BACKGROUND Teachers are a key part of the wider public health workforce in England. We conducted a survey to find out how they are trained for this role during their initial teacher education (ITE). METHODS Between 2011 and 2012, we sent an online questionnaire to 220 ITE course managers and conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 19 course managers to explore issues i...

Successful implementation of IT-enabled change requires good management of the change process and of the various sources of resistance that typically accompany the introduction of such change. As a result, helping managers better understand the dynamics of organizational processes is an important objective for IS and IT educators. The EIS Simulation is a new computer-based multimedia simulation...

This paper examines the current food crises, the projected effect of climate change, the vulnerabilities created by regional concentrations of food production, imports and exports, and the significant role of women as food producers, consumers and family food managers. Bridging productivity differentials between male and female farmers, by helping women overcome production constraints, would si...

This paper presents an agent-oriented approach to build a decision support system aimed at helping emergency managers to detect and to manage risks. We stress the flexibility and the adaptivity characteristics that are crucial to build a robust and efficient system, able to resolve complex problems. The system should be independent as much as possible from the subject of study. Thereby, an orig...

Decision making has always been a difficult process, based on various combinations if objectivity (when scientific tools were used) and subjectivity (considering that decisions are finally made by people, with their strengths and weaknesses). The IT revolution has also reached the areas of management and decision making, helping managers make better and more informed decisions by providing them...

This paper analyses the productivity growth of the SUMA tax offices located in Spain evolved between 2004 and 2006 by using Malmquist Index based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models. It goes a step forward by smoothed bootstrap procedure which improves the quality of the results by generalising the samples, so that the conclusions obtained from them can be applied in order to increase pro...

This paper employs four conceptual frameworks to assess IT outsourcing arrangements, i.e. core competencies, agency theory, transaction cost economics and partnerships. The frameworks are related to an empirical comparison of the public and private sectors within the United Kingdom, utilizing data from thirteen interviews conducted with IT managers from both sectors. The study suggest that each...