Efthymios Valkanos

Connecting organisational culture and quality of care in the hospital: is job burnout the missing link?

PURPOSE To date, relatively little evidence has been published as to what represents an effective and efficient way to improve quality of care and safety in hospitals. In addition, the initiatives that do exist are rarely designed or developed with regard to the individual and organisational factors that determine the success or failure of such initiatives. One of the challenges in linking organisational culture to quality of care is to identify the focal point at which a deficient hospital culture and inadequate organisational resources are most evident. The accumulated evidence suggests that such a point is physician burnout. This paper sets out to examine this issue. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The paper reviews the existing literature on organisational culture, burnout and quality of care in the healthcare sector. A new conceptual approach as to how organisational culture and quality of care can be more effectively linked through the physician experience of burnout is proposed. FINDINGS Recommendations are provided with regard to how future research can approach quality of care from a bottom-up organisational change perspective. In addition, the need to widen the debate beyond US and North European experiences is discussed. ORIGINALITY/VALUE The present paper represents an attempt to link organisational culture, job burnout and quality of care in a more meaningful way. A conceptual model has been provided as a way to frame and evaluate future research.

Experiential learning – its place in in‐house education and training

Purpose – Intense competition, rapid technological changes and modern aspects of management force any enterprise to put emphasis on their personnel and invest in their training and education. In terms of in‐house education and training, experiential learning is chosen to be analyzed in this particular paper. The paper aims to present experiential methods developed by trainers during the process of carrying out in‐house training programs with the aim of motivating trainees to learn through participative experiences and simultaneously adopt for their part another way of thought, action or behavior. It also seeks to examine the reasons why experiential learning is important and the conditions under which this kind of knowledge can be effective.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a general review of a range of experiential learning methods.Findings – The paper results in a useful checklist for developers and trainers to assess the level of experiential learning they are currently offering.Origina...

Adult vocational training and the project technique

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the benefits of implementing the Project method, by applying the technique in adult vocational training environments.Design/methodology/approach – While the central idea of this method stems from Greek antiquity, the method itself began to evolve within American pragmatism based on the principles of cognitive and Gestalt psychology. In the present paper, the assessment process of the Project method was undertaken with the multi‐methodical approach and use of combined levels of triangulation to determine whether it can be applied to a group of adults, training in the subject of marketing communications.Findings – Since the projected conditions from the bibliography are observed through the implementation of the Project technique it appears that adult trainees activate learning skills and competencies of emotional intelligence. Thus, the creation of knowledge operates as a “spiral” process starting from the individual level and expanding to the business an...

In-house experiential education after the Greek crisis: recessionary effects on experiential learning design and implementation of an effective vocational training

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the Greek recession on the design of adult vocational training through the financial crisis effects on entrepreneurship and, in particular, the significance of the conditions of the in-house experiential learning effective implementation in the new macroeconomic circumstances. Design/methodology/approach An overall theoretical approach is attempted through the bibliographic review and the analysis of selected scientific forums’ data. Findings The results of the literature review yielded 24 important factors-prerequisites that influence the implementation of in-house experiential adult education. The importance of the in-house experiential learning and the role of adult educators are emphasized in the direction of the essential skills acquisition that shall provide employees and enterprises with intellectual and practical assistance, so that they may adjust to the new macroeconomic environment. Practical implications This effort has provided a number of useful proposals to each recipient involved in adult education and training in order to reinforce the support of the business world as much as possible, especially during the time period of recession, and to reduce unemployment. Originality/value Starting from the fact that the macroeconomic recession itself constitutes an inevitable experience of an entire social, economic and educational system, the present study attempts a realistic approach of the significance of in-house experiential education and training in the direction of successful adjustment of enterprises, employees, adult educators and the State itself against the challenges of our times.

Occupational Mobility Dimensions in Greece

Abstract Mobility of labour both geographical and job or occupational mobility according to reports of several European Foundations and Institutes (e.g. Eurofound, IZA, CEPS, Danish Technological Institute etc), is an EU key objective of the European labour market. While mobility operates as one of EUs real adjustment mechanisms for macroeconomic shocks, its low levels still remain a serious problem for the European Integration (Janiak, A. &Wasmer, E., 2008). As there is a lack of relevant researches on this field in Greece, this paper attempts to study the employment mobility of Greek unemployed job seekers. Job mobility, geographical mobility and occupational mobility, combined with job mobility or regardless job mobility, are being correlated with career attitudes, using the Boundaryless Career Attitudes Scale, constructed by Briscoe & Hall (2005), as well as several concepts of networking, based on three questionnaires studying job seeking, constructed by Wanberg et al. (2000) and Lambert et al. (2006) . Implicative Statistical Analysis was released for the data analysis. In this study 62 unemployed people expressed their insights regarding occupational mobility. A strong argument of the impact of occupational mobility on human lives in Greece was made and further implications were discussed

Measuring the Attitudes of Adult Learners: A First Application of RAACES in Greece.

This article made use of the model ‘Revised adult attitudes toward continuing education scale’ (RAACES) to investigate the attitudes of adult learners in Vocational Training Centers (VTC/KEK) in Greece. The work aims to confirm the scale-measuring attitudes of adults resulting from the adoption of the RAACES model. Based on the results of the investigation in which we conducted 100 interviews with adults trained in the use of VTC (KEK), with a structured questionnaire of closed questions, the results of factorial analysis (factor analysis) suggest the existence of three dimensions read through the nine items of the RAACES model. Finally, the empirical results are discussed and suggestions for practical implementation are proposed.