Concrete Advice Research Articles

Storytelling is not just for marketing: Cultivating a storytelling culture throughout the organization

When managers consider storytelling part of their organizational strategy, it is generally considered a marketer’s task. However, we argue that intentionally building a storytelling culture across domains and functions can provide value to all parts of the organization. Even so, storytelling can often feel like a formidable undertaking, exclusive to firms with ample in-house resources or finely tuned existing brand stories. This is not the case, and in this article we offer examples and concrete advice for companies of all sizes and resource levels to embed storytelling throughout the organization. Likewise, we build a case for developing organizational culture and capacity to harness the power of storytelling not only for marketing strategy, but also for overall organizational functionality. We provide examples of potential storytelling applications, a review of storytelling benefits, and step-by-step guidance on how to manage and embed storytelling.

Directionality challenges for transformative innovation policy: lessons from implementing climate goals in the process industry

ABSTRACT In the new paradigm of ‘transformative’ or ‘mission-oriented’ innovation policy, which addresses broad societal challenges, policy makers are given a large responsibility for setting or shaping the direction of socio-technical transitions. However, the literature has so far not provided much concrete advice on how to achieve directionality in practice. The main argument of this conceptual article is that a more detailed approach is needed to better understand the challenges policy makers might face when they attempt to translate societal goals into more concrete and actionable policy agendas. It identifies and discusses eight analytically derived directionality challenges: handling goal conflicts, defining system boundaries, identifying realistic pathways, formulating strategies, realising destabilisation, mobilising relevant policy domains, identifying target groups, and accessing intervention points. To illustrate these challenges, the article uses examples from the implementation of the Swedish climate goal in the process industry.

Dependencies between MES features and efficient implementation

During the last decade, a lot of procedure models for the introduction of industry 4.0 (I40) or industrial internet of things (IIoT) solutions have been proposed, especially in the German literature. Since they target all kinds of I40 projects they necessarily must be somewhat generic and are missing important details especially for the “implementation phase”. However, even in specific models for introducing manufacturing execution systems (MES) there are a lot of vague hints instead of concrete advice of how to do an effective and efficient implementation. Although it is certainly right that soft factors like finding the right partners and doing a good change management that involves end users early in the process are at least as critical as technical aspects, the latter should not be neglected. In this paper, some desirable features of MES are discussed and how they positively influence the efforts necessary for introducing such a system in a small to medium sized enterprise (SME).

New Business Venture Motivation: Comparative analysis between Chinese and Indonesian Postgraduate Students

Purpose: This study explores the complex comparative study aimed to explain Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) of Postgraduate students in Indonesia and China. The students was selected on consideration: who are studying postgraduate program, take an entrepreneurship seminar/training, and who have ever worked.
 Theoretical framework: Theory of Planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and Entrepreneurial Education by combining to this research. Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which describes the intention by: attitudes, perceived behavioral control (PBC), and subjective norms. Entrepreneurship Education (ED) provide motivation, knowledge, and abilities for students to begin a business (Cho, 1998).
 Design/methodology/approach: After using online and face to face questionnaire, this research using a model of causality or correlation influence to test the hypothesis proposed the analytical technique used is SEM (Structural Equation Modelling).
 Findings: Results showed, when compared to Indonesia, ED system in China likely more to prepare and facilitate graduate students to be able to start a new venture. The lack of any significant direct effect on students in Indonesia in the ED to EI is possible for students think that ED they get is too theoretical and teachers did not give concrete advice or assistance to start or run their businesses. Subjective Norms are important factors that significantly affect EI on the sample in Indonesia.
 Research, Practical & Social Implications: Practically, this research to contributes provides useful inputs to facilitate ED program in both countries (China and Indonesia).
 Originality/Value: This study contributes to perceived control of behavior toward the intention of entrepreneurship with the education of entrepreneurship. The research determine the impact of Theory of Planned Behavior to determine intention of entrepreneurial.

Piloting personalization research through data-rich environments: a literature review and future research agenda

PurposeOver the last 50 years, increased attention for personalization paved the way for one-to-one marketing efforts, but firms struggle to deliver on this promise. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide a complete picture on personalization, develop a future research agenda and put forth concrete advice on how to move the field forward from a theoretical, methodological, contextual, and practical viewpoint.Design/methodology/approachThis research follows a systematic literature review process, providing an in-depth analysis of 135 articles (covering 184 studies) to distill the (1) key building blocks and components of personalization and (2) theoretical, contextual, and methodological aspects of the studies.FindingsThis manuscript uncovers six personalization components that can be linked to two personalization building blocks: (1) learning: manner, transparency, and timing and (2) tailoring: touchpoints, level, and dynamics. For each of these components, the authors propose future research avenues to stimulate personalization research that accounts for challenges in today's data-rich environments (e.g. data privacy, dealing with new data types). A theoretical, contextual, and methodological (i.e. industry, country and personalization object) review of the selected studies leads to a set of concrete recommendations for future work: account for heterogeneity, embed theoretical perspectives, infuse methodological innovation, adopt appropriate evaluation metrics, and deal with legal/ethical challenges in data-rich environments. Finally, several managerial implications are put forth to support practitioners in their personalization efforts.Originality/valueThis research provides an integration of personalization research beyond existing and outdated review papers. Doing so, it accounts for the impact of new technologies and Artificial Intelligence and aims to advance the next generation of knowledge development on personalization.

Why Do We Speak to Experts? Reviving the Strength of the Expert Interview Method

In political scientists’ drive to examine causal mechanisms, qualitative expert interviews have an important role to play. This is particularly true for the analysis of complex decision-making processes, where there is a dearth of data, and for linking macro and micro levels of analysis. The paper offers suggestions for making the most effective and reflective use of qualitative expert interviews. It advocates an encompassing, knowledge-based understanding of experts and argues for the incorporation of both “inside” and “outside” experts, meaning those that make and those that analyze political decisions, into an integrated analytical framework. It puts forward concrete advice addressing this technique’s inherent challenges of selecting experts, experts’ personal biases, and the systematic capturing of evidence. Finally, the article suggests that the combination of expert interviews, experimental methods, and online interviewing can meaningfully strengthen the evidentiary value of this important data collection technique.

University Foreign Language Teachers’ Perceptions of Professor-Student Rapport: A Hybrid Qualitative Study

Research has shown a consensus that positive professor-student relationship makes meaningful contributions to academic outcomes such as faculty effectiveness, increased motivation, enhanced learning, and excellent teaching. Employing a qualitative research design, the authors of this study examine the conceptualization of one specific aspect of faculty-student relationship; namely, rapport, which they believe is particularly salient in college classrooms characterized by effective teaching and a positive interpersonal climate. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with 26 Iranian foreign language professors who were selected through snowball sampling. A hybrid thematic analysis of the data revealed two core themes of rapport antecedents: (1) connectedness, and (2) professionalism and professorial ethics. The two themes and their sub-themes will be elaborated upon in this article. The article concludes by discussing the purposeful insights into the antecedents of rapport to provide concrete aspirational advice on how to potentially improve the higher education process.

Four Lessons to Take From Athena-Without Disguising Oneself as the Mortal, Mentor.

Four Lessons to Take From Athena-Without Disguising Oneself as the Mortal, Mentor.

Learning analytics dashboard: a tool for providing actionable insights to learners

This study investigates current approaches to learning analytics (LA) dashboarding while highlighting challenges faced by education providers in their operationalization. We analyze recent dashboards for their ability to provide actionable insights which promote informed responses by learners in making adjustments to their learning habits. Our study finds that most LA dashboards merely employ surface-level descriptive analytics, while only few go beyond and use predictive analytics. In response to the identified gaps in recently published dashboards, we propose a state-of-the-art dashboard that not only leverages descriptive analytics components, but also integrates machine learning in a way that enables both predictive and prescriptive analytics. We demonstrate how emerging analytics tools can be used in order to enable learners to adequately interpret the predictive model behavior, and more specifically to understand how a predictive model arrives at a given prediction. We highlight how these capabilities build trust and satisfy emerging regulatory requirements surrounding predictive analytics. Additionally, we show how data-driven prescriptive analytics can be deployed within dashboards in order to provide concrete advice to the learners, and thereby increase the likelihood of triggering behavioral changes. Our proposed dashboard is the first of its kind in terms of breadth of analytics that it integrates, and is currently deployed for trials at a higher education institution.

What Institutions Can Learn From the Navigational Capital of Minoritized Students

ABSTRACT Minoritized students — low-income, first-generation students of color — leverage skills when navigating higher education. Yet, institutions often misrecognize this navigational capital, rendering it invaluable and missing an opportunity to learn from students. We explored how 16 first-year minoritized students — who participated in a counterspace aimed to affirm their experiences — translated their navigational capital into feedback for institutional change. Through surveys, students reported that institutional practices perpetuated misrecognition by privileging Whiteness; endorsing deficit assumptions about students’ abilities; and making campus resources inaccessible. Activating their navigational capital, students offered concrete advice for how institutions can better recognize and support their lived experiences.

Az előadásmódról: Verbális és nem verbális technikák

Performance was discussed in rhetoric for centuries, and then it was separated from rhetoric and became a separate discipline. According to classical rhetoricians, delivery is one of the five tasks of the orator. Cornificius discusses eight types of delivery, to which he adds eight types of body movements. In the history of 20th-century Hungarian rhetoric, the field of delivery became almost the sole dominant field after Zoltán Kodály’s 1937 radio lecture (On the deterioration of Hungarian pronunciation). The mode of delivery can be either verbal or non-verbal. Verbal means verbal, realised with words. Non-verbal refers to the vocal, i.e. phonetic, elements accompanying words on the one hand, and body movement or body language on the other. The paper briefly describes the speech errors, discusses pronunciation errors in detail, and provides concrete examples and advice to help improve speaking technique. Understanding the theoretical background is important for the training of speakers and actors.

Best versus Good Enough Practices for Open Music Research

Music researchers work with increasingly large and complex data sets. There are few established data handling practices in the field and several conceptual, technological, and practical challenges. Furthermore, many music researchers are not equipped for (or interested in) the craft of data storage, curation, and archiving. This paper discusses some of the particular challenges that empirical music researchers face when working towards Open Research practices: handling (1) (multi)media files, (2) privacy, and (3) copyright issues. These are exemplified through MusicLab, an event series focused on fostering openness in music research. It is argued that the "best practice" suggested by the FAIR principles is too demanding in many cases, but "good enough practice" may be within reach for many. A four-layer data handling "recipe" is suggested as concrete advice for achieving "good enough practice" in empirical music research.

La biographie en histoire des idées politiques, un outil sous-estimé ? Le cas exemplaire de Machiavel

"Writing a biography of Machiavelli, especially an “intellectual” one, orientated towards the history of philosophical thought, is a challenge due to the extent of the documentation available, collected over the centuries. Nevertheless, any analysis of the origins of the Florentine author’s thought using his letters as local government officer, before he was dismissed and wrote the great texts for which he is famous, takes us back to a larger philosophical problem. Indeed, Machiavelli is a precursor of the modern political expert. Such experts are characterized by their classic academic knowledge drawn as much from Antiquity and from Scholasticism as from the everyday political action in which they got literally caught up. From there came the idea of a new way of writing about politics. Machiavelli is the first one to do so, writing in order to give practical, concrete advice to follow in the real world. We define this new way of regarding Machiavelli’s political writing as a “programme”, which his biography helps us to understand more completely. Keywords: Machiavelli, Intellectual Biography, Doctrine, Political Thought "

COVID-19 and Its Potential for Disruption and Transformation in Public Health: Lessons Learned from the Perspective of Young Professionals

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and intensified various challenges for Public Health and the Public Health service (ÖGD) in Germany. However, it also offers a window of opportunity for effective long-term transformation of the country's Public Health system. Against this backdrop, an online survey was carried out among the members of the German Network of Young Professionals in Public Health (Nachwuchsnetzwerk Öffentliche Gesundheit (NÖG)) in October and November 2020. It sought to elicit members' experiences and views related to Public Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting preliminary "lessons learned" for the German Public Health context are presented in this article. Based on the results of the survey, recommendations were formulated which are intended to provide targeted and concrete advice for the strengthening and transformation of Public Health in Germany. The main issues that preoccupied the young professionals were the increased public and political attention to Public Health and the narrow focus on infectious disease control, the standing of Public Health in Germany and the strengths and weaknesses of Public Health structures and workforce. The recommendations are aimed at promoting long-term and holistic strengthening of Public Health, with the training of an interdisciplinary workforce of young professionals presenting a key focus.

Care to share: Four lessons we can learn from data sharing in older person care research

Sharing data offers opportunities to make research into older person care more efficient. However, this is not yet common practice in the Netherlands. To optimally utilize the potential of data sharing, insight into factors that promote the implementation of data sharing in older person care research is important. In the TOPICS-MDS project, research data from the National Program for Older Person Care (NPO) was collected, managed and reused on a large scale. The experiences of stakeholders involved in this project can teach us more about the needs researchers have when sharing their data. For this study, we interviewed 23 people involved in different ways in data sharing in TOPICS-MDS about their experiences in the data sharing process. Thematic analysis yielded four overarching themes, which we converted into the following lessons: those who want to promote data sharing must ensure 1) visibility of the added value of data sharing, 2) trust in the database, 3) transparency of the process and 4) communication. These lessons complement the results of previous research with concrete advice. Optimizing data sharing in older person research is both promising and challenging. It requires dedication and involvement from both the researcher and the research participant, and appreciation for both.

Video Review: The Soothsayings of Iris

Video Review: <i>The Soothsayings of Iris</i>

Deepening our understanding of which policy advice to expect from prioritizing SDG targets: introducing the Analytic Network Process in a multi-method setting

The indivisibility principle of the 2030 Agenda is considered key for the implementation of policies in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, science is not only asked to develop new methods for assessing SDG target interactions but also to translate findings of methodological insights into policy advice for easy take-up by policymakers. The present paper demonstrates how to adopt the multi-criteria analysis technique Analytic Network Process (ANP) for prioritizing SDG targets in considering all positive and possible indirect SDG target interactions at once. The application of the ANP is linked to a multi-method setting embracing positive scores derived from the analytical methods Nilsson-scale, a cross-impact matrix, and network analysis techniques. This supports the prioritization of SDG targets when considering n-order neighbours in a network with respect to their synergies. The ANP allows evaluating the synergistic potential and progress controllability of SDG target rankings calculated by CI-matrix metrics and thus provides conclusions on the importance of n-order interactions of SDG targets in a network for the final ranking. We showed that the application of a combination of different analytical methods improves the overall quality of the formulated policy advice regarding its scope and methodological profoundness. In this context, we compared the analytical methods involved with respect to their ability to formulate policy advice and finally presented a framing how to translate methodological results into concrete and applicable policy advice.

Nutrition in Cancer Care: A Brief, Practical Guide With a Focus on Clinical Practice

This overview aims to create an understanding of the nutritional issues concerning patients with cancer and provide evidence-based practical guidance to healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses, and dietitians), caregivers, and all others involved in the care of patients with cancer. The focus of this paper is therefore on providing a simple guide for daily clinical practice. The theoretical background and in-depth comprehensive reviews of malnutrition are described elsewhere. Nutrition plays a crucial role in cancer care. It affects treatment tolerability, outcomes, and quality of life. However, a focus on nutrition is still lacking among oncologists because of insufficient training in nutrition topics received during graduate and postgraduate training and an underestimation of its importance. The consequences of the disease and its treatment, such as anorexia-sarcopenia-cachexia, are therefore still often overlooked, underdiagnosed, and undertreated. The authors have summarized the most important challenges, evidence-based recommendations, and common clinical scenarios to bridge the gap between comprehensive guidelines and clinical practice, where brief concrete advice is preferred to systematic reviews. Furthermore, an easy applicable overview is provided, which can be used as a guide during daily routines.

Supporting parents and healthy behaviours through parent-child meetings \u2013 a qualitative study in the Netherlands

BackgroundThe first 2 years of a child’s life have been found to be crucial to healthy growth and development. Parent support groups can help parents to promote health-related behaviours during this crucial period. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of parents who participated in a parent support group (Parent-Child Meetings) which promoted health-related behaviours of their children, and to determine whether and how these meetings supported them in promoting these behaviours.MethodsWe used a qualitative study design. The parent support group consisted of weekly Parent-Child Meetings organized in a multi-ethnic, relatively low-income neighbourhood in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Data on the experiences of parents was collected through participatory observations, informal conversations (n = 30 sessions) and semi-structured interviews (n = 13) between April 2019 and March 2020. The data was analysed using thematic content analysis.ResultsParents indicated that they experienced the parent-child meetings as enjoyable and as providing them with socio-emotional support. They reported that the meetings increased their parenting knowledge, skills and practices regarding healthy behaviours of their children and that they used this knowledge in their daily lives. They also appreciated the practical information and advice provided by experts in the meetings. Parents indicated that the positive attitude of the experts was crucial in accepting and adopting their advice. Additionally, parents valued the interactive and hands-on workshops, which integrated health-related behaviours and active play with children, as it enabled them to learn while they played with their children.ConclusionThis study indicated that parent-child meetings contributed to enhancing parental knowledge, skills and practices regarding healthy behaviours of their children. This could potentially benefit the health of children during the first 2 years of their lives. In particular, the peer support of other parents, the hands-on workshops, and the concrete advice and information provided in an informal setting were highly valued by parents. Future parent support groups could use these findings to improve their meetings or to start meetings that better suit the needs of parents with young children.

Evaluation of education scenarios for acquiring digital competences of secondary school students in Slovenia

Digital competences are among the most important competences in modern society, with the education system playing a key role in the acquisition of digital competences by youths. As a rule, digital competences of students in general secondary schools in the EU are not optimal and vary considerably. As EU states are autonomous regarding secondary schools, their education organisation varies. Therefore, attempts are being made to implement certain standards of learning outcomes to be attained by secondary school students. Such standards are being prepared, and systematic implementation of the acquisition of digital competences in schools will begin as soon as there are enough trained teachers, for who in 2017 in the framework of DigCompEdu, a European framework of digital competences of educators was developed, with concrete advice for their work in the education process. We have prepared several education scenarios that can be used to enhance digital competences of students in general secondary schools where there are no professional subjects in which the students could acquire digital competences. Since the education scenarios are described by a large number of parameters, we prepared a hierarchical multi-attribute decision model for their evaluation and grading. Experts from the ministry, from professional services and secondary schools, cooperated in the preparation and validation of the model. The model is an aid to decision-makers who are looking for best scenarios, and also allows schools to evaluate their status and recognise what has to be done to attain a certain level of digital competences of students.