Organizational Acumen Research Articles

Work readiness of graduate nurses and the impact on job satisfaction, work engagement and intention to remain

Graduate work readiness is a relatively new construct that can predict graduate potential. Its impact on graduate work outcomes however, is unknown. The current study aimed to explore the relationships between work readiness and a number of work outcomes (job satisfaction, work engagement, and intention to remain). A survey design was used. A sample of 96 graduate nurses from two regional hospitals in Victoria, Australia participated in this study. Data were collected using quantitative surveys Three of the four work readiness dimensions (organisational acumen, clinical competence and social intelligence) were found to predict job satisfaction and work engagement. Moreover, both job satisfaction and work engagement were found to mediate the relationship between organisational acumen and intention to remain. The findings indicate that dimensions of work readiness uniquely predict work outcomes. Findings support prior research, which suggests that graduate work readiness is a multidimensional construct comprising skills and attributes beyond discipline-specific competence.

Work readiness of graduate health professionals

The current exploratory study investigated work readiness among graduate health professionals. A critical incident technique was used to elicit perceptions regarding: strategies and skills that constitute work readiness among health professionals and the work readiness factors that help or hinder health graduates' transition and integration into the workplace. Fifteen medical graduates, 26 nursing graduates and five organisational representatives from a regional hospital in Victoria, Australia participated. Data were collected via qualitative interviews. Participants discussed a total of 92 critical incidents; 52 related to helping and 40 to hindering work readiness factors that impacted graduates' transition and integration experiences. A follow-up thematic analysis indentified four critical work readiness factors: social intelligence, organisational acumen, work competence and personal characteristics. While graduates and organisational representatives considered each factor important, some differences between the groups emerged. Organisational representative's perceived social intelligence and clinical skills critical graduate competencies, yet graduates were unprepared in these areas. The identified work readiness factors were consistent with past research and warrant further investigation of work readiness among a larger group of graduate health professionals in a range of contexts.

Music and Conflict (review)

and Conflict Edited by John Morgan O'Connell and Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. [viii, 289 p. ISBN 9780252035456 (hardcover), $80; ISBN 97-0252077388 (paperback), $30.] examples, illustrations, maps, appendices, index. and Conflict is a valuable addition to the growing literature on music in war and peace. In addition to how music might dissolve and nurture cross-cultural understanding, the book considers the ways in which music inflames and justifies conflict. The volume brings together an array of case studies and engages conflict with a theoretical depth that fosters thought for exploring countless other disputes. All of the authors in this volume acknowledge the power of music to move people, yet, unlike countless other affirmations of music's healing and peace-making capabilities, these writers realize that if music has power it also has power to harm. Three themes permeate the book and are found to varying degrees in each of the essays. The first provides insight into how the discourse and the use of music help to identify conflict. By examining the discord in music discourse and practice, the essays highlight policies and ideologies that inform musical production and meaning. Second is an account of some of the ways that music is employed to resolve conflict by fostering inter cultural understanding to promoting healing. The third theme speaks to the applied researcher and suggests ways that ethnomusicologists might operate as mediators in conflict resolution. John O'Connell's introduction, An Ethnomusicological Approach to and Conflict, is valuable for its careful presentation of the myriad of ways that this topic can be approached. In a Lakoffian manner he highlights that the language of music scholarship, analysis, and practice are heavily imbued with metaphors of conflict, and that war and peace are not discrete categories but best thought of as a continuum of behaviors. The book logically progresses from music used to exacerbate conflict to music used for resolution. Each of the six sections comprises a pair of chapters grouped together under specific conceptual and geopolitical themes. The editors should be commended for the organizational acumen that facilitates dialogue between the chapters. The work's value emerges from the intersections between the paired articles. The clear, progressive layout lends itself well to dialogue between subsections and, as such, would work well in a seminar context. Part 1, Music and War, contains two articles on post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Jane C. Sugarman's Kosova Calls for Peace' highlights how wars require that communities overlook differences in background and orientation so as to act as a united group and how Albanian songs and music videos produced during the Kosovo War forged a sense of national purpose by eliding or mystifying social difference (p. 18). Sugarman argues that this elision of differences was achieved through the evocation of a mythic mode of representation that may be identified in song lyrics, the staging of music videos, and hyper-ethnic musical arrangements. Inna Naroditskaya's chapter Musical Enactment of Conflict and Compromise in Azerbaijan provides a close reading of the score and performance (s) of the oratorio Qarahag Shikestasi by Azeri composer Vasif Adigozal. She reads across this piece and several others to find a musical interpretation of the conflict over the contested region of Qarabag. Different types of hybridization are engaged strategically in these pieces to balance a proximity to Western music with a distance that keeps them attractively exotic, revealing a craving for communication with and recognition by other nations. Part 2, Music and Boundaries, explores how music helps define within and across frontiers in Korea and Northern Ireland. Keith Howard's Music across the DMZ examines how musical policy reflects the dominant ideology in each sector-Artists on both sides of the Korean demilitarized zone have advanced on different trajectories, each creating music of value. …

The Work Readiness Scale (WRS): Developing a measure to assess work readiness in college graduates

Work readiness is a relatively new concept which has emerged in the literature as a selection criterion for predicting graduate potential. Its definition and validity however, is contentious. To address this issue, the current study aimed to identify the attributes and characteristics that comprise work readiness and develop a scale to assess graduate work readiness. A qualitative study was conducted to assist in generating a representative pool of items for quantitative measurement. The resultant 167 item Work Readiness Scale (WRS) which we developed was validated in a sample of 251 graduates across a range of disciplines. Item analysis assisted in refining the scale. Exploratory factor analyses supported a 4-factor solution, with the final WRS consisting of 64 items. The four factors explained 44.7% of the variance, demonstrated excellent reliability and were labelled personal characteristics, organisational acumen, work competence, and social intelligence. The findings indicate that work readiness is a multidimensional construct and initial evidence is provided for the construct validity of the WRS.

What a Difference a Data Set and Advocacy Make for AAPI Health

Each of the four articles provides unique factual lessons on the health policy arena—federal and local—that affects AAPIs in the United States. All promulgate a shared message: better data sets and relentless advocacy make a policy difference. Funding helps, but a shared vision, and the academic-community-legislator collaborations that have built and continue to mount the evidence base in the service of meeting AAPI health needs, has certainly come a long way since 1976. Now we know how to achieve better data, and the AAPI community has the organizational acumen to put forth these recommendations with a unified voice.

Assessing North Korean Nuclear Intentions and Capacities: A New Approach

This article develops a novel assessment of the nuclear program of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Using a theory-driven approach rooted in comparative foreign policy analysis, the article undermines two common assumptions about the DPRK nuclear threat: first, that the North Korean leadership's nuclear intentions are a measured response to the external environment and, second, that the DPRK has developed enough technical capacity to go nuclear whenever it pleases. In place of these assumptions, the article puts forth the general theoretical hypotheses that (1) the decision to go nuclear is rarely if ever based on typical cost-benefit analysis, and instead reflects deep-seated national identity conceptions, and (2) the capacity to go nuclear depends not only on raw levels of industrialization and nuclear technology, but also on the state's organizational acumen. Applied to the case of the DPRK, these hypotheses suggest that it has long been strongly committed to the goal of acquiring an operational nuclear deterrent, but also that it has been finding it very difficult to successfully implement that wish. The article also demonstrates that these hypotheses are supported by the meager evidence available on this case.

The best pitcher in baseball: the life of Rube Foster, Negro League giant

When Rube Foster was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, his rightful place alongside baseball's greatest black heroes was at last firmly established. A world-class pitcher, a formidable manager, and a brilliant administrator, Rube Foster was arguably more influential in breaking down the color barrier in major league baseball than the venerable Jackie Robinson. Born in 1879, Rube Foster pitched for the legendary black baseball teamsthe Cuban X-Giants and the Philadelphia Giants before becoming player-manager of the Leland Giants and the Chicago American Giants. Long a central figure in black baseball, he founded baseball's first black league the Negro National League in 1920. From its inception, the Negro League served as a vehicle through which many of the finest black players could showcase their considerable talents. Challenging racial discrimination and stereotypes, it ultimately set the stage for future efforts to contest Jim Crow. Despite the long-standing success of the Negro National League as an influential black institution, Rube Foster was deeply embittered by organized baseball's unmitigated refusal to lift the color barrier. He died a broken man in 1930. The Best Pitcher in Baseball is the story of a man of unparalleled vision and organizational acumen whose passion for justice changed the face of baseball forever. It is a moving tribute to a man and his dream.

The american orthodox jewish housewife: a generational study in ethnic survival

This study has explored the cultural dynamism within American Jewish Orthodoxy via the experiences of three generations of Orthodox housewives Examining the force of Americanization on its early period and the revitalization of traditional Judaic commitment in its more recent period, the study concluded that the second generation, in both organizational acumen and effectiveness of third-generation socialization, was pivotal to this unfolding The Americanization of the second generation did not operate as a deterrent, but as a comfortable context into which the third-generation has maintained a vital, traditional Judaic commitment