Purpose The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the fragmented literature on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), leader–member exchange (LMX), learning, innovative work behavior (IWB) and employee performance across different countries, disciplines and organizations, thereby broadening the literature breath and making gap identification comprehensive. Second, it provides information on how much studies have been concentrated on Africa with the goal of provoking scholarly work in a unique cultural setting on the interrelatedness of these concepts. Design/methodology/approach Relevant literature search was undertaken using key search terms, “employee performance,” “OCB,” “LMX,” “IWB,” “individual learning” and “team learning.” Findings The findings show positive relationships between the behaviors and employee performance. They also reveal an interesting diversity in the study across multidisciplinary fields holding both cultural and contextual significance for academia and practitioners. Research limitations/implications – The limitation of literature to peer-reviewed journals from the authors’ university library might have missed important information not in this domain. Further studies must make use of additional search terms and engines excluded from this study to provide a more comprehensive analysis. Practical implications The paper has important managerial implications for practitioners. The analysis can support the understanding of employee performance from a broader and more diverse view points; and help in providing insight into real-life opportunities, constraints and solutions in enhancing performance management. Originality/value – This systematic literature review highlights important knowledge gaps which need to be explored especially in the African and Ghanaian contexts.
Although empathy is an essential aspect of co-design, the design community lacks a systematic overview of the key dimensions and elements that foster empathy in design. This paper introduces an empathic formation compass, based on a comparison of existing relevant frameworks. Empathic formation is defined here as the formative process of becoming an empathic design professional who knows which attitude, skills and knowledge are applicable in a co-design process. The empathic formation compass provides designers with a vocabulary that helps them understand what kind of key dimensions and elements influence empathic formation in co-design and how that informs designers’ role and design decisions. In addition, the empathic formation compass aims to support reflection and to evaluate co-design projects beyond the mere reliance on methods. In this way, empathic design can be made into a conscious activity in which designers regulate and include their own feelings and experiences (first-person perspective), and decrease empathic bias. We identify four important intersecting dimensions that empathy is comprised of in design and describe their dynamic relations. The first two opposing dimensions are denoted by empathy and differentiate between cognitive design processes and affective design experiences, and between self-and other orientation. The other two dimensions are defined by design research and differentiate between an expert and a participatory mindset, and research-and design-led techniques. The empathic formation compass strengthens and enriches our earlier work on mixed perspectives with these specific dimensions and describes the factors that foster empathy in design from a more contextual position. We expect the empathic formation compass—combined with the mixed perspectives framework—to enhance future research by bringing about a deeper understanding of designers’ empathic and collaborative design practice.
In this study, we aimed to identify how the learning activities elicited in a lesson study project contributed to self-perceived change in supervisors’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Lesson study is a method which combines both professional and educational development. During a lesson study project, teachers collaborate in a team and develop, teach, evaluate, and redesign a research lesson. During the 4-month lesson study project described here, four supervisors designed a protocol for research supervision meetings aimed at enhancing undergraduate students’ learning. During the project, they experimented with open questioning and giving positive feedback instead of giving instruction and explanations. A mixed-methods design was used in this study. Data on the supervisors’ learning activities and PCK were gathered using learner reports, video-recordings of meetings, and exit interviews. The analyses of these data showed that the lesson study project contributed to the development of the supervisors’ PCK on instructional strategies and student understanding. The learning activity that contributed most to these changes was reflecting on their own practice and that of their students.
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