Isomorphic effects of managerial and directoral career paths

The extensive array of interlocking directorate research remains near-exclusively cross-sectional or comparative cross-sectional in nature. While this has been fruitful in identifying persistent structures of inter-organisational relationships evidence of the impact of these structures on organisational performance or activity has been more limited. This should not be surprising because, by their nature, relationships have strong longitudinal and dynamic qualities that are likely to be difficult to isolate through cross-sectional approaches. Clearly, managerial practice is inevitably strongly conditioned by the specific contingencies of the time and the information available through networks of colleagues and advisers (particularly at board level) at the time. But managerial and directoral capabilities and mental sets are also developed over time, particularly through previous experiences in these roles and the formation of long-lasting 'strong' and 'weak' relationships. This paper tests the influence of three longitudinal dimensions of managers and directors' relationships on a set of indicators of financial performance, drawing from a large dataset of detailing historic board membership of UK firms. It finds evidence of isomorphic processes through these channels and establishes that the longitudinal design considerably enhances the detection of performance effects from directorate interlocks. More broadly, the research has implications for the conception of collective action and the constitution of 'community'.

Virtual manufacturing and design in the real world - implementation and scalability on HPPC systems

Virtual manufacturing and design assessment increasingly involve the simulation of interacting phenomena, sic. multi-physics, an activity which is very computationally intensive. This chapter describes an attempt to address the parallel issues associated with a multi-physics simulation approach based upon a range of compatible procedures operating on one mesh using a single database - the distinct physics solvers can operate separately or coupled on sub-domains of the whole geometric space. Moreover, the finite volume unstructured mesh solvers use different discretization schemes (and, particularly, different ‘nodal’ locations and control volumes). A two-level approach to the parallelization of this simulation software is described: the code is restructured into parallel form on the basis of the mesh partitioning alone, that is, without regard to the physics. However, at run time, the mesh is partitioned to achieve a load balance, by considering the load per node/element across the whole domain. The latter of course is determined by the problem specific physics at a particular location.

Interprofessional attitudes amongst undergraduate students in the health professions: a longitudinal questionnaire survey

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) introduced at the beginning of pre-registration training for healthcare professionals attempts to prevent the formation of negative interprofessional attitudes which may hamper future interprofessional collaboration. However, the potential for IPE depends, to some extent, on the readiness of healthcare students to learn together. Objectives: To measure changes in readiness for interprofessional learning, professional identification, and amount of contact between students of different professional groups; and to examine the influence of professional group, student characteristics and an IPE course on these scores over time. Design: Annual longitudinal panel questionnaire survey at four time-points of pre-registration students (n = 1683) drawn from eight healthcare groups from three higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK. Results: The strength of professional identity in all professional groups was high on entry to university but it declined significantly over time for some disciplines. Similarly students’ readiness for interprofessional learning was high at entry but declined significantly over time for all groups, with the exception of nursing students. A small but significant positive relationship between professional identity and readiness for interprofessional learning was maintained over time. There was very minimal contact between students from different disciplines during their professional education programme. Students who reported gaining the least from an IPE course suffered the most dramatic drop in their readiness for interprofessional learning in the following and subsequent years; however, these students also had the lowest expectations of an IPE course on entry to their programme of study. Conclusion: The findings provide support for introducing IPE at the start of the healthcare students’ professional education to capitalise on students’ readiness for interprofessional learning and professional identities, which appear to be well formed from the start. However, this study suggests that students who enter with negative attitudes towards interprofessional learning may gain the least from IPE courses and that an unrewarding experience of such courses may further reinforce their negative attitudes.