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The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of recruitment and retention practices in the criminal family firm and to provide theoretical explanation for the coercive nature of such practices.

The case study methodology uses 18 semi-structured interviews, court transcripts and press reports to investigate a landmark case of modern slavery in the UK.

The findings tentatively suggest that the trusting relationships typical of the legitimate family firm employers are replicated in a criminal business.

The theoretical implications of the paper are that Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic violence and misrecognition can be used to explain the process of worker exploitation in the family firm. Such psychological tools of domination maintain power in a situation of forced labour and blur the boundaries between employer/offender and worker/victim. From the perspective of understanding forced labour, Bourdieu's concept of misrecognition provides a theoretical framework for understanding the “stickiness” of exploitative workplace practices.

The article suggests a non-economic explanation of why individuals choose to remain in poorly paid and exploitative labour, which will be of use to regulatory and enforcement bodies, seeking to understand the psychological and structural drivers of forced labour.

Despite press interest in modern slavery in family firms, such cases have been rarely analysed in family firm literature. The paper contributes to the limited explorations of criminality in family firm businesses.

This study aims to increase understanding of the factors that affect retail pharmacy performance. This paper investigates how various product-, store-, customer- and competitor characteristics affect over-the-counter (OTC) drug sales and thus store performance.

This paper specifies and estimates a hierarchical model comprising scanner-based information, as well as individual-level data from a customer survey.

Results indicate that the drivers of retail pharmacy performance in OTC categories are different from those identified in traditional retailing research.

This is the first study that determines which factors impact the sales of OTC drugs in pharmacies.

This paper looks at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from the angle of the market for corporate control and analyzes in detail the reported rationales of a sample of 355 mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002-2012. The purpose of this paper, after having created a taxonomy of deal motivations, is to empirically test two alternative hypotheses: deviation vs convergence of M&A deal rationales between state-owned and private enterprises.

The data set is obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). A recursive algorithm is developed to infer the ownership nature of the enterprises at the time the deal took place and then the authors double-checked the identity of the global ultimate owner by visual inspection of all the available information. Motivations are analyzed through a case-by-case analysis and classified into several categories, thereby providing a taxonomy of rationales behind SOE M&As and discussing their differences and similarities relative to private firms.

More than 60 percent of the deals performed by SOEs as acquirers are driven by “shareholder value maximization” motives, similarly to private enterprise acquirers. The other 40 percent of deals are almost equally spread among three rationales that specifically relate to the role of modern state capitalism in the economy. “Financial distress” motivation, which is the only one clearly deviating from the objectives of profit maximization typical of private ownership, is far less important than the others.

The paper does not analyze the case studies in detail. Neither does it correlate the evidence with the quality of corporate governance or the quality of institutions in the country. This would be interesting in order to discover whether the alignment of objectives between public and private enterprises is enhanced by certain features of public sector management, as suggested by the OECD (2015) Guidelines.

The paper suggests some policy implications in terms of reforms of the corporate governance of the SOEs and accountability of their management against clearly stated public missions. It also calls for the need for citizens to be informed in a transparent way about the rationales of major M&A deals when a SOE is on the acquirer side, and the consistency of such rationales with the mission assigned by governments to the enterprises they own. Finally, it underlines that regulatory concerns raised in many countries by the rise of cross-border SOE M&As are in most of the cases unfounded.

Existing literature has mainly focused on private corporate M&A deals or has just disregarded the ownership status of the acquiring firm. This paper focuses on the motivations for SOE deals in order to elaborate a taxonomy of SOE deal rationales and to identify the differences and similarities between private corporate firms.

This review arises from a series of multidisciplinary Franco‐British workshops which were supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). More than 30 participants from a range of institutions and agencies were involved in compiling the material in this review (Appendix I). The workshops offered an opportunity to exchange ideas from research on the relationships between migration, health and well‐being in Britain and France. In the following discussion we compare and contrast experiences in the two countries, with the aim of assessing the importance of international, national and local contexts, in their various cultural, social and political dimensions, for the relationships of interest. Drawing on these ideas, we suggest the definition of a future international research agenda.

Many people delay or never seek professional help for stress and depression. There is limited research on this topic using qualitative methodologies, but even less exploring the attitudes of the general population.This study explores the attitudes and preferences of the general population about when and where help is sought for stress and depression through the Somerset Health Panels. These comprised 12 two‐hour panels held across Somerset, England, involving a total of 96 people. This study reveals that a positive and non‐judgemental view of depression and stress exists within the general population. The response and support from friends and family is critical in seeking other sources of help, for which the GP is perceived as a gatekeeper. A preferred hierarchy of professional and nonprofessional sources of help exists, which is not entirely consistent with the arrangement of current services. This research adds to our understanding of how to engage with communities more generally and helps understand a general population perspective on mental health issues ‐ in particular, the way services are currently arranged does not always reflect the hierarchy in which people would prefer to seek help, and that stigma is evident but does not always act as a barrier to eventual help‐seeking.

The purpose of this paper is to examine affective events theory (AET) by testing the mediating effect of employees’ positive affect at work in the relationships of leaders’ use of positive humor with employees’ work engagement, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs); and the moderating effect of transformational leadership style on the relationship between leaders’ use of positive humor and subordinate’s positive affect at work.

Data were obtained from 235 full-time employees working for a large information technology and business consulting corporation. Moderated mediation (Hayes, 2013) was performed to test the proposed model.

Leaders’ positive humor was related to creation of subordinates’ positive emotions at work and work engagement. Positive emotions at work did not mediate between leaders’ humor and performance or OCBs. In addition, leaders’ use of transformational leadership style made the relationship between leaders’ positive humor and employees’ positive emotions at work stronger.

This study provides evidence of the positive relationship of leaders’ positive humor with employees’ positive emotions at work and work engagement. Such knowledge may help to inform the training workshops in humor employed by practitioners and potentially create a more enjoyable and fun workplace, which can lead to greater employee engagement.

AET helps explain effects of leader humor, but the effects of are complex. Leader’s use of even positive humor is most likely to have favorable effects mainly depending on their leadership style (transformational) and if their humor successfully leads to positive emotions among employees.

The purpose of this study is to shed some light on an important phenomenon – how and why intra-family succession may change if millennial cohorts are considered as successors. Specifically, it aims to explore the superordinate themes that support the success of intra-family succession from perspective of two different cohort successors (X and millennial).

An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was adopted for detailed structural analysis of in-depth interview as it aims to explore meaning of participants' experiences. A total of ten individuals participated in the study.

Seventeen superordinate themes emerged from participants' personal statements and experiences. The themes are grouped into four aspects: namely, characteristics of predecessor and successor, succession process, firm and family and succession output. These aspects were found to be different between X and millennial cohort successors. They then form an empirical model of intra-family succession from both perspectives.

This study enriches the theory of family firm by considering generational effect of successors on intra-family succession.

As millennial cohort successors prefer to go directly into business (experiential learning) and are driven by non-material motives (passion-driven), predecessors are expected to utilize them in the process of nurturing and development.

This study considers the role of generation cohort in supporting the success of intra-family succession especially in relation to the characteristics of millennial cohort successors that have been shown to differ from that of X cohort.

This study explores how and when intuitive forms of planning can be used in a family firm's succession process.

The study uses an extended focus group meeting, consisting of individual, group and subgroup discussions with seven highly experienced external family business advisors in the Netherlands to gain a holistic understanding of the succession process and its underlying logic. The study also employs pre- and post-group questionnaires.

This study reveals that advisors perceive intuitive forms of planning as an integral part of the succession process, with the latter containing both intuitive and formal logic and activities. Both logics are used situationally and flexibly to deal with the uniqueness and unpredictability of the succession process and to build strong relations and manage relational dynamics in business families to address tasks, dilemmas and contingencies.

The succession process is an important part of business families' achievement of transgenerational intent. Creating commitment among potential successors begins when they are children, and understanding the role of the more intuitive forms of planning during the succession process will provide us with a more holistic perspective on its dynamics.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether early maladaptive schema (EMS) and autobiographical memory specificity mediate the relationship between abuse and attachment in childhood with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) characteristics among forensic inpatients.

The study adopted a quantitative cross-sectional design. In total, 34 male adults residing in medium secure facilities completed self-report measures. Data were analysed using bootstrapped mediation procedures.

The study’s hypotheses received partial support. The EMS of “entitlement/grandiosity” and autobiographical memory specificity differentially mediated the relationship between emotional and physical abuse and neglect, and parental care and overprotection with BPD characteristics, including trait anger and the frequent expression of anger. In line with attachment theory and the functional avoidance mechanism (Williams et al., 2007), the proposed mediators are conceptualised as adaptive responses to early adversity with potential maladaptive consequences for later interpersonal functioning.

These provisional findings will require further exploration with specific investigation of the relationship between EMS and autobiographical memory specificity. It is recommended that future research replicates the study’s design with a larger sample and investigate the role of other mediators and moderators in this complex relationship. Examples of these are mentalisation, social problem-solving capabilities, social support and adult attachment styles.

Clinical implications encourage the incorporation of these mediators into clinical formulation, intervention and ward practices.

For forensic inpatients with a history of adversity, interventions working directly with EMS and specificity of autobiographical memory, e.g. schema therapy (Young, 1999), mentalisation and mindfulness may be useful. Furthermore, the relationship between EMS and specificity of autobiographical memory with interpersonal experience and functioning can be incorporated into clinical formulation.