Junior Development Research Articles

Development and evaluation of a drop-and-stick method to assess landing skills in various levels of competitive surfers.

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a drop-and-stick (DS) test method and to assess dynamic postural control in senior elite (SE), junior elite (JE), and junior development (JD) surfers. Nine SE, 22 JE, and 17 JD competitive surfers participated in a single testing session. The athletes completed 5 drop-and-stick trials barefoot from a predetermined box height (0.5 m). The lowest and highest time-to-stabilization (TTS) trials were discarded, and the average of the remaining trials was used for analysis. The SE group demonstrated excellent single-measures repeatability (ICC = .90) for TTS, whereas the JE and JD demonstrated good single-measures repeatability (ICC .82 and .88, respectively). In regard to relative peak landing force (rPLF), SE demonstrated poor single-measures reliability compared with JE and JD groups. Furthermore, TTS for the SE (0.69 ± 0.13 s) group was significantly (P = .04) lower than the JD (0.85 ± 0.25 s). There were no significant (P = .41) differences in the TTS between SE (0.69 ± 0.13 s) and JE (0.75 ± 0.16 s) groups or between the JE and JD groups (P = .09). rPLF for the SE (2.7 ± 0.4 body mass; BM) group was significantly lower than the JE (3.8 ± 1.3 BM) and JD (4.0 ± 1.1 BM), with no significant (P = .63) difference between the JE and JD groups. A possible benchmark approach for practitioners would be to use TTS and rPLF as a qualitative measure of dynamic postural control using a reference scale to discriminate among groups.

Does Business Succession Enhance Firms' Innovation Capacity? Results from an Exploratory Analysis in Italian SMEs

The main objective of this paper is twofold. The first is to develop a conceptualization of intergeneration business transfer as potential source of innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The second is to deepen such an understanding through an exploratory analysis on a sample of micro and small enterprises located in Emilia Romagna. The paper is organized in two parts. In the first part we review the literature on the subject and in the second part we present our main findings. The empirical result indicates that succession process is not related to an enhancement of firm innovation capacity. Moreover juniors are strongly socialized with senior's vision of business. What are the causes that drastically reduce the opportunity to create new knowledge, visions, and, finally, to enhance firms' innovation capacity? Senior entrepreneurs do not pay much attention on the junior's development in term of formal education and outside training experience. Juniors also do not take responsibility for their level of preparedness. Prior generation does not take into consideration the possibility to buy-out the business or to separate ownership and management and develop managerial governance. Furthermore the owner/founder strongly expects next generation assumes the leadership of firms. These attitudes constrain willingness of next generation and promote a weak commitment of successor to family business. We conclude by arguing the need to rediscover the creative role of entrepreneur, to manage as valuable a resource for firms' sustainable development and to consider the firm as value of community. Based on this finding recommendations to firm and regional/institutional level are offered.