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This paper aims to explore the experience of working with different conceptualisations of participation and participatory practice. This is done through an examination of the involvement of a technology company within a multinational, 3-years participatory research project involving 13 partners and over 200 disabled people.

This paper provides a case study, narrative account of a range of activities undertaken within the project, presenting a rare and much-needed explicit insight into the emergence of participatory ways of working and the reasoning and tensions behind them.

Through the case study gaze of one of the technology companies involved, it explicates the underpinning processes of the participatory approach and how these challenged the notions of various partners.

This paper shows how engaging in meaningfully participatory research creates profound institutional challenges for technology developers. The subsequent need to make hard decisions and compromises throughout disrupts traditional ways of working and anticipated outcomes. However, it also reveals opportunities for delivering unanticipated and transformative outcomes, highlighting the need for greater flexibility in funding research that aims to be participatory.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the main drivers of change in the relational approaches adopted in business-to-business (B2B) companies as an effect of the digital transformation processes boosted by COVID-19 pandemic.

The methodology includes a qualitative study based on an abductive approach. Twenty-eight semistructured interviews and two focus groups have been carried out with sales and marketing professionals from different industries.

The research defines a conceptual framework that describes what the main changes of B2B relational approach are in a context affected by the pandemic, as well as its effects. The framework is constituted by three dimensions, namely, efficiency of the interaction, coordination and digital trust, and seven subdimensions.

This research also contributes to managerial practice, defining some directions to be fulfilled in a business context affected by the COVID-19 emergency to improve efficiency, coordination and trust.

Academic literature has greatly analyzed the transformation of the B2B scenario; less studies have explored how the relational approach is changing due to the digital acceleration caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

As a “business capital” model premised upon a financial perspective of educational change spreads itself into school systems around the world, a countervailing view of “professional capital,” as proposed by Hargreaves and Fullan, provides a new framework for transforming teaching and uplifting learning. The purpose of this paper is to advance theory by distinguishing among three forms of professional capital found in three different settings.

Systemic professional capital is exemplified by the city-state of Singapore, in which schools, higher education, and the Ministry of Education all support one another to optimize student learning. Social movement professional capital is manifested in the Learning Communities Project of rural middle schools in Mexico, where change is driven forward with a model of tutorial relationships that has proven to be sustainable even when funding is cut and political support is withdrawn. Activist professional capital can be identified in a Teacher Solutions Team model in Arizona in the USA, where educators carve out new zones of interaction and support for one another to deepen their knowledge base. This paper examines and discusses the above.

Systemic, social movement, and activist forms of professional capital are found to share affinities with the three forms of teacher professionalism identified by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development based on findings from the Teaching and Learning International Survey.

These distinctions among various forms of professional capital invite further research and theory building to provide alternatives to the rise of business capital in schools and school systems.