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This study aims to test a theoretical model of co-creation dynamics, service innovation and competitive advantage. The authors explore the dynamics of collaboration between travel agents and their suppliers in co-creating value for their customers. A research model is proposed to examine the relationship among six co-creation elements (co-creation dynamics), service innovation, competitive advantage and two antecedents: technology adoption and environmental change and the moderating effects of trust.

An empirical survey was performed based on travel agencies in Taiwan and Malaysia. A total of 105 valid responses from Taiwan and 102 valid responses from Malaysia were received. SPSS and partial least square were used to analyze the data.

A new six-element construct of co-creation dynamics was suggested. All the proposed effects were found significant in which trust enhanced the effect of elements of innovation for Taiwan travel agencies. However, in contrast to the proposed hypotheses, technology adoption had no direct effect, whereas trust had no moderating effect for Malaysia travel agencies.

This study suggests that managers should include co-creation approaches with partners and customers while developing new services. The identification of areas that may be lacking can allow managers to develop capabilities to improve business co-creation competency.

This study links the relational view with service-dominant logic that emphasizes business co-creation and service innovation as operant resources and a key fundamental source for competitive advantage. This study also looks at interpreting business co-creation and discusses whether business co-creation affects service innovation in the hospitality and tourism industry.

One may categorize assistive technologies for aged care into two types, namely, supportive (helping the elderly with their everyday activities) and empowering (obtaining physical or educational training to help seniors to maintain their capabilities). This paper looks at the impact of this perspective in the adoption of technologies that are used to aid already declined functions in comparison with technologies that are used to empower an elderly person’s capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to extract the factors that influence adoption of assistive technologies among seniors and the theories used in this context.

A systematic literature review was conducted on relevant peer reviewed papers. A preliminary exploratory search was conducted to identify keywords and online databases for the search. A total of 104 papers published since 2000 were analyzed after title, abstract and full text filtering.

The study summarizes and categorizes the factors impacting the adoption of assistive technologies among seniors. The paper analyses the theoretical support utilized by literature and maps the empirical evidence for supportive and empowering technologies.

This research like any other literature review is limited to the search keys. However, the keys have brought to this work from a preliminary search.

The work informs nursing professionals on the process to adopt technologies among seniors. The paper also helps technology developers to design technological products that are easier to adopt for older adults.

It was found that existing adoption theories are able to handle supportive technology adoption mainly because of the direct link between usage and improved functionalities. However due to the indirect effect of empowering technologies, elderlies lag in benefit realization for empowering technologies. This opens avenues of research and requires future work and utilization of new theoretical approaches in this area. The paper indicates propositions, claims and suggested questions for future research in both supportive and empowering technologies.

The mass market is dead. The database lives. Sales, marketing, product development—and the strategies that fuel them—will never be the same.

The knowledge of artefact design in design science research can have an important application in the improvement of decision support systems (DSS) development research. Recent DSS literature has identified a significant need to develop user-centric DSS method for greater relevance with respect to context of use. The purpose of this paper is to develop a collective DSS design artefact as method in a practical industry context.

Under the influence of goal-directed interaction design principles the study outlines the innovative DSS artefact based on design science methodology to deliver a cutting-edge decision support solution, which provides user-centric provisions through the use of design environment and ontology techniques.

The DSS artefact as collective information technology applications through the application of design science knowledge can effectively be designed to meet decision makers’ contextual needs in an agricultural industry context.

The study has limitations in that it was developed in a case study context and remains to be fully tested in a real business context. It is also assumed that the domain decisions can be parameterised and represented using a constraint programming language.

The paper concludes that the DSS artefact design and this development successfully overcomes some of the limitations of traditional DSS such as low-user uptake, system obsolescence, low returns on investment and a requirement for continual re-engineering effort.

The design artefact has the potential of increasing user uptake in an industry that has had relevancy problems with past DSS implementation and has experienced associated poor uptake.

The design science paradigm provides structural guidance throughout the defined process, helping ensure fidelity both to best industry knowledge and to changing user contexts.

In the fall of 1987, the first of three volumes of a scholarly research atlas—The Historical Atlas of Canada—was published to great acclaim. Describing the Atlas as “the most innovative, beautiful and successful single volume on the history of Canada, and indeed the most ambitious cartographic venture ever attempted in this country,” the Royal Canadian Geographic Society awarded gold medals to the volume's editor, R.C. Harris, and cartographer/designer, Geoffrey J. Matthews, as well as to the director of the whole Atlas project, W.G. Dean. The volume received many honors, including the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for the best book of the year on Early Canada from the Canadian Historical Association and the George Perkins Marsh Award in Environmental History from the University of Utah. Reviewers described the volume in superlatives. American reviewers were equally generous in their praise. Petchenik (herself the editor of the Historical Atlas of Early American History) described the volume as “an amazing accomplishment” and commented that “Not only a country but a civilization has been enriched by this publication.” Konrad assessed the volume as “a unique statement unrivaled in its potential impact.” Shuman, a professor of library science, noted that “this atlas, when complete, should stand as a model to be emulated by all other nations, whenever possible.” Pye, writing in the [British] Geographical Journal stated that “it is difficult to imagine that it could be even remotely paralleled in the foreseeable future.” Volume III of the Atlas appeared in 1990 and again won plaudits. Reviewers obviously felt that the high standards set by the first volume had been maintained.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study conducted for the purpose of learning more about the mindfulness experiences of college students and their teachers. To assist in developing a more inclusive approach to the teaching of mindfulness tailored to the individual needs of more vulnerable students and to inform teacher training and curriculum development.

This three-phase phenomenological study involved face-to-face and online contact with community college students and teachers involved in courses that incorporated mindfulness meditation. The findings from interviews with students in phase 1 were shared with teachers in phase 2 along with suggestions for safeguarding in phase 3 but initial results are promising as a number of safeguards have already been put into place.

This study found that mindfulness meditation is not necessarily a positive experience for vulnerable college students and their teachers and that there was a need for more teacher training, knowledge and ongoing support about the effects of some mindfulness meditations on some vulnerable students and how to adjust their intensity.

While this is a small qualitative study, the majority of students interviewed reported unusual experiences. This this is not well known in the literature on mindfulness in higher education, and a search of the clinical literature supports the findings that significant safeguards and adjustments are needed for mindfulness meditation for vulnerable students in educational, non-clinical settings. Further research is needed.

An implication of this study is that mindfulness meditation in its current form is likely to be unsuitable for vulnerable students. Practical recommendations for safeguarding mindfulness in higher education are already being trialed, as mentioned in this paper and will be the subject of more extensive exploration in another paper.

There are significant implications in these findings that the potential harmful effects of mindfulness may be overlooked and may be more commonly experienced than is currently realized especially for individuals with a history of trauma, with addictions, mental health difficulties or self-harm.

An innovation in this study is its methodology which drew out students’ and teachers’ own experience of mindfulness meditation in their own words when most mindfulness studies are quantitative and tend to focus on outcomes before understanding. In addition, the findings were presented directly to teachers making it possible to see how little they knew about their students’ experiences. This created an opening and a willingness to adopt safeguarding recommendations.

This chapter is based on research conducted in Sweden with young sports-active children participating in non-elite sports. The main focus was to explore the phenomenon of emotional abuse of children in sport from the perspective of the children and young athletes. The study is theoretically grounded in the new sociology of childhood and draws inspiration from the theory of different sports worlds within children's sport. This chapter explores young athletes perspectives about how negative emotions arise from emotionally abusive interactions during sports practice and the resulting effects on the child. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 15 girls and boys aged 12–18 involved in gymnastics, swimming, floorball, football and volleyball. The study found that emotional abuse takes different forms and involves both peers and coaches, often occurring in situations where the young athletes’ sport performance is displayed and evaluated. The emotionally abusive behaviour seems to have a range of harmful effects for the child. This chapter adds to the existing literature by examining how emotional abuse is expressed and experienced within non-elite youth sports, what forms of interaction contribute to the experience of negative emotions and what harmful effects it may have.

One of the most colorful and free‐spirited publishers in U.S. history, the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company of Chicago has also made an impressive mark on that history. As this country's oldest alternative publishing house—founded in 1886—it has been closely associated with such movements as populism, freethought, socialism, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as various currents of labor and social radicalism of more recent years. The Kerr Company has also established itself as a leading publisher of original works and reprints in the field of labor and radical history. Several generations of America's progressives and dissidents have relied heavily on Kerr publications for their education and inspiration. For libraries with a focus on labor, politics, women, reform movements, anarchism, socialism, pacifism, radical fiction, popular culture, and the broad counter‐culture, Kerr books are indispensable.

Gymnasts worldwide have turned to media to speak out about their experiences of abuse in sport. More formally, services to report abuse have been recognised as important; however, we know little about athletes' experiences of the process. Therefore, we consider in this chapter how (former) athletes experience the process of reporting abuse and maltreatment. This chapter begins with a narrative poem that was created using direct quotes from an interview with a former gymnast, Lisa (pseudonym), who described her involvement with her national gymnastics federation's reporting process. We then examine reporting services and discuss the reasons why (former) athletes may not report abuse and maltreatment. As a conceptual framework, we present the pixie model of women's artistic gymnastics (WAG) as the root of the culture of fear, control and silence that prevents gymnasts from reporting their experiences, and discuss factors that enable the reporting of abuse and maltreatment. To illustrate the ways the WAG pixie model shaped Lisa's reporting experience, the poem presented at the outset of this chapter is extended to a narrative about her engagement with reporting processes. The chapter concludes with a call to put abuse and maltreatment on the sports governance agenda, the development of trauma-informed processes and further research on reporting abuse in sport.

Evidence from epidemiological studies (Doll and Peto, 1981 European Atherosclerosis Society, 1987) has clearly pointed to a strong association between food consumption and disease. This association has been used to account at least in part for the relationship between social class and a range of diseases (Townsend, Davidson and Whitehead, 1988), as evidence from survey research (MAFF, 1987) suggests that patterns of food consumption and dietary intake vary markedly between social classes and income groups. The aim of this article, drawing on data derived from an exploratory, qualitative investigation of patterns of food consumption in middle class and working class households, attempts to throw some light on the relationship between social class and food consumption.