9,242 research outputs found
The stronger families in Australia (SFIA) study: phase 2
No full textThis report presents a medium- to long-term evaluation of the Communities for Children (CfC) initiative.
Executive summary
This report presents the results of Phase 2 of the Stronger Families in Australia (SFIA) study, an evaluation of the Communities for Children (CfC) initiative. The focus is on examining the effects of the initiative on child, family and community outcomes. By using data from Phase 1 (Waves 1 to 3 conducted from 2006-08) and Phase 2 (Waves 4 and 5 conducted in 2010-12) of the Stronger Families in Australia (SFIA) study, the medium- to longer-term effects of the program can be assessed.
As is outlined in detail in the report: Stronger Families in Australia Study: The Impact of Communities for Children, the CfC initiative aimed to:
improve the coordination of services for children 0-5 years of age and their families;
identify and provide services to address unmet needs;
build community capacity to engage in service delivery; and
improve the community context in which children grow up.
As part of the CfC initiative, the Department of Social Services (DSS; formerly Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs [FaHCSIA]) funded non-government organisations as "Facilitating Partners" initially in 45 disadvantaged geographic areas around Australia. Their task was to develop and implement a "whole-of-community" approach to enhancing early childhood development, through consultation with local stakeholders. The idea behind the CfC model is that service effectiveness is dependent not only on the nature and number of services, but also on coordinated service delivery. The types of services offered in the CfC sites differ depending on the needs of each community, and include home visiting; programs on early learning, child nutrition and literacy; parenting and family support services; and community events. There are now 52 funded CfC Facilitating Partners.
In 2009, CfC services were incorporated into the Family Support Program, which brought together a wide range of services for children and families, broadening their scope to include services for children aged 0 to 12 years and targeting vulnerable and disadvantaged families. In the same year, eight sites were targeted to focus on preventing child abuse and neglect in particular - four were existing CfC sites and four were new sites. In this report, these sites are referred to as Stage 2 CfC sites. Stage 2 CfC sites have not been included in the CfC evaluation reported in the main body of this report; however, preliminary waves of data from the early implementation of seven Stage 2 CfC sites and comparison (contrast) sites are included in the appendix.
As in the initial phase of the evaluation, Phase 2 of the SFIA study provides a unique opportunity to consider the effectiveness of the CfC initiative. The strengths of the SFIA study include having a large sample representing 42% of the initial target population in the selected CfC and contrast sites, relatively low and non-systematic attrition from Wave 2 (when children were 2-3 years of age) to Wave 5 (when children were 9-10 years of age), robust measurements of child and family outcomes, and an appropriately matched comparison group. However, the SFIA survey cannot identify the extent to which particular children or families have received CfC services, as one of the key features of the initiative was to change the nature of how the service delivery system operates in a community context.
Summaries of the key findings of the study and some of the implications of these findings are provided in this report
Team perfectionism and team performance: A prospective study
No full textPerfectionism is a personality characteristic that has been found to predict sports performance in athletes. To date, however, research has exclusively examined this relationship at an individual level (i.e., athletes’ perfectionism predicting their personal performance). The current study extends this research to team sports by examining whether, when manifested at team level, perfectionism predicts team performance. A sample of 231 competitive rowers from 36 boats completed measures of self-oriented, team-oriented, and team-prescribed perfectionism prior to competing against one another in a 4-day rowing competition. Strong within-boat similarities in the levels of team members’ team-oriented perfectionism supported the existence of collective team-oriented perfectionism at the boat level. Two-level latent growth curve modeling of day-by-day boat performance showed that team-oriented perfectionism positively predicted the position of the boat in mid-competition and the linear improvement in position. The findings suggest that imposing perfectionistic standards on team members may drive teams to greater levels of performance
The Impact of Interventional Change Techniques on an Internet Banking Cross-functional Team.
No full textThis study investigates the team aspects of a process improvement project situated in
an Internet banking system maintenance and modification phase. To investigate how
team processes could be improved in this context, four interventional change
techniques were introduced and implemented during an action research study in
which the researcher was included as one of the team members and participated
during group meetings and discussions.
Internet banking is an important Internet-delivered service which is expected to
provide benefits for both commercial banks and bank customers. Internet banking
allows bank customers to have the freedom to perform their financial activities at their
convenience. Developing, maintaining, and improving Internet banking systems
requires large amounts of investment to maintain high levels of Internet banking
service quality, and the maintenance and modification phase of the overall lifecycle
cost is a considerable part of this investment. Therefore, in order to ensure high levels
of usability, reliability, and quality for these Internet banking services, commercial
banks need to make significant investments in the maintenance and modification
phases of their Internet banking systems' lifecycle.
The four interventional change techniques used in this study were: departmental
participation, equal participation, holistic scenario, and management support. The four
techniques were found to be influential in developing process improvements in the
maintenance and modification phase of Internet banking systems. These techniques
generated several significant improvements which directly affected the way team
members managed their work. The significant contributions of these interventional
change techniques were: the creation of cross-functional multilevel teams,
development of effective departmental participation and communication techniques,
extended scope and knowledge by the team members of Internet banking systems, an
increase in team learning and understanding, techniques to change problem structure,
and an end to end problem-solving approach.
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These contributions also directly improved the performance of the Internet banking
systems maintenance team, and there was a significant improvement in the outcomes
of the Internet banking systems maintenance and modification phase
Development of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI)
No full textIn this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI’s distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women’s empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.Non-PRIFPRI1; CRP4; Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index; GAAP; G Cross-cutting gender theme; Capacity StrengtheningPHND; EPTD; A4NHCGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH
[[alternative]]A Study of the Factors Effecting Team Creativity: the Case Study of Advertising Teams
No full text[[abstract]]The purposes of this study were to explore the important issues of the factors that effect team creativity. The research method adopted was the case study of the qualitative research and the data was collected by in-depth interviews. In the process of the research, the author interviewed with five advertising teams, including eleven co-researchers.
According to the analysis of the research data, we can get the findings of the study as follows:
1. There are six factors effecting team creativity: (1) personal characteristics, (2) team characteristics, (3) creating process, (4) organizational culture, (5) working environment, (6) characters of team tasks.
2. There are three factors of personal characteristics effecting team creativity, including: (1) personality, (2) professional abilities, (3) life experiences.
3. There are four factors of team characteristics effecting team creativity, including: (1) professional abilities of the team leader (2) leading styles of the team leader (3) elements of team composition (4) the relationship among the team members.
4. There are three factors of creating process effecting team creativity, including:(1) team creating procedure (2) team creating technique (3) team creating principle.
5. There are three factors of organizational culture effecting team creativity, including: (1) corporation mission (2) working atmosphere (3) the way to motivate creativity (4) the supporting business processes.
6. There are two factors of working environment effecting team creativity, including: (1) the corporation systems (2) the corporation facilities and equipment.
7. There are two factors of characters of customers effecting team creativity, including: (1) customers’ views towards creativity (2) traits of goods.
A pre-post test evaluation of the impact of the PELICAN MDT-TME Development Programme on the working lives of colorectal cancer team members
No full textBackground: the PELICAN Multidisciplinary Team Total Mesorectal Excision (MDT-TME) Development Programme aimed to improve clinical outcomes for rectal cancer by educating colorectal cancer teams in precision surgery and related aspects of multidisciplinary care. The Programme reached almost all colorectal cancer teams across England. We took the opportunity to assess the impact of participating in this novel team-based Development Programme on the working lives of colorectal cancer team members.Methods: the impact of participating in the programme on team members' self-reported job stress, job satisfaction and team performance was assessed in a pre-post course study. 333/568 (59%) team members, from the 75 multidisciplinary teams who attended the final year of the Programme, completed questionnaires pre-course, and 6-8 weeks post-course.Results: across all team members, the main sources of job satisfaction related to working in multidisciplinary teams; whilst feeling overloaded was the main source of job stress. Surgeons and clinical nurse specialists reported higher levels of job satisfaction than team members who do not provide direct patient care, whilst MDT coordinators reported the lowest levels of job satisfaction and job stress. Both job stress and satisfaction decreased after participating in the Programme for all team members. There was a small improvement in team performance.Conclusions: participation in the Development Programme had a mixed impact on the working lives of team members in the immediate aftermath of attending. The decrease in team members' job stress may reflect the improved knowledge and skills conferred by the Programme. The decrease in job satisfaction may be the consequence of being unable to apply these skills immediately in clinical practice because of a lack of required infrastructure and/or equipment. In addition, whilst the Programme raised awareness of the challenges of teamworking, a greater focus on tackling these issues may have improved working lives furthe
The shift team formation problem in multi-shift manufacturing operations
No full textThis paper addresses the problem of assigning operators to teams that work in single-, two-, or three-day shift systems. The problem was motivated by, and illustrated with a case situation encountered in Dutch manufacturing industry. The problem addressed forms an extension of cell formation problems which are currently in the phase of addressing labor-related issues in cell design. A generalized goal problem formulation is presented to address multiple, conflicting objectives covering cross-training of workers, ensuring adequate levels of labor flexibility and minimizing labor-related costs. The proposed solution procedure consists of two phases. In the first phase, shift systems, in which applicable machines and the sizes of each shift team are identified. The next phase deals with assignment of operators to various teams and identification of specific cross-training needs for various workers. This phase involves the use of interactive goal programming. The methodology is illustrated by details from the case situation as well as a numerical example.
Top Management Team Diversity: A systematic Review
No full textEmpirical research investigating the impact of top management team (TMT)
diversity on executives’ decision making has produced inconclusive results.
To synthesize and aggregate the results on the diversity-performance
link, a meta-regression analysis (MRA) is conducted. It integrates more
than 200 estimates from 53 empirical studies investigating TMT diversity
and its impact on the quality of executives’ decision making as reflected
in corporate performance. The analysis contributes to the literature by
theoretically discussing and empirically examining the effects of TMT diversity
on corporate performance. Our results do not show a link between TMT
diversity and performance but provide evidence for publication bias. Thus,
the findings raise doubts on the impact of TMT diversity on performance
Top Team Leadership in Local Government
No full textThis chapter seeks to provide an overview of the entire Doctor in Business
Administration. The structure of the DBA involves three individual study elements,
named Projects 1, 2 and 3. This present Chapter acts as a ‘linking document’ and
provides an overview of the entire DBA.
For the purposes of this thesis, I have assumed that the knowledge gained, together
with the underpinning literature, is cumulative, and will therefore not be repeated in
every single project
Supply chain partnership in construction a field study on project team level factors
No full textPeople and their relationship are at the heart of supply chain partnerships, however there is a lack of qualitative studies focusing on how integrated relationships may be developed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct field research to deepen our understanding of team level variables that might help or inhibit a project team to perform in a SCP setting. To guide us in our study, we used a team effectiveness framework. Taking the role as a team coach, the first author conducted field research in four different project teams that were working in a SCP setting for the first time. These teams worked on housing refurbishment projects (2-12M construction costs) initiated by housing associations. All four were delivered through a strategic partnership. We found that SCP project teams are structured differently than conventional project teams. When we look at team level factors, we see that team members need time to understand their role and responsibilities within the project team and to build a shared mental model. The smallest problems in regard of team inputs (i.e. resources) can harm the team’s performance. Trust and psychological safety are important mediators between the input-output relation. Our main conclusion is, if we want supply chain partnerships to work, much more attention should be given to team level variables instead of merely relying on tools and techniques.Management in the Built EnvironmentArchitecture and The Built Environmen
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