Workforce Development and Higher Education Partnerships

Workforce development and higher education can benefit from collaborative efforts that incorporate and apply teaching, learning, and research from a variety of environments. This chapter introduces the context of workforce development innovation and the impact on employees. Partnerships, in general, are defined and workforce development and higher education partnerships are examined that have influenced building collaborative relationships. Also included is a review of best practices and future trends related to workforce development and higher education partnerships.

The Transculturalized Diversity and Inclusion Model

While the transculturalized diversity and inclusion (TD&I) model is a contemporaneous strategy for leadership and learning, it is the latest of the existing disability study models. This chapter reviews the development of the TD&I model from the leadership perspective to study arguments, experiences, and to investigate how this information apprises the construction and exercise of transcultural consciousness, expertise, know-how, traditions, determinations, happenstances, objectives, agreement, and learning. This exploration focuses on the implementation of the model and survey results as this transculturalized model is reasoned the appropriate tool to expose how different backgrounds can be utilized in achievement to blend variability, variation, and diversity into unity. Beginning with the initial conceptual frameworks, and the results of the data, this research details the TD&I model and how to implement it in today's environment of activating change and transformation. This information adds to the body of knowledge regarding disability, strategy, diversity, and inclusion for academics, practitioners, and learners.

Shared Leadership and Team Performance

This chapter contributes to the existing evidence on the constructs of shared leadership, social, and emotional capitals to demonstrate their significant galvanizing effect on team and organizational performance through trust. This study aimed to ascertain how leadership self-efficacy might influence shared leadership team, trust, and performance in this IT Company. Managers with self-reported ratings for the self-efficacy attributes cluster of leadership demonstrate greater probability of improving both perceived and actual employee performance. The emerging results concur with the aforementioned premise because these appear to emphasize the leadership self-efficacy attributes cluster of problem solving. These results may have a positive impact on the team and organizational performance as a whole.

Education

This chapter discusses the role of education in “humanizing the economy” and emphasizes its contribution to the development of a new socio-economic model that helps to overcome the irregularities present in contemporary society. It proposes the implementation of school practices aimed at the completeness of the individual and in favor of social balance. It also emphasizes the importance of the humanizing process in the attainment of values such as, justice, freedom, solidarity and cooperation, which are structuring values of social cohesion. The primary data focused on the Secondary Education in the Districts of Braga and Viana do Castelo, in the northwest of Portugal. Interviews were conducted with school principals as main actors in the research. In spite of the limitations of the work, the results show that, in Portugal, education is still focused on individualism. It is also noted that assimilation of social aspects and humanization is weak, which inhibits placing the individual at the center of economic concerns and produces negative externalities on economic and social performance including wellbeing.

This Seed Will Bear No Fruit

The continuous increase in the number of older people and the gradual erosion of the extended family system which used to cater to them are alarming. While older people in much of the developed countries have embraced old people's homes as an alternative, the same cannot be said of older people in Nigeria who still believed that it is the duty of the family to accommodate them. The chapter examined the perception of older people about living in old people's home in some selected local government areas in Osun State, Nigeria. The study showed that their perception about living in old people's home was poor as many of them still held on to the belief that it was the responsibility of their family members to house them as it was done in the olden days. Although a few of the interviewees (particularly those who are exposed to what is obtained in the Western world and those with some level of education) had accepted the idea, many preferred to live with their family rather than being dumped in “an isolated environment,” where they would not have access to their family members. Pragmatic policy options aimed at addressing this emerging social problem were highlighted.

From Macro to Micro

Transdisciplinarity characterizes the collaborative statewide networks organized around the disease continuum of cancer care in Georgia, United States. By exploring the driving forces at the macro level of policy formation and state cancer control efforts, the transdisciplinary team approach translates to the meso level where statewide workgroups organize to develop implementation initiatives designed to influence improvements in cancer control. Georgia's statewide cancer control efforts apply three cross-cutting priorities of quality, care coordination and palliative care/survivorship in association with the top five site specific priorities. The influence of transdisciplinarity is demonstrated through the Georgia Colorectal Cancer Roundtable (GCCRT) initiatives impacting colorectal cancer screenings at the micro level where practitioner and patient interactions occur. A medical home achieves improvements in colorectal cancer screening after participating in the GCCRT annual meeting.

Demystifying Unlearning and Innovation in Higher Education Institutions

This chapter analyzes human and emotional capitals as the main source for organizational change, innovation, and learning. Individuals and teams thus have the aptitude to revitalize their learning ability. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between intentional unlearning and forgetting. Dynamic capabilities and knowledge management emphasize that organizational innovation depends on knowledge considered to be the vital resource. The old dominant logic must be unlearned for organizations to embrace innovation and creativity. Organizational learning models are critiqued and the capacity for unlearning in organizational learning processes is highlighted. Unlearning typologies and related barriers of organizational forgetting are critiqued. Furthermore, unlearning leads to innovation as re-learning is based on initiative and experimentation between individuals in a blameless culture. The organizational learning social constructivist perspective is adopted in a dynamic capability theoretical framework. Furthermore, the notion of transdisciplinarity embraces a new age mindset which refutes the old dominant logic.

JIT Inventory Management Strategy

Implementing a just-in-time (JIT) inventory management strategy seems to be the latest hot topic in the business world, particularly in manufacturing industries. In today's competitive supply chain environment, more and more companies are either adopting JIT methodology or at least beginning to research and understand how JIT would affect their business. But what exactly is JIT? Many companies may be already putting into practice some of the concepts of JIT – such as looking at always improving or trying to reduce waste in terms of product or labor steps. Some companies may be fully ready to embrace a JIT operating process; yet, perhaps JIT is not the best choice for their business. The goal of this chapter is to develop a better understanding of JIT, from this history behind its inception to the various risks and benefits that relate to adopting JIT from an interdisciplinary/strategic approach to a transdisciplinary viewpoint. Those strategies, which include the basic methods of minimum stock, economic order quantity (EOQ), and Safety stock methods, are explored and explained in this chapter.

Higher Education Transcendence Through Transdisciplinarity

The future of higher educational institutions is in need of innovators, creative thinkers, problem solvers, and people who can envision transcending across disciplines into a transdiciplinarity environment that by its nature requires institutions of learning to identify the challenges that affect humanity and investigate and implement solutions throughout the life of those challenges, working continuously to iteratively improve upon yesterday's solutions. Allowing the coexistence of old and new, being able to deal with change and disorder while explaining persistence and order requires practices that connect contextually things, people, and events that are distant and only partially congruent. Transdisciplinarity as a construct or framework can guide institutions of higher learning to break from outdated models and structures to form new ways of being that are fluid, heuristic, and holistic. Transperformative education can serve as a model to operationalize transdisciplinarity at the curricula, instructional, operational, and strategic level.

Practice Perspectives on Learning Analytics in Higher Education

Learning analytics have taken higher education by the proverbial “storm.” Universities primarily employ learning analytics at the level of metrics to satisfy institutional requirements but are also investing significant effort in technical development. In the domain of teaching, learning analytics are making an appearance but are much less developed than in institutional or technical domains. On the basis of the potential of learning analytics to inform teaching practice and thus improve learning experiences, course instructors are now encouraged to use learning analytics at classroom level. Early forages are giving mixed results, and some confusion reigns among teaching staff in relation to the usability/value of learning analytics. The fundamental premise of the present chapter is that if potential of learning analytics to improve learning experiences is to be realized, then learning analytics must shift further into the practice domain, and this requires the projection of learning theory onto learning analytics.