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Like pro-bono service of law and other professional practices, micro-credentialing has become the quasi-charity project of the rapidly commodifying higher education (HE) sector. Produced with minimum waste and expense, qualifications through micro-credentialing economises time spent and optimises efforts. As a result, these bite-size educational offerings are becoming abundant and attractive to both learners and providers. While learners learn on the job or in the job market, providers get an opportunity to package knowledge and skills. Among a plethora of courses with potential overlapping and mismatched competencies, however, a clear pathway to target a career through pastures of micro-credentialing is yet to emerge. If not, it may result in another system of skill poverty and thus alienate the essential autonomy of credential seekers. Autonomy or self-tailoring your own package of micro-credentials (MC) without a proper wayfinding system could be overwhelming, sometimes even counterproductive, if competency management is based on a one-size-fits-all model. Via a local case, this chapter reviews current MC available to capacitate a career using Construction Management (CM) as a point of departure. It aims to develop a wayfinding framework or user-friendly menu for those wanting to craft a career via a micro-credentialing ecosystem. Broadly, it investigates navigating various MC offerings equivalent to undergraduate qualifications needed to become a CM professional recognised by accreditation bodies. In the process, it systematically discourses multiple ontologies of micro-credentialing in links, lapses, overlaps, and intersections among competencies to untangle complexities and optimise opportunities. It was hoped that learners could target a career instead of matching a job profile in the micro-credentialing universe.

The purpose of this case study is to document the process of building a collection of works around transgender life-writing, following the identification of a significant gap in the existing collections.

This case study describes and evaluates a collection development project undertaken at Senate House Library, University of London. After evaluating four comparable case studies, guidelines were developed for acquisitions to the collection, based on subject, conservation needs and financial expense.

Twenty items were selected for the collection, dating from 1933 to 2015, including books and magazines in multiple languages. The items acquired for the collection push back against the genre’s traditional preoccupation with transition. Writers describe their experiences as a racing driver and fighter pilot (Roberta Cowell), an NGO director (A. Revathi), a Buddhist monk (Michael Dillon), a professional tennis player and ophthalmologist (Renée Richards), and a travel writer, journalist and mountaineer (Jan Morris).

Challenges included setting the scope of the collection, and questions around the cataloguing and arrangement of materials.

Items acquired for the collection entered the library separately and were processed individually by the library’s cataloguing team as they arrived. Several issues arose during this stage of the project.

To serve the needs of library users effectively, it is necessary to analyse the imbalances in collections as a routine practice.

The case study is original in focusing on a comparably small project with larger implications for the user experience and inclusivity of a library and its collections.

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how these enable the evolution of implementation opportunities.

Through a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a large multinational, the authors analyse the dialogue and interactions among 25 dyads when identifying opportunities to contribute to strategy implementation. The data analysis relies on a process-coding approach and linkography, a valuable protocol analysis for identifying recursive interaction schemas in conversations.

The authors identify four main framing processes – shaping, unveiling, scattering and shifting – and provide a framework of how these processes affect individuals’ mental models through increasing the tangibility of opportunities or elevating them to new value hierarchies.

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the strategy implementation and organizational development literature, providing a micro-perspective of how dialogue allows early knowledge structures to emerge and shape the development of opportunities for strategy implementation.

From a managerial perspective, the authors offer insights to trigger action and change in individuals to contribute to strategy when moving from formulation to implementation.

Rather than focusing on the structural control view of strategy implementation and the role of the top management team, this study considers strategy implementation as a practice and what it takes for organizational actors who do not take part in strategy formulation to enact and shape opportunities for strategy implementation through constructive dialogue.

Despite the burgeoning popularity of virtual gifting in live streaming, research lacks an in-depth understanding of the drivers behind this behavior. Using para-social relationship (PSR), this study aims to capture viewers’ lively social feelings toward the streamer as the key factor leading to the purchase behavior of virtual gifts. It also aims to establish a theoretical link between PSR and viewers’ holistic experience in live streaming as captured by cognitive absorption and aims to investigates the role of technological features (i.e. viewer–streamer and viewer–viewer interactivity, streamer-level and viewer-level deep profiling and design aesthetics) in shaping viewers’ experience.

Based on 433 survey responses, this study employs a combination of structural equation modeling and neural networks to offer valuable insights into the relationships between the technological environment, viewer experience and viewer behavior.

Our results highlight the salience of PSR in promoting the purchase of virtual gifts through cognitive absorption and the importance of the technological environment in eliciting the viewer experience. This study sheds light on the development of PSR in a technological environment and its relationship with cognitive absorption.

By applying PSR to conceptualize viewers’ perceived connection with the streamer, this study extends the research on purchase behavior in the non-shopping context by providing an enlightened understanding of virtual gift purchase behavior in live streaming. Moreover, by theoretically linking PSR with cognitive absorption, virtual gift purchase and technological features of live streaming, it enriches the theory of PSR and bridges the gap between the design practice of supporting the IT infrastructure of live streaming and research.

This study aims to assess how the provision of facilities management (FM) services influences customer satisfaction in hotels in secondary cities. This study focussed on customer satisfaction in relation to specific FM services such as cleaning, maintenance, security, internet/information technology and air conditioner servicing.

The study used a case study design. Simple random and purposive sampling methods were used to select the hotels and the respondents. The study used a survey based on the SERVQUAL model to collect data from 136 respondents. Six hotel managers were also interviewed.

There were disparities in customer satisfaction across the various hotel categories based on the assessment indicators used. Thus, customer satisfaction with FM services was not influenced by hotel ratings. On the calibre of staff handling FM activities, none of the hotels had a professional facilities manager. The hotel managers were in charge of FM activities, which affected the provision of FM services. Generally, customers in all the selected hotels were not satisfied with the quality of FM services. Specifically, the overall mean gap score was very low (−3.20), which meant that customers’ expectations far exceeded their perceptions, hence, their dissatisfaction. Tangible(s) of services were customers’ least appreciated (−1.04) dimension. This meant that hotels did not pay much attention to the physical (place) aspect of their FM activities. This should engage the attention of hospitality industry regulators and policymakers, given the current global health crisis caused by Covid-19 and its variance.

The study demonstrates customer satisfaction with FM services in hotels in secondary cities. Practically, hotels can become very competitive if they consider the findings of the study to provide effective customer-oriented FM services.