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This paper aims to explore perceptions and provides insights, from students who volunteer in policing whilst also studying the college of policing licenced professional policing degree (PPD) in Wales. It examines issues that act as enablers and blockers to volunteering in this public service, which also provides opportunities to develop their employability towards the careers to which they aspire. The paper provides insights from students and makes recommendations of interest to multiple stakeholders locally, regionally, nationally and internationally regarding attracting and recruiting volunteers.

Focus groups were conducted with students at three separate universities in the South and West of Wales. These undergraduate students were volunteers in different police forces and agreed to take part in connection with their experiences. The results were analysed using NVivo to establish commonalities.

The paper provides empirical insights concerning the issues surrounding the way those undergoing the process for recruitment as volunteers within policing are either hindered (blocked) or assisted (enabled). It identifies specific problematic areas as well as areas which have been of assistance. Policy makers, educators and recruiters should be aware of such blockers and enablers when considering adopting volunteering as an opportunity to enhance student employability. It also has resonance for other forms of volunteering in alternate public services.

This research is limited to those volunteers who are undertaking the licenced PPD at three separate universities in Wales. Although the research adds to the broader evidence-base with regards to volunteering and its use to enhance employability.

The paper includes practical implications for multiple stakeholders including university programme educators, administrators and decision makers in policing with regards to volunteering, employability, programme structures and process management.

The research is based upon the experiences and perceptions of those individuals who are actually engaged in volunteering.

Effective procurement of infrastructure is partly dependent on infrastructure procurement personnel having the skills that are important for the discharge of their role. Addressing the infrastructure deficits in developing countries, therefore, calls for an understanding of the skills that are important for the discharge of the roles of public personnel that are involved in infrastructure procurement. This study aims to investigate these skills from the perspective of public infrastructure procurement personnel in the sub-Saharan African region.

A questionnaire survey of procurement personnel yielded 590 useable responses, which were analysed using t-tests and exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

EFA established eight key components of important infrastructure procurement skills to include skills related to: project success factors; social and environmental sustainability; marketing and e-procurement; project phase management, the application of procurement laws and procedures; soft skills, ICT and communication; and data analysis and team building.

The findings are crucial in developing infrastructure procurement capacity building programmes that would be appropriate for infrastructure procurement personnel in developing country contexts. Infrastructure procurement personnel ought to engage more in capacity development training that is aligned to enhancing skills within the eight components.

This chapter explores the concept of allyship in social justice struggles. It provides a road map for self-reflection as well as acquisition of skills necessary for effective allyship. It describes appropriate roles for allies in dismantling systems and structures that protect the privilege of the majority in various contexts – privilege often unseen, unacknowledged and/or actively denied. This chapter will examine unique roles of allies in exposing, challenging, and dismantling privilege and white supremacy. Concrete examples of benefits that have accrued to white Americans through privilege – both conscious and unconscious, are assessed. The reader will be encouraged to explore personal areas of privilege and marginalization and acknowledge multidimensional identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, etc.) of individuals and unique lived experiences. Those seeking authentic positions of allyship are challenged to root out embedded privilege/white supremacy through direct action.

For construction organisations to be effective at implementing an integrated safety, health and environmental (SHE) management system, they require the right level of organisational capability. This capability includes the policies, systems and resources of the organisation. However, within the academic literature, it is unclear which organisational attributes of construction companies are important for implementing integrated SHE management. This study aims to explore the organisational attributes that determine integrated SHE management capability and their relative priorities.

The study used a literature review supported by expert verification and a subsequent three-round expert Delphi technique accompanied by applying the voting analytical hierarchy process.

The study identified 20 attributes grouped under five main thematic categories. These are strategy (the organisation’s vision and top management commitment); process (the organisation’s procedures and processes for SHE management); people (organisation’s human resources, their competence, roles, responsibilities and involvement in SHE management); resources (organisation’s physical and financial resources for SHE management) and information (SHE related documents, data, records and their communication across an organisation). While these thematic categories and the attributes within carry different weights of importance, the strategy-related attributes are the most important, followed by the people-related attributes.

The results of this study should enable construction companies and key industry stakeholders to understand construction companies’ capability to successfully implement an integrated SHE management system. Furthermore, construction companies should be able to prioritise efforts or investments to enhance their SHE management capability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of personalisation in the relationship between the architectural design of homes and inhabitants’ psychological well-being.

This interdisciplinary mixed-method study first investigates the existence of a link between personalisation and users’ association with home through a quantitative study (n = 101) and then explores the nature of this relationship through qualitative interviews (n = 13) in a sequential explanatory approach.

The main findings of the study highlight the significance of personalisation in relation to the way people perceive home. A direct link was established between participants’ involvement in the transformation of the home and their satisfaction with the residence, as well as satisfaction with life in general. Further thematic analysis of the qualitative study revealed further conceptualisations of personalisation, which together form an umbrella concept called transformability.

The findings underscore the need for embedding flexibility as an architectural concept in the design of residential buildings for improving the well-being of occupants.

The design of homes has a great impact on inhabitants’ psychological well-being. This is becoming of greater importance in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic that has led to an increase in the amount of time spent in homes. This research contributes to this debate by proposing concepts for a deeper understanding of architectural influences on the psychology of the home.

Prior research on business analytics has advanced substantially our understanding of how social media analytics affect business performance. However, the specific value of social media analytics to product innovation has not been fully explored and appreciated. To address this important issue, the present study draws on the resource-based view and the knowledge-based view to examine (1) whether the use of social media analytics strengthens radical product innovation to a greater extent than it does incremental product innovation and (2) how knowledge-exploration competence and knowledge-exploitation competence mediate the influence of social media analytics on radical and incremental product innovation.

This study tested the proposed model using data collected from 205 manufacturing firms. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the research hypotheses using LISREL 8.80 software program.

The statistical findings provide compelling evidence that the use of social media analytics is more likely to lead to radical product innovation than to incremental product innovation. In addition, knowledge-exploration competence only partially mediates the relationship between social media analytics and radical product innovation. Knowledge-exploitation competence not only partially mediates such a relationship, but also fully mediates the link between social media analytics and incremental product innovation.

This study contributes to the social media analytics and innovation literature by offering novel theoretical and empirical insights into how firms can leverage the value of social media analytics to create superior product innovation.

This paper aims to investigate the interrelated role of relational commitment and dependence as drivers of key performance outcomes. Specifically, the authors provide a conceptual model of the impact of commitment on relationship value dependence and switching cost dependence. The authors further investigate how these dimensions of dependence offer differing noneconomic and economic paths to strategic and financial performance.

Survey data was collected from 296 purchasing agents across multiple industries located in the USA. The conceptual model and accompanying hypotheses were tested via partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results show that the relational path is driven by affective and normative commitment, which are related to relationship value dependence. Conversely, calculative commitment is related to switching cost dependence. This economic path is related to both strategic and financial performance, whereas the relational path is more closely related to strategic as opposed to financial performance outcomes.

This study extends research on Business-To-Business (B2B) relationships by leveraging social exchange theory to examine the interrelated roles played by two forms of dependence on performance outcomes. Thus, the authors answer Scheer et al.’s (2015) call for research into the two distinct types of dependence – relationship value and switching cost dependence – and their roles in determining B2B relationship outcomes. The findings contribute to the literature by integrating social exchange and relationship marketing concepts to develop a dual pathway approach to B2B partnerships.

The results suggest that dependence is not necessarily negative for firms. Specifically, buyers can and do still exhibit positive performance, both strategic and financial, in relationships with suppliers even when dependent on the relationship. Regardless of whether buyers are dependent due to a relationship or economic factors, both can, in different ways, lead to positive strategic and financial outcomes. Together, the authors contribute to the understanding of B2B partnerships by offering guidelines for both buyers and suppliers in the dyad.

The authors derive a comprehensive model depicting primarily relational and economic paths to performance through different types of commitment and dependence. The authors contribute to the literature by demonstrating that relational and economic paths to success are not the same, highlighting how firms could influence performance even when the relationship is not necessarily characterized by generally positive relational benefits and behaviors.

In response to increasing competition for consumer attention, sport governing bodies have innovated short-format, action-oriented versions of traditional sports to attract new fans. This article explores how sport governing bodies (SGBs) manage the need for innovations to both conform to existing stakeholder expectations whilst offering novel benefits in comparison to competition (i.e. legitimate distinctiveness).

Created by the English Cricket Board (ECB), The Hundred competition was used as a case study to explore the conformity-differentiation tension through a legitimacy lens using document and media analysis.

Seven themes were created to explain how the ECB managed legitimacy tensions: rule modification, team creation, scheduling, game-day experience, broadcasting, gender equity and sponsorship. In each theme, differentiation and conformity were traded-off by the ECB to prioritise pragmatic legitimacy with broadcasters and sponsors.

For sport management professionals, the Hundred demonstrates the commercial value of differentiating new sporting events from competitors via hybrid broadcasting partnerships, embedded gender equity and designing game-day experiences that attract hard-to-reach consumer demographics.

SGBs must trade-off legitimacy between sources when innovating to survive, and when faced with conflicting expectations, commercial imperatives determined whether to conform or differentiate.

This paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.

The research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.

Gilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.

The paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.