The influence of national and organizational culture on the use of performance improvement interventions

This exploratory study examined the influence of national and organizational culture on the use of various performance improvement interventions. Data on intervention use were collected from practitioners in the United States and South Asia. Results revealed that orientation programs, organizational communication, instructor‐led training, and performance appraisals were among the most used interventions in both the United States and South Asia. Findings also indicated that factors such as organization size, location of headquarters, learning and development budget, and reporting structure are related to the use of interventions. Practitioners in South Asia predominantly had expertise in disciplines such as human resources, while those in the United States had experience in instructional design and human performance technology. These differences may influence the development and implementation of instructional and noninstructional interventions.     

“I never thought this could be for me”: aspirational capital,identities, and political engagement among first-generation college students in São Paulo

ABSTRACT

Today, young adults from lower-income backgrounds are pursuing educational trajectories that would have been distant dreams for their parents. In many Global South countries, this expansion has followed a neoliberal logic in which private universities purport to provide students skills and increased earning capacity, and employers the necessary human capital to compete in global markets. This article examines these processes in Brazil, where federal policies have contributed to a dramatic growth in private, for-profit higher education in recent years. Building on ethnographic research in São Paulo’s expansive peripheries, our analysis examines three inter-related themes: higher education and life aspirations; intersectional identity construction; and political/community engagements. We argue that while neoliberal ideologies and policies are a key component of Brazilian higher education, many first-generation college students actively – and critically – challenge everyday oppressions and create new life possibilities in the context of enduring inequalities.     

Indigenization and University Governance: Reflections from the Transition to Yukon University

Tertiary Education and Management - While literature on university governance in Canada has identified key challenges that need to be addressed, it largely overlooks calls for change towards...     

Measuring patent assessment quality—Analyzing the degree and kind of (in)consistency in patent offices’ decision making

We argue that consistent decision making in judging a patent's validity and basing this on its underlying technological quality are important elements of patent office service (“assessment”) quality. To understand which level of assessment quality patent offices (can) provide, particularly in new technological areas, we study the concordance of the European Patent Office's (EPO) granting and opposition decisions for individual patents. Using the biotechnology industry in the 1980s (an emerging patenting area then) as an example, we find no empirical evidence that the EPO provided maximal or optimal assessment quality as far as can be told from bibliographic indicators. We discuss research limitations and consequences of this first empirical analysis, and suggest ideas for refinements in future work.     

Higher education policies in Brazil: 1970–90

Under the authoritarian regime, policies on higher education were mostly produced by the Excutive. First of all, an Educational Reform made up for the rapid expansion of a huge private sector where small teaching institutions prevail and which now absorbs over 60% of Brazilian students. The public sector, in turn, was substantially improved: the number of full time faculty increased and teachers in the federal universities were encouraged to apply for a M.A. or a Ph.D. and to get involved with research activities. Meanwhile, a dual funding system (teaching and research) emerged which was responsible both for the creation of graduate programmes all over the country and for the expansion of a research infrastructure. The civilian government (1985 on) brought policy making out of the bureaucracy and into the Congress. The new Constitution granted the university a degree of autonomy it had never enjoyed before which, however, is still to be regulated by further legislation. Policy initiatives driving at institutional differentiation and at performance assessment have systematically failed to become effective due to resistances within the university itself. Meanwhile financial stringency at a time of recession necessarily leads to reductions in funding, notably for research.     

Positive beliefs about errors as an important element of adaptive individual dealing with errors during academic learning

Research on learning from errors gives reason to assume that errors provide a high potential to facilitate deep learning if students are willing and able to take these learning opportunities. The first aim of this study was to analyse whether beliefs about errors as learning opportunities can be theoretically and empirically distinguished from adaptive reactions to errors in an affective-motivational sense (including the maintenance of motivation and activating emotions), and in terms of learning behaviour and metacognitive activities specifically adjusted in response to a specific error. The second aim was to validate the proposed distinction across different domains. The third aim was to investigate the added value of beliefs about errors besides domain-specific self-concept and mastery goal orientation for understanding the preconditions for adaptive reactions to errors at school. We assessed all variables in three different school subjects (N = 614 students, Grades 5–7). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated distinctness and a moderate domain specificity of error-related reactions. Positive error-related beliefs predicted students’ affective-motivational and action adaptivity of error reactions, above and beyond self-concepts and goal orientations. Taken together, the current findings provide a more complete understanding of the intra-personal mechanisms of adaptive responses to errors in different school subjects.