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This paper aims to outline the process of developing a new co-produced virtual group support programme called Positive Family Connections (PFC) aimed at family carers of children with a learning disability, or who are autistic, aged between 8 and 13 years.

Development process: family carers were recruited to develop PFC prior to a feasibility randomised controlled trial being conducted (not reported in this paper). The programme was positively oriented and family systems-focused. PFC was developed by family carers, along with the research team, and designed to be delivered by family carer facilitators. The development process included several meetings to design the format and content of the programme. An initial pilot was then delivered and further amendments made to the programme in response to the pilot participants’ feedback.

The programme: the co-produced PFC programme involved attending six weekly sessions on Zoom; each 2-h session focused on different themes (e.g. communication and activities).

Reflections on the co-production process: key ingredients of co-production included ensuring clarity on roles, positive communication and understanding of the family carers’ situation and utilising the varied skills family carers can bring to research and practise.

This is the first family systems-focused programme that the authors know of, that has been co-produced with family carers and solely delivered virtually by trained family carer facilitators from the outset.

This paper aims to analyse the post‐crisis communication response of the UK oil industry both from a management and employee perspective following two major helicopter incidents in 2009. The purpose of this paper is to develop further understanding of the merits of a cross‐industry post‐crisis communication strategy for certain crisis types.

This research is a single case study focusing on the Helicopter Task Group (HTG). Thirteen members of the HTG were interviewed and 250 questionnaires distributed to the workforce. Results were analysed against a literature review of current post‐crisis communication theory.

The study demonstrates that where a crisis is deemed to genuinely cross company boundaries, an inter‐organisational approach to post‐crisis communications is of mutual benefit to all stakeholders, providing certain conditions for dialogue are met.

This paper only focuses on one crisis event. Further research is required with other inter‐organisational groups formed to lead a cross‐industry response to a crisis.

This case study provides a model for cross‐industry pre‐crisis planning and post‐crisis renewal strategy where the aim is not to attribute blame, but to respond to a wider community of concerns and issues that are deemed to cross company and institutional boundaries.

The research demonstrates that the process of rebuilding stakeholder relationships and renewal is possible prior to any formal attribution of blame or apology.

This paper aims to examine whether and how two firm-level factors jointly moderate the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and firm performance: (1) the “alignment” between a firm's CSR activities and risk preferences and (2) performance measurement systems (PMS).

Using survey responses from top managers of private Italian companies and matching archival data on the financial performance of these companies, the authors show that the positive effect of CSR activities on firm performance is contingent upon CSR–risk alignment, which creates competitive advantages, and the extent to which the firm's PMS are supportive of its strategic initiatives.

The findings suggest that to extract economic benefits from CSR activities, firms must align CSR activities with their risk preferences and rely on PMS to overcome the causal ambiguity between CSR activities and competitive advantage.

Overall, this study contributes to both the CSR–firm performance and consequences of PMS literature and holds significant practical implications.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Obesity in children and adolescents is a significant public health concern. The World Health Organization Health Promoting Schools (HPS) framework promotes good nutrition and physical activity in school settings. While HPS is embraced globally, effective implementation and sustainable programmes are a continued challenge. This paper aims to report on the characteristics of current school interventions based on HPS and implementation barriers and enablers.

A literature search identified peer-reviewed studies of school health interventions reflective of the HPS framework focusing on obesity prevention. Studies from all countries were included, if conducted in primary and/or secondary schools; included a sufficient amount of qualitative implementation or process evaluation data to draw conclusions regarding key barriers and enablers to implementation; and were published in English.

Nine interventions (n = 9) from seven countries were included. Most were implemented in primary schools and focused on specific grade levels. Engaging parents, the home environment, teacher time constraints, fun interventions, student participation, teacher training, integration with the curriculum and stakeholder engagement all emerged as strong implementation themes. Teachers as role models, establishing community partnerships and policy support also emerged as common themes.

Future interventions may benefit from enhancing teacher and parent health promotion. Partnerships with initiatives focusing on environmental sustainability may simultaneously benefit human and planetary health while strengthening stakeholder engagement opportunities and consistent messaging throughout the community. More comprehensive evaluation data are needed, in particular, for long-term HPS initiatives.

The knowledge of goals of the successor, who is preparing to take over the business, is extremely important for the succession process and further operation of a family enterprise. The aim of this study is to structure the goals of Polish family enterprises’ successors and to develop a Synthetic Model of the goals of Polish family enterprises' successors with the application of grey clustering evaluation models.

Research into the specifics of the diagnosis and assessment of the goals set for the successors of the first succession in family businesses in Poland was carried out in the third quarter of 2016 at two stages using two research methods: in-depth group interview and individual interview. The main aim of the first stage was the extraction of subjectively identified goals by family enterprises' successors (based on their succession experience). The statements were open and obtained during two in-depth group interviews (2 FGI) with successors being in the process of succession at its various stages (total, n = 14). The respondents presented their experiences connected with the succession process along with emotions that are associated with it. In one of the interview stages, the respondents were asked to enumerate their individual goals they set for themselves in the context of upcoming changes. Next, the group agreed on the most frequently mentioned goals by creating their verbal interpretation. The obtained list of 20 goals was recorded and discussed, and thanks to the application of the elimination rule in the collective decision-making process, that list was reduced to 10 goals, which was approved by all participating successors.

The results show the developed Synthetic Model of the goals of family enterprises’ successors. The study singled out four groups of successors: (1) successors who do not work in the family enterprise yet, (2) successors holding lower-level positions, (3) successors holding managerial positions, (4) successors who manage the entire company. As a result of the calculations, the developed Synthetic Model of the goals of family enterprises' successors was positively verified for successors working in higher-level positions and successors managing the entire family enterprise.

In order to use the results of clustering, e.g. for conducting studies on large samples with the use of statistical tools, a reduced number of goals should be taken into account. A thorough study of three goals may bring results similar to the study of the original ten successors of Polish family enterprises in the process of succession. The aim of future research is to develop a mathematical model using optimization functions that enable selection of elements representing individual clusters in such a way that it leads to the extraction of the elements with the highest value in relation to the accepted criterion for assessing their value.

In the future, conducting family business research in accordance with the developed methodology requires a look at the proposed list of successor goals obtained during the Focus Group Interview (FGI) as it could be shortened using the Cluster of Grey Incidence method. Shortening the list of goals has its analytic and practical justifications. The study of the full list of goals in subsequent (and numerous further studies) could lead to errors related to, for example, different interpretation of goals among the investigated successors. Furthermore, the full list of goals would increase costs and extend research time.

The role and contributions of blue and gray collar employees in strategy making in practice are generally ignored, and left out of scientific inquiry. However, the authors argue that they are “hidden actors” in the strategy making process, and “silent heroes” of the strategy. Their participative role is generally seen limited to operational phases of strategy. Nevertheless, recent literatures have fruitful implications on blue and gray collars workers’ contributions in formulation phase. Upper echelon (Hambrick, 1987; Hambrick & Mason, 1984) and strategy as practice (SAP) literatures (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009; Whittington, 2006) are suggested to be closely scrutinized since the former has incorporated the middle- and low-level teams of management in the explanation (Carpenter, Geletkancz, & Sanders, 2004), and the latter takes “practice” as a prominent research perspective, and thus enable us to approach strategy phenomena from a wider context of practitioners, practices, and praxis (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Jarzabkowski & Wilson, 2002). Overall, this chapter suggests that future studies could question the hidden assumptions behind strategy approaches to trace the assumed image and role of blue and gray collars in strategy making, and go further to integrate their deserved role in strategy process, content, context, and cognition.

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.

This paper aims to present demographic characteristics and postgraduate employment trends of business doctoral graduates, especially the proportion that are underrepresented minorities (URMs) over time.

The authors analyze the near census of individuals receiving doctoral degrees in a wide range of business disciplines from US-accredited universities from 1973 to 2018 (n = 50,091) contained with the National Science Foundation Survey of Earned Doctorates. The authors analyze how the proportion of URM graduates, by discipline, has changed over time both in terms of receiving a doctoral degree and entering an academic position.

The proportion of URM graduates fluctuated between approximately 5% and 15% annually, steadily increasing across decades. Overall, 64.4% of all graduates entered an academic position, with notably higher rates among whites (72.1%) compared to Blacks (51.8%), Hispanics (60.4%) and other URMs (56.4%) (p < 0.001). In adjusted models, the proportion of URMs that entered academic positions significantly increased overtime, beginning in the 1990s and peaked in the 2000s. Although the few institutions that graduated the highest number of URMs do not currently have an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business school, the authors identify several exemplar institutions where URM graduates entered academic jobs at the highest rates.

The authors provide demographic trends that shed light on ways to influence an increase in URM doctoral graduates from business disciplines into academic careers. This discussion is of interest to university administrators and other stakeholders interested in diversity issues in higher education.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares these relationships in England, Australia and the USA.

Three nations were examined: Australia, England and the USA (n = 1,776). Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: organizational dissent scale, perceived immediacy measure, computer-mediated immediate behaviors measure and measure of online communication attitude.

The results reveal supervisors’ computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy both positively predict dissent. Some aspects of online communication attitudes positively predict computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy. In addition, attitudes toward online communication positively predict dissent. National culture influences some of these relationships; in each case the effects were substantively larger for the USA when compared to the other nations.

This study is the first to cross-culturally analyze dissent and immediacy. In addition, this study considers the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic influences the superior–subordinate relationship.