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Personal computers are most commonly thought of as consumer products, but now they are being developed for use by many different classes of retailer; in fact they have found application in small newsagents, pharmacists and others. Additionally, in conjunction with portable data recording terminals they can be used as packaged systems which will read bar coded labels, and carry out localised data processing of the information gathered. This article examines some of the latest developments and looks at the relevance of this class of system at a cash point within a retail outlet.

An analysis carried out by a major supplier of EPOS equipment suggests that, if EFTS is introduced at point of sale, with all cheques replaced by EFT debit card transactions, and all credit cards by EFT credit cards eliminating vouchers, the retailer could expect a 20% saving in costs.

Early portable data entry terminals, capable of recording and transmitting data, were certainly not an alternative to POS terminals. But, argues our contributor, the new generation of PDETs are capable of accepting alpha numeric input, can be programmed and reprogrammed, and are capable of sending special instructions down the line from head office. In stores with low sales volumes, it is possible to develop cost effective alternatives to POS based on the use of a PDET alongside a low cost ECR.

Child sponsorship programs have been accused of representing children in the developing world in a manner described as “development porn”. The purpose of this paper is to take an historical approach to investigating the use of advertising techniques by Plan Canada, a subsidiary of one of the oldest and largest child sponsorship‐based non‐governmental development agencies, Plan International, during the 1970s. This time period represents an important era in international development and a time of significant change in the charitable giving and advertising industries in Canada.

The authors conduct a content analysis on an archival collection of 468 print advertisements from the 1970s.

A description of the “typical” Plan Canada fund‐raising ad is presented and shown to be different, in several aspects, from other advertisements of the time period. It was determined that Plan Canada's advertisement did not cross the delicate line between showing the hardship and realities of life in the developing world for these children and what became known as “development porn”.

There has been little previous research which focuses specifically on the design of charity advertisements. This paper presents a historically contextualized description of such ads, providing a baseline for further research. It also raises important questions regarding the portrayal of the “other” in marketing communications and the extent to which aid agencies must go to attract the attention of potential donors.

To share the learnings gained from the experiences of the training and development manager at The Glenmorangie Company.

The practical approach taken is described in terms of getting management buy‐in to training and development through a bottom‐up approach.

The experiential approach used at The Glenmorangie Company echoes the findings documented in the CIPD research analysis paper based on 2005 Training and Development Survey.

When considering implementing new learning initiatives this approach will enable one to optimise one's success and prove sustainability, through managers' commitment and employee engagement.

To all those involved in training and development it provides a practical step‐by‐step approach to making effective learning interventions that managers are committed to adopt.

The purpose of this project was to develop research support services that address local and external research data management (RDM) support drivers within the existing organizational culture at the University of Florida. The goal was to prompt organization change to support a campus-wide electronic lab notebook.

This project used a mixed-methods research approach to cultivate an organizational change program that support technological infrastructure to benefit researchers. The mixed-methods research involved participation action research integrated with a stakeholder approach.

The development of the grant proposal which was unfunded led to development of continued project goals. This project confirmed the development for support for an institution-wide electronic research notebook (ERN) solution requires adherence to the summary of five key actions for developing RDM services. Failure to complete all of the key actions engenders fragmentation culture.

This project includes implications for institutions to develop grant proposals with integrated budgets for research support services of funded projects; and to use the summary of key actions for developing RDM services articulated by Jones et al. (2013) in “How to Develop RDM Services – a guide for HEIs.” Both are need to support findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable data for researchers.

This project has practical implications for higher education institutions interested in leveraging socio-technical processes to advance the role of libraries as collaborator, partner and stakeholder in developing institution-wide adoption, support and training for ERN as a research support service to RDM.

This paper contributes to the body of developing literature on ERN as support services to RDM lead by academic research libraries.

This project contributed to the change in organization culture resulting in the successful collaboration between the Research Office and College of Medicine to support an institution-wide ERN technological infrastructure for one year as a pilot at a large academic research institution in the southeast USA.

Ten online databases were evaluated for their scope, extent of literature coverage within that scope, timelines, and degree of relevance and overlap in retrieval for welfare, corrections and community development. The databases evaluated were: Eric, NTIS, Social Scisearch, Psychological Abstracts, National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Sociological Abstracts, PAIS International, Child Abuse and Neglect, Family Resources, and National Rehabilitation Information Centre. These were evaluated by choosing three test cases and by conducting searches on fifty well known concepts. All databases yielded relevant documents. The specialized databases did not prove to be more comprehensive in their respective fields than larger databases. The databases were also ranked for their useful‐ness and cost‐effectiveness.

To resurrect and renew the tradition of the early Frankfurt School, whose of Marxist–Hegelian dialectical approach to understanding the societal conditions of its emergence – post World War I Germany, the rise of fascism, New Deal politics, the defeat of fascism, and the subsequent rise of consumer society – remains relevant to studying present circumstances, stressing the cultural dimension of capitalism, the proliferation of alienation, ideology, and mass media, and, finally, the nature of the society-character/subjectivity nexus.

Employing a comparative historical approach to the study of alienation, ideology, and character, to articulate social-theoretical standards for critical social research today.

Global civilization faces an array of crises, beginning with economies whose lack of growth or stability the ability of a large segment of the world’s population to obtain jobs conducive to a decent standard of life. With governments’ inability to implement public policies to buffer instabilities, cultural values are in crisis as well.

Reviving the framework of early Frankfurt School Critical Theory is necessary to promote a better world.

Reconstructing key concerns of the Frankfurt School is conducive to critiquing this tradition’s recent preoccupation with communication and recognition, and demonstrates how the first generation’s legacy helps us understand contemporary social movements of the Right and the Left, in ways that are similar to the Weimar Republic in Germany. Both the Right and the Left being products of legitimation crises that trigger a desire for regressive or progressive social change – the Right would restore a mythical past, the Left would foster a new social order based on humanistic concerns.

Eric Broekaert passed away shortly after the XVIth European Working group on Drug-Oriented Research (EWODOR)-conference in Rome on 28 September 2016. He was one of the great TC pioneers in Europe, who founded the first TC for addictions in Belgium (De Kiem) and co-founded the European Federation of Therapeutic Communities and EWODOR. He was a respected Professor of “Orthopedagogics” at Ghent University and a Member of the Editorial Collective of Therapeutic Communities: the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities. The paper aims to discuss the overview of the career of Eric Broekaert.

In this obituary, the authors provide an overview of his career, major achievements and theoretical, methodological and integrative ideas, clustered around four typologies: university professor and scholar; manager and source of inspiration; TC pioneer and believer, and integrative thinker.

Besides his obvious merits as a TC researcher and advocate, one of his major theoretical contributions has been the introduction of the holistic, integrative approach and the idea that diverse types of interventions, as well as methodological approaches can alternatively go together.

He regarded TCs as the ultimate integration of various educational and therapeutic approaches to promote growth and quality of life among severely disadvantaged populations, such as drug addicts and children and adults with emotional and behavioural disorders.

Universities of Small Island States (SIS) have the potential to fulfill a crucial role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also face barriers to local capacity building. The University of Aruba partly addresses these challenges through the development of The Academic Foundation Year (AFY), a one-year pre-university program aiming to optimally equip students for higher education. This study aims to assess to what extent the program can foster the local embeddedness of the students in ecology, culture and history and an understanding of opportunities and challenges for sustainable development in SIS.

The authors provide examples of how the program incorporates education for sustainable development and how it emphasizes experiential learning. In addition, quantitative survey data and qualitative analysis of focus group meetings are used to reflect on the program’s achievements and its potential for further development.

The survey results suggest that AFY courses not only increase knowledge but also change students’ perceptions regarding sustainability. Indeed, key impacts emerging from the student focus group related to both academic preparation and engagement with sustainability. Reflections by teachers emphasized the importance of experiential learning, an expansive view of the SDGs and preparing students as citizens.

This study highlights that the program could provide a starting point for the development of similar initiatives in other SIS, the common basis being the fostering of sustainability literacy and social adoption of the SDGs.