Organizational culture,values, and routines in Iranian medical schools

In Iran, restructuring of medical education and the health care delivery system in 1985 resulted in a rapid shift from elite to mass education, ultimately leading to an increase in the number of medical schools, faculties, and programs and as well as some complications. This study aimed to investigate views on academic culture, values, and routines held by faculty members. A nation-wide survey conducted in six public medical schools in Iran. The research findings show weak organizational culture and values, together with routine behaviors sensed as a negative and low satisfaction with academic leadership. The research evidence suggests bureaucracy, politicization, conservativeness, and centralization as common features of medical schools in Iran and also suggests suitable supervisory skills to tackle the tension between governmental management and academic leadership with cultural changes, the creation of new values, and adoption more efficient routines.     

Methods to account for citation inflation in research evaluation

Quantitative research evaluation requires measures that are transparent, relatively simple, and free of disciplinary and temporal bias. We document and provide a solution to a hitherto unaddressed temporal bias – citation inflation – which arises from the basic fact that scientific publication is steadily growing at roughly 4% per year. Moreover, because the total production of citations grows by a factor of 2 every 12 years, this means that the real value of a citation depends on when it was produced. Consequently, failing to convert nominal citation values into real citation values produces significant mis-measurement of scientific impact. To address this problem, we develop a citation deflator method, outline the steps to generalize and implement it using the Web of Science portal, and analyze a large set of researchers from biology and physics to demonstrate how two common evaluation metrics – total citations and h-index – can differ by a remarkable amount depending on whether the underlying citation counts are deflated or not. In particular, our results show that the scientific impact of prior generations is likely to be significantly underestimated when citations are not deflated, often by 100% or more of the nominal value. Thus, our study points to the need for a systemic overhaul of the counting methods used evaluating citation impact – especially in the case of researchers, journals, and institutions – which can span several decades and thus several doubling periods.     

从化学发展史看化学学科发展观的沿革

文章以化学发展史为背景,讨论了化学学科发展观的沿袭与变革,提出了适应现代化学发展的新学科发展观———泛化学学科发展观,并探讨了泛化学学科发展观的内涵和外延及其与传统学科发展观的关系。     

基于职业认知教育的秘书职业概论课程开发

职业认知教育应该成为高职教育教学的重要课题。秘书岗位要求秘书人员具备“有形”的硬技能和更多“无形”的软技能,其中职业意识是软技能的灵魂所在。在高职秘书专业教育教学中,要“树心”与“树技”并重而甚于“树心”,让学生学会做人、做事是秘书职业对于秘书人才培养的特殊要求,也是对秘书教育的强烈提醒。独立开设以职业认知为主旨的职业基础课——秘书职业概论,让学生在正确的职业认知的基础上养成良好的职业意识、职业精神是有益的。     

成熟型小企业变革管理研究

所有大企业都是由小企业发展而来的。小企业在国家经济社会发展中起着不可替代的重要作用。然而由干自身实力缺陷，小企业的死亡率是非常高。因此，研究小企业进入成熟期后如何进行有效变革管理，把握影响变革关键因素及变革过程，将对企业实践及社会经济发展具有重要指导意义。本文结合小企业成长相关理论及企业变革理论，在前人研究基础上结合案例研究，尝试总结出影响成熟型小企业变革的四大关键要素：企业经营者、企业能力、企业战略、企业环境。并对其进行具体分析，同时提出了成熟型小企业变革模式。即文化变革先行，结合战略组织变革、流程变革，从三个方面把握变革过程，以使成熟型小企业变革管理具有可操作性和可控性模式。     

Students’ perceptions of career conversations with their teachers

Internationally, schools acknowledge their responsibility in guiding students not only in their academic growth, but also in their lifelong career development. In relation to this development, vocational schools in the Netherlands are implementing integral career guidance in which teachers receive a new task in guiding students in developing their own learning and career paths. A questionnaire was developed to investigate students’ perceptions of career guidance by teachers during career conversations, and data involving 28 teachers were collected from 579 students. The study identified four different teacher guidance profiles. Remarkable is that teachers spoke very little about career issues, and school issues were mostly on the agenda. The results indicate that teachers struggle with the transition towards becoming a career guide of students, and aspects influencing the transition into this new role need to be considered.     

Career Academies: Effective Structures to Promote College and Career Readiness

Career academies promote smaller learning communities within high schools, creating personalized learning environments while promoting students’ readiness for college and careers. After describing the career academy structure, we present four research-based aspects that can assist school leaders and teachers in developing and implementing academies. We include practical examples from the Metro Nashville Public Schools, noting how educators have collaborated with civic agencies, businesses, and postsecondary partners to increase the graduation rate and improve student learning outcomes. Career academies can be effective in preparing students for college and careers, while also providing economic benefits to the community.     

Changes in BSc Business Administration and Psychology students’ learning styles over one,two and three years of study

Knowledge on general or discipline-specific changes in the learning styles of university students can be utilised in the design and execution of courses, but little is known of such changes. The study examined the changes in the learning styles of three year groups of BSc Business Administration and Psychology students from admittance to one, two and three years later for the three year groups respectively. Learning styles were measured using the Danish Self-Assessment Learning Styles Inventory, which is an adaptation of Sternberg's MSG Thinking Styles Inventory within the theory of mental self-government. The Hierarchic and Oligarchic learning styles decreased significantly for all three year groups. The Judicial learning style increased significantly for the year groups who had studied for two and three years. The Global learning style increased significantly for the year group who had studied for one year. The findings are discussed in relation to comparable research.     

Positive Perspectives on the Profession: Reframing through Appreciative Inquiry

Change theories and Organization Development strategies have long followed the problem-solving approach of looking at organizations, identifying the weaknesses and introducing interventions to “stop doing the wrong things.” In its simplest form, this approach has been successful in a variety of situations and has a popular following. Consultants or internal reviewers look for the problems, identify the cause of the problem, and introduce the intervention (new rule) to eliminate the opportunity for the repetition of the “problem.” Problem-solving is a popular perspective through which change is initiated in politics, academia, and in social media. Eliminate the “bad” and pay attention to what we have been doing wrong to improve. This article first reviews the problems posed in past Hanna lectures to some major themes: (a) the need to address societal concerns, (b) the need to reduce sub-disciplinary fragmentation, (c) the problems inherent on university campuses as a result of politics and the economy, (d) the need to re-examine the over-reliance on the scientific research paradigm at the cost of phenomenological understandings, and (e) the framing of problems to be solved by professionals in our field. The introduction of Appreciative Inquiry and is then provided as an alternative approach to examine current contextual setting with the primary emphasis away from “What problems are you having?” and toward “What is working around here?”. This alternative suggests that in all organizations there is some positive force that is moving the organization forward, and the identification of that force (what works) can lay the ground work for doing more of “what works.” Finally, three examples of Appreciative Inquiry opportunities in action from our discipline are offered for consideration.     

Commentary on "Between Cordelia and Guido:

This commentary addresses several of the administrative issues raised in the preceding paper, and comments on the three case examples. The issues include the importance of developing ongoing collegial relationships with deans, delineation of different areas of responsibility for mental health services and the deans, confidentiality issues in campus "crisis" situations, required evaluations and treatment, and learning the mental health service consultant's role.