Books on the topic 'Group process strategy'

Like most challenging tasks in life rehearsal helps us to improve our performance, and with the interview, rehearsal is essential. This chapter discusses rehearsal strategies for the interview, considering groups, courses, modelling, and feedback (both from the group and on video). The advantages and disadvantages of interview courses are discussed. The chapter explores the benefit of rehearsal groups, the importance of the correct composition of such groups to be a positive influence, and how to give constructive feedback without undermining confidence. The chapter continues with an explanation of the modelling process as a group rehearsal strategy and thinks about how to apply empathy in the rehearsal group in order to enhance communication during the interview. This chapter includes a useful exercise for an interview rehearsal group to work towards having a panoramic perspective of performance.

This chapter reviews the core meanings of the process of acculturation and its consequences for groups and individuals. At the cultural group level, acculturation involves changes in social structures and institutions and in cultural norms. At the individual psychological level, it involves changes in people’s behavioral repertoires and their eventual adaptation to these intercultural encounters. Three key issues are examined: how people choose to acculturate, how well they adapt to intercultural living, and whether there are any systematic relationships between how people acculturate and how well they adapt. The most common finding is that pursuing the integration strategy is related to higher levels of well-being. This chapter attends in particular to the health outcomes of acculturation, and seeks to outline the key features of this process that may permit the achievement of positive health and social outcomes following intercultural contact.

This chapter looks at how the structure of bank groups is factored into the resolution process. In analysing the resolution of banks and other legal entities, a focus on the legal entities alone is a form of false consciousness. Instead, the focus needs to be on resolving the overall financial enterprise of which the bank is a part. By focusing on resolving groups instead of individual legal entities, financial regulatory authorities around the world have developed the single-point-of-entry (SPE) resolution strategy, which has been widely accepted as the most promising solution to the too-big-to-fail problem. When applied to a banking group with a holding company at the top and operating subsidiaries at the bottom, only the top-tier holding company would be put into a bankruptcy or resolution proceeding. The holding company’s assets would then be used to recapitalize the operating subsidiaries, perhaps pursuant to secured capital contribution agreements, and keep them out of their own insolvency or resolution proceedings. The recapitalized group would then be stabilized and its residual value distributed to the failed holding company's stakeholders in satisfaction of their claims.

Chapter 15 reviews the importance of strategy and research in the formation and drafting of a proposed public health law, including assessing potential support and opposition. The chapter dictates an iterative process whereby the proposal’s drafter should first seek to understand his or her own proposal and its goals, explore the values-and practical-based interests behind why anyone would care about the legal proposal, identify groups of people and individuals who sympathize with or oppose the interests or burdens underlying all aspects of the proposal, research the history and positions of these groups, and anticipate challenges to the proposed enactment and implementation.

The IMS-Arbovirus is a model that provides a methodological framework for arboviral disease prevention and control. It divides the compendium of actions to be taken into the following components, which are not listed in their order of importance: management, epidemiology (with emphasis on health surveillance), laboratory, patient care (clinical), integrated vector management (IVM), and environment (with emphasis on water, sanitation, and hygiene). It also proposes common crosscutting themes for each component: operations research and health communication and promotion for behavioral change. Each component and crosscutting theme is overseen and executed by personnel trained for this purpose. The Integrated Management Strategy for Arbovirus Disease Prevention and Control in the Americas contains a group of indicators selected by the countries, and a trained professional regularly conducts an informal evaluation of the strategy. This evaluation may be based on what the coordinator for each component or the participants in the process report, often based only on their own experiences. Generically, this methodology attempts to organize ideas and the methodologies that should be followed for best performance in an evaluation. The IMS-Arbovirus currently includes monitoring and evaluation from the outset, thus systematically coordinating its planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The main objective is for monitoring and evaluation to serve as a good mechanism for management, course correction, and accountability to advance and improve the quality and impact of management with the preparation of the IMS Arbovirus. The specific objectives are as follows: determine the progress made and barriers implementing the IMS-Arbovirus, formulate recommendations to improve the IMS-Arbovirus Implementation process, and create a monitoring plan based on the evaluation's results.

This chapter examines the human essence in helping relations, with a particular focus on belongingness, independence, and status. It first reviews research on seeking and receiving help, paying attention to how receiving assistance from others leads to positive and negative consequences for the recipient: positive reactions are expressed in feelings of gratitude, while negative consequences come in the form of threat to self-esteem. The chapter proceeds by discussing the dynamics of inequality in interpersonal and intergroup helping, along with the autonomy versus dependency nature of help (i.e., solutions vs. tools). It explores how generosity breeds prestige within the group. It continues to strategic aspects in intergroup helping relations, considers the ways in which helping relations constitute subtle mechanisms to maintain or challenge existing structural inequality (i.e., the Intergroup Helping as Status Relations model, IHSR). It concludes by explaining the unique human essence of helping relations between individuals and groups.

This chapter introduces practical tools for reducing response times significantly. Using the approaches and techniques presented in the chapter can reduce response time several folds. This is a strategic and tactical goal for every organization to reduce response times. The significant contribution of Lean/just in time to management is manifested in focusing on short response and introducing the perception that work in process is a burden, not an asset. This chapter presents tools and techniques such as the small batch concept, group technology, tactical gating, the “traffic lights” system, Superzoufing, working with a complete kit, and the shortest processing time.

Strategic communication has become a widespread, interdisciplinary term in society over the last few decades and is a process of targeted and networked communication. Strategic communication involves a communication concept that includes the analysis, planning, organisation, implementation and control of internal and external communication of companies and organisations, with the aim of ensuring stringent and coordinated communication with their target groups. The contributions to this volume illuminate strategic communication from a comprehensive research perspective. They confirm the relevance and significance as well as the diversity of strategic communication in business, politics and the military and show that, despite their different perspectives, aspects and fields of activity, there are fundamental similarities in their uses of strategic communication. With contributions by Marco Althaus, Michael Bauer, Franz Beitzinger, Marcel Bernet, Heiko Biehl, Georg Därendinger, Florian Demont-Biaggi, Nadine Eggimann, Birte Fähnrich, Peter Filzmaier, Barbara Günthard-Maier, Gunther Hauser, Michael Holenweger, Thomas Jauch, Gerhard Kümmel, Phil C. Langer, Anne Linke, Ulrich Lissek, Regula Marti, Christoph Mörgeli, Markus Niederhäuser, Nicole Rosenberger, Victor Schmid, Jens Seiffert-Brockmann, Christopher Storck, Jodok Troy, Arne Westermann, Michael Willi, Ansgar Zerfass, Natascha Zowislo-Grünewald

Bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology offer unique perspectives on studies of mass violence and present opportunities to interpret human skeletal remains in a broader cultural context. Massacres and other forms of large-scale violence have been documented in many different ancient and modern contexts. Moving the analysis from the victims to the broader political and cultural context necessitates using social theories about the nature of mass violence. Massacres can be seen as a process, that is, as the unfolding of nonrandom patterns or chains of events that precede the events and continue long after. Mass violence has a cultural logic of its own that is shaped by social and historical dynamics. Massacres can have varying aims, including subjugation or total eradication of a group based on status, ethnicity, or religion. The goal of this edited volume is to present case studies that integrate the evidence from human remains within the broader cultural and historical contexts through the utilization of social theory to provide a framework for interpretation. This volume highlights case studies of massacres across time and space that stress innovative theoretical models that help make sense of this unique form of violence. The primary focus will be on how massacres are used as a strategy of violence across time and cultural/geopolitical landscapes.

Skillful performance has become one of the most perennial and critical questions within management and organization studies (MOS). This introductory chapter discusses how skillful performance has been conceptualized and investigated in three main interrelated research areas within MOS, namely strategic management, organizational learning and knowledge management, and human resource management. It critically scrutinizes these bodies of literatures, showing that while they have generated an abundance of knowledge about what characterizes the properties of the capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise related to skillful performance, they have considerably less to say about how they are enacted in skillful performance. As a way forward, the chapter introduces a range of process-based approaches to advance our understanding of how capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise are enacted in the skillful performance of individuals, groups, and organizations.

The authors examined in complex the reasons, the typical and special demonstrations of such difficult appearances-phenomena as complicity and collaborationism on the territory of the Reich Commissariat "Ukraina" and the zone of the military Hitler administration in the years of the Second World War in their work; the problem is investigated on the basis of the significant amount of the poorly-known or the unknown for the researchers archival documents of the Ukrainian archives' storehouses, at the historical-philosophical and social-psychological level; grasping the idea of the complex social processes, the authors tried to define the water-parting between the demonstrations of the spontaneous or the organized population's self-activity of the occupied territories, the conscious, the voluntary and the forced collaboration with the occupants, showed the motivation of the behavior's different models at the individual and group (collective) levels. New is the positing and interpreting of the problem as the strategy of people survival on the extreme conditions of war. The authors made the typology of different demonstrations of collaboration and complicity in dependence on the specific conditions, the character of the occupation regime, the mental and the moral-psychological factors, ect. The reply to such sharp and touchy questions as, in the first turn, the survival strategy of the Ukrainian population during the Hitler occupation, the activity of the military-political structures, the characteristic features and peculiarities of the social-economic, cultural and religious life, the character of the international relations, the activity of the Ukrainian social-political institutions at the beginning of war and others, in the authors' opinion, will help in creation of the objective and complete picture of the Second World War.

This essay explores a variety of ways that the problem of inequality has been framed in the context of national policy debates in the United States. Following an introduction to the notion of inequality as a social problem, the chapter provides a brief review of how framing has been examined as a communications process and a strategic resource. The framing of inequality as a focus of public policy debates is described in relation to a selection of issues that include health disparities, racial inequality, and the digital divide. An additional assessment is made of the use of comparative risk as a framework for highlighting differences between groups defined by race, ethnicity and social class. The framing of environmental risks is examined in relation to a social justice frame. The author concludes with a discussion of constraints on the use of particular frames within debates about economic social policy.

Economic growth is not an inherently equitable process. It has become clear that certain groups of society are more consistently capable of reaping the benefits of economic growth and that much of the interpersonal and territorial inequality that is especially pervasive in the Global South is attributable to the pursuit and achievement of economic growth in the absence of sufficient concern for notions of equity. This awareness has invigorated an interest in the development of a more comprehensive understanding of what more equitable, inclusive economic growth might entail and how it can be achieved. This chapter provides a multifaceted exploration of the notion of equitable economic growth with a specific focus on the Global South. Firstly, it proposes a holistic, employment-oriented conceptualization of equitable economic growth. Secondly, it offers basic insights into the operationalization of equitable economic growth and the suitability of different strategic approaches for its pursuit and achievement.

This book brings together selected research on commissioning healthcare in the English NHS carried out by national policy research unit in commissioning and the healthcare system (PRUComm) between 2011 and 2018. PRUComm is funded by the English Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme. The bookexplores the changes to commissioning in the English NHS quasi market introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (HSCA 2012). It focuses on threemain areas: first, the development and operation of the newly formed commissioning bodies named Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) which were supposed to increase clinical engagement; secondly, technical aspects of commissioning being the use of competition and cooperation by CCGs to commission care in the HSCA 2012 regulatory context encouraging competition,and the allocation of financial risk through contracts between commissioners and providers of care (including new forms of contract such as alliances); and thirdly the reorganisation of the commissioning of public health services.The research demonstrates that the HSCA 2012 has had the effect of fragmenting commissioning responsibilities and in the process impaired good governance and strong accountability of commissioners. It shows how the use of market mechanisms has declined despite the pro competition regulatory regime of the HSCA 2012, and that more cooperative processes are used at local level to reconfigure health services. It concludes that strategic planning and monitoring of services will always be essential for the English NHS, whether the term ‘commissioning’ is used to describe these activities or not in the future.

In preparation for its 2019–2022 Country Partnership Framework with South Africa, the World Bank Group has drafted a Systematic Country Diagnostic, which forms the basis of this book. Its aim is to strengthen understanding of the constraints in achieving two goals in South Africa: to eliminate poverty by 2030, and to boost shared prosperity. These goals are aligned with South Africa’s Vision 2030 in the National Development Plan. This book is the result of consultations and conversations with the National Planning Commission, government departments, the private sector, young South Africans, and other stakeholders. It identi­fies ­five broad policy priorities: to build South Africa’s skills base; to reduce the highly skewed distribution of land and productive assets and strengthen property rights; to increase competitiveness and the country’s participation in global and regional value chains; to overcome apartheid spatial patterns; and to increase the country’s strategic adaptation to climate change and water insecurity. The key obstacle to growth, investment, and jobs that has been identifi­ed is ‘the legacy of exclusion’. Undoing this is a long-term process, but renewed commitment by the political leadership to strengthen institutions and rebuild the social contract present an enormous opportunity in achieving progress towards South Africa’s Vision 2030, and this book suggests ways to accomplish this aim.

This chapter examines the processes and the conditions explaining union success in fighting precarious work, based on a comparative study of multinational subsidiaries in the metal and chemical industries in Germany and Belgium. It examines how unions in each plant made different use of institutional and associational power resources to avoid concessions for the relatively protected standard (or permanent) workforce, while improving the conditions of the less protected non-standard (temporary and agency) workers. To fight precarity, trade unions need to build and sustain power. Power resources associated with encompassing institutions and associational power are essential to building inclusive solidarity among different groups of workers. Findings show that fragmented and less encompassing institutions in Germany allow employers to exploit exit options. However, inclusive and strong institutions in Belgium are not an antidote per se to employers’ strategic threats.

The aim of the e-book is to present the theoretical, cognitive and practical aspects of the essence and complexity of operational management in a production company. The presented modern production methods together with the challenges and problems of contemporary enterprises should better help to understand the issues of sustainable development, with particular emphasis on waste. The book consists of six chapters devoted to relevant and topic issues relating to the core business of an industrial enterprise. Chapter 1 The nature of the industrial enterprise is an introduction to further considerations and deals with the essence of the basic aspects of the company. Both popular and less known definitions of an enterprise, its features, functions and principles of operation are presented. An important part of the chapter is the presentation and formulation of strategic, tactical and operational goals. Moreover, the division of enterprises is presented with the use of various criteria and the features of the industrial market, which make it distinct. Chapter 2 The operational management evolution and its role in the industrial enterprise discusses the evolution and concept of production and operational management. The management levels were also presented, indicating their most important functions. An integral part of the chapter is the essence of the production system, viewed through the prism of the five elements. Chapter 3 Functions and role in operations management presents the issues concerning the organization of production processes, production capacity and inventory management. This part also presents considerations on cooperation and collaboration between enterprises in the process of creating value. Chapter 4 Traditional methods used in operational activities focuses on methods such as benchmarking, outsourcing, core competences, JIT, MPR I and MRP II, as well as TQM and kaizen. Knowledge of these methods should contribute to understanding the activities of modern enterprises, the way of company functioning, the realization of production activities, as well as aspects related to building a competitive position. Chapter 5 Modern methods used in production-operations management discusses the less common and less frequently used production methods, based on a modern and innovative approach. In particular, it was focused on: Shop Floor Control and cooperative manufacturing, environment-conscious manufacturing (ECM) and life-cycle assessment ( LCA), waste management and recycling, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), virtual enterprise, World Class Manufacturing (WCM), Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and House of Quality (HOQ), theory of constraints (TOC), Drum Buffer Rope (DBR), group technology (GT) and cellular manufacturing (CM), Demand Chain Management and competitive intelligence (CI). In the last section discusses: the role of sustainable statistical process control and Computer-Aided Process Planning in context formatting of information management. Chapter 6 Problems of sustainable development and challenges related to production and operations management describes the problem and challenges related to production and operations activities. In particular, attention was paid to the threats related to changes in global warming, the growing scale of waste, or the processes of globalization. It was pointed out that the emerging problem may be both a threat and a chance for the development of enterprises. An integral part of the chapter are also considerations on technical progress, innovation and the importance of human capital in operational activities.

This book examines how conditions conducive to atrocities against civilians are created during wartime in some communities. It identifies the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders as the main processes. In these places, political and ethnic identities become linked and targeted violence against civilians becomes both tolerated and justified by the respective authorities as a necessary sacrifice for a greater political goal. The book augments the literature on genocide and civil wars by demonstrating how violence can be used as a political strategy, and how communities, as well as individuals, remember episodes of violence against civilians. It focuses on Croatia in the 1990s, and Uganda and Guatemala in the 1980s. In each case, it is considered how people who have lived peacefully as neighbors for many years are suddenly transformed into enemies, yet intracommunal violence is not ubiquitous throughout the conflict zone; rather, it is specific to particular regions or villages within those zones. As the book describes, the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders limit individuals' freedom to express their views, work to prevent the possible defection of members of an in-group, and facilitate identification of individuals who are purportedly a threat. Even before mass killings begin, the book finds, these and similar changes will have transformed particular villages or regions into amoral communities, places where the definition of crime changes and violence is justified as a form of self-defense by perpetrators.

A country’s foreign policy, also called its foreign relations, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve goals within its international relations (IR) milieu. The study of such strategic plans is called foreign policy analysis (FPA). The inception of foreign relations in human affairs and the need for foreign policy to deal with them is as old as the organization of human life in groups. In the twentieth century, due to global wars, international relations became a public concern as well as an important field of study and research. Gradually, various theories began to grow around international relations, international systems, and international politics, but the need for a theory of foreign policy continued to be neglected. The reason was that states used to keep their foreign policies under official secrecy and it was not considered appropriate for the public, as it is today, to know about these policies. However, although foreign policy formulation continued to remain a closely guarded process at the national level, wider access to governmental records and greater public interest provided more data for researchers to work on and, eventually, place international relations in a structured framework of political science.

This book inquires into Vladimir Putin’s leadership strategy and relies on social identity theory to explain Putin’s success as a leader. The author argues that Russia’s second president has been successful in promoting his image as an embodiment of the shared national identity of the Russian citizens. He has articulated the shared collective perspective and has built a social consensus by tapping into powerful group emotions of shame and humiliation derived from the painful experience of the transition in the 1990s. He was able to overturn these emotions into pride and patriotism by activating two central pillars of the Soviet collective identity: a sense of exceptionalism that the Soviet regime promoted to consolidate the Soviet nation, and a sense of a foreign threat to the state and its people that also was foundational for the Soviet Union. Putin’s assertive foreign policy decisions, culminating in the annexation of Crimea, appeared to have secured, in the eyes of the Russian citizens, their insecure national identity. The top-down leadership and bottom-up collective identity–driven processes coalesced to produce a newly revanchist Russia, with its current leader perceived by many citizens to be irreplaceable. Politics of national identity in Russia are promoted through a well-coordinated media machine that works to focus citizens’ attention on Putin’s foreign policy and on Russia’s international standing. Public fears are played out against the backdrop of Soviet legacies of national exceptionalism and the politics of victimhood associated with the 1990s to conjure a sense of collective dignity, self-righteousness, and national strength to keep the present political system intact.

Writings on women workers in the global economy have generally taken as their starting point the rise in female employment in industries in the light manufacturing for export sector. Another issue covered by the literature on gender and labor is migration, where the racialized as well as gendered nature of employment is thrown into sharp focus. Migration has been a major concern in much of the recent feminist literature on gender and employment is because one of the most significant features of contemporary processes of migration has been the feminization of these flows. But given the ways in which women workers both in export sector factories and as migrant domestic workers are subject to harsh workplace practices, social stigmatization, and systems of intense workplace control, the possibilities for resistance and change for some of these groups of workers are considered as well. Three intersecting literatures that focus on the topic of resistance to regimes of labor control in a variety of different workplaces (including the household) are discussed: first, those that focus on “everyday” forms of resistance; second, those that look more at resistance as an organized political strategy taking the form of trade union activism or involving nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and third is a literature that considers the possibilities and limitations of a wider politics of resistance offered by things like corporate codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility.

Abstract A fundamental challenge plagues the global peacebuilding community. How can technocratic approaches to peacebuilding that are rooted in short-term, project-based execution of activities further the longer-term transformative outcomes like altering young people’s attitudes and beliefs about peace and violence? In response to this global challenge, in Peacebuilding Legacies, Sukanya Podder addresses an important gap relating to the long-term effects of peacebuilding programmes involving children and young people. Podder unpacks the concept of peacebuilding legacy through the lens of time, transformation, and intergenerational peace. Podder also develops unique qualitative cues for measuring legacy in terms of the institutional, normative, and organizational logics. If norms resonate strongly with the local context, they are likely to encourage strong retention and meaningful adoption over time. Successful institutionalization of project models through planned handover to successor national organizations or government departments holds the key to stronger local ownership. Organizational learning and reflection can support this process through a more strategic approach to programming and through post-exit studies. With regard to attitude change, Podder found that the media and peace education projects that targeted individuals’ ingrained beliefs and values but overlooked the role of group social norms had only limited persuasive effects. To shift the values, practices, norms, and beliefs of the younger generation, the mindset of the older generation must also be targeted. Changes in the legal, political, economic, and other social institutions are critical for long-term and meaningful transformation. This requires adopting an ecological model of peace.

Throughout the industrialized world, international migrants serve as nannies, construction workers, gardeners and small-business entrepreneurs. Labor Movement suggests that the international migration of workers is necessary for the survival of industrialized economies. The book thus turns the conventional view of international migration on its head: it investigates how migration regulates labor markets, rather than labor markets shaping migration flows. Assuming a critical view of orthodox economic theory, the book illustrates how different legal, social and cultural strategies towards international migrants are deployed and coordinated within the wider neo-liberal project to render migrants and immigrants vulnerable, pushing them into performing distinct economic roles and into subordinate labor market situations. Drawing on social theories associated with Pierre Bourdieu and other prominent thinkers, Labor Movement suggests that migration regulates labor markets through processes of social distinction, cultural judgement and the strategic deployment of citizenship. European and North American case studies illustrate how the labor of international migrants is systematically devalued and how popular discourse legitimates the demotion of migrants to subordinate labor. Engaging with various immigrant groups in different cities, including South Asian immigrants in Vancouver, foreigners and Spätaussiedler in Berlin, and Mexican and Caribbean offshore workers in rural Ontario, the studies seek to unravel the complex web of regulatory labor market processes related to international migration. Recognizing and understanding these processes, Bauder argues, is an important step towards building effective activist strategies and for envisioning new roles for migrating workers and people. The book is a valuable resource to researchers and students in economics, ethnic and migration studies, geography, sociology, political science, and to frontline activists in Europe, North America and beyond.

These Guidelines are one of the results of the four-year research project “Open Online Learning for Digital and Networked Society” (2017-2021). The project objective was to enable university teachers to design open and online learning through open and online learning curriculum and environment applying learning analytics as a metacognitive tool and creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the needs of digital and networked society. The research of the project resulted in 10 scientific publications and 2 studies prepared by Vytautas Magnus university Institute of Innovative Studies research team in collaboration with their international research partners from Germany, Spain and Portugal. The final stage of the research attempted creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the learner needs in contemporary digital and networked society. The need for open learning recognition has been increasing during the recent decade while the developments of open learning related to the Covid 19 pandemics have dramatically increased the need for systematic and high-quality assessment and recognition of learning acquired online. The given time also relates to the increased need to offer micro-credentials to learners, as well as a rising need for universities to prepare for micro-credentialization and issue new digital credentials to learners who are regular students, as well as adult learners joining for single courses. The increased need of all labour - market participants for frequent and fast renewal of competences requires a well working and easy to use system of open learning assessment and recognition. For learners, it is critical that the micro-credentials are well linked to national and European qualification frameworks, as well as European digital credential infrastructures (e.g., Europass and similar). For employers, it is important to receive requested quality information that is encrypted in the metadata of the credential. While for universities, there is the need to properly prepare institutional digital infrastructure, organizational procedures, descriptions of open learning opportunities and virtual learning environments to share, import and export the meta-data easily and seamlessly through European Digital Hub service infrastructures, as well as ensure that academic and administrative staff has digital competencies to design, issue and recognise open learning through digital and micro-credentials. The first chapter of the Guidelines provides a background view of the European Qualification Framework and National Qualification frameworks for the further system of gaining, stacking and modelling further qualifications through open online learning. The second chapter suggests the review of current European policy papers and consultations on the establishment of micro-credentials in European higher education. The findings of the report of micro-credentials higher education consultation group “European Approach to Micro-credentials” is shortly introduced, as well as important policy discussions taking place. Responding to the Rome Bologna Comunique 2020, where the ministers responsible for higher education agreed to support lifelong learning through issuing micro-credentials, a joint endeavour of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Research and Innovation resulted in one of the most important political documents highlighting the potential of micro-credentials towards economic, social and education innovations. The consultation group of experts from the Member States defined the approach to micro-credentials to facilitate their validation, recognition and portability, as well as to foster a larger uptake to support individual learning in any subject area and at any stage of life or career. The Consultation Group also suggested further urgent topics to be discussed, including the storage, data exchange, portability, and data standards of micro-credentials and proposed EU Standard of constitutive elements of micro-credentials. The third chapter is devoted to the institutional readiness to issue and to recognize digital and micro-credentials. Universities need strategic decisions and procedures ready to be enacted for assessment of open learning and issuing micro-credentials. The administrative and academic staff needs to be aware and confident to follow these procedures while keeping the quality assurance procedures in place, as well. The process needs to include increasing teacher awareness in the processes of open learning assessment and the role of micro-credentials for the competitiveness of lifelong learners in general. When the strategic documents and procedures to assess open learning are in place and the staff is ready and well aware of the processes, the description of the courses and the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to provide the necessary metadata for the assessment of open learning and issuing of micro-credentials. Different innovation-driven projects offer solutions: OEPass developed a pilot Learning Passport, based on European Diploma Supplement, MicroHE developed a portal Credentify for displaying, verifying and sharing micro-credential data. Credentify platform is using Blockchain technology and is developed to comply with European Qualifications Framework. Institutions, willing to join Credentify platform, should make strategic discussions to apply micro-credential metadata standards. The ECCOE project building on outcomes of OEPass and MicroHE offers an all-encompassing set of quality descriptors for credentials and the descriptions of learning opportunities in higher education. The third chapter also describes the requirements for university structures to interact with the Europass digital credentials infrastructure. In 2020, European Commission launched a new Europass platform with Digital Credential Infrastructure in place. Higher education institutions issuing micro-credentials linked to Europass digital credentials infrastructure may offer added value for the learners and can increase reliability and fraud-resistant information for the employers. However, before using Europass Digital Credentials, universities should fulfil the necessary preconditions that include obtaining a qualified electronic seal, installing additional software and preparing the necessary data templates. Moreover, the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to export learning outcomes to a digital credential, maintaining and securing learner authentication. Open learning opportunity descriptions also need to be adjusted to transfer and match information for the credential meta-data. The Fourth chapter illustrates how digital badges as a type of micro-credentials in open online learning assessment may be used in higher education to create added value for the learners and employers. An adequately provided metadata allows using digital badges as a valuable tool for recognition in all learning settings, including formal, non-formal and informal.

Hard coal mining is characterised by features that pose numerous challenges to its current operations and cause strategic and operational problems in planning its development. The most important of these include the high capital intensity of mining investment projects and the dynamically changing environment in which the sector operates, while the long-term role of the sector is dependent on factors originating at both national and international level. At the same time, the conditions for coal mining are deteriorating, the resources more readily available in active mines are being exhausted, mining depths are increasing, temperature levels in pits are rising, transport routes for staff and materials are getting longer, effective working time is decreasing, natural hazards are increasing, and seams with an increasing content of waste rock are being mined. The mining industry is currently in a very difficult situation, both in technical (mining) and economic terms. It cannot be ignored, however, that the difficult financial situation of Polish mining companies is largely exacerbated by their high operating costs. The cost of obtaining coal and its price are two key elements that determine the level of efficiency of Polish mines. This situation could be improved by streamlining the planning processes. This would involve striving for production planning that is as predictable as possible and, on the other hand, economically efficient. In this respect, it is helpful to plan the production from operating longwalls with full awareness of the complexity of geological and mining conditions and the resulting economic consequences. The constraints on increasing the efficiency of the mining process are due to the technical potential of the mining process, organisational factors and, above all, geological and mining conditions. The main objective of the monograph is to identify relations between geological and mining parameters and the level of longwall mining costs, and their daily output. In view of the above, it was assumed that it was possible to present the relationship between the costs of longwall mining and the daily coal output from a longwall as a function of onerous geological and mining factors. The monograph presents two models of onerous geological and mining conditions, including natural hazards, deposit (seam) parameters, mining (technical) parameters and environmental factors. The models were used to calculate two onerousness indicators, Wue and WUt, which synthetically define the level of impact of onerous geological and mining conditions on the mining process in relation to: —— operating costs at longwall faces – indicator WUe, —— daily longwall mining output – indicator WUt. In the next research step, the analysis of direct relationships of selected geological and mining factors with longwall costs and the mining output level was conducted. For this purpose, two statistical models were built for the following dependent variables: unit operating cost (Model 1) and daily longwall mining output (Model 2). The models served two additional sub-objectives: interpretation of the influence of independent variables on dependent variables and point forecasting. The models were also used for forecasting purposes. Statistical models were built on the basis of historical production results of selected seven Polish mines. On the basis of variability of geological and mining conditions at 120 longwalls, the influence of individual parameters on longwall mining between 2010 and 2019 was determined. The identified relationships made it possible to formulate numerical forecast of unit production cost and daily longwall mining output in relation to the level of expected onerousness. The projection period was assumed to be 2020–2030. On this basis, an opinion was formulated on the forecast of the expected unit production costs and the output of the 259 longwalls planned to be mined at these mines. A procedure scheme was developed using the following methods: 1) Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) – mathematical multi-criteria decision-making method, 2) comparative multivariate analysis, 3) regression analysis, 4) Monte Carlo simulation. The utilitarian purpose of the monograph is to provide the research community with the concept of building models that can be used to solve real decision-making problems during longwall planning in hard coal mines. The layout of the monograph, consisting of an introduction, eight main sections and a conclusion, follows the objectives set out above. Section One presents the methodology used to assess the impact of onerous geological and mining conditions on the mining process. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is reviewed and basic definitions used in the following part of the paper are introduced. The section includes a description of AHP which was used in the presented analysis. Individual factors resulting from natural hazards, from the geological structure of the deposit (seam), from limitations caused by technical requirements, from the impact of mining on the environment, which affect the mining process, are described exhaustively in Section Two. Sections Three and Four present the construction of two hierarchical models of geological and mining conditions onerousness: the first in the context of extraction costs and the second in relation to daily longwall mining. The procedure for valuing the importance of their components by a group of experts (pairwise comparison of criteria and sub-criteria on the basis of Saaty’s 9-point comparison scale) is presented. The AHP method is very sensitive to even small changes in the value of the comparison matrix. In order to determine the stability of the valuation of both onerousness models, a sensitivity analysis was carried out, which is described in detail in Section Five. Section Six is devoted to the issue of constructing aggregate indices, WUe and WUt, which synthetically measure the impact of onerous geological and mining conditions on the mining process in individual longwalls and allow for a linear ordering of longwalls according to increasing levels of onerousness. Section Seven opens the research part of the work, which analyses the results of the developed models and indicators in individual mines. A detailed analysis is presented of the assessment of the impact of onerous mining conditions on mining costs in selected seams of the analysed mines, and in the case of the impact of onerous mining on daily longwall mining output, the variability of this process in individual fields (lots) of the mines is characterised. Section Eight presents the regression equations for the dependence of the costs and level of extraction on the aggregated onerousness indicators, WUe and WUt. The regression models f(KJC_N) and f(W) developed in this way are used to forecast the unit mining costs and daily output of the designed longwalls in the context of diversified geological and mining conditions. The use of regression models is of great practical importance. It makes it possible to approximate unit costs and daily output for newly designed longwall workings. The use of this knowledge may significantly improve the quality of planning processes and the effectiveness of the mining process.