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Rural welfare is more than addressing problems of ‘poverty’. As we argue here, social policy initiatives are also conceived by governments as solutions to geographical problems about uneven regional development and population distribution. What these problems were, and how welfare provision could solve them, has varied from generation to generation and takes shape in place-specific ways. That welfare provision has operated as de facto geographical development and population policy is particularly the case in Australia, in its context of massive continental size and heterogeneous rural places. In Australia, the ‘rural’ means much more than just the ‘countryside’ surrounding or between networks of cities and towns (in the traditional European sense; see Gorman-Murray, Darian-Smith, & Gibson, 2008). ‘Rural Australia’ is inserted into national politics as a slippery geographical category, coming to encompass all of non-metropolitan Australia (each of Australia's states only having one major city), within which there is great diversity: broadacre farming regions involving the production of cash crops at scales of thousands of squared kilometres; regions producing rice and cotton with state-sponsored irrigation; coastal agricultural zones with smaller and usually older land holdings (often the places of traditional ‘family farming’ communities); single industry regions focused around minerals extraction or defence (many of Australia's major defence bases being located outside state capitals either in sparsely populated regions in Australia's north or in smaller ‘country towns’ in the south, where they dominate local demography); semi-arid rangelands regions dominated by enormous pastoral stations leased on Crown land (single examples of which rival the United Kingdom in size); and remote savannah and desert regions many thousands of kilometres from capital cities, supporting Aboriginal communities living on traditional country mixing subsistence hunting and gathering with government-supported employment and food programmes. In this context, rural welfare performs a social policy function, but also becomes a means for government to comprehend, problematise and manage geographical space.

This study seeks to evaluate a selection of second‐generation ebook readers in order to determine which devices deliver the best experience for the user, in terms of functionality and overall experience. The technical and physical elements of the devices are also compared.

This paper starts with a brief discussion of the current ebook marketplace, and previous studies that evaluate ebook readers. It then reports on a study in which 33 Master's students from an Information and Library Studies course were each given an ebook reader and asked to complete a task designed to engage them with the device. The participants then evaluated the devices by completing a questionnaire. A discussion of the results of the study and implications for the development of ebook reading devices follows.

Although some issues, specifically size, weight, and screen quality, have been addressed in the new generation of ebook readers, some residual dissatisfaction remains. The participants in the study preferred to use devices with which they were familiar.

This study provides guidance on the usability of ebook readers and provides insights into the future of ebook reading devices. It will be of benefit to information professionals seeking to utilise ebook reading devices, and to designers of ebook readers.

The welfare state is certainly paradoxical. On the one hand, it is extraordinary mundane, concerned with the minutiae of the pension and benefit rights of millions of citizens. On the other, the sheer scale of its growth is one of the most remarkable features of the post-war capitalist world and it remains on of the dominant, if sometimes unnoticed, institutions of the modern world. (Pierson, 1998, p. 208)

This paper introduces section 404 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 to corporate real estate (CRE) executives and identifies some of the effects that this new legislation has on the management of CRE operations with respect to financial reporting controls. While section 404’s reach includes all financial reporting, this paper focuses on capital projects and describes one method for establishing necessary financial reporting controls through a Management by Projects approach.

The case includes theoretical references to family business, organizational culture, resource-based value and leadership.

The case combines primary and secondary data. There is ample public information about Martin Guitar including histories of the company and its instruments. These were used for background. Primary data were provided by the company in the form of customized data and interviews.. The case writer has served Martin Guitar as a consultant and also plays Martin instruments. The case writer had numerous opportunities to interview Chris and his key lieutenants.

In 2019, C.F. Martin IV (Chris) was in his fourth decade leading one of the America’s oldest family-owned companies, C.F. Martin & Co., Inc. Martin Guitar is a globally known maker of fine guitars that are prized by collectors, working musicians and amateur musicians. Chris was raised in the family business and took on the CEO’s position at the age of 30. The case describes the company’s management practices and the culture that has emerged from them. In 2019, at age 64, Chris confronted issues faced by his predecessors over multiple generations: how to prepare the company for succession, and maintain its strong performance as a family-owned company in a dynamic industry environment.

The case is designed for a management course for upper-level undergraduates.

Today, education shows an urgent need for transformation to better respond to the complex and interdependent nature of current learning and social challenges we are facing. This chapter is based on the evidence of schools and district initiatives that claim for systemic change with a strong focus on wider interconnection and collaboration between learners, professionals and organizations.

Networks for Change is a programme launched in 2017 by the Barcelona Education Consortium that intends to create professional networks of schools in the city. The programme seeks a deep change in the whole system: to influence how teachers learn from one another to lead a collective transformation of schools, moving towards inclusive, significant and profound learning of all students. To achieve this, the programme articulates 25 territorial networks of schools, spread over the 10 districts in the city of Barcelona, grouping a total of 283 schools (ages 3–18), 1,700 leadership teams and 10,000 teachers. The network sessions are facilitated by one district leader, existing a team of 13 facilitators in the programme. Each school assigns an internal and volunteering leadership team that is responsible to assist to the network meetings, so as to empower internal change processes in schools.

The present study evaluates the impact of the programme on the development of territorial networks, as well as on the changes emerged in school communities. The instruments used combine a quantitative and qualitative approach including a questionnaire for teams of leaders involved in the programme, a questionnaire for teachers from schools and a focus group with programme facilitators of the 25 networks.

The main results show that the Networks for Change programme is already becoming a response to the widely contrasted need to weave sustainable relationships between teachers from different schools in the system at the same time that it is strengthening the collaborative capacities of educational actors in the city’s neighbourhoods and territories. Likewise, and to take a step further in the development of the programme, it is suggested emphasizing the increase of transversality in the networks as cross-sector collaboration, distributing the leadership of the programme through its actors and establishing direct ways for the impact to schools and their transformation. Right now, the network mainly fulfils a function of generating learning among its participants, although the desired horizon is to extend this learning to the entire ecosystem and at the same time generate systemic change in the neighbourhoods in order to enhance and document real impact on learners.

Drawing on interviews with men and women gun carriers, this paper considers the intersection of femininity and guns. It argues that two sets of expectations shape the normative relationship between women and guns: First, armed women are a blind spot in feminist discourse, which tends to reproduce the “pacifist presumption” that women are nonviolent caretakers and peacemakers. Second, contemporary pro-gun discourse often bases women’s gun carry within their duties and obligations as mothers in a form of “martial maternalism.” Inflected with a post-feminist appropriation of rights and equality, this pro-gun discourse reproduces gender binaries through a discourse of gender inclusivity. Following previous analyses that emphasize the contradictory politics of gender in conservative spaces, my analysis emphasizes how the gendered politics of guns is sustained by multiple, though not necessarily shared, understandings of women’s guns by men and women within American gun culture.