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This case teaches students the importance of maintaining a strong FICO score by illustrating the consequences of paying bills late or not at all. The protagonist is David Molina, a waiter at a struggling Italian restaurant located down the block from where he lives. Money is tight for Molina right now—his limited income means he lives paycheck to paycheck. However, Molina knows things will be looking up for him soon because he recently accepted a job as a bank teller across town—his first desk job.

Molina has been putting off paying two of his bills: a cable bill and his Bank of America credit card bill, both of which are late and have been issued, this time, in the form of threats to impact Molina's credit score if he doesn't pay them. He has just enough money to afford the minimum payments on each overdue bill. But then he receives a phone call from his friend, Jim Lindsey, reminding him about an invitation to go to Myrtle Beach for the upcoming weekend. Molina knows he cannot afford it, but a woman he's attracted to, Jessica, will be there too. Should Molina put off the bills yet again, and if so, how exactly will being late on them hurt his credit score?

This study aims to present the experiences with self-determination and taking ownership of life in Sudbury model schools that allow students true choice.

For this qualitative study we used a thematic analysis (TA) methodology. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with 14 adult participants from eight different Sudbury model and comparable schools in the Netherlands, Israel and the US. These schools offered students real choice in the curriculum program. Transcripts were analyzed and corresponding meanings thematized. Self-determination theory (SDT) is used as a lens to interpret the findings.

The findings suggest that an organizational structure that supports own responsibility in an absence of an imposed program and a culture of no-interference creates conditions for taking ownership of life and choices (self-determination) and encompasses taking ownership of learning, education and one’s future. Taking ownership of one’s life seems to be related to strongly internally oriented processes with an internal locus of causality, to find their own motivation and taking responsibility for choices, behavior and consequences in a SDT need supportive social context.

This study is part of a larger research that addressed multiple facets of their experiences with their schools to understand the longer-term effects these schools had on the adult lives of participants. This limits the scope of this paper to only explore the conditions that led to the mental state of “taking ownership of one’s life.”

Conditions that can lead to long-term self-determination of one's life and future in a school setting is an unexplored area of research.

This paper analyses children's experiences of school or family visits to Hare Krishna eco-farms in Europe. The article evaluates the extent to which these encounters enable retention and recollection of memories and, consequently, trigger change towards more sustainable behaviour.

Participatory research, qualitative observations and theories of childhood memory are used to explore the nature of children's environmental encounters on Hare Krishna eco-tours.

Findings reveal that Krishna eco-tours offer a conducive environment for cerebral registering and future reminiscing through the following components: experiential learning of sustainable practices which are radically different to mainstream alternatives, sensory experiences, nature play and entertainment and freedom from everyday constraints.

The emerging literature on children's eco-tourism has largely focussed on market-related aspects and farmers' needs. In contrast, the authors’ conceptual framework, based on contemporary research in childhood memories, offers a tool to evaluate the impacts of eco-tourism from a more holistic perspective.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the potential of regenerative tourism practices and their influence on destinations and their stakeholders from a community development approach focusing on Nordic lifestyle entrepreneurs. We focus on small and micro-sized enterprises (SMiEs) that conform to the realities of tourism systems in Nordic regions.

We explore how community development can be used as an approach for regenerative tourism and vice versa. Our conceptual paper builds from recent work of the Nordic Regenerative Tourism project, which aims to develop place-based practices for SMiEs that contribute to the regeneration of natural and cultural resources.

Regenerative tourism research should focus on developing tools that aid in capacity sharing and equitable partnerships through a community development approach. However, there is a lack of understanding of the processes of how to implement this in real world practice. More research is needed in developing tools to mobilize Nordic communities, particularly within the countryside to help transform tourism towards a regenerative model. It was found that much of these efforts comes from MSMEs. Therefore, more case studies are needed to understand how and why lifestyle entrepreneurs play in community revitalization efforts and the potential linkages with regenerative tourism management and marketing.

This conceptual paper contributes to the discussion of regenerative tourism and focus on smaller countryside communities within the Nordics. We argue that community development is linked with the concept of regenerative tourism through lifestyle entrepreneurs.

In this study, we applied the strategy-as-practice (SAP) framework to analyse strategic communication practices. SAP implies approaching strategy as something that organisational members do and is useful for understanding the tensions between emergence and formalisation and between planning and improvisation that characterise the everyday communication work of communication practitioners.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study of a record company and on qualitative interviews with various actors from the music industry.

Tensions exist between the emergence of inputs from active consumers that require flexibility and attempts to strategically formalise and continuously adapt plans and encourage consumers to act in anticipated ways. The findings revealed five strategic communication practices—meetings, working in the office, gathering and analysing consumer engagement and related data, collaboration and storytelling—that practitioners used to conduct strategic communication and navigate the tensions.

The study contributes to understanding the role of strategic communication practices in contemporary organisations and how practitioners manage the tensions within them. The study shows that an SAP approach can account for improvisation and emergence, as well as planning and formalisation. It also shows how SAP resonates with emergent and agile strategic communication frameworks.

This study aims to develop and validate two scales: quiet quitting (QQ), measuring individual-level work disengagement, low organisational commitment and not going above and beyond in work, and quiet firing (QF), measuring employee perceptions of the degree to which their managers devalue them and when organisations intentionally create a situation to make them quit.

The scale development process involved item generation through literature search, review and interviews with working executives. The scales were then tested online by 264 participants from India.

In the quantitative analysis, the QQ and QF scales have good psychometric properties when tested with factor analysis, reliability analysis and Cronbach’s alpha. Furthermore, the convergent, discriminant and predictive validity of outcome constructs also showed significance.

This study found that the QQ and QF scales are highly reliable and exhibit good psychometric properties. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to empirically develop and test the QQ and QF constructs and offer implications for organisations and managers.

Renewable energy sources and smart devices are options for those wishing to lessen their reliance on fossil fuels. Smart devices in the home also allow energy providers to remotely control energy use (RCEU). However, little is understood about consumer’s perceptions of RCEU programs. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), it is proposed that environmental attitudes, environmental self-identity, green history, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control will predict differences in both purchase intentions and RCEU.

Data from 692 participants was collected via an online survey of energy consumers. The relationship between study variables was examined using regression analyses.

The results indicate that environmental attitude, environmental identity, green history and perceived behavioral control are positively related to both purchase intentions and RCEU. The results could have important implications for energy providers, practitioners, energy consumers and citizens interested in environmental issues.

As energy providers consider ways to better manage consumer energy use, RCEU has been used more frequently. However, understanding customer perceptions of RCEU is not well-established in the green energy literature. This paper contributes a first step towards the understanding of RCEU perceptions.

This study aims to explore the experiences of peers working in a range of roles within a single NHS mental health service. This study also aims to provide evidence of the impact of existing support, organisational structure and culture around peer working and provide recommendations for a Good Practice Guide for Peer Working. Peer roles require lived experience of mental health conditions and/or services. While the impact on them of using their own lived experience is not fully understood, anecdotal evidence suggests that peer workers may experience a greater emotional impact than other mental health workers. Burnout and retention are particular concerns.

This was a two-stage study using focus groups and reflexive thematic analysis in Stage 1. The key themes formed the basis of the Stage 2 workshop, which provided recommendations for a Good Practice Guide. The study team consisted of peer researchers with lived experience, supported by a Lived Experience Advisory Panel.

There is a perceived lack of support and an increased peer burden for peer workers. Recommendations included relevant ongoing training and development; support and supervision; and organisational cultural change.

Working within a peer-led co-production framework, this study contributes to the development of the evidence base for peer emotional labour. Based on the findings, a Good Practice Guide for Peer Working is being developed to promote good practice for the development of future peer worker roles.

The planning of massive vaccination campaigns often falls to nongovernmental organizations that have to face the critical challenge of vaccinating the largest number of people in the shortest time. This study aims to provide an easy tool for minimizing the duration of mass vaccination campaigns in rural and remote areas of developing countries.

This paper presents a linear mathematical model that combines location, scheduling and routing decisions that allows determining where to locate the vaccination centers, as well as the schedule/route that each medical team must follow to meet the target demand in the shortest time possible. In addition, the paper proposes an heuristic approach that can be integrated in a spreadsheet.

As the numerical experiments show, the proposed heuristic provides good solutions in a short time. Due to its simplicity and flexibility, the proposed approach allows decision-makers to analyze and evaluate several possible scenarios for decision-making by simply playing with input parameters.

The integration of the heuristic approach in a spreadsheet provides a simple and efficient tool to help decision-makers while avoiding the need for large investments in information systems infrastructure by user organizations.

Motivated by a real-life problem and different from previous studies, the objective of the planning is to reduce the length of the vaccination campaigns with the available resources and ensure a target coverage instead of planning for minimizing costs or maximizing coverage. Furthermore, for helping implementation to practitioners, the heuristic can be solved in a spreadsheet.