Collaboration is a widely utilized strategy for addressing complex social issues and for facilitating organizational innovation and performance. Evaluators are uniquely positioned to empirically examine the development and effects of interagency and interprofessional collaboration. In this article, the authors present the Collaboration Evaluation and Improvement Framework (CEIF), an extension of earlier work in collaboration theory development. The CEIF identifies five points of entry to evaluating collaborations and suggests actions that evaluators can take to (a) define and describe the evaluand of collaboration, (b) measure the attributes of organizational collaboration over time, and (c) increase stakeholder capacity to engage in efficient and effective collaborative practices. Use of the CEIF to operationalize and assess the construct of collaboration can enable the evaluator to ascertain how collaborative efforts correlate with indicators of organizational impact and outcomes.
A Psychomanteum Process involving mirror-gazing was conducted in a research setting to explore apparent facilitated contact with deceased friends and relatives, and to collect data on the phenomena, experiences, and effects on bereavement. A pilot study with five participants resulted in strong experiences and four apparent contacts. The main study took 27 participants through a three-stage process: remembering a deceased friend or relative, sitting in a darkened room gazing into a mirror while thinking of the person, and finally discussing and reflecting on the experience. Data were collected with pre- and post-questionnaires, a follow-up questionnaire at least four weeks after the session, interviews by the facilitators, and two personality measures, the Tellegen Absorption Scale and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Contacts with the sought person were reported by 13 participants. Participants reported that a variety of imagery appeared in the mirror, as well as experiences of dialogue, sounds, light, body sensations, and smell. Several specific messages were reported by participants who believed that they were from the sought persons. Twenty-one self-report items relating to bereavement were analyzed for changes between pre- and follow-up questionnaires. Using a Wilcoxon signed ranks analysis, statistically significant reductions in bereavement responses were found over the entire group ( p=.05 to .0008). These included unresolved feelings, loss, grief, guilt, sadness, and need to communicate. Participants also reported significant impact on their lives following the session.
Back to Basics" is a political slogan much in the news at the moment. It suggests that we have lost sight of the eternal truths and concerns that should properly be the focus of our attention and actions in order to lead a good life; and that we ought to return to them. It is probably time for a similar movement in management. Senior managers and directors have been seduced and confused by a plethora of instant cures for all known management ills; by acronyms, awards, certificates; by buzz words; by conferences and seminars; by "value added" accounting, empowerment, re-engineering, leading, subcontracting and competitive tendering; and they are not actually doing what they are supposed to do, which is to run their organization effectively and efficiently. Things are not getting better. Perhaps we should go back to those eternal truths and concerns of managers that would help them improve the organizations for which they are ultimately responsible.There are three basic areas of concern for a Chief Executive:(1) The long-term future of the organization.(2) How to satisfy all the customers over that long term. (3) How to do so at the lowest possible cost.These basic concerns are made up of many aspects.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.