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This study aims to provide an overview of the past two decades of lifelong learning (LLL) policies for enhancing employability and reduce social exclusion in young people of European countries through the development of the so-called LLL key-competences.

Built on a quasi-systematic review, this contribution explores traditional and new methods for promoting the LLL transition, and then employability, in young adults (e.g. apprenticeship, vocational training, e-learning, etc.).

It argues the need to identify all the possible approaches able to support policymakers, as they can differently impact key-competence development.

Finally, based on the consolidated EU policy experience, we propose a strategy of implementation of the LLL programmes that facilitates the institutions’ decision processes for policy-making through the use of decisional support system.

The purpose of this paper is to identify entrepreneur mentor benefits and challenges as a result of entrepreneurship mentoring in higher education (HE).

An entrepreneurship mentoring scheme was developed at a UK university to support prospective student entrepreneurs, with mentors being entrepreneurs drawn from the local business community. A mentor-outcomes framework was developed and applied to guide semi-structured interviews.

Results supported the broader applicability of our framework, with a revised framework developed to better represent the entrepreneur mentor context. Alongside psychosocial and personal developmental outcomes, mentors benefitted from entrepreneurial learning, renewed commitment to their own ventures and the development of additional skills sets. Enhanced business performance also manifested itself for some mentors. A range of challenges are presented, some generic to the entrepreneur setting and others more specific to the higher education (HE) setting.

The framework offered serves as a starting point for further researchers to explore and refine the outcomes of entrepreneur mentoring.

The findings serve to support those considering developing a mentor programme or including mentoring as part of a formal entrepreneurship education offer, specifically in a university setting but also beyond.

The vast majority of entrepreneurship mentoring studies focus on the benefits to the mentee. By focusing on benefits and challenges for the entrepreneur mentor, this study extends our knowledge of the benefit of entrepreneurship mentoring. It offers an empirically derived entrepreneur mentor outcomes framework, as well as offering insights into challenges for the entrepreneur mentor within an HE setting.

This paper aims to draw attention to an urgent need for reform of the regulatory framework of the broader export credit system to ensure a new and comprehensive “safe haven” for officially supported export credits. The purpose is to analyse the complex debate on disciplines of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), creating a point of reference for future analysis of and debates around the “carve-out clause” of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) and a “safe haven” in a broader sense.

This paper takes inspiration from legal, economic and political science literature on subsidies and officially supported export credits, as well as on legal documents related to the WTO and the OECD. It examines the WTO subsidy and the OECD export credits framework, focusing on main legal and economic governance aspects. Then, it gives a critical analysis how “safe” a “safe haven” in a broader sense might be, assessing frictions of and solutions for the fundamentally different set of disciplines, limitations, financial instruments not covered by OECD regulations, as well as new challenges related to climate finance.

After assessing the challenges regarding the “carve-out clause” of the WTO subsidy framework and two tracks aiming to create a new “safe haven”, requirements for comprehensive disciplines for officially supported export credits are pointed out. Furthermore, several misunderstandings and mistakes appearing in the debate are clarified.

Desktop research rather than empirical field work.

This paper creates awareness for governments and exporters how to deal with a complex system of interrelated disciplines. The question, how “safe” a “safe haven” in a broader sense can be, has not been resolved yet. Some authors focus on the WTO disciplines not taking into account the need for an effective matching procedure of the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits (the Arrangement). Furthermore, the introduction of several new pre-export financing programmes and the growing significance of climate finance-related instruments for export credit agencies creates both opportunities and challenges. This paper can serve as a reference point for the academic debate and further research. This paper also offers newcomers to the topic a comprehensive overview.

Although the “carve-out clause” and the Arrangement have been much discussed, there is limited literature review structuring both existing and new aspects of the debate, assessing (dis)advantages of arguments and interpretations. This paper both adds to the corpus of literature about the ASCM, as well as the Arrangement, and takes this corpus as the object of its analysis.

The branding of universities is increasingly recognized to present a different set of challenges than in corporate, for-profit sectors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how faculty make sense of branding in the context of higher education, specifically considering branding initiatives in business schools.

The paper is based on qualitative interviews with faculty regarding their responses to organizational branding at four business schools. Discourse analysis was used to analyze the interview data.

The study reveals varied, fluid and reflexive faculty interpretations of organizational branding. Faculty interviewed in the study adopted a number of stances towards their schools’ branding efforts. In particular, the study identifies three main faculty responses to branding: endorsement, ambivalence and cynicism.

The study contributes by highlighting the ambiguities and ambivalence generated by brand management initiatives in the higher education context, offering original insights into the multiple ways that faculty exploit, frame and resist attempts to brand their organizations. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for branding in university contexts.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This paper seeks to identify the changes in cognition associated with becoming information‐literate, specifically, in relation to the evaluation of information. Additionally, it puts forward a model for a teaching and learning intervention that engages the learner and leads to higher order information literacy (IL) thinking. From a theoretical perspective the research integrates ideas from the fields of IL, teaching and learning, e‐learning and information behaviour (IB).

Three interventions were designed to develop the information literacies of first‐year undergraduates studying Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University, to teach and test IL. Interventions took a blended approach and combined face‐to‐face and online social network learning (OSNL) – also referred to as social media learning (SML) – and focused on one aspect of information literacy: the ability to evaluate source material. Data were captured via interviews, focus groups and from the online discussion that was analysed thematically and categorised using task, behaviour, cognitive states, affective states, cognitive states and knowledge. This helped to evaluate the efficacy of the interventions and provided data for further analysis. This paper focuses on the cognitive data and their transitions during the interventions and, in particular, among those respondents who experienced OSNL.

The changing cognitive states, associated with IL learning were modelled and made evident key cognitive states and transitions. This is represented in the paper in diagrammatic and mathematical notation. The findings indicate the complexity of the information behaviours associated with IL including the cognitive, behavioural, cognitive and affective elements. Although the cognitive transitions are the focus of this paper, an insight is also given into an IL intervention that fosters the capability to interact critically and reflectively with information. The pedagogy that underpins these changes is indicated. The intervention, which incorporated OSNL, proved the most successful.

Undergraduate students' IB can be changed and IL developed. Additional long‐term data would have indicated whether this intervention had a lasting impact on the undergraduates.

IL practitioners should consider incorporating OSNL and assessment in their interventions. Incorporating discussion, reflection and peer‐to‐peer assessment is likely to lead to deeper learning when teaching IL.

The research adds detail to the understanding of the cognitive, behavioural, affective and cognitive states associated with IL and makes explicit how these may change, as the learner becomes information‐literate.

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine how generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT may serve as a new context for management theories and concepts.

The paper presents the analyses of selected management theories on decision-making, knowledge management, customer service, human resource management and administrative tasks and explains what may change after generative AI adoption.

The paper indicates that some management theories and concepts need to be studied in the generative AI environment that may influence managerial work at the strategic, functional and administrative levels.

This paper is an opinion piece article and does not refer to empirical data. It formulates some conclusions to further empirical research studies.

The paper analyzes selected management theories in a new technological setting. The paper also provides information about the functions of generative AI that are useful in understanding and overcoming how new technology may change organizations and management.