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The purpose of this paper is to examine critically both utopian and dystopian discourses of offshoring so that a more considered, nonetheless theoretically informed, view of the global offshore phenomenon can be formed.

Drawing upon some preliminary research on offshoring ventures from the UK to India, and the extant literature, the practice of business process outsourcing (BPO) via offshoring is explored and critiqued.

It is argued that neither dream nor nightmare is the adequate discursive metaphor to capture what we have discerned through our research on offshore outsourcing.

The primary contribution of this paper is that demonstrates that utopian and dystopian discourses fail to adequately explain the practice of offshore BPO and that in cultural, economical, ethical, and political terms, it is much more complex.

The purpose of this study is to examine the health and social care information needs of people with a visual impairment; to identify the health and social care information sources used by visually‐impaired people seeking information; to identify differences in the information needs of people with different visual impairments; to examine ways in which developments in information provision may help to meet the needs of visually impaired people.

In total, 28 semi‐structured interviews (face‐to‐face or telephone) were conducted with 31 visually impaired people living in or near Sheffield, UK. The participants included two groups: people with an age‐related visual impairment, and people with a visual impairment since birth or early childhood. Framework analysis was used to analyse the findings.

Four major themes were identified: health and social care information needs, sources of health and social care information, possible improvements, and “intervening variables”.

In this study only a small proportion of the health and social care information needs of visually impaired people were currently being met. There was minimal co‐ordination of information between the different information providers. Visually impaired people were dependent on acquiring and seeking out additional information from a wide variety of sources.

This paper provides new insights into the health and social care information needs of visually impaired people and their sources of information, and starts to fill gaps identified in an earlier systematic review. The paper reinforces the view that visually impaired people are a heterogeneous group, with different needs according to their visual impairments.

Narrative inquiry and life history are privileged methods for studying people's lives, experiences, and identity construction. In this article, I argue that critical life history inquiry is especially suitable for studies of those, who have actively involved in progressive social and cultural movements and have developed an identity as activist educators.

Describes a study to measure the quality of service provided by food‐poisoning surveillance agencies in England and Wales in terms of the requirements of a representative consumer ‐ the egg producing industry ‐ adopting “egg associated” outbreak investigation reports as the reference output. Defines and makes use of four primary performance indicators: accessibility of information; completeness of evidence supplied in food‐poisoning outbreak investigation reports as to the sources of infection in “egg‐associated” outbreaks; timeliness of information published; and utility of information and advice aimed at preventing or controlling food poisoning. Finds that quality expectations in each parameter measured are not met. Examines reasons why surveillance agencies have not delivered the quality demanded. Makes use of detailed case studies to illustrate inadequacies of current practice. Attributes failure to deliver “accessibility” to a lack of recognition on the status or nature of “consumers”, combined with a self‐maintenance motivation of the part of the surveillance agencies. Finds that failures to deliver “completeness” and “utility” may result from the same defects which give rise to the lack of “accessibility” in that, failing to recognize the consumers of a public service for what they are, the agencies feel no need to provide them with the data they require. The research indicates that self‐maintenance by scientific epidemiologists may introduce biases which when combined with a politically inspired need to transfer responsibility for food‐poisoning outbreaks, skew the conduct of investigations and their conclusions. Contends that this is compounded by serious and multiple inadequacies in the conduct of investigations, arising at least in part from the lack of training and relative inexperience of investigators, the whole conditioned by interdisciplinary rivalry between the professional groups staffing the different agencies. Finds that in addition failures to exploit or develop epidemiological technologies has affected the ability of investigators to resolve the uncertainties identified. Makes recommendations directed at improving the performance of the surveillance agencies which, if adopted will substantially enhance food poisoning control efforts.

Against a British policy backdrop, which places an ever- increasing emphasis on workplace learning in pre-service professional programmes, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of the mentor to professional knowledge development in nursing, paramedicine, social work and teaching.

Taking the form of a literature review, it explores the influence of policy, professional and theoretical conceptualisations of the mentor role, and structural factors influencing the mentor’s contribution to professional knowledge.

Where there are clearly delineated policy obligations for the mentor to “teach”, mentors are more likely to make connections between theoretical and practical knowledge. When this responsibility is absent or informal, they are inclined to attend to the development of contextual knowledge with a consequent disconnect between theory and practice. In all four professions, mentors face significant challenges, especially with regard to the conflict between supporting and assessor roles, and the need to attend to heavy contractual workloads, performance targets and mentoring roles in tandem.

The authors argue first for the need for more attention to the pedagogy of mentoring, and second for structural changes to workload allocations, career progression and mentoring education. In order to develop more coherent and interconnected professional knowledge between different domains, and the reconciliation of different perspectives, it would be useful to underpin mentoring pedagogy with Bhabba’s notion of “third space”.

The paper makes a contribution to the field since it considers new obligations incumbent on mentors to assist mentees in reconciling theoretical and practical knowledge by the consequence of policy and also takes a multi-professional perspective.

From providing public Internet access in rural communities to pioneering the development of a model automated document delivery system, libraries of every type in the state are engaged in a variety of multi‐library automation and connectivity efforts. The following descriptions include projects from academic libraries, public libraries, state agencies, and a library school.

The purpose of this paper is to explore recent literature on the impact of changes in the workplace environment and projected trends through to the year 2030. This allows the authors to identify and discuss what key trends are changing the nature of project organising work. The authors aim to identify what knowledge and which skills, attributes and experiences will be most likely valued and needed in 2030.

This paper is essentially a reflective review and is explorative in nature. The authors focus on several recent reports published in the UK and Australia that discuss the way that the future workforce will adapt and prepare for radical changes in the workplace environment. The authors focus on project organising work and the changing workplace knowledge, skills, attributes and experience (KSAE) needs of those working in project teams in 2030 and beyond. The authors draw upon existing KSAE literature including findings from a study undertaken into the KSAEs of project alliance managers working in a highly collaborative form of project delivery.

The analysis suggests that there is good and bad news about project workers prospects in 2030. The good news is that for those working in non-routine roles their work will be more interesting and rewarding than is the case for today. The bad news is that for workers in routine work roles, they will be replaced by advanced digital technology.

Few, if any, papers published in the project organising literature speculate about what this discipline may look like or what KSAEs will be valued and needed.

This paper opens up a debate about how project management/project organising work will be undertaken in future and what skills and expertise will be required. It also prompts project managers to think about how they will craft their careers in 2030 in response to expected work environment demands. This will have professional and learning implications.

The issue of the future workplace environment is highly relevant to the social context.

This paper is about a projected future some 12 years onward from today. It bridges a gap in any future debate about how project organising jobs may change and how they will be delivered in the 2030s.

Sustainability reporting serves as a means of communication between corporations and their stakeholders on sustainability issues. This study aims to identify and account for the contents of sustainability reporting communicated through the websites of the plants in five continents of the same multinational mining corporation.

This study uses data published by Newmont Mining Corporation. The corporation has regional headquarters in five continents: Africa, Asia, Australia and North America and South America. The data were drawn from the websites of the five plants adjacent to those regional headquarters. Economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability as reported by each plant were identified; to do so, a disclosure analysis based on the elements of the Global Reporting Initiative and the United Nations Division for Sustainability Development was used. These aspects were then compared and contrasted to highlight if, and to what extent, institutional isomorphism influences variations in sustainability disclosures among plants compared with the parent company.

It was found that most of the reporting about sustainability matters comprises narratives; there were also a few physical measures but very little financial information. Notwithstanding that the websites of all five plants used similar headings, the contents of reports differed. The reports from the plants in Australia, South America and Africa were more comprehensive than those from the plants in Asia and North America. The authors attribute these differences to institutionalisation of location-specific characteristics, including management discretion, legislation and societal pressures influencing sustainability reporting. The authors argue that managers responsible for preparing sustainability reports and who work essentially as sustainability accountants should develop templates and measures to raise the standard and comprehensiveness of reports for improved communication, information and behaviour.

Extant studies on sustainability reporting have focused mainly on comparisons between sustainability reports published by different corporations or sustainability reports published in different years by the same corporation. The authors believe that this is one of the first studies to have examined differences in sustainability information published by different subsidiaries within the same large corporation and the first to show how concurrent disclosures can differ.

This feminist standpoint study aims to make an empirical contribution to the entrepreneurial leadership and HRD fields. Women entrepreneur leaders' experiences of gender will be explored through a framework of doing gender well and doing gender differently to unsettle the gender binary.

Against a backcloth of patriarchy, a theoretical gender lens is developed and a feminist standpoint research (FSR) approach taken in this study. There are five case studies of women entrepreneur leaders operating small businesses across North East England in sectors of IT, law, construction, beauty, and childcare. In each case study a two‐stage semi‐structured interview process was implemented and the women's voices analysed through a framework of doing gender well and differently.

This paper highlights the complexities of gender experiences offering four themes of women entrepreneurs' experiences of gender within entrepreneurial leadership: struggling with entrepreneurial leadership; awareness of difference; accepting and embracing difference; and responding to difference, which are offered to challenge the gender binary and capture the complexities of how gender is experienced.

The field must begin to shift its focus from the dominant masculine discourse to foster understandings of gender experiences by using gender as an analytical category to enable the field to truly progress.

Women are still an under‐represented group within entrepreneurship and within the higher echelons of organisations. This requires greater attention.

This feminist study calls for both scholars and practitioners to analyse critically their underlying assumptions and bring a gender consciousness to their HRD research and practice to understand gender complexities within entrepreneurial leadership and organisational experiences more widely.