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Increasingly, there are calls for effective partnerships between grassroots communities and universities. This paper presents the key enablers of harmonious working relationships between grassroots communities and a university focused on rural development. This emanated from a qualitative study in which the views of academic staff and postgraduate students from the University of Venda were explored. This paper was conducted using qualitative exploratory research design. A convenient purposive sample of students and academic staff members from the four faculties of the University of Venda was selected. A total of 35 participants were sampled and involved in the study. Data was collected using reflection circles to solicit information from the participants. Data was subjected to thematic content analysis. The key enablers of harmonious collaboration were “resource allocation and institutional support”, engagement with external stakeholders”, equality and fair treatment”, positive relationship building”, “community-oriented programmes and projects”, “collaborative agreements and support”, and “community feedback and communication”. These findings imply that universities should prioritise community engagement, establish transparent and equitable partnerships, and allocate sufficient resources to support initiatives. The study recommends the design and implementation of community-oriented programmes allowing the communities to actively engage in university initiatives while establishing feedback mechanisms.

The construction industry has been accused of ineffectiveness and inefficiency because of delays, cost overruns and defects that are partly due to flaws in the design. As professionals responsible for design, architects should achieve optimum performance in the project delivery process. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence the performance of architects in construction projects. This study employs a questionnaire survey for data collection and partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) for data analysis. Using a census method, a total of 222 useable responses are gathered from registered architects in Indonesia. Results reveal significant and positive relationships between working condition, organisational support and effective design process and the performance of architects. The strongest effect is found from the influence of effective design process on the performance of architects. Thus, these factors should be applied to enhance the performance of architects, thereby improving the project outcome.

Historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden of their house. Her narrative is punctuated by letters home, written 200 years before, by May, a young, middle-class midwife desperately trying to introduce modern medicine to the suspicious, insular islanders. The lives of these two characters intersect unexpectedly in this deeply moving but also at times blackly funny story about maternal ambivalence, the way we try to control children, and about women's vexed and passionate relationship with work. Moss's second novel displays an exciting expansion of her range - showing her to be both an excellent comic writer and a novelist of great emotional depth.

Human rights sensitivity (HRS) is essential for social workers advocating for and providing services to people with mental illness. In this study, the authors employed vignettes of two chronic mental illnesses—schizophrenia and alcoholism—to analyze the moderating effect of HRS on association between empathy and working relationship by hierarchical regression analysis. In total 245 social workers in mental health (M age = 36.44, SD = 6.61, male 22.0%, female 78.0%) participated in the study. Differences were found in empathy levels and working relationships in schizophrenia and alcoholism vignettes. Levels of empathy, intrinsic helping and emotional support (behavioral dimension), client respect, and emotional relatedness as well as respect and acceptance in working relationships were significantly higher for schizophrenia than for the alcoholism vignette. Further, empathy and HRS significantly predicted the quality of working relationships in schizophrenia and alcoholism vignettes. Levels for positive work relationships increased with empathy and HRS. The effects of empathy on working relationship were augmented among social workers with a high level of HRS only in the vignette of schizophrenia. Based on these results, the authors emphasize the importance of HRS and propose strategies to enhance it.

Hard bargainers are known to dictate terms. Humanitarian frontliners confront them daily. Some state and nonstate counterparts, guided by military necessity, are deemed so overpowering that it seems impossible to negotiate humanitarian necessity with them. And yet, humanitarians leverage negotiations with quite an edge. They construct working relationships and creative solutions to get access and deliver humanitarian aid to those affected by conflict. Humanitarians shape a responsible approach that can enrich the understanding of negotiation power. Guided by humanitarian principles, they do not exercise a power over anyone but leverage a power of getting things done with counterparts, through relational, transactional, and process moves. The purpose of this article is both descriptive and prescriptive. On the one hand, it provides examples to document humanitarian negotiation practices of empowerment and to contribute to a general theory of negotiation power. On the other hand, the article provides some recommendations from negotiation theory to empower humanitarians. Indirectly, by analyzing and supporting the power of humanitarian frontliners, this article also aims at refining the reflection and action of every negotiator when confronted with tough bargainers.

Introduction Despite the growing evidence on patient and public involvement (PPI) in health research, little emphasis has been placed on understanding its quality and appropriateness to evidence synthesis (ES) and systematic reviews (SR). This study aimed to synthesise qualitative evidence on the benefits, challenges, and best practices for PPI in ES/SR projects from the perspectives of patients/public and researchers. Methods We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, Cochrane Library and CINAHL Plus. We also searched relevant grey literature and conducted hand‐searching to identify qualitative studies which report the benefits and challenges of PPI in individual ES/SR projects. Studies were independently screened by two reviewers for inclusion and appraised using the Joanna Briggs Institute's Qualitative Tool. Included studies were synthesised narratively using thematic synthesis. Results The literature search retrieved 9923 articles, of which eight studies were included in this review. Five themes on benefits emerged: two from patients'/public's perspective—gaining knowledge, and empowerment; and three from researchers' perspective—enhancing relevance, improving quality, and enhancing dissemination of findings. Six themes on challenges were identified: three from patients'/public's perspective—poor communication, time and low self‐esteem; and three from researchers' perspective—balancing inputs and managing relations, time, and resources and training. Concerning recommendations for best practice, four themes emerged: provision of sufficient time and resources, developing a clear recruitment plan, provision of sufficient training and support, and the need to foster positive working relationships. Conclusion Highlighting the benefits and challenges of PPI in ES/SR projects from different stakeholder perspectives is essential to understand the process and contextual factors and facilitate meaningful PPI in ES/SR projects. Future research should focus on the utilisation of existing frameworks (e.g., Authors and Consumers Together Impacting on eVidencE [ACTIVE] framework) by researchers to help describe and/or report the best approaches and methods for involving patients/public in ES/SRs projects. Patient and Public Contribution This review received great contributions from a recognised PPI partner, the Chair of the Cochrane Consumer Network Executive, to inform the final stage of the review (i.e., interpretation, publication and dissemination of findings). The PPI partner has been included as an author of this review.