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The International Management Centre from Buckingham has been working with Allied Irish Banks in Britain for the past three years in a unique business development programme. David Seekings talks to Brian Wilson, General Manager of AIB, about how it went.

The case is a secondary sourced case. Information for the case was found from news articles and interviews.

David’s Bridal was a privately held corporation generating $1.3bn in annual revenue and employing over 12,000 employees. David’s Bridal filed bankruptcy not once but twice. This case examines the bridal industry and the environmental factors that led to the two bankruptcies. Bridal dresses are at the top of wedding categories. Environmental factors causing bankruptcy included online competition, reputation as seen through the eyes of the consumer, COVID, and supply chain challenges. David’s Bridal first looked to Jim Marcum to turn the corporation around and when this failed, they created a new management team after the second bankruptcy to save the company.

The case is designed as an interdisciplinary case for undergraduate leadership, advanced accounting or undergraduate strategy courses. The case was tested in MGMT 330: Leading People in Organizations. This case is appropriate for junior- and senior-level students.This case will be used in ACCT 402: Advanced Accounting – a senior-level course. The case gives perspective on going concern opinions and the strategic implications of bankruptcy.Possible textbooks▪ Christensen, T., Cottrell, D. and Budd, C. (2023). Advanced Financial Accounting (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill.▪ Hoyle, J., Schaefer, T. and Doupnik, T. (2024). Advanced Accounting (15th ed.). McGraw-Hill▪ Rothaermel, F. T. (2024). Strategic Management (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill

This paper is based on a study aimed at ascertaining whether information and communication technology (ICT) can be used as an integrating link for children with motor disabilities in primary school. The study includes an introductory questionnaire with parents of 16 children and observations in the classrooms of five pupils attending a school in a small town in Sweden. In this article inclusion is exemplified with one of these pupils. The results of this study show agreement with other research that the computer, which often symbolises the whole ICT field, is used as a pedagogical tool for learning at school. However, it is difficult to see whether ICT is used in a way that enhances inclusion, an overall goal for many people with disabilities in today's society. One reason for this is the school's strong focus on learning, another that limited efforts have been put into communication and collaborative work between the pupils.

My intellectual journey as a sociologist and a symbolic interactionist began when I was a 13-year-old eighth-grader in Catholic School on the working-class, southwest side of Chicago. My eighth-grade nun pulled me aside after school one day and gently told me that, now that I should think about what to be when I grow up. She suggested I study to be “either a sociologist or a priest.” After some serious thought, I eliminated the option of becoming a priest – yet, the word sociologist was intriguing. I had no idea what it really meant, but it had a certain ring to it in 1960, when society was becoming a viable and visible orientation in terms of major events we were learning a little bit about from the good nuns and television – like civil rights, the cold war, and the space race. I took her advice and set out on a 50-year journey to become a sociologist. The map of the journey has been elusive, though, in that what it means to be a sociologist – especially an interactionist sociologist – has changed over the years as events in my life and the social world have evolved. This journey has had three segments: sociology as something to do; sociology as something to know; and sociology as something to be. The journey has been profound as well as fun because, as I continue to discover what it means to be an interactionist sociologist, I discover who I am.

Clear writing begins with clear thinking. In the following article, the author describes some of the barriers to clear thinking and suggests ways to remove them. He then goes on to describe key rules of effective communication, including clarity, simplicity, accuracy and style. Readers will find practical guides and descriptive examples which can help them apply the principles in practice.

Notes the differences between benchmarking and intelligence gathering and suggests that some benchmarking initiatives fail because these differences are not realized. Outlines other reasons why initiatives fail and offers a short checklist to help prevent some common errors when commencing a benchmarking initiative.

Job loss and long-term unemployment can have pervasive negative impacts on well-being. At its most extreme, unemployment is accompanied by feelings of shame, humiliation, insecurity, and worthlessness, as well as damage to cherished identities and narratives of self. Scholars have investigated how the unemployed attempt to repair these damaged identities, but little is known about how network members participate in the identity reconstruction process. Social support has been shown to ameliorate the negative psychological effects of unemployment, but studies have also found that the unemployed are reluctant to ask for assistance and often perceive network members as a source of stress rather than as a source of support. To understand why social support can be experienced both positively and negatively by the unemployed, we draw upon 84 in-depth qualitative interviews with men and women who experienced unemployment during the extended economic downturn associated with the Great Recession. We find that social support ameliorates unemployment when it bolsters identities important to recipients, and exacerbates unemployment when it undermines such identities. We also show how the unemployed respond to identity-threatening support: by avoiding it, rejecting it, or reframing it as reciprocity. Our analysis contributes new insights into the relationship between social support and identities, as well as a deeper understanding of the noneconomic costs of the slow economic recovery following the Great Recession.

This chapter compares four dimensions of ethnic identity construction among youth in two ethnically diverse schools, one in the inland city of Lillehammer and one in Oslo, Norway. In Lillehammer children of immigrant origin are in the minority, while at the place Furuset in Oslo they are in the majority. The first dimension deals with how children of immigrant origin experience having “one foot in two cultures.” The second dimension concerns the importance of appearance regarding skin color, while the third concerns the importance of appearance through clothing. The last dimension concerns proficiency in the Norwegian language. The chapter suggests that the answer to the question “Always a foreigner?” is not a clear “yes” or “no,” it depends on the social context. Most children of immigrant origin, at both schools, try to act out Norwegian identities in some contexts and foreign ethnic identities in others. However, it appears that belonging and social inclusion in Norwegian contexts are best achieved by children of immigrant origin who are in the minority and who apply assimilation strategies – that is, who try to act and pass as Norwegian. If assimilation strategies are needed for experiencing belonging and inclusion, more knowledge and education is needed in Norwegian schools on values of tolerance and creative potentiality of ethnic and cultural diversity in both local and national contexts.

The current interest in Industrial Relations has created a demand for training in the skills of negotiation; the training world has responded to this demand with an astonishing spectrum of activity. Old human relations case studies have been lovingly dusted and refurbished, role‐playing has come back into its own and HMSO has made a creditable little fortune for the tax‐payer from its timely booklets at 15p each. All sorts of people, including some of my legal acquaintances who this time last year had never even heard of industry, let alone industrial relations, have been sucked in to meet the demand. This article testifies to my own involvement, although initially without real conviction. Working in the industrial relations field with the late Bill Allen had convinced me that nothing short of major cultural change could significantly improve the negotiating climate in Britain. But this sounds like stealthy autobiography and I shall spare you the tediousness of my history and thinking in this area. Instead, let me indulge in that most deplorable characteristic of British industrial relations practice and do some bashing of the other side. The current crop of industrial relations and negotiating skills training courses gives plenty of scope for such bashing. Of the many practices which merit criticism, two stand out as being irresistibly obnoxious.

The real success for major bank marketing initiatives depends on the highest possible degree of leadership and direction from the most senior executive officer. Innovation must stem from determining what the customer is (or will be) seeking and fulfilling that demand in a unique way; the next step will involve increasing vigilance over the prime criterion of any customer segment, with banks considering the economics of reaching customers along the spectrum from very limited, basic needs to very sophisticated needs. Banks should deliberately seek to enter the financial consultancy market more aggressively and overtly, not just at merchant level but right across customer groups.