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The purpose of this paper is to describe how librarians at the University of Lethbridge Library recently undertook a pilot project to deliver information literacy to satellite campus students using Skype. Distance delivery of post‐secondary education is on the rise; this creates unique challenges for academic libraries who strive to meet the resource and instructional needs of students.

This case study outlines the literature review and environmental scan the authors took before deciding to teach their distance education students via Skype, and looks at the successes and challenges of their pilot.

Skype has some limitations as an instructional delivery tool; however, for the purpose of this pilot study proved fairly successful and a good “first step” for distance information literacy delivery.

Readers will learn from the authors' experience, getting ideas and tips on how to conduct information literacy classes for distance students.

This paper is of value to those librarians who must teach distance students, providing them with ideas on low‐cost and low‐tech solutions.

Describes how, in order to disprove the misconception that although TQM is a good idea it would not work in their company/sector, the University of Northumbria has set up a Best Practices Club that enables companies to exchange ideas, successes and failures on the subject, for the benefit of others. Asserts that the biggest benefit of the club is that it helps companies to realise that their problems are not unique ‐ other people have experienced them and found solutions. Concludes that no one company has a monopoly on the best ideas and that the club has shown that best practice is applicable to all industries.

This study seeks to appraise the design of nursing and residential care homes for people with dementia in Northern Ireland using the design audit checklist developed by the Dementia Services Development Centre – DSDC.

The appraisal used postal questionnaires, based on the DSDC essential design criteria, that were sent to facility managers. This was conducted in order to establish the level of compliance with these criteria to achieve a dementia‐friendly home, and to ascertain whether there are any noticeable differences between nursing homes and residential care homes.

The study identified the types of homes that were seen as failing to meet most of the DSDC design criteria and, in particular, which criteria are not met according to their managers. Results from this sample suggest that nursing homes align better with DSDC criteria than residential care homes. The study concludes that the majority of managers perceive their care homes to meet over 50 percent of the essential criteria, with just over 5 percent below the 50 percent mark.

Given that this study used postal questionnaires more research is needed in order to validate results. Behavioral and policy implications are crucial aspects that will be the subject of future research which will involve post‐occupancy evaluation.

More attention to dementia‐friendly building design needs to be taken into consideration by residential care homes, and more improvement would still be required by nursing homes not meeting all criteria.

The paper highlights the importance of dementia‐friendly building design and the requirements for more care in designing and fitting care environments for people with dementia.

The relationship between interlocking directorates and firm performance has been increasingly debated, with a focus on whether firm's centrality in interlock networks is associated with performance. The purpose of this study is to examine not only how a firm's position in this network is associated with performance but also how the performance of network partners can impact a firm's performance. This study examines how firms effectively utilise the interlock network to achieve the goal of higher market capitalisation – termed market capitalisation rank (MCR).

The premise of the study is the UK FTSE 350 firms from 2014 to 2018. The paper makes use of a temporal network autocorrelation model to examine how firm characteristics, the structural position in the interlock network and the performance of network partners affect MCR over time.

The analysis indicates that firms with ties (via the interlock network) to firms with high market capitalisation are more likely to enhance their own MCR, highlighting network partners have the opportunity to play a critical role in a firm's dominance strategy to optimise firm value.

The value of this research is that it does not only look at the impact of a firm's position in the network on performance, but the impact of the performance of network partners on a firm's market performance as well.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate a novel approach to citizen engagement in health priority setting carried out in the context of Primary Care Trust (PCT) commissioning in the English National Health Service.

Four deliberative events were held with 139 citizens taking part in total. Events design incorporated elements of the Twenty-first Century Town Meeting and the World Café, and involved specially-designed dice games. Evaluation surveys reporting quantitative and qualitative participant responses were combined with follow-up interviews with both PCT staff and members of the public. An evaluation framework based on previous literature was employed.

The evaluation demonstrates high levels of enjoyment, learning and deliberative engagement. However, concerns were expressed over the leading nature of the voting questions and, in a small minority of responses, the simplified scenarios used in dice games. The engagement exercises also appeared to have minimal impact on subsequent Primary Care Trust resource allocation, confirming a wider concern about the influence of public participation on policy decision making. The public engagement activities had considerable educative and political benefits and overall the evaluation indicates that the specific deliberative tools developed for the exercise facilitated a high level of discussion.

This paper helps to fill the gap in empirical evaluations of deliberative approaches to citizen involvement in health care priority setting. It reports on a novel approach and considers a range of implications for future research and practice. The study raises important questions over the role of public engagement in driving priority setting decision making.

Aims to recount how an equality and diversity staff‐development program is helping Mid‐Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust to place increasing value on equality and inclusion, and to reap the rewards of a diverse workforce

Contains information from the trust's director of workforce development and Academee, the learning and development specialist closely involved in the program.

Finds that the program has: helped staff to acknowledge any subconscious biases and tendency to stereotype; revealed for employees how to understand the ways in which prejudices can manifest themselves as active discrimination; highlighted any inappropriate actions; and led to sustainable changes in behavior. Reveals that the program has become a key part of induction training for new staff, and also central to customer‐care training, which ensures that staff are increasingly sensitive to meeting the needs of different communities.

Demonstrates how the program has helped Mid‐Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust to gain: good basic understanding of the issues and legal requirements related to the subject of equality and diversity; awareness that people being equal does not mean that they are the same as each other, or that their needs are the same; and clear understanding that the trust expects all staff to treat colleagues, patients, carers and visitors with respect and dignity, according to their diverse needs.

Considers the problems of a multi‐disciplinary team working together to understand and evaluate a healthcare information system, which itself is situated in a complex organisational and political environment. Provides general discussion of problems faced by evaluators of such systems. Describes this specific evaluation project (Electronic Patient Records in the UK National Health Service), gives an account of the evaluation process as it occurred, highlights some of the problems encountered, and discusses attempts to overcome these. Suggests that social, organisational and political factors are inherent in all such research enterprises, and that in order to facilitate a rich understanding of complex systems, these factors must also be considered as part of the research data.

Digital technologies provide an opportunity for the rail sector to achieve social, economic and environmental sustainability, if implemented correctly. Unlocking the full potential of technology, however, will require significant changes beyond the technological. Physical assets will need to link with digital assets, making best use of data, simulation and modelling. Transformational leadership informed by systems engineering will be necessary to deliver the change process required to innovate across the whole railway life cycle. Each of these digital railway elements – technology, data, simulation, transformational leadership and systems engineering – presents challenges to be overcome. The authors believe that by instilling core values alongside technical expertise, by being open, resilient, responsive, customer-centric and valuing people, the digital railway has the power to transform the sector. It will enable improved railway processes; safer, faster and more reliable trains; better customer experience; cost-effectiveness; and reduced carbon emissions and more. The digital railway will not just realise the current vision but form the foundation for a sustainable railway to meet changing mobility needs well beyond 2050.

Corporate success depends partially on the quality of knowledge accessible to the executive board. One route of access to such knowledge is the appointment of directors who already hold directorships with prominent other corporate actors. Such director appointments provide interlocks to a corporate knowledge ecosystem (Haunschild and Beckman, 1998). The purpose of this paper is to examine how linkages between companies belonging to different sectors impact firm performance and to examine how linkages created by female directors, as opposed to male directors, shape performance.

This paper investigates the interlocks created between UK FTSE 350 companies from 2010 to 2018. It draws on network analysis to map the roles that male and female directors play in linking firms with varying sector classifications. The paper provides an examination of the impact of these roles on firm performance, through a panel data regression analysis.

This paper finds that there is an increase of inter-industry brokers over the period, and that men are still dominant in both the network and creating inter-industry ties amongst companies. However, the role of women in establishing these ties appears to be changing, and women are more important when it comes to create inter-industry ties among key economic sectors.

This paper provides a novel approach to examine the interplay between gendered inter (and intra) sectoral linkages and firm performance. It provides an original application of the two-mode brokerage analysis framework proposed in Jasny and Lubell (2015).