Leaders Of Professional Organizations Research Articles

Practitioners' learning about healthcare supply chain management in the COVID-19 pandemic: a public procurement perspective

PurposeThe procurement and supply of crucial healthcare products in the early stages of the COVID-19 emergency were chaotic. To prepare for future crises, we must be able to describe what went wrong, and why, and map out ways to build agility and resilience. How can this be done effectively, given the highly complex and diverse network of actors across governments, care providers and supply chains, and the extreme uncertainty and dynamism in the procurement system and supplier markets? The purpose of this study was to capture learning from practitioners in “real time” in a way that could frame and inform capacity building across healthcare systems with varying procurement and supply management maturity.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study involved interviews with 58 senior public procurement practitioners in central and regional governments, NGOs and leaders of professional organizations from 23 countries, very early in the COVID crisis. Following the first, inductive phase of analysis leading to five descriptive dimensions, the awareness-motivation-capability (A-M-C) framework was applied in a further round of coding, to understand immediate challenges faced by procurement practitioners, how the complex, multi-level procurement system that shaped their motivations to respond and critical capabilities required to face these challenges.FindingsDevelopments across 23 countries and practitioners' learning about procurement and supply in the pandemic crisis can be captured in five overarching themes: governance and organization, knowledge and skills, information systems, regulation and supply base issues. Together these themes cover the strengths and gaps in procurement and supply capability encountered by procurement leaders and front-line personnel. They highlight the various facets of structure, resource and process which constitute organizational capability. However, to account better for the highly dynamic situation characterized by both unprecedented rivalry and cooperation, analysts must also pay attention to actors' emerging awareness of the situation and their rapidly changing motivations.Originality/valueThe application of the A-M-C framework is unique in the healthcare supply chain and disaster management literature. It enables a comprehensive overview of healthcare procurement from a system perspective. This study shows how increasing system preparedness for future emergencies depends both on developing critical capabilities and understanding how awareness and motivation influence the effective deployment of those capabilities.

A different kind of loss: A tribute to Dr Clyde Hertzman (1953–2013)

Every now and then we experience a loss in our professional and work circles that somehow seems tougher and deeper than others, and so untimely it takes our breath away. And somehow the rituals of mourning that help us through the losses in our personal and family lives are not available to us in our work worlds. Much is being written about Dr Clyde Hertzman, our remarkable friend and colleague who died suddenly in February in the United Kingdom at the age of 59. Clyde’s current position was Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, British Columbia). The reach of his work and ideas extended beyond academia to the grassroots of national and international audiences. There are multiple postings in online discussion boards, in local and national newspapers and in medical journals. ‘Google’ his name and pages of tribute entries return. Reflections have come from politicians, journalists, university and medical school deans and professors, leaders of professional organizations, advocacy groups and nongovernmental organizations – pretty well all the players, institutions and organizations in Canada, and beyond, who care about young children and who have shared Clyde’s journey and work on the human development agenda. So too has the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) posted its words of respect and tribute for the contributions Clyde has made internationally, nationally and locally. Most recently, he worked with our CPS Early Years Task Force to help develop our strategy, infusing his brilliance and enthusiasm for opportunities to make a better world for Canada’s children. He liberally shared his ideas, his contacts and his wisdom to help us craft the next steps in this long journey. He collaborated with the CPS Early Years Task Force just a week before his death and spent a morning in early December with us at HELP, where we brainstormed the options, the strategies and the direction. He had recently learned of, and shared in confidence, his Order of Canada appointment and, apart from being delighted at the recognition, was contemplating how to use this new platform to shine a brighter light on early child development. In November 2010, he was named CIHR’s Health Researcher of the Year, and he delivered a phenomenal lecture at Ottawa’s National Gallery. It was one of those magical nights with a bitter cold wind pounding at the windows, snow falling and an erudite crowd in attendance, including the Governor General and Clyde’s partner Marcy Cohen. Clyde was at the top of his game. His broad-reaching and convincing dissertation emphasized that the early years do matter and are a determinant of lifelong health and well-being. He brought the understanding of cellular biology to the story of a successful society, and created a buzz and excitement around his passion for measurement. Dr Clyde Hertzman Clyde introduced us to many new concepts, including biological embedding, emphasizing how the environmental experiences of early childhood in families and communities become hardwired into the brain. “Early in life, the environment talks to genes and the genes listen,” he wrote (1). Similarly, any of us who were lucky enough to experience Clyde through his teaching, his writings or his lectures have had our neuronal connections biologically and indelibly altered. His humility coupled with his vibrant curiosity made him very special to work with. Clyde has, in a most wonderful way, ‘gotten under our skin’. So the loss of Clyde feels like a tsunami for those of us working on the human development agenda – it’s a hole in our universe. And it will continue to manifest itself in the absence of his voice in the multiple conversations we shared, the silence from the podium and the empty chair at the panel table. The loss of his intellectual horsepower, his different, creative way of looking at and measuring the world, and his ability to take complexity and transform these complex ideas into brain butterscotch is immeasurable. We know that his impact will be felt by generations of children around the world forever. So this is the ‘now and then’ in our professional careers when, like William Wordsworth in Surprised by Joy, we instinctively turn at a moment of early childhood success to look for Clyde – for his leadership, wisdom and enthusiasm, then we realize he is no longer with us. We will repair, we will rebuild and refocus, but we will remember this different kind of loss.

Impact of Aspirations and Legacies of Leaders in the Construction Industry in Singapore

Leadership has been looked at through various lenses, such as behaviors, styles, and skills. More recently, leadership has been viewed from the lens of the legacies leaders want to leave behind. Leaders’ desired legacies not only reflect the impact they want to have on the people and organizations they work with, but also portray the future they hope for. This paper discusses findings from interviews with 49 leaders of professional organizations and architectural, engineering, and construction firms in Singapore. These leaders showed their desire to develop their followers into leaders and to leave successful organizations behind. They also revealed their anxiety about issues in the industry such as lack of professionalism and adversarialism. In line with the results of the interviews, this paper proposes that rather than waiting to think about their legacy in the last stages of their careers, leaders in engineering should try from the start to be clear about what they want to achieve through their leader...

Wound-Management of Complex Wounds

It is well accepted that during the end stages of life any of a number of vital body systems can, and often do, shut down to varying degrees. The result of organ shut down can be devastating, resulting in injury or interference with functioning of other systems that may eventually lead to death. We propose that the skin, the largest organ of the body, is no different, and also can become dysfunctional to varying degrees and with varying levels of resultant injury. When this dysfunctional state occurs, the manifestations are termed, Skin Changes At Life's End (SCALE). We have established an expert group to build a consensus proposal on SCALE. The panel consisted of 18 internationally recognized key opinion leaders including clinicians, caregivers, medical researchers, legal experts, academicians and leaders of professional organizations. A forum was held on April 4–6, 2008 in Chicago, IL, to discuss the nature of SCALE, including the Kennedy Terminal Ulcer (KTU) and other end of life skin changes. General agreement existed that, like any other organ of the body, the skin is subject to a loss of integrity due to internal and external insults. Contrary to popular myth, not all pressure ulcers are avoidable. Our current understanding of the complex skin changes that can occur at life's end (including the KTU) is limited, and additional research and expert consensus is necessary. Specific areas requiring research and consensus include: assessing the critical etiological factors of SCALE clinically describing and diagnosing the conditions, and recommending appropriate pathways of care. The panel concluded with a series of proposed consensus statements to which public comment was sought. This poster will present these statements and the panel's overall findings.

Possibilities and Pitfalls of a Public Health Agenda for Physical Education

The 1996 Surgeon General’s Report (SGR), Physical Activity and Health, was one of the more significant U.S. federal documents to outline national priorities for health and physical activity. In this monograph Marlene Tappe and Charlene Burgeson and Stephen Cone remind us that Physical Activity and Health was the third in a series of Surgeon General reports focused on the health of the U.S. population over the last 40 years. The first was the 1960 SG report titled Tobacco and Health and the second, published in 1988, focused on Nutrition and Health. Of the three, the 1996 report has had most relevance to the physical education profession because it spoke directly to our primary concern, physical activity or human movement. The editors’ decision to devote a Journal of Teaching in Physical Education monograph to a critique of the relationships between physical education, physical activity, and public health using the 1996 SGR as a watershed was insightful. Sport pedagogists and public-health professionals alike can benefit. Their invitations to the lead authors working in the U.S. and the U.K. to write about these relationships globally and the implications for physical education and teacher education have resulted in a thought-provoking monograph. These authors represent U.S. leaders of professional organizations as well as a diversity of national and international scholars from subdisciplines in our field including sociology, epidemiology, exercise physiology, and sport pedagogy. All have brought to their task expertise in and passion for quality physical activity and/or physical education. The authors were charged to respond to the following four questions:

The Search for Success

First, we wrote to leaders of profes sional organizations and institutions and asked them to name outstanding school ad ministrators they knew. Over 1000 names were provided—some from every state in America. Our second step was to write to the nominees and ask them to tell us why they thought they were nominated as outstand ing school administrators. Their open-ended responses filled six notebooks. Of the 491 respondents, 70 were middle level adminis trators. Some of their thoughts follow.