for the group.

The research provides novel insights into the underlying dynamics of the emergence, management, and sustainability of a shared information practice within a contemporary mothers group on Facebook.

This chapter addresses the call for identification of organizational contingencies related to a global mindset, exploration of different forms of a global mindset, and the relationship of global mindset with global strategies. To this end, the chapter explores global mindset development in the context of a three-year case study of middle managers in a Danish multinational corporation working with deliberate global mindset capability development as a vehicle for global strategy execution. The analysis of individual middle manager practices of a global mindset and associated organizational practices, as observed from a middle manager strategy implementation perspective, is condensed into four core aspects of individual-organizational practice that enables the enactment of global mindset: inclusive strategy co-creation, interactional synergy, imagined community building, and performance flexibility. On the basis of these learnings, the potentials and opportunities of applying a contextual, behavioral perspective on global mindset that incorporates both individual and organizational factors, as opposed to a generic, cognitive perspective, are discussed in terms of advancing knowledge of both the global mindset–performance causal chain and the practical impact of global mindset research.

The purpose of the paper is to report the investigation results of current practices of strategic asset allocation process, which consists of capital budget planning, monitoring, and control of Hong Kong building contractors. The changes of the said practices are compared with the results of the two similar surveys undertaken in the past longitudinally.

A total of 157 questionnaires were sent to about 1,000 approved Hong Kong building contractors (classified as group A, B, C in accordance with their maximum capacities). The total response rate was 30.7 per cent. Statistical techniques, a two‐dimensional contingency table, and discriminant function analysis (DA) were deployed to analyze the survey data via SPSS.

Only the practice of a regular review of the minimum rate of return of major projects was popular. For monitoring aspect, 100 per cent of surveyed contractors monitor project performance once operational. The result of post‐completion audits on major projects was 63 per cent. For the results of the longitudinal study, 66.7 per cent of group C firms employed the practices of intermediate and long‐term capital budgets and 71.4 per cent of large firms had a formal body for screening investment proposals compared with 54.8 per cent and 63.3 per cent of the same group's practices in 1994 respectively. DA results showed that the patterns within the three different groups (A, B, and C) were very similar, and group A and group B were active in capital budgeting monitoring and control.

Planning was the weakest and data showed that Hong Kong building contractors had tight control of the projects.

This paper reports the investigation results of current practices of strategic asset allocation process, which consists of capital budget planning, monitoring, and control of Hong Kong building contractors.

Most works on human resource (HR) practices assume that companies use them in the same way for the entire workforce. The objective of this work is to check whether the application of HR practices varies within organizations. To be specific, HR practices can vary depending on the importance that companies attach to the job.

Based on the concepts of strategic value and uniqueness, four hypotheses are developed and tested by means of a survey of a sample of 735 companies.

The results of our work confirm that the internal variations in HR practices consist of the use of a more or less sophisticated approach, or more or less close to high commitment practices perspective.

This study does not include external variables with potential influence, such as trade union power and labor regulations, which may affect determined HR practices.

These results may be useful in developing a realistic design of the function of HR in companies.

The variations that we have encountered, rather than being different configurations of practices, seem a question of positioning in a dimension in which high commitment practices and control practices are complete opposites. Results show that HR practices are not the same for all workers. There are differences, which questions the HRM proposals that do not consider possible variations in the practices within companies.

This chapter examines the use of virtual communities of practice to group coach and mentor educators and facilitate engaging critical consciousness. A Group Coaching and Mentoring framework became the platform in which the core elements of coaching, mentoring, metacognition, and self-regulated learning strategies were employed. These core elements were applied within virtual communities of practice to manifest self-awareness, reflective thinking, planning for action, and accountability, each of which is vital to the development of critical consciousness. Research shows that fostering critical consciousness creates spaces to address learning equity and gaps in educational achievement. Therefore, this chapter serves as a guide for educational leaders to effectively administer group coaching to raise an educator’s higher-order thinking, plan, problem solve, and co-create. The implementation of this design resulted in increased motivation and willingness among educators to apply new skills and foster new teaching experiences that shaped learning outcomes for their students.