Survey of manufacturing curricula from around the world

In the manufacturing organization cost or more specifically cost reduction is an everyday obsession with managers and engineers. To compete globally and win new contracts, manufacturing firms need to learn how to be responsive, lean and efficient. On the other hand, in order to retain and motivate workers, improve systems efficiency and conform to various regulations including health, safety and the environment, manufacturing firms need to continuously invest. Both opposing pressures create a challenging environment for manufacturing managers and engineers. This paper introduces research into how the manufacturing environment is changing and in particular the type of issues that manufacturing managers and engineers need to learn. The paper presents the first results of a study being conducted by a number of academic institutions and industries from around the world into manufacturing education issues. The principle aim of the research consortium is to anticipate the needs of manufacturing organization of the future and to provide a framework for curriculum development within universities that meet these needs. This paper specifically outlines the results of a study of existing manufacturing curricula from around the world and takes an in-depth look at four recently developed masters programmes.     

Governance and Participation in Local Welfare: The Case of the Italian Piani di Zona

This article analyses four cases of governance in Italian local welfare systems. Following Law 328/2000, the design and management of the social services system in Italy involve different public responsibility levels, mainly regional and municipal. In order to manage social policies, Italian municipalities have to join in new inter‐municipal groupings called ‘Piani di Zona’ (Area Plans). Moreover, the law provides for engaging in these Plans even local third‐sector organizations and citizens. The article attempts to highlight the implications of this complex system that is leading local authorities to open new governance arenas. We hereby present the results of a research project on two Piani di Zona in the Region of Lombardy (Northern Italy) and on two in the Region of Campania (Southern Italy), carried out by means of institutional analysis. We particularly focus on the dynamics of participation triggered by the Piani di Zona. Our hypothesis is that the role of public administration is a fundamental variable to understand the different ways of participating. In this sense, we discuss the dynamics of local governance by relaying them to four main questions: who participates in what, where and how?     

Leadership and Uncertainty: How Role Ambiguity Affects the Relationship between Leader Group Prototypicality and Leadership Effectiveness

In social identity analyses of leadership the role of leader group prototypicality (the extent to which the leader is representative of the collective identity) in leadership effectiveness is emphasized. We extend this analysis by identifying role ambiguity as a situational influence that feeds into the desire to reduce uncertainty, as a moderator of the relationship between leader group prototypicality and indicators of leadership effectiveness (perceived effectiveness, job satisfaction and turnover intentions). Role ambiguity is proposed to lead people to turn to their group memberships, making leadership effectiveness more contingent on the extent to which leaders are group prototypical. Results of a survey of n=368 employees of four Italian companies supported this hypothesis. Role ambiguity and leader group prototypicality interacted in predicting perceived effectiveness, job satisfaction and turnover intentions, such that leader group prototypicality was more strongly related to leadership effectiveness for employees experiencing greater role ambiguity.     

Activation and Local Welfare in Italy: Trends and Issues

This article deals with the development of local welfare in Italy and is grounded on a research project focusing on activation as a main feature of change in Italian social policies. Along with decentralization processes, many Italian regions have been acting as policy laboratories, developing and testing very different approaches according to their political attitude. On the one hand this results in a fragmented policy landscape which is difficult to recompose, and, moreover, in growing inequalities in the Italian welfare system. On the other hand, it opens opportunities for experimentation on institutional and organizational structures on a regional scale, creating a variety of practices for research and policy analysis. In the article we first describe the main trends in national social policies, with a specific focus on the dynamics of change referring to activation. We will then focus on a pilot programme which is aiming at the promotion and implementation of innovative practices in health and social care services in Friuli‐Venezia Giulia, a region in which there is a significant orientation towards enhancing social citizenship and enforcing the central position of the public actor. We investigate how the dynamics of territorialization and personalization, implied by the programme, trigger specific logics and practices of activation. Finally, referring to this case study, we propose an analytical overview of some relevant issues in the development of ‘local active welfare’ in Italy.     

The key role of positive parenting and children’s temperament in post‐institutionalized children’s socio‐emotional adjustment after adoption placement. A RCT study

Parenting interventions represent a means for experimentally inquiring socio‐emotional change of post‐institutionalized children after adoption. We used this approach in a three time point RCT study involving 83 post‐institutionalized children (M_age = 33.5 months, SD = 17.1) and their adoptive mothers (M_age = 42.6, SD = 3.9), attending either the Video‐Feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting in adoption and foster care or a dummy intervention. Controlling for gender and age at adoption, children showed a significant change in their socio‐emotional adjustment in the specific variables inquired—that is, emotional availability‐EA, and behavioral problems—after intervention attendance. Mediation and moderated mediation models showed that maternal EA was a main factor affecting children’s EA and externalizing behavioral problems, with a key moderating role played by children’s temperament; children with high scores on temperamental negative affect benefitted most from their mothers’ increase in EA.     

Competences and social participation in local social policies: the Italian Area Social Plans

Drawing on the results of research on 20 Area Social Plans, the article analyses the competences for participation and the role that they perform as a linkage between models/theories and practices of participation. We investigate in particular the conceptual models and representations of officials and politicians in regard to the competences deemed important for promoting social participation. Besides giving voice to those who actually design and implement the Plans, often working on the front line, these representations enlighten the strengths and weaknesses of social participation. The underlying trend that emerges from the research is the centrality of a relational framework of participation. This entails some problems. There is a risk of a reductive vision which gives overwhelming weight to personal skills of communicative type. This would devalue both institutional contexts (in terms of resources and facilitating factors or, conversely, disincentives) and the intersubjective dimension at the basis of communicative skills. The risk, in short, is the trivialisation of relational skills. The most important point is that conceiving skills as equivalent to personal abilities leads to evasion of questions concerning how to elicit, transmit, and reorganise knowledge for participation.     

Old and New Organizational Cages. What about Autonomy and Freedom?

The discourses on the so-called “post-bureaucracy” emphasizes the importance of autonomy and freedom in present-day organizations. Yet, differently to the discourses, the practices are not univocal and there is a mix of continuity and transformation to be investigated. The article addresses these issues aiming to understand if and how organizational cages are changing, in particular in the public sector. After discussing the issues of autonomy and freedom in the contemporary organizations, the analysis focuses on the New Public Management in Italy on the basis of a case study. The research highlights the role of institutional and social resources that mediate freedom and autonomy.