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The purpose of this study is to capture the variation in entrepreneurs' understandings and experiences through which they contextualise cultural factors within a national setting to articulate how they use their knowledge and social capabilities to advance their activity.

This study adopts an interpretivist approach through which culture is investigated at the individual level. Phenomenography is used as a methodology to capture the variation in the entrepreneurs own understanding and experiences of the cultural factors.

The findings introduce four different understandings and eight experiences to explore how entrepreneurs contextualise culture in their environment. The findings present a change in the role of culture in influencing entrepreneurial social capabilities and confidence; and a change in the local culture from collectivism to individualism. Furthermore, the findings show how entrepreneurs use their knowledge, experience and understanding to achieve socially driven acts to pursue economic value, integration and acceptance.

We encourage further research in the Middle-East region to examine the model and identify other factors that affect entrepreneurial behaviour, including the important developments with regard to women entrepreneurs. While Jordan has embarked on introducing policy level changes to support entrepreneurship, the findings report that the culture of collectivism is changing. This requires a longitudinal research to capture the change and its implication on entrepreneurial activity in Jordan and its impact on unemployment and economic value.

In terms of practical contribution, the study introduces a policy level contribution by answering the question presented by the GEM report (2014) pointing out the high entrepreneurial opportunity identification in Jordan, yet the country has the lowest entrepreneurial activity in the region. Although the report pointed out issues in policy and institutional support the role of culture was not addressed. The study recommendation is to celebrate and entrepreneurial activity and introduce entrepreneurial studies at schools to influence a positive change.

We addressed some of the several calls to further investigate and understand the role of culture, how entrepreneurs contextualise it (Foss and Klein, 2012; Garud et al., 2016; Zahra et al., 2014; Welter et al., 2019). Our research provides a fertile ground for further enquiries that pose questions such as “What other factors do entrepreneurs contextualise in their environment?” and “how these factors are contextualised?” The use of phenomenography as an interpretive methodology might therefore assist in revealing further shared understandings of the variation in entrepreneurs' behaviours. Further research on capturing “understanding” presents the complex forms of interactions and mechanism in the cognitive world of the entrepreneurs (Barandiaran et al., 2009; Brannback and Carsrud, 2016).

In this study, phenomenography has enabled new insights into the multiplicity and idiosyncratic role of culture within a national setting and introduces a model of social capability and integration which capture the contextualisation of cultural factors. The study contributes to entrepreneurship literature as follows: first, the implicit assumption in this research is that culture is an active construct that entrepreneurs understand, experience and also influence; second, the variation in entrepreneurs' outcomes is based on their subjective and personal understandings which form the ways of contextualisation. Third, the variation in understanding and experiences captures the different ways entrepreneurs use their social capabilities to achieve integration and economic value.

This study aims to provide reliable and valid constructs of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and a measurement instrument in the context of Iranian organizations based on the seven core subjects of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 standard. It also examines the effects of these seven CSR criteria, namely, organizational governance, human rights, labor practices, the environment, fair operating practices, consumer issues and community involvement, and development on the organizational performance of Iranian organizations.

Through an extensive study of literature review, the related items of these core subjects were identified. Data for the study were collected from 207 Iranian manufacturing and service firms. The research model was tested using structural equation modeling.

Statistical analysis revealed that a number of significant relationships between CSR practices and organizational performance of Iranian organizations. The result found that community involvement and development plays an important role in enhancing organizational performance of organizations.

First, the time sequence of the association between the variables could not be concluded, given that cross-sectional data were used. A future study is suggested to conduct a longitudinal research design to present the evidence of causation which cannot be achieved through cross-sectional designs. Second, this study was limited to Iran. Hence, the findings and conclusions drawn from this research are representative of the Iranian context only. Hence, final results should be considered with caution.

This study offers a number of implications for Iranian managers and policy-makers. First, this study identified that there is a relationship between CSR practices based on the seven core subjects of ISO 26000 and firm performance in the context of Iran. Second, the instrument developed, in this research, will be very useful to policy-makers in various industries of Iran as a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of their current CSR practices and initiatives. Third, decision-makers can also prioritize the CSR practices on which their firms should focus to improve their organizational performance.

The novelty of this research is to determine the related items of the core subjects of ISO 26000 as the main factors and offer an instrument to measure the effects of various CSR practices on organizational performance of Iranian firms in the context of Iran.

THE Georgia Institute of Technology, the Northwestern University, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have received a grant from the Engineering Division of the National Science Foundation (USA) for a two‐year research effort entitled “Collaborative Research in Tribology”. Principal investigators at the three institutions are, respectively, Prof. Ward O. Winer, Prof. Herbert S. Cheng, and Prof. Frederick F. Ling.

TO some, Annual Estimates this year may have a nightmarish quality. Not perhaps so much in the safe areas to which many who had the means to do so have gone with those means and no doubt are contributing part of them to the local exchequers; but in the so‐called “dangerous” areas which have lost them and their means and have, because of their liability to air raids, huge expenditure on A.R.P., the librarian may have a severe battle to get what he needs to maintain his work. Our own policy would be to concentrate, so far as is possible, upon the book fund and on salaries. If these can be retained at a fair amount much good will ensue.

The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things in their way. But while it is important that better and more scientific attention should be generally given to the preparation of food for the table, it must be admitted to be at least equally important to insure that the food before it comes into the hands of the expert cook shall be free from adulteration, and as far as possible from impurity,—that it should be, in fact, of the quality expected. Protection up to a certain point and in certain directions is afforded to the consumer by penal enactments, and hitherto the general public have been disposed to believe that those enactments are in their nature and in their application such as to guarantee a fairly general supply of articles of tolerable quality. The adulteration laws, however, while absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding many forms of fraud in check, and particularly for keeping them within certain bounds, cannot afford any guarantees of superior, or even of good, quality. Except in rare instances, even those who control the supply of articles of food to large public and private establishments fail to take steps to assure themselves that the nature and quality of the goods supplied to them are what they are represented to be. The sophisticator and adulterator are always with us. The temptations to undersell and to misrepresent seem to be so strong that firms and individuals from whom far better things might reasonably be expected fall away from the right path with deplorable facility, and seek to save themselves, should they by chance be brought to book, by forms of quibbling and wriggling which are in themselves sufficient to show the moral rottenness which can be brought about by an insatiable lust for gain. There is, unfortunately, cheating to be met with at every turn, and it behoves at least those who control the purchase and the cooking of food on the large scale to do what they can to insure the supply to them of articles which have not been tampered with, and which are in all respects of proper quality, both by insisting on being furnished with sufficiently authoritative guarantees by the vendors, and by themselves causing the application of reasonably frequent scientific checks upon the quality of the goods.

THE Conservative Government elected on June 18th last has lost no time in putting into practice its avowed principle of reducing direct taxation. Late in July it flew a kite through an inspired leak showing that it intended to save millions on education, one small part of which would be £10 million, purporting to be “saved” by making readers pay for books borrowed through public libraries. First indications of this were in a story included in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and other papers, and as this story was not denied by the Government, the Library Association thought it proper to issue a press statement immediately, with the message that the Association was totally opposed to the introduction of such charges.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

This paper aims to review developments in dark tourism research over a 20-year period from its inception in 1996. This paper also considers the reasons why people visit dark tourism sites and the different perspectives of site operators, tourists and academics.

This paper uses a round table discussion with three participants – all researchers who played a significant role in developing the early concept of dark tourism. The paper also explores a number of questions about past, current and future research interests and developments.

It was observed that dark tourism site operators and visitors tend to view the act of remembrance as a significant reason for visiting a site associated with past atrocities. This perspective is rather different from the original concept of dark tourism – viewed by many as a form of pilgrimage tourism.

The review reveals a gap between aspects of the literature on dark tourism and the reasons why these sites remain popular with tourists. Site operators and visitors say that motives for visiting are more commonly associated with an act of remembrance and a sense of pilgrimage than a desire to view a site associated with pain and death.

This viewpoint provides a 20-year perspective on research in dark tourism based on a conversation between three of the most eminent researchers in the field.

Suicide behaviour rates vary significantly between countries due to a range of cultural, behavioural and health‐related factors. Gender and age‐related factors also appear to be impor tant key determinants of vulnerability to suicide ideation and suicide completion. The homeless population is par ticularly at risk, due to multiple complex issues that relate to social exclusion, alcohol, drug, mental health and nutritional issues. Studying homeless people is problematic due to access, the transitory nature of their contact with statutary services, problems of self‐repor t and recall in people ‐ some of whom have mental health and cognitive issues. There is an increasing interest from practitioners and academic researchers in spiritual factors that appear to modulate the responses of an individual to the internal and external threats that underlie the motivation to end his or her life. Effective approaches to suicide prevention and crisis management require a good understanding of the interplay between this complex set of biological, psychological and social domains. These will be explored in the final section of this review. This paper, therefore, aims to provide a non‐systematic review of the existing literature published in academic journals and relvant ‘grey literature’ and focuses on themes in the literature that will hopefully inform both policy and practice.