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The authors explore neuro-enhanced reality (NeR) as a novel approach for enhancing service communication between customers, frontline employees, and service organizations that extends beyond current state-of-the-art approaches based on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies.

The authors first take stock of research on reality-enhanced service communication with AR and VR, then complement these insights with emerging neuroscientific research to conceptualize how NeR enables innovative forms of service communication. On this basis, the authors develop a research agenda to guide the future study and managerial exploitation of NeR.

AR and VR already offer unique affordances for digital-to-physical communication, but these can be extended with NeR. Specifically, NeR supports neuro-to-digital and digital-to-neuro communication based on neuroimaging (e.g. controlling digital content through thought) and neurostimulation (e.g. eliciting brain responses based on digital content). This provides a basis for outlining possible applications of NeR across service settings.

The authors advance knowledge on reality-enhanced service communication with AR and VR, whilst also demonstrating how neuroscientific research can be extended from understanding brain activity to generating novel service interactions.

This article outlines the experience of the first 260 Sure Start Local Programmes of developing interagency partnerships in their areas. It draws on quantitative and qualitative data collected between 2000‐2005 by the implementation module of the government‐commissioned National Evaluation of Sure Start. Following a résumé of the aims and design of the Sure Start Local Programme initiative, a description of the implementation module methodology and an overview of existing knowledge around inter‐agency collaboration, five factors are identified which impacted on the partnership‐building task. These comprise: the nature of partnership history; clarity of purpose; the extent of strategic commitment at the highest levels; trust among partners; and the characteristics of the national workforce. The article concludes by highlighting the continuing relevance of these issues to the new collaborations required by the UK government's Every Child Matters agenda, including the work of children's centres.

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team's (CGST) information products, with a focus on good practice “eurekas” and an integrated management system for storing knowledge and learning; an intranet‐based “action points” system.

The process behind development of a set of products and a system to capture and share good practice in health care.

To ensure that good practice in clinical governance was being disseminated effectively, and to celebrate success, the CGST developed “eurekas” as short, structured accounts of local improvements to health care. To enhance the number of “raw” eurekas turned into finished, online products, the process of production was streamlined through an online “action points” system. This is an effective knowledge management tool for storing, retrieving and monitoring the development of information into a range of products for sharing across the NHS (e.g. stories, case studies). The system was developed in parallel with the team's website and intranet.

The stages in development of CGST information products since 2000 are outlined, along with the principles behind an efficient system for capturing good practice and CGST learning. Tips on information product development and distribution are given.

This paper reports on an action research study that aimed to collaboratively develop a complementary therapy care intervention to augment palliative care choices available to nursing home residents with advanced dementia.

An action research design was adopted that consisted of a series of action cycles involving collaborative exploration, problem-solving planning, development and evidence gathering. A combination of mixed methods was used when gaining data at the different stages, including face to face delivered questionnaires, observational notes, focus groups, and the objective measure of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory adapted for Nursing Homes (NPI-NH).

Care home staff and relatives considered the use of Complementary Therapy to be a helpful intervention promoting that it can reduce a sense of loneliness and provide companionship for residents experiencing distress. Analysis of NPI-NH scores showed a reduction in presenting neuropsychiatric behaviours associated with stress and distress.

Differing levels of participant group engagement may affect this study’s findings as it was noted that care home staff provided a fuller contribution to the project in comparison to relatives.

Implementation guidance is needed when implementing complementary therapy within the nursing home practice to promote consistency and successful integration of an intervention that is not provided as routine care.

The findings of this study are encouraging and demonstrate the acceptability of complementary therapies to residents with advanced dementia, where positive impacts on otherwise difficult to address dementia symptoms related to stress and distress are highlighted.

Reforms of the system for the accommodation and support needs of asylum seekers entering the United Kingdom (UK) during the twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries have meant that the support of asylum seekers has largely moved away from mainstream social work to dedicated asylum support teams. This article investigates how the workers engaged as ‘asylum support workers’ understand and make sense of their participation in the support of asylum seekers dispersed across the UK. By drawing on qualitative research with asylum support workers, this paper looks at how such workers make sense of their roles and how the ‘support’ of asylum seekers is conceived. The paper concludes that, by working in this political and controversial area of work, workers are constantly finding ways to negotiate their support role within a dominant framework of control.

Medicalization is the increasing social control of the everyday by medical experts. It is a key concept in the sociology of health and illness because it sees medicine as not merely a scientific endeavor, but a social one as well. Medicalization is a “process whereby more and more of everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence, and supervision” (Zola, 1983, p. 295); previously these areas of everyday life were viewed in religious or moral terms (Conrad & Schneider, 1980; Weeks, 2003). More specifically, medicalization is the process of “defining a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem, or using a medical intervention to ‘treat’ it” (Conrad, 1992, p. 211). Sociologists have used this concept to describe the shift in the site of decision-making and knowledge about health from the lay public to the medical profession.

As management-level turnover is increasing rapidly, one of the major challenges for the hospitality industry is to retain highly educated and highly skilled employees. As the psychological contract approach to the employment relationship had not been investigated with regard to the hospitality industry, it became the subject of this study. The results demonstrate that psychological contract measures, in particular job content, can explain why there is a substantial amount of variance in intention among highly educated hotel employees with regard to leaving the organization, especially when the mediating role of affective commitment is taken into account. In this paper, managerial implications are discussed, and recommendations for further research are made.

The present book chapter deals with the problem of dark tourism as well as the resilience forms of consumption in post-disaster context.

The turn of the century characterised a radical change in the forms of tourism consumption. New forms of tourism as dark or thana tourism have captivated the attention of scholars and journalists. This book chapter centres efforts in dillucidating what are the key factors that determine the formation of a dark site. The text is inspired in my own ethnographies in Cromañon, Argentina and the Ground Zero, US.

As Phillip Stone puts it, not all dark shrines or sites welcome tourists. While some sites are reluctant to mass tourism, others are mainly organised around the figure of the tourist. La Republica de Cromañón is a night club where in a fire died 194 young. The site is today refurbished as a sanctuary to remind the victims. At a closer look, there is a tension between stakeholders at the time of promoting dark tourism in Cromañón. In the opposite the ground zero is fully designed to be visited by thousands tourists.

The originality of this research consists in the contraposition of two study cases which answer the question to what extent dark tourism is desired by locals. The findings lay the foundations towards the specialised literature in dark tourism studies. We discuss critically the nature of thanatopsis.