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In Australia as elsewhere, kindergarten or pre-school teachers’ work has almost escaped historians’ attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lives and work of approximately 60 women who graduated from the Adelaide Kindergarten Training College (KTC) between 1908 and 1917, which is during the leadership of its foundation principal, Lillian de Lissa.

The paper is a feminist analysis and uses conventional archival sources.

The KTC was a site of higher education that offered middle class women an intellectual as well as practical education, focusing on liberal arts, progressive pedagogies and social reform. More than half of the graduates initially worked as teachers, their destinations reflecting the fragmented field of early childhood education. Whether married or single, many remained connected with progressive education and social reform, exercising their pedagogical and administrative skills in their workplaces, homes and civic activities. In so doing, they were not only leaders of children but also makers of society.

The paper highlights the links between the kindergarten movement and reforms in girls’ secondary and higher education, and repositions the KTC as site of intellectual education for women. In turn, KTC graduates committed to progressive education and social reform in the interwar years.

The purpose of this paper is to test the potential of an innovative technology-mediated mental training protocol for the empowerment of stress management and neurocognitive efficiency in highly stressful professional contexts, with people who occupy top management positions. The innovative protocol specifically combines mindfulness practice and a wearable neurofeedback system managed via smartphone.

The longitudinal research included pre- and post-training assessment steps in order to test training effects with respect to subjective level and physiological markers of stress, anxiety and mood profiles, cognitive abilities and markers of neurocognitive efficiency.

Results showed decreased stress, anxiety, anger and mental fatigue; increased participants’ information-processing efficiency; increased electrophysiological markers concerning the balance and reactivity of the mind-brain system; and improved physiological markers of vagal tone.

Though further investigation and replication with larger samples would strengthen present findings, the authors suggest that observed outcomes, together with the limited duration of the overall protocol and of daily practices, make the training a potentially valuable tool especially for people whose professional position imposes time limitations and elevated job duties, thus increasing the risk of drop-out from traditional stress management programs.

The combination of mindfulness-based mental training with the advantages offered by a novel brain-sensing wearable technology allows for overcoming the weak points of traditional approaches (e.g. notable time expense) and optimizing training opportunities and outcomes. Furthermore, this is, to the authors’ best knowledge, the first systematic report of the application of such methodology in an organization and with top management professionals.

INFORMED CONCERN for the pre‐school child was the motive which brought together five research assistants from varying backgrounds in 1977, to set up an Early Childhood Information Centre at the Froebel Institute (Roehampton Institute of Higher Education) in south London. It is a matter for profound regret that all work on the centre ceased in March 1978, but it is also an experience familiar to anyone who has worked on a Job Creation Project.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on integrated marketing communications (IMC) by empirically examining the concept in a new context, that is hotel companies, and comparing its implementation and impact in Italian and Croatian hotels.

The study uses survey methodology to assess IMC, approaching managers and guests in high-quality hotels.

From the manager’s point of view, both Italian and Croatian hotels show a high level of IMC implementation and significant differences regarding some items. From the guest’s point of view, significant differences are obtained between the two hotel groups. In addition, IMC is found to influence positively and significantly customer satisfaction.

This research is limited to the Italian and Croatian hotel context. Future studies should approach a greater number of hotels to obtain more representative results.

Managers need to adopt a holistic vision of marketing communications and regularly analyze consumers’ opinions to understand if their campaign works.

This paper makes several original contributions, thus filling the existing gap in the literature. First, IMC is analyzed in a new environment, that is high-quality hotels. Second, the study is conducted in Italy and Croatia, where research on IMC is rather neglected. Third, in addition to managers’ opinions, guests’ perceptions are assessed, thus highlighting that consumers need to be considered as true “co-managers” of business strategies.

It is now about twelve years since the first discovery —by accident—that antibiotic supplements to the feeding stuffs of young livestock produced increased weight gains and improved conversion of food into flesh. Already a commercial practice of some magnitude in the U.S.A., it has grown in this country to such an extent that the trend is being reviewed at high level authority.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of business improvement methods (BIM/TQM) in contributing to innovation implementation in SMEs within peripheral regions.

A survey with responses from 606 SMEs in the North West European peripheral regions was administered. The survey explores the role of a range of business improvement methods (BIM/TQM) as an antecedent or stimulant in helping to achieve three levels of effective innovation implementation: introducing new products/services; engaging in innovation that resulted in major product/service innovation (radical), and engaging in innovation activities that did not result in major product innovation (incremental), and non‐innovative.

The findings show that BIM/TQM was likely to stimulate and encourage the development of incremental levels of innovation in the SMEs where there was an emphasis on the people, or organic aspects of BIM/TQM applied, rather than more mechanistic BIM/TQM approaches. However, there was a lack of a clear link between BIM/TQM and radical innovation where newness in products/services and markets was required.

There is a paucity of studies that probe the effectiveness of applying business improvement methods in stimulating innovation implementation, especially in peripheral regions and involving multiple levels of innovation.

This study aims to explore how women entrepreneurs in small businesses encounter digitalization and learn to use social media at work by combining theoretical perspectives from research on women entrepreneurs in small businesses, digitalization and use of social media and digital skills in response to calls from earlier research regarding women entrepreneurs' adaptation to an increasingly digitalized world.

Qualitative methods were applied including a total of 13 in-depth interviews in two phases, in 2017 and 2019, with 11 women entrepreneurs in nine small businesses, along with observations of their digital presence.

This study contributes with new insights regarding women entrepreneurs' behavior and ways to acquire digital skills to keep up the pace in digitalization. Learning by doing, informal learning and step-by-step self-development entrepreneurial behavior were practiced along with strategical recruiting of young digitally skilled employees, i.e. digital natives. Findings state that in order to remain competitive and generate business growth, women entrepreneurs constantly have to learn new skills to capture the potential of digitalization especially regarding the knowledge and use of social media. The women entrepreneurs emphasize challenges of digitalization as limited resources, constant need of new digital skills, digital stress or even burnout due to internal and external demands on online presence, scanning and maintenance of social media platforms. In contrast to earlier research, the women entrepreneurs did not express any significant gender stereotyping online, yet they strongly emphasized the continuous challenge of work––life balance.

This study contributes to an under-researched field with novel research combining theories from women entrepreneurship and information and communication technologies (ICTs) related to digitalization with a special focus on social media. Following the era of digitalization, the women entrepreneurs have to act as digital entrepreneurs finding new innovative ways of doing business. The importance of recruiting young digitally skilled employees in small businesses is vital for women entrepreneurs, since the needed learning and business development takes place when digital natives and digital immigrants work together.

THE topics of the Library Association Conference and the election of the Council of the Association naturally absorb a great deal of attention this month. To deal with the second first: there were few novelties in the nominations, and most of the suggested new Councillors are good people; so that a fairly good Council should result. The unique thing, as we imagine, about the Library Association is the number of vice‐presidents, all of whom have Council privileges. These are not elected by the members but by the Council, and by the retiring Council; they occupy a position analagous to aldermen in town councils, and are not amenable to the choice or desires of the members at large. There are enough of them, too, if they care to be active, to dominate the Council. Fortunately, good men are usually elected, but recently there has been a tendency to elect comparatively young men to what are virtually perpetual seats on the Council, simply, if one may judge from the names, because these men occupy certain library positions. It, therefore; is all the more necessary that the electors see that men who really represent the profession get the seats that remain.

The study explored how information institutions can support the resilience of parents of adolescents affected by the Russia–Ukraine war. Ukrainian parents are facing major challenges of supporting their teenagers through a difficult developmental phase while also “buffering” their war-related hardships. By supporting parents, information institutions can also support children.

Fifteen parents were interviewed about mental health challenges and resources that are helpful and/or missing from their support systems. Recordings of participant narratives were analyzed using the qualitative thematic analysis technique.

The findings indicate that both teens and parents rely on internal resilience skills, family, friends and community resources to support themselves. However, a number of additional resources could be offered by information institutions, including content for (1) teens on developing skills in communication, interpersonal relationships, problem solving and academic pursuits; (2) parents on child development and opportunities in their host countries; both groups on (3) both groups on mental health first aid and safe spaces to meet peers. The study recommendations will be of interest to information professionals working with families, especially families affected by disasters.

The study relied on a small convenience sample of participants.

Study recommendations would be of interest to information professionals who develop and provide services to families affected by natural and manmade disasters.

Study recommendations improve understanding of the (potential) role of information institutions and libraries in strengthening family and community resilience.

The study offers a rare insight into experiences of war-affect families and provides evidence-driven recommendations for information institutions to support family and community resilience.

In the context of European consumers’ experiences of austerity, this study aims to advance current resilience theory in marketing through developing persistent resilience from a context of austerity influenced consumption.

Following an interpretivist approach, 38 face to face, in-depth interviews were conducted with European consumers from Ireland, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece who were affected in some way by the global financial crisis.

Building upon limited conceptual and empirical investigations in social geography, the analysis identifies the themes of persistent stressors and temporal orientation as constants, alongside day-to-day coping, relating and pragmatism, consumer adjustment, repertoires of resistance and transformation as key elements of persistent resilience within the consumption context of austerity.

The study addresses the limited theoretical and empirical focus on persistent resilience and austerity and directly contributes to consumer behaviour and marketing theory in understanding persistent resilience and its implications.

Changes to behaviours as a result of persistent resilience included reducing and stopping consumption, discount shopping, alternative consumption in the form of growing or making and mindful consumption through wastage reduction and re-use.

The study highlights the significant social impact of austerity while also identifying positive outcomes for social relations among family, friends and the wider community.

This study develops and extends Golubchikov’s (2011) theory of persistent resilience through exploring European consumer responses to austerity, identifying key consumption characteristics relevant for marketing theory and practice.