Reflecting on Crucibles: Clarifying Values in Authentic Leaders

This qualitative study explores the role of crucibles, life-triggering moments, parents’ life mottos and definitions of success, and holding values in the lives of authentic leaders. This research used the life-story approach to explore the experience of such concepts on authentic leaders. Self-identified leaders with more than five years of experience in a leadership position or in a role of managing and developing others were invited to this research. Qualified authentic leaders (between 65 to 80 in ALQ) were invited to a qualitative interview utilizing the life story approach to explore significant forming factors of their leadership qualities. An inductive coding method was used in analyzing the transcription of interviews. Significant themes and codes show that life-triggers, crucibles, parents’ life mottos, their definition of success, and holding values play a significant role in authentic leadership development. Leadership scholars should emphasize the forming experiences of authentic leadership in their leadership development studies. In other words, the experienced dynamics of parents (life mottos and definitions of success), the experience of crucibles are suggested as antecedents of authentic leadership. The research shows that parents’ dynamics, crucibles, and life-triggering moments resonate with Erikson’s stages of development on authentic leadership development.

Factors affecting endoscopic treatment’s failure for primary vesicoureteral reflux in the paediatric population

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify which factors could determine endoscopic therapy’s failure in the paediatric patients with primary vesicoureteral reflux (VUR). Methods: We reviewed data from patients who underwent endoscopic surgery for primary reflux. We performed a multivariate logistic regression analysis considering factors conditioning therapeutic failure. All the tests were performed considering significant values of p < 0.05. Statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS 19.0 program. Study sample was homogenised by just including patients with primary reflux and excluding both patients with secondary reflux and patients with functional lower urinary conditions. Results: A total of 96 patients were included for review. Median age at surgery was 28 months. The overall success rate of endoscopic surgery for vesicoureteral reflux was 57%. Female sex, age under 24 months at the time of surgical intervention and having suffered a urinary tract infection (UTI) despite antibiotic prophylaxis are statistically significant risk factors for therapy failure. Conclusions: Nonetheless, differences between series could explain these differences in success rates. The lack of standardisation of the definition of ‘success’, the heterogeneity of patients included, and variables such as the degree of reflux, the presence of dysfunctional voiding, age or follow-up make it difficult to compare the success rate between series. Therefore, homogenisation of study samples assessing the evolution of primary reflux and response to endoscopic therapy is warranted. Level of evidence: Not applicable

Successful Deer Management in Scotland Requires Less Conflict Not More

What would successful deer management look like in Scotland? To some, flourishing populations of native wild deer represent success. But to others, negative impacts such as damage to woodlands and peatlands, agricultural and forestry losses, deer-vehicle collisions, and facilitating Lyme disease spread represent failure. Conflicting interests and incentives among people involved in deer management mean a common definition of success, and therefore clear management targets, remain elusive. While some environmental groups urgently call for an increase in the number of deer culled (shot) each year, other stakeholders aim to maximize deer numbers. Overcoming this governance failure will require clearly articulated, scientifically valid, and socially acceptable socio-ecological objectives to be co-produced by a broad range of stakeholders. Systematic monitoring of deer impacts will also be needed to evaluate the ability of specific management interventions to achieve defined objectives. Reintroducing Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) has been suggested as a means to reduce deer numbers and their negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts. However, evidence of lynx impacts on deer numbers, deer impacts, and social conflicts over deer suggest lynx reintroduction alone would not effectively reduce negative impacts of deer in Scotland, though it could be part of a broader solution. In the short-term, achieving sustainable numbers of deer in Scotland will require a substantial increase in the number of deer culled and effective changes to the way deer management is incentivized, regulated, implemented, and monitored.

Where Is More Important Than How in Coastal and Marine Ecosystems Restoration

Restoration is considered an effective strategy to accelerate the recovery of biological communities at local scale. However, the effects of restoration actions in the marine ecosystems are still unpredictable. We performed a global analysis of published literature to identify the factors increasing the probability of restoration success in coastal and marine systems. Our results confirm that the majority of active restoration initiatives are still concentrated in the northern hemisphere and that most of information gathered from restoration efforts derives from a relatively small subset of species. The analysis also indicates that many studies are still experimental in nature, covering small spatial and temporal scales. Despite the limits of assessing restoration effectiveness in absence of a standardized definition of success, the context (degree of human impact, ecosystem type, habitat) of where the restoration activity is undertaken is of greater relevance to a successful outcome than how (method) the restoration is carried out. Contrary to expectations, we found that restoration is not necessarily more successful closer to protected areas (PA) and in areas of moderate human impact. This result can be motivated by the limits in assessing the success of interventions and by the tendency of selecting areas in more obvious need of restoration, where the potential of actively restoring a degraded site is more evident. Restoration sites prioritization considering human uses and conservation status present in the region is of vital importance to obtain the intended outcomes and galvanize further actions.

Mission (im)possible? UN military peacekeeping operations in civil wars

Under what conditions can UN military peacekeeping operations (PKOs) succeed in contexts of civil war? This is an important question given the prevalence and cost of civil wars and the high, yet not always fulfilled, expectations of very costly military PKOs as responses to them by the international community. Yet, the academic and policy debates on this question are as long-standing as they are unresolved. Our article contributes to existing scholarship in several ways. First, adopting a nuanced and multi-dimensional definition of success that considers violence, displacement, and contagion as its 3 essential components, we identified 19 cases of full or partial successes, and 13 full or partial failures, covering all 32 UN military PKOs deployed to civil war settings. Second, we develop an original dataset and analytical framework that identifies a wide range of plausible factors related to the dynamics of both the intervention and the underlying conflict it is meant to address. Third, applying qualitative comparative analysis to our dataset of these 32 military PKOs, our key finding is that what matters most and consistently across all of these missions is the presence or absence of domestic consent to, and cooperation with, deployed PKOs.

Welcome to the 21st Century for Project Managers

If the O&G industry adopted new mail technology at the same rate it adopts project management technologies, it would still be using the Pony Express. Risk aversion and resistance to change are two of the main reasons for project failure across the industry. The industry still solves problems by throwing a bunch of human resources at the issue. The more people in the room the better the solution will be, right? In the 21st century, project management needs be based on the interaction of technology with human behavior. The objective of this paper is to introduce the industry to project management in the 21st century. In today's ever-changing global economy, the definition of success is just as fluid, and project management must be agile enough to deal with this. Finding something that works and then sticking to it for decades will no longer suffice. Modern technology companies take a unique approach to major project management which continually polls for changes and empowers individual employees to use their own best judgement while maintaining coordination with their fellows. An examination of this approach can provide helpful insight into optimizing the use of available resources, human or otherwise. Today's top technologies make it easy for individual team members to continuously update and record the progression of the project, and helps employees work toward better solutions rather than limiting themselves to the original requirements and company protocol. Employees are empowered to look for solutions, think out of the box and outside of what is currently available in-house. In the 21st century, the solution to problems is not a complex spreadsheet shared on SharePoint, it's an elegant integration of technology that optimizes human performance as shown in this case study.

What is the optimal outcome after endoscopic sinus surgery in the treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis? A consultation of Canadian experts

Objectives Many experts feel that in the absence of well-defined goals for success, they have an easier time identifying failure. As success ought to not be defined only by absence of failure, we aimed to define optimal outcomes for endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) by obtaining expert surgeon perspectives. Methods A total of 12 surgeons participated in this targeted consultation. Face to face semi-structured interviews were performed with expert surgeons in the field of CRS and ESS. General impressions and personal definitions of acceptable operative success and optimal operative outcomes were compiled and summarized. Results According to an expert survey, patients’ main objectives are an improvement in their chief complain, a general improvement in quality of life (QoL), and a better overall symptomatic control. The most important aspects of endoscopy for defining a successful intervention were an adequate mucus circulation, a healthy mucosa, minimal edema, and patency of all explored cavities or ostia. In the assessment of surgical outcomes, it was determined that both objective and patient reported data must be carefully examined, with more attention given to subjective outcomes. Conclusions According to data gathered from a Canadian expert consultation, a definition of success must be based on both subjective data and nasal endoscopy. We propose to define an acceptable outcome as either a subjective improvement of at least the minimal clinically improvement difference of a validated patient reported outcome questionnaire, along with a satisfactory endoscopic result (1) or a complete subjective resolution with a sub-optimal endoscopy (2). Graphical abstract