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Obviously affirmative action has had a presence in presidential politics since the Kennedy Administration; however, the focus of this paper is not to chronicle the treatment of affirmative action policy in each presidency since the 1960s, but rather to take a different look at affirmative action from the context of contemporary times during the Obama Administration, with both Clinton and Bush Administrations as reference points.

In addition to noting how the Clinton and Bush Administrations responded to critics of the 50 +  year old policy framework of acting affirmatively, this paper explores how the Obama Administration has advanced access by supporting race-conscious admissions and principles of the diversity rationale.

This paper also argues that the Obama Administration has acted affirmatively by establishing and/or promoting economic policies that seek to address the legacy of poverty, thereby expanding access further.

In 2015, there were many student protests regarding diversity that made many pay attention to the status of diversity on university campuses. However, well before these protests occurred there have been diversity officers at the forefront and behind the scenes doing change management work in the equity, diversity, and inclusion arena. While universities are entrenched systems of privilege that are difficult to change fundamentally, there is hope in that this work can and does make a difference for students, faculty, and staff. So, while universities continue to reflect society and its shortcomings, this work does matter.

In this chapter, I share my personal journey as a Chief Diversity Officer for nine years at public universities in North America, drawing upon that experience I share four areas I believe are vital to the success of any diversity effort. Since I have worked in the US and Canada, I bring to this chapter comparisons across borders that highlight the significance of particular practices, challenges of the twenty-first century and pitfalls along the way.

In the context of tourism and hospitality studies, the potential of action research for generating robust actionable knowledge has not been yet realized. This chapter provides an account of the theory and practice of action research, demonstrates how it may be designed and implemented, and how it may generate actionable knowledge. It provides illustrative examples and shows how this research approach aligns effectively with some of the themes that currently engage the attention of researchers in the fields of tourism and hospitality such as process improvement, sustainability, and community-based tourism development. Thus, it makes a case for more widespread use of action research in the field.

The chapter describes and reflects upon an EU-funded research initiative, TRADEIT, which has attempted to develop a learning network among European traditional food producers as one way of contributing to the economic sustainability of the ventures, the social sustainability of the food’s regional character and the environmental sustainability of food production through the use of traditional methods.

The chapter describes TRADEIT before moving on to an exploration of learning in organizations and networks. It outlines the action learning research methodology developed and implemented to explore the development of a learning network in TRADEIT. A single case history is presented to illustrate the engagement of a small food producer in the network.

The discussion reflects on the application of action learning in supporting sustainability evident in TRADEIT.

The chapter focuses on the application of action learning in the development of a learning network among traditional food producers across Europe.

We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and skills to focus on the eco-system as the level of analysis. In a world that has become economically, socially, and technologically highly connected, approaches that foster the optimization of specific actors in the eco-system, such as individual corporations, result in sub-optimization of the sustainability of the natural and social system because there is insufficient offset to the ego-centric purposes of the focal organization. We discuss the need for OD to broaden focus to deal with technological advances that enable new ways of organizing at the eco-system level, and to deal with the challenges to sustainable development. Case examples from healthcare and the agri-foods industry illustrate the kinds of development approaches that are required for the development of healthy eco-systems. We do not suggest fundamental changes in the identity of the field of organizational development. In fact, we demonstrate the need to dig deeply into the open systems and socio-technical roots of the field, and to translate the traditional values and approaches of OD to continue to be relevant in today’s dynamic interdependent world.

This first chapter provides an overview of all the chapters included in this book. This book focuses on contemporary research methods in hospitality and tourism. Revisiting the traditional research methods is necessary for academia and practitioners in the hospitality and tourism field. New understandings and interpretations of traditional research paradigms such as positivism and interpretivism as well as more recent paradigms such as realism and pragmatism in the context of hospitality and tourism are vital to strengthen the research practices. We hope that the edited book can help researchers and practitioners in our field in their research journeys and applications.