Merits, Volume 4, Issue 1 (March 2024) – 7 articles

The lockdown during the pandemic questioned the learning and working conditions but underlined crucially the teaching pedagogy and new essential teachers’ roles and competencies, and on the whole, the operational framework of education for quality of education for all. The research was carried out through a European Project and gathered at training centers in two countries focusing on learning and pedagogical issues during the lockdown through focus group discussion methodology and labels analysis. If planning, material resources, and health issues came out as relevant difficulty categories, the findings underlined collaborative projects and capacitating pedagogy as efficient and helpful. The findings also questioned the quality-of-life framework at school and the teaching pedagogy and new teachers’ roles as competencies to cope with such a situation to support transformative learning. The outcomes suggested a positive operational framework, the innovative bienvivance paradigm, derived from medical methodology, which can help school organizations by inner development for outer changes to integrate diversity, equity, and educational quality efforts into their missions. It aims at serving inclusive excellence toward human resource sustainability and zero waste of human resources. It can be seen as an effective framework for quality and equity in education. It supports the UN and UNESCO recommendations and the psycho-socio-economic optimization of human resource issues, which are crucial in these human resource mobility and migrations waves, and broadly copes with global changes. Full article

This study presents a problem-based learning (i.e., PBL) assignment to engage students around the areas of diversity, justice, equity, inclusion, belonging (i.e., DEI), and sustainability in the classroom and workplace. The assignment is developed based on the learning objectives of an upper division business course following an outlined three-step process. A pretest-posttest research design with a control group demonstrates that the experiential assignment is effective in enhancing students’ problem-solving skills which, according to employers, recent college graduates need to improve upon. The PBL approach also increases students’ interest in DEI and sustainability so that they want to make a difference in society. While students’ confidence in their preparedness to become a manager decreases over the course of a semester, this loss in confidence is mitigated by students’ active participation in the PBL assignment. Full article

Ohio’s 5G and broadband industry is rapidly changing. In this study, we assess the current skills and skills gaps of the state’s workforce and the supply and demand of labor within the 5G and broadband industry. We use a skillshed analysis to determine declining occupations with easy and challenging transitions into 5G and broadband occupations. Based on the analysis, we determine where skills gaps exist and where additional resources are needed to prepare the state’s workforce for the 5G and broadband industry. Full article

During the COVID-19 crisis, organizations had to demonstrate organizational resilience (OR) to continue to carry out their missions. We conducted qualitative research to identify the factors that contributed to the OR of police and penitentiary institutions in French-speaking Switzerland, in terms of their operations and management. The modes of action and crisis responses of these emergency services, regularly confronted with crises and particularly impacted during the pandemic, are worthy of attention. To this end, we synthesized the OR factors that are frequently identified in both theoretical and empirical review articles and identified four theoretical conceptualizations: (a) resilience engineering, (b) ecological resilience (these two are the most widely used), (c) a third way situating resilience at an intermediate stage in a metamodel representing the evolution of organizations from a fragile to antifragile state, and (d) a conceptualization focusing on the temporal dimension of OR. Based on the results of 25 semi-structured interviews with executives from cantonal police forces and prisons, we present what we consider to be the key levers in a three-phase resilience process (upstream, during, and after the shock): anticipatory and proactive organizational culture, information management and communication, liminal leadership practices, social and environmental practices, agility-enhancing governance practices, and learning capabilities. Our results largely confirm that these parameters significantly contributed to the OR of the institutions in question. They also enable us to propose winning configurations of factors that can increase the potential for OR. Full article

Effective workplace leadership development programs are considered critical to organizational adaptive capacity and sustainability. The purpose of this exploratory study is to conduct an environmental scan of contemporary practices and approaches to leadership and management development programs in Australian workplaces. An online survey was distributed to a sample of Australian human resource professionals given the field’s strong practitioner orientation. The survey sample includes members of the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI), the professional body for human resource professionals and practitioners in Australia. The findings indicate a substantial majority of the current practice is not informed by evidence-based theory or practice. The most commonly used model is 70:20:10, which lacks a coherent evidence base and has been widely criticized for that reason. The findings point to the frequent application of bespoke leadership frameworks and significant theory–practice gaps. While organizations cite “ensuring delivery of business results”, as the main driver for instigating leadership development programs, with support from top management being crucial to the effectiveness and success of leadership development programs/interventions, evaluation and measurement of impact and return on investment remains problematic. Based on these insights, we present a future research agenda for monitoring and evaluating leadership development programs that will build a stronger theoretical foundation to inform evidence-based practice. Full article

In pursuing this study, we were interested in the effect of changes in psychological demands over time on burnout. We were also interested in examining the moderating role resources could play between changes in job demands over time and employee burnout. Multilevel regression analyses of repeated measures were conducted to capture the hierarchical structure of the data (time (Level 1, n = 537 (12-month period between T1 and T2)); employees (Level 2, n = 289)) nested in firms (Level 3, n = 34). To measure change in psychological demands, the distribution of psychological demands at T1 and T2 were dichotomized at the T1 median. Following this dichotomization, four groups were created: low T1 and low T2; high T1 and low T2; low T1 and high T2, high T1 and high T2. In terms of direct associations, an increase in psychological demands over time was associated with emotional exhaustion and cynicism but not professional efficacy. Locus of control, self-esteem, and social support from supervisors were also directly associated with burnout. As for interaction effects, social support from coworkers attenuated the effect of changes in psychological demands over time (i.e., increasing psychological demands) on cynicism. In other words, employees facing greater psychological demands over time (increasing psychological demands) and benefitting from social support from their coworkers had less cynicism. Our findings offer meaningful insights into possible ways of lowering burnout levels. Based on the results obtained, psychological demands, social support, locus of control, and self-esteem should be considered valuable intervention targets. Full article

Firefighting is an occupation with high injury risks, particularly when conducting fireground operations. The fire service generally quantifies the job demands of firefighting through tracking emergency call volume across 24 h shifts; however, volume alone does not account for the specific work completed in response to different call types. Utilization of external (i.e., objective work) and internal (i.e., intrinsic responses to work) training load measures have the potential to quantify the multifaceted workload demands of responses to medical and fire emergencies and inform injury prevention strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to utilize training load measures to quantify the workloads across emergency call types. For medical emergencies and fire emergencies, the external load and the physiological, perceived, and cumulative internal loads were quantified. The results indicate that the magnitude of objective work required for fire emergency responses that include fire suppression and/or auto-extrication is approximately three times greater than that of medical and other fire emergency (i.e., no suppression or extrication) responses. Further, in response to the objective work for fire suppression and/or auto-extrication calls, the intrinsic workloads are six times more physiologically and perceptually demanding than—as well as double, cumulatively—those of medical and other fire emergency responses. Full article