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The study sets out to demonstrate how a lifecycle perspective on complex, public-sector procurement projects can be used for making qualitative assessments of procurement policy and practice and reveal those procurement capabilities that are most impactful for operating effectively.

Agency theory, institutional theory and the lifecycle analysis technique are combined to abductively develop a framework to identify, analyse and compare complex procurement policies and practices in public sector organisations. Defence is the focal case and is compared with cases in the Nuclear, Local Government and Health sectors.

The study provides a framework for undertaking a lifecycle analysis to understand the challenges and capabilities of complex, public-sector buyers. Eighteen hierarchically-arranged themes are identified and used in conjunction with agency theory and institutional theory to explain complex procurement policy and practice variation in some of the UK’s highest-profile public buyers. The study findings provide a classification of complex buyers and offer valuable guidance for practitioners and researchers navigating complex procurement contexts.

The lifecycle approach proposed is a new research tool providing a bespoke application of theory by considering each lifecycle phase as an individual but related element that is governed by unique institutional pressures and principal-agent relationships.

This paper aims to identify the values antecedents of women’s social entrepreneurship. It explores where and how these values emerge and how they underpin the perceived desirability and feasibility of social venture creation.

Values development across the life-course is interrogated through retrospective sense-making by thirty UK-based women social entrepreneurs.

The findings express values related to empathy, social justice and action-taking, developed, consolidated and challenged in a variety of experiential domains over time. The cumulative effects of these processes result in the perceived desirability and feasibility of social entrepreneurial venture creation as a means of effecting social change and achieving coherence between personal values and paid work, prompting social entrepreneurial action-taking.

This paper offers novel, contextualised insights into the role that personal values play as antecedents to social entrepreneurship. It contributes to the sparse literature focussed on both women’s experiences of social entrepreneurship generally, and on their personal values specifically.

As higher education institutions (HEIs) have increasingly turned to consider sustainability over the last decade, education for sustainable development (ESD) has emerged as a way of imbuing students with the skills, values, knowledge, and attributes to live, work, and create change in societies facing complex and cross-cutting sustainability challenges. However, the question of how HEIs can actively embed ESD more broadly in and across curricula is one that continues to challenge institutions and the HE sector as a whole. While traditional teaching practices and methods associated with subject-based learning may be suitable for educating students about sustainable development, a re-orientation towards more transformational, experiential and action-oriented methods is required to educate for sustainable development. The need for educators to share their practices and learn lessons from each other is essential in this transformation.

This paper presents a selection of practical examples of how to embed a range of interactive, exploratory, action-oriented, problem-based, experiential and transformative ESD offerings into HE teaching practice and curricula. Presented by a group of academics and professional services staff at the University of Strathclyde who lead key modules and programmes in the institution’s ESD provision, this paper reflects on five approaches taken across the four faculties at Strathclyde (Humanities and Social Sciences, Science, Engineering and the Strathclyde Business School) and examines the challenges, practicalities and opportunities involved in establishing a collaborative programme of ESD.

The impact of innovative web portals on users, from access to application, is gaining interest as the global call for increased data availability gains momentum. This study reports on the perceptions of portal end users about usage and access to digital data across a range of fields of practice.

Data were collected and analysed from interviews (n = 132) and email feedback (n = 235) from end users of interoperable spatial knowledge web portals.

Data reveal that users attribute importance to ease of access and applicability, and to confidence and trust in data. The acquisition of data assists with reducing knowledge silos, facilitates knowledge sharing and decision-making. Digital data portals enable the building of stronger collaborations between different groups of individuals and communities leading to improved outcomes and more positive developments across varied discipline and practice areas.

Recommendations for developing online portals to optimise knowledge transfer and associated benefits, for users, are offered.

By collecting extensive qualitative data drawn from the experiences of end users of digital data portals, this paper provides new insights, thereby addressing a knowledge gap in the published literature about the use of technology uptake and the application of online data for practice and industry benefit.