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The purpose of this paper is to conceptually and empirically explore issues that explain why women entrepreneurs access only a small percentage of venture capital (VC) investment in the USA.

The focus is on the situations women entrepreneurs face, and the strategies they adopt, to successfully fund their high‐growth businesses with venture funding. Rather than looking for answers at the individual level (men v women), the authors focus on the construct of gender and the way that the socially constructed business practices and processes of access to capital may appear neutral and natural but, in fact, may deliver differential consequences to women and men. When entrepreneurs and capital providers are interacting around the terms and particulars of a business venture, they are also participating in a less obvious conversation – an interaction that is call the Shadow Negotiation. Through interviews with women who have been successful or are in the process of accessing VC for their businesses, patterns of women's awareness and strategic responses that illustrate this phenomenon are identified and their implications discussed.

Women are actors with agency, taking control over situations that may be stacked against them. The analysis suggests that women entrepreneurs vary in the degree to which they identify the gendered landscape they are navigating, and the level of attention and care that management of this landscape demands.

This study complements existing research, both theoretically and prescriptively.

This article argues that strategies to promote gender equity in organizations need to focus on assumptions in the organizational culture that underpin work practices and behaviors. An analytic case is used to demonstrate the importance of bringing cultural assumptions to the surface during the organizational change process and examining their implications for both gender equity and organizational effectiveness. Initial efforts aimed at changing work practices were disappointing. However, the understanding that cultural assumptions had unintended consequences for both gender equity and organizational effectiveness provided a foundation for the organization to continue to experiment after the initial intervention. The article argues that linking changes in work practices and processes to underlying assumptions provides a basis for the organization to engage in an on‐going and iterative process of inquiry, experimentation, reflection, and learning that can generate surprising and positive outcomes over time.

Mediators' impartiality and empathy are two classical factors in the parties' trust in mediators. However, mediators are often torn between being impartial and being empathetic. The aim of this paper is to explore this empirically.

This study empirically tests the strategic use of caucus to improve the interaction between impartiality and empathy by splitting them into two phases: impartiality in joint sessions and empathy in caucus.

The strategy did create significant synergy between impartiality and empathy with the main impact of reducing the time needed to reach an agreement.

All research data come from workplace mediation and from the same organization. Although it can be reasonably postulated that the results can be generalized to other mediation settings, this remains to be proven.

When mediators use the trust caucus strategy, impartiality and empathy work better together and parties put more weight on empathy than on impartiality. While the use of the trust caucus does not increase the likelihood of reaching agreement, it does significantly decrease the time needed to conclude an agreement.

The study uses a quasi‐experimental design to test its hypothesis. Furthermore, the study uses real mediation cases.

In September 1996, Fleet Financial Group and the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute undertook a one‐year pilot project addressing a “dual agenda” – reexamining work processes to achieve positive business outcomes while also helping employees better integrate work responsibilities with life outside of work. The chosen sites for the experiments were a retail/small business banking unit and a portfolio management unit. Radcliffe‐Fleet Project researchers employed two key methods: dual context and action research. Using this methodology, interventions and measures of success of the interventions were developed collaboratively with management and employees. Even in these competitive, deadline‐driven work environments, quantitative measures and qualitative assessments at each site showed a positive relationship between business outcomes and quality of life outcomes. The researchers develop guidelines for companies interested in replication of this project. Several principles are also identified for sustaining the success of effective work‐life integration interventions and institutionalizing the “dual agenda” in the workplace.

Despite a wealth of research and policy initiatives on “work‐family”, “work‐life balance” or what we prefer to call work‐personal life integration, societies seem stuck about how to make equitable, satisfactory and sustainable changes in the ways in which paid work can be combined with the rest of life. So what is holding back satisfactory change? And how can people move beyond this apparent deadlock in workplaces and other institutions and really go forward? This paper looks at some of the reasons why issues about work‐personal life integration have become so pressing and then reflects on implications for working towards more fundamental changes at many different levels. It highlights sticking points holding back change and argues that these could be developed into new levers for change by emphasising the need to rethink and question many deeply held – but outdated – assumptions about working practices, families, culture and personal lives.

This paper aims to analyze how a tangram activity improved students’ abilities to explain sustainability, articulate a positive perception of sustainable design and relate sustainability with innovation in engineering design.

The concept of paradigm shift was introduced in the classroom by using a tangram activity to help students understand that sustainable design requires out-of-the-box thinking. Instructors from three institutions teaching various levels of sustainability courses to engineering majors used the activity to introduce sustainable design, then measured the understanding and appreciation of the concepts introduced through the tangram activity with pre- and post-activity surveys.

Findings from the study indicate that students’ perceptions of sustainability significantly improved due to the activity, without regard to the institution. The activity also significantly improved students understanding of the connection between sustainability and innovation, across all three institutions, across all majors and across all years of study except second-year students. Improving engineering students’ views on sustainability may lead, over time, to changes in the industry, in which environmental performance is incorporated into the engineering design process.

Active learning approaches are needed for affective-domain learning objectives in the sustainability field for students to learn the necessary attitudes, values and motivations to implement sustainability in engineering design. Simple, easily implemented active learning techniques, such as the tangram activity presented here, can be implemented across the curriculum or to the public to introduce the paradigm shift necessary with sustainable design.

This article discusses the use of online asynchronous discussion boards as a valuable tool for connecting students to leadership concepts, theories, and models in introductory leadership survey courses. Recommendations are given for designing effective discussion boards that engage students and enhance their learning. Student outcomes include construction of knowledge, relevant connections between course material and personal lives, and critical reflection.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general exploratory review of perception and image in hospitality and tourism. The paper considers the nature of perception and image and how they can affect buying behaviour for hospitality and tourism products.

The authors use the literature to explore the nature of perception and image and how these can be manifested. A model is elucidated which might help to explain purchase decision making for hospitality and tourism products and services.

Findings supplement the authors' views about the importance of this issue for managing and marketing hospitality and tourism products more effectively. The model seeks to make explicit the stages in the process from image formation to purchase.

As both authors are working practitioners, this paper offers a model and a practical approach which will form the basis for a practitioner panel, from which the model will be refined.

There has been little research in an area which seeks to integrate image formation with practical implications for hospitality and tourism organizations.