Utilizing Technology to Enhance Human Resource Practices

HR management departments are constantly evolving as a result of new technological advancements. For family HR firms, this technological evolution is vital in ensuring that they remain innovative and current with their competitors. Technology has impacted how companies recruit, retain, and evaluate employees. However, in order to ensure that technology is effectively and accurately adopted and integrated, companies need to understand how they can employ technology to enhance their daily operations and implement tools that provide an adequate return on investment for the technology they select. In family firms, a vast majority of employees are able to ensure that funds are invested in appropriate technology-enhanced projects and that they develop a family-like culture with their stakeholders. This chapter will seek to explore these emerging trends in order to present opportunity for family owned firms to function most efficiently and effectively in the modern, technology enhanced workplace.

The Present Opportunity for a Recovery of the Real Liberal International Order: the Liberal International Order and the Illiberalism

The article examines the liberal international order, its evolution and decline, draws on opinions of critics, journalists, diplomats and scholars. The author analyzes the reasons and stages of the decline of traditional liberal order, as well as its transformation into neoliberal democracy. The presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush stand out as a period in which the international order begins to change its nature. In addition, the article touches upon the consequences of hyper globalization in the context of the formation of neoliberal democracy. As a result of this analysis, the author raises the problem of not understanding the essence of illiberal democracies.

Utilizing Technology to Enhance Human Resource Practices

HR management departments are constantly evolving as a result of new technological advancements. For family HR firms, this technological evolution is vital in ensuring that they remain innovative and current with their competitors. Technology has impacted how companies recruit, retain, and evaluate employees. However, in order to ensure that technology is effectively and accurately adopted and integrated, companies need to understand how they can employ technology to enhance their daily operations and implement tools that provide an adequate return on investment for the technology they select. In family firms, a vast majority of employees are able to ensure that funds are invested in appropriate technology-enhanced projects and that they develop a family-like culture with their stakeholders. This chapter will seek to explore these emerging trends in order to present opportunity for family owned firms to function most efficiently and effectively in the modern, technology enhanced workplace.

“How I kept track of it of course was my business”: Cancer patient self-monitoring as self-stylized work

Objectives:Self-monitoring behaviors of cancer patients benefit patients, caregivers, and providers, and yet the phenomenon of self-monitoring from the cancer-patient perspective has not been studied. We examined cancer patients' self-monitoring preferences and practices, focusing on the meaning of self-monitoring within the cancer experience.Methods:Semi-structured interviews were conducted among adult cancer patients who had been seen at least once at a rural United States cancer center. Questions sought out the meaning of self-monitoring and its practical aspects. Qualitative data were analyzed by adapting the four-stepped method by Giorgi for empirical phenomenological analysis.Results:Twenty participants were interviewed (11 women and 9 men). Transcribed interviews revealed that cancer patient self-monitoring is self-stylized work that ranges from simple to complex, while being both idiosyncratic and routine. Participants reported using tools with systems for use that fit their distinctive lives for the purpose of understanding and using information they deemed to be important in their cancer care. Three conceptual categories were discerned from the data that help to elucidate this self-stylized work as fitting their individual priorities and preferences, reflecting their identities, and being born of their work lives.Significance of results:Findings highlight patients' unique self-monitoring preferences and practices, calling into question the assumption that the sole use of standardized tools are the most effective approach to engaging patients in this practice. Self-monitoring efforts can be validated when providers welcome or adapt to patients' self-stylized tools and systems. Doing so may present opportunity for improved communications and patient-centered care.

Querying the Causal Role of Attitudes in Educational Attainment

This paper synthesizes the evidence on the causal impact of attitudes on educational attainment using a simple four-element model of causation—requiring association, sequence, intervention, and explanation. Overall, there was no clear evidence that intervening to change the educational attitudes of disadvantaged students will lead to enhanced attainment. Some mental concepts, such as external motivation, show promise and could be developed further. Others, like locus of control, show little promise and could even be dangerous if used without care. Given that there are other approaches that can help to overcome the poverty gradient in schools, raising aspirations is not the way for policy to go. The stratification of educational outcomes is more likely to be structural rather than mental. An improved attitude without the competence to do something about it could be ineffective, whereas competence may be sufficient in isolation. The current evidence is that attitudes do not cause variation in attainment, and so policies and practices based on a belief that they do are being, and will continue to be, ineffective. Such policies also present opportunity costs, using budget that could be used for more promising approaches, and leaving the poverty gradient largely untouched for yet another generation.

Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition for the Diabetic Patient: A Case-Based Approach

Patients’ nutritional status is essential to ensure beneficial outcomes. However for the diabetic, the caloric energy required is not only sustaining but problematic if not managed appropriately. Uncontrolled hyperglycemia places these patients at risk of complications such as infections, neuropathy, and retinopathy. Health care providers can assist in tailoring nutritional support for diabetic patients. Possible interventions include adjusting caloric requirements to minimize carbohydrates and maximize fat as a main calorie substitute and to suggest appropriate macronutrient sources. Other disease state complications such as diabetic-associated nephropathy and gastroparesis affect nutritional support and present opportunity for further interventions. Diligence regarding blood glucose monitoring is imperative. Additional anti-diabetic therapies can be used to maintain tight glucose control; however, close monitoring must occur to minimize hypoglycemic episodes, which can be life-threatening.