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Globally, food waste is a significant environmental, economic and social issue. Food waste in landfill creates the potent greenhouse gas, methane, contributing to climate change, with its management predominantly falling to local governments. Despite efforts by many countries, and extensive infrastructure and market development funding, food waste continues to be landfilled, with apparently similar councils taking diverse approaches. Using a mixed methods study design, data was firstly collected from a National online survey of Australian council-based waste management staff (n = 183), with descriptive and factor analysis of the survey data revealing a strong sense of structural empowerment (PCA.75 to.90) and a preference for sourcing information from networks (48%). These results informed a series of semi-structured interviews (n = 43) which, after thematic analysis, provided rich insights into the attitudinal and situational interpretations council-based waste managers bring to decisions around household food waste management. Framed by four pillars of Structural Empowerment, the findings suggest that waste manager's attitude is equally as important as support, resources, and knowledge and that, despite mandates and targets, individual motivational factors and organisational paradigms determined decision-making. Identified barriers included perceived capacity constraints, inadequate focus on actionable interventions, and fragmented, uninspiring, planning. This article provides important insights around 1) leveraging networks for knowledge dissemination, 2) fostering capacity-building initiatives, and 3) advocating for sustained engagement with food waste diversion within councils. This underscores the need for additional research into evolving council typologies and effectively engaging key stakeholders to achieve food waste diversion targets and address climate change impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The purpose of the research is the diagnosis of competencies of people holding managerial positions in the geriatric care sector in Germany. Methods: Scheitler’s concept of competency was employed in this study. The method of in-depth unstructured interviews was also used. The method of qualitative content analysis according to Mayring was applied to evaluate the obtained data. Results: As a result of the conducted analyses, professional tasks and competencies of people holding managerial positions in the geriatric care sector in Germany were presented. Discussion: The research results showed that the tasks of people performing managerial functions in geriatric care in Germany are complex and exceed medical or caregiving tasks. They are related to personnel management, responding to their needs, as well as the needs and expectations of people managing medical facilities. An extremely important task is cooperation with the relatives of the elderly. The research results also revealed the importance of having a wide variety of competencies. The respondents were of the opinion that professional skills are less important and social and personal skills are gaining in importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]