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The objective of this paper is to report results from a Canadian-based study addressing systems-level barriers that restrict the employment of persons with vision loss, specifically in the experience of searching for and maintaining competitive employment. This paper aims to generate knowledge which may inform strategies and advocacy efforts to enhance opportunities for, and experiences of, paid employment for persons with vision loss.

This constructivist, grounded theory study used in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven participants with restricted vision (those who are legally blind) to frame data collection and analyses.

Three interconnected themes emerged: facing and negotiating barriers, the cyclical process of seeking and keeping employment and settling for second best. Participants described barriers to employment that have been described in previous literature that not only continue to exist, but that act to potentiate one another, resulting in settling for competitive employment experiences that are second best. This represents a type of social injustice that has been previously described as ‘occupational injustice’. We explain this concept and link it to participants’ experiences.

This was a small, geographically bounded study. Nonetheless, the findings resonate with previous research and further our understanding regarding how barriers are experienced.

Knowledge gained furthers the understanding of how systemic obstacles restrict and bound the participation of persons with vision loss in the labour market.

While the barriers to employment for persons with low vision have been previously well described, this paper demonstrates how these barriers interact and act synergistically with one another, thereby reinforcing the need to focus on shortcomings at the service, system and policy level, in addition to individual rehabilitation.

Six million Iraqis were displaced during the Iraq-Daesh War, and although many have returned to their communities, there remain approximately 1.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the country. Today, approximately 25% of IDP children in Iraq are out of school (REACH, 2020). This study foregrounds the voices and family histories of IDPs when navigating educational access and makes a methodological argument for the need for increased qualitative research in post-conflict settings. Using the conceptual framework of navigation, the author presents displaced persons as agentic, dynamic people with lived histories, present realities, and imagined futures which inform their journey through the education system. Semi-structured interviews with 16 IDPs who identified as parents or caregivers were conducted virtually. Displaced Iraqis value education for different reasons, ranging from basic literacy to employment to societal improvement. In doing so, the author challenges the barrier-dominant framework through which IDP educational access is often understood and nuanced with a temporal lens which requires us to identify IDPs as (1) persons capable of making choices for themselves, (2) givers as well as receivers, and (3) persons who aspire to goals beyond basic survival.

Using data from a survey of a stratified random sample of 900 internationalising firms carried out in 2008, this chapter examines the barriers to internationalisation faced by young innovative SMEs. The results indicate that young technology-intensive firms are more likely than non-technologically intensive firms to report barriers to internationalisation. When compared with the whole sample, young technology-intensive SMEs are significantly more likely to experience difficulties in obtaining basic information about doing business in an overseas country, and with the costs of doing business overseas. Factor analysis suggests that young technology-intensive SMEs which internationalise through non-traditional modes differ with regard to their perceptions of barriers to internationalisation from those who sell directly to customers overseas.

This chapter employed a systemic meta-synthesis literature review to reflect on the transactional variables of the theory of transactional distance (TTD) in addressing barriers to student engagement in the open and distance learning (ODL). Literature sources were obtained from unlimited databases around the globe; however, articles published before 2015 were not included in this review. Through the literature review, the authors identified barriers to student engagement in the ODL through the lens of TTD. The identified barriers to student engagement are presented according to three transactional variables of the TTD and later classified concerning student engagement dimensions. Findings suggest that key instructional dialogue barriers emanate from the teacher and student personality. For program structure, the authors found the poorly designed courses while for learner autonomy there are situational, institutional, and dispositional barriers. The identified barriers to student engagement in ODL revealed the interrelatedness of the transactional variables and the strong link with the student engagement dimensions. By integrating the transactional variables of TTD and student engagement dimensions, this chapter identified possible strategies to address barriers to student engagement in the ODL.

Purpose – This chapter examines the complex, multilevel barriers low-income women of color in a medium-sized Midwestern city face when trying to achieve economic self-sufficiency and homeownership. The aim of this study was to determine whether women attempting to achieve self-sufficiency and/or homeownership face different barriers than men as a result of multiple and intersecting social locations.

Design/methodology/approach – The study sample includes 24 low-income women of color, all of whom participated in in-depth interviews in Fall, 2008. Low-income women also completed short demographic surveys. Intersectionality represents the conceptual framework for this study, and data analysis followed phenomenological inquiry.

Findings – Some barriers low-income women of color face are unacknowledged and are gendered and racialized. Many women in this study faced personal barriers (e.g., low-income, lack of savings, poor credit, lack of mentors) and system-level barriers (e.g., banking account requirements and lenders’ downpayment requirements) to obtain economic self-sufficiency and/or homeownership simultaneously.

Research limitations – This study only examined 25 women's experiences in one location. These findings can only be generalized to low-income women of color in this study.

Originality/value – This study addresses the gaps in existing literature about low-income women's journeys toward economic self-sufficiency, and highlights that many women have goals of homeownership as well. Data analyzed here also illustrated the complex nature of barriers.

This research applies a static hedging portfolio method derived from Derman, Ergener, and Kani (1995) (henceforth Derman's SHP method) and a new SHP method with European cash-or-nothing binary options developed by Chung, Shih, and Tsai (2013) to price European continuous double barrier (ECDB) options and the rebates of the ECDB options. Our numerical results indicate that the new SHP method outperforms Derman's SHP method in terms of efficiency and effectiveness under all circumstances.

In this chapter the authors identified and discussed the most significant barriers faced by cooperative movements in Malta, providing recommendations for potential solutions. Primary data for this research were collected through the use of semi-structured interviews with a selection of 18 representatives of the small current Maltese cooperative movement, most of whom are active either in individual cooperatives (16) and/or in the cooperative institutions (five).

Findings indicated that the most significant problems are the lack of education and awareness regarding the cooperative movement. These are closely followed by the divide within the movement itself, which is also hindering further development of Maltese cooperatives. Therefore, for the movement to grow and develop, one must first tackle the lack of education and awareness of this business model. Furthermore, in order for the movement to reach its full potential there must be cooperation amongst cooperatives, leading to the appropriate environment for growth.

Through the identification of these significant barriers, targeted action may be recommended and taken so as to reduce, if not eliminate, these barriers and thereby help the Maltese cooperative movement flourish.

In recent years, recognition of environmental influences in public health has expanded to include more components of the environment such as the built environment, attitudes, and public policies. This environmental attention has addressed the need for healthier housing, schools, roads, and work sites, as some examples. Paralleling the development of awareness of the impact of environment on health and health behaviors, the influence of the environment and its contribution to the experience of disability has become more apparent. This national descriptive analysis of environmental barriers contributes to our understanding of the extent of environmental considerations for the entire U.S. adult population, not just older individuals, and will document those problems for those with self-reported functional limitations (i.e., disability).

This analysis uses the 2002 National Health Interview data to examine physical, social, and policy barriers experienced by the U.S. national population of adults age 18 or over. Focusing specifically on those who report a physical, activity, participation, or mental health limitation, the experience of barriers in the home, workplace, school, and the community is examined using descriptive analyses.

Results indicate that approximately 11% of the population with disabilities and 2% of the nondisabled adult population experience barriers in their daily lives. Severity of limitations and poor health status among those with disabilities increase the experience of barriers. The only sociodemographic factor related to reporting barriers was income. Depending on the kind of limitation, up to 28.6% of the population with disabilities experience barriers. The two most frequently reported types of barriers were building design and attitudes of other people.

This analysis provides an indication of how the environment is experienced by adults with disabilities and identifies perceived barriers found in the home, the work/school environment and the community. It starts to provide a baseline for understanding of the environment as experienced by persons with disabilities and suggests the most pressing areas for attention.

To our knowledge, this is among the first nationally representative analysis of barriers that interfere with daily activities experienced by adults in the United States. It highlights the experience of adults with disabilities and describes numerous types of potential barriers.

This chapter explores the relationships between organisational type, rationales and the barriers that prevent community food projects from increasing the scale of their operations. From a broad survey of community food projects, organisations were divided according to their primary rationale (e.g. rural economic development and distribution), and then subdivided – by form – as a non-profit, private business, governmental agency or cooperative. Data from the interviews and surveys were coded using a qualitative grounded theory approach, to reveal the barriers experienced by each. Overall, access to long-term stable income is a recurrent theme across all types of projects. However, income sources dramatically change how these organisations prioritise barriers. Similarly, the organisation’s primary rationale and experiences influence the interpretation and approach to collaboration and education. Despite these differences, our results suggest a large degree of convergence that cuts across organisational forms and rationales, and offer a base for broader regional food system conversations.

Language commonality and barriers are often taken as exogenous given variable and independent of the context; however in this chapter we investigate the factors determining perception of language barriers. As such we are responding to the question of when do managers perceive language barriers and which business contexts foster the perception of language barriers and which do not? Language serves different purposes and entails different communicative requirements depending on the context in which it is used. In addition, language has multiple dimensions and we argue that the different dimensions of language vary in their importance depending on the specific context, where the contextual variation in this case is related to the operation mode chosen in the foreign market. More specifically, we argue that language distance (relatedness in language) matters when the firms conduct business abroad through their own employees, while language incidence (accuracy in language) is critical when operating through a local agent. The different use of language implies a need for different language skills. The combination of the operation mode and the availability of people with the needed language skills will affect managers’ perception of language barriers. The hypotheses are tested on a large data set encompassing 390 multinational corporations headquartered in Finland, South Korea, New Zealand, and Sweden that have undertaken a business operation in a foreign country.