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School leaders can significantly influence the conditions that affect teacher retention. Yet, leaders in rural and high-poverty schools often face limited opportunities to develop their abilities to enhance these conditions. In this case study, we examine how participating in a professional community supported school leaders' efforts to increase teacher retention and student learning outcomes.

We used case study methodology to study 14 leaders from rural, high-poverty or underperforming schools with greater-than-average levels of teacher turnover. The leaders were participating in a three-year research-practice partnership intended to assist them in using improvement science to address problems of practice related to teacher retention and student learning outcomes in their schools. We collected and analyzed data from interviews, exit surveys, artifacts and participant observations over a one-year period.

Participating in this professional community helped the leaders create the conditions for increased teacher retention and student learning outcomes by providing them with opportunities to collaborate with their peers, receive leadership coaching, exchange ideas and learn in a safe space.

These findings confirm and extend extant school leadership development research. A particularly interesting finding was the role of the professional community in reducing the leaders' feelings of isolation while providing them a safe space to learn. The findings also illustrate how universities and school districts can partner to provide professional learning opportunities that enhance school leaders' professional knowledge, leadership practices and well-being.

Globally, contemporary school learning environments are being transformed to incorporate innovative designs and pedagogies, digital technology and new ergonomic furniture – often ‘un-classroom-like’ in their form but can more readily accommodate the needs of 21st century learners. In this concluding chapter, key strategies, themes and ideas presented by contributing authors are presented. Linking the discussion of the book to the changing context of education and design, this chapter provides insights and reflections for supporting educators and learners to more effectively use the learning environments as a pedagogical and learning tool.

This final chapter draws together the key findings presented in the preceding pages and considers emergent conclusions and implications for mental health and wellbeing in schools. The author draws upon the evidence presented by the book’s eclectic range of contributors and the health promoting schools’ (HPSs) framework to provide a road map of what an effective whole school approach (WSA) might look like moving forward. Crucially, lessons from recent crises in education, including COVID-19-driven changes in pathways to support, are highlighted as pivotal factors in a future vision which sees schools as an effective and sustainable frontline force to help tackle the global burden of child and adolescent mental health through a proactive, preventive stance. With this future focus in mind, next steps are considered in terms of developing effective and sustainable mental health and wellbeing support for all within healthy school settings.

Due to the constantly increasing competitiveness along with the complexity of knowledge, firms perceive collaboration as a key strategy that preserves firms' radical innovation performance. In this context, this paper aims to examine how firms’ partners’ diversity in open innovation activities influences the development of radical innovations, critical for social development. In particular, this study analyzes how the functional and geographical breadth of the firm’s collaboration portfolio affects its radical innovation performance. Furthermore, it also explores the role of firm size as a moderator in the relationships proposed.

This research employs panel data analysis, using a sample of 4,677 Spanish firms, with data sourced from the PITEC database.

The results of this study show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the functional and the geographical breadth of collaborations and the firms’ radical innovation performance. Moreover, this study finds partial support for the moderating role of firm size, in the sense that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms vary in their optimal number of diversity of partners.

This research provides a better understanding on how partners’ functional and geographical diversity, along with organizational characteristics such as firm size, affect how firms benefit from collaboration for innovation. This study shows that both SMEs and large firms experience diminishing returns when their collaboration networks become overly diverse in pursuit of radical innovation, due to increased costs. However, in SMEs, the turning point occurs at a later stage, consistent with the idea that small firms need broader functional networks to access complementary and novel resources they usually lack.

This chapter reviews the evidence on the role of physicians in shaping inequalities in access to and utilisation of healthcare. The authors examine three types of physician decisions that can influence inequalities in access and utilisation: location decisions, decisions to work in the public and/or private sector, and decisions or behaviours in the doctor–patient encounter. For each, the authors summarise the issues and empirical evidence on possible policies to help reduce inequalities in access. Future research to reduce inequalities should focus on changes to health systems that influence physician decisions, such as health insurance expansions, the public–private mix and financial incentives, as well as physician training and policies for a more diverse physician workforce.

The personalities of leaders have been shown to impact the culture of their organizations and are also expected to have a more distal impact on the firm’s financial performance. However, the authors also expect that leader gender is an important intervening variable such that exhibiting various personality dimensions may result in unique cultural and performance-based outcomes for women and men leaders. Thus, the authors seek to examine first the impact of leader personality on organizational performance, as driven through organizational culture as a mediating mechanism. In doing so, the authors propose the expected impact of specific personality dimensions on certain types of organizational cultures, and those cultures’ subsequent impact on the organization’s performance. The authors then extend to consider the moderating effects of leader gender on the relationship between leader personality and organization. To support their propositions, the authors draw from upper echelons and implicit leadership theories. The authors encourage researchers to consider the proposition within a sample of the largest publicly traded US companies (i.e., Fortune 500) at an important era in history such that for the first time, 10% of these companies are led by women. In doing so, the authors hope to understand the leadership dynamics at the highest echelons of corporate governance and provide actionable insights for companies aiming to optimize their leadership composition and drive sustainable performance.

This study investigates the impact of internal expectations, such as fantasy of success and fear of failure and external factors, such as social environment and past experiences, on entrepreneurial choice.

Based on achievement motivation and social cognitive theories, the authors construct hypotheses and use secondary data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database and Economic Freedom Index report to empirically test the hypotheses. The authors also use propensity score matching to solve the endogeneity issue and test the robustness.

Internal expectations (fantasy of success and fear of failure) on business outcomes inversely affect entrepreneurial choices, with a vibrant business environment amplifying and past failure experience mitigating these effects.

Due to the economic recession, governments encourage small businesses. Thus, the complexity of individual entrepreneurial motivations and influencing factors necessitate deeper exploration. This study is one of the first research offering insights into entrepreneurial motivations from combined dimensions and providing theoretical support for strategies promoting public entrepreneurship.

While there has been a growing interest in the field of Metaverse-related research, its impact on vulnerable segments of the population, particularly those with special needs, is yet to be fully examined. This research develops the underlying scant theoretical knowledge related to the attachment of people with disabilities to the Metaverse and its effects on their need for uniqueness and acceptance of disability, and hence their sense of inclusivity and overall well-being.

The study adopted a quantitative approach using an Internet-based survey. The sample size consisted of 530 Metaverse users with a physical disability in the USA. The proposed model integrates virtual place attachment alongside disabled consumers' need for uniqueness, and acceptance of their physical disability. SPSS and LISREL were utilized for data analysis and SEM.

The study underscores the complexity of the interplay between virtual place attachment, disability acceptance and the need for uniqueness among physically disabled users in the Metaverse. It investigates how the attachment to virtual spaces by people with disability influence their psychological well-being.

This research adds to the interactive marketing and disabled consumer psychology literature exploring the theoretical and practical implications from an attachment and need for uniqueness theory perspectives.

This paper aims to explore the influence of a particular label surface texture, i.e. embossing, on consumer purchase intentions and willingness to pay. This paper further highlights the underlying mechanisms explaining this relationship by unveiling the mediating role of willingness to touch and perceived package uniqueness.

Based on the visual salience theory and the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model, this paper tests mediations and serial mediations across two online experiments and evidence from a laboratory experiment.

Study 1 reveals perceived package uniqueness as the mediator, such that embossed elements on the label increase perceived uniqueness, hence leading to greater purchase intentions and willingness to pay. In addition, Study 2 replicates these results and goes further by demonstrating the positive effect of embossing on purchase intentions and willingness to pay through willingness to touch then perceived package uniqueness.

The findings provide insightful managerial implications by drawing attention to the importance of using embossed elements on packaging, particularly when companies seek to differentiate themselves from competitors by stimulating consumers to touch their product packaging and having them perceive their products as unique.

Using visual salience theory and the SOR model, this research is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first to shed light on the effect of embossing as a visual element of the packaging design on willingness to touch the product (haptics) and perceived uniqueness, ultimately enhancing purchase intentions and willingness to pay.

Rural indigenous schools in Malaysia can be far from equipped with facilities and conducive learning environments, especially in schools serving a large and diverse community. SK RPS (Rancangan Penempatan Semula/Resettlement Programme) Banun is an all-indigenous school located in the interiors of Gerik, Perak in Malaysia. Being the only school in the vicinity of an Orang Asli settlement comprising 18 villages of the Je hai and Temiar tribes, this public school is said to be a one stop hub for the community. Despite the school's existence, there are several challenges which hinders children of the Orang Asli community to attain a quality education or in some cases to even go to school. This paper is written based on the lived experiences of three teachers from mid-2022 to mid-2023 and amplifies the day-to-day challenges of the school and its community. The paper also discusses the initiatives implemented to tackle some of the challenges, highlighting key successes and suggestions to improve some areas particularly in enhancing and reimagining pedagogical approaches as well as learning environments in Orang Asli schools in Malaysia.