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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential fruitfulness of the theory of Alasdair MacIntyre for understanding how social enterprises may facilitate well-being, using empirical evidence from doctoral research to illustrate this.

This paper is based on findings from research conducted at a mental health training and employment organisation which used gardening as rehabilitative tool. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews with staff, volunteers and service users were used to generate the data, a MacIntyrean lens used to analyse the data, and some suggestions are made as to why social enterprises may be particularly suited to such an approach.

Practitioners encouraged the seeking of “internal goods” or “goods of excellence” within practices, as it was this which was understood to facilitate well-being. Service users shared in this view, perceiving their time on the case site primarily as “work” and choosing to engage with the service out of a desire to meaningfully contribute to the community project.

This research is conducted on a small scale and therefore lacks generalisability. The lack of comparison with other organisational forms using the same practice is also a limitation.

This theory offers an alternative lens for considering how social enterprises might contribute to well-being. The data presented here also complement the growing body of research literature on Work Integration Social Enterprises, considering some of the wider well-being benefits beyond work integration, which thus far has received limited empirical attention.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a case study that identifies the practical issues and implications of employer engagement through course design, delivery and employee commitment in a higher education course delivered in the financial services sector.

Using a case study the paper draws on the course team (employer and university) experience of a higher education course delivered at a financial services institution over a two cohort period. Student application data and student feedback are used to identify the practical issues arising from course.

The paper emphasises the importance of understanding the business of the employer, bespoke delivery models and employee commitment for increasing employer participation in higher skills in the work place, particularly for employers not traditionally engaging with universities for course delivery at undergraduate level.

The paper explores issues for employers and universities for design, delivery and sustainability of higher skills in the work place.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

When UK internet and phone bank First Direct announced the ground‐breaking and adventurous collaboration between business and academia, with the chance for its staff to study for a foundation degree in business studies, an important lesson was drawn from this Yorkshire‐based success story. After the hard work of engaging and sustaining the essential support of employers, then the really hard work starts – sustaining the interest of employees from enrolment, through delivery and to completion of an award.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that can have a broader social impact.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The following article is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned-entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Jacob Rosen, a Professor of Medical Robotics at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he directs the Bionics Lab. Professor Rosen is also the Director of Surgical Robotics Engineering at the UCLA School of Medicine’s Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology and has joint appointments at UCLA’s Department of Surgery and UCLA’s Department of Bioengineering. Professor Rosen is the co-founder of the companies Applied Dexterity, ExoSense and SPI. As a pioneer in medical robotics devices and technologies, Professor Rosen describes his unique approaches and philosophies.

Dr Rosen received his BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering, MSc and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University in 1987, 1993 and 1997, respectively. From 1987 to 1992, he served as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces studying human–machine interfaces. From 1993 to 1997, he was a research associate at Tel-Aviv University, as well as held a position at a startup company developing innovative orthopedic spine/pelvis implants. From 2001-2013, he held faculty positions at the University of Washington and at University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr Rosen developed several key systems in the field of medical robotics, such as the Blue and the Red Dragon, for minimally invasive surgical skill evaluation; RAVEN, a surgical robotic system for telesurgery; and several generations of upper and lower limb exoskeletons including the Exo-UL7 – a dual arm wearable robotic system. He is a co-author of 100 manuscripts in the field of medical robotics and a co-author and co-editor of two books entitled “Surgical Robotics – Systems, Applications, and Visions” and “Redundancy in Robot Manipulators and Multi-robot systems” published by Springer. Professor Rosen has filed eight different patent applications and also works as an expert witness and consultant on design, patent protection & litigation and malpractice regarding surgical robotics.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

The 1980s and 1990s at Stanford University were a uniquely productive era for research on organizations and labor markets. I describe three important, interconnected themes that characterize the research on organizations and labor markets that emerged from Stanford during this era: the central role of the firm in a multi-level system that determines labor market outcomes, the role of institutions in both creating and constraining labor market outcomes, and the dynamic, often unexpected, consequences of labor market outcomes. I describe the genesis and development of each theme and conclude by discussing what lessons can be learned from this era about creating an innovative and productive research culture.

In this chapter, the author argues that in order to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goal 4 which calls for education to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030,” transformative leadership may be key. Transformative leadership goes well beyond traditional technical and rational approaches to leadership; it includes but extends theories such as social justice leadership and transformational leadership and involves two general principles and eight interconnected tenets. These include knowing oneself, one’s community and organization; deconstructing frameworks that perpetuate inequity and reconstructing them in more equitable ways; addressing the inequitable distribution of power; emphasizing individual and collective good; focusing on democracy emancipation, equity, and justice as well as interconnectedness and global awareness; and offering both critique and promise. Transformative leadership theory is a critical, holistic, and normative approach that focuses on values, and on beliefs and mindsets as well as knowledge and action. It is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equity, and democratic society. Thus, it is an approach to leadership that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-xenophobic, etc.; it calls for rejection of deficit thinking and for inclusive and equitable practices that require moral courage. It is such a holistic and critical theory that would help to promote the United Nations’ education goal by the target of 2030.

Contemporary global mobility and dual careers are two key features of working life today. Little is known, however, about where they intersect, where one partner travels for their career, while the other partner is left behind, caring for the family and attempting to manage their own career. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the partner’s career is impacted by the traveller’s absence, and the strategies employed to enable their continued career development.

The paper employs a qualitative methodology, drawing on semi-structured interviews with the partners of international yachtsmen.

The findings highlight the prioritisation of the traveller’s career, for reasons of finance and their passion for their career. The implications of this could be detrimental to the partner’s career. Personalised, flexible working arrangements are essential in order for the partner to achieve a sustainable career of their own.

The gendered nature of the sample provides an opportunity for further research examining the implications of the female being the traveller and the male the stay at home partner.

The paper examines a range of alternative strategies for maintaining or developing the career when also faced with additional family responsibilities.

This paper gives consideration to the career of the stay at home partner. A new dual-career strategy is identified – the entrepreneurial secondary career strategy, which has the potential to deliver the flexibility required to manage both work and family demands, and allow partners to enact their authentic career.

Today many young people are choosing to become vegetarian. Others are finding meatless meals appetising and attractive as they make a conscious effort to eat more healthily. So this year the Kraft Nutrition Award judges asked senior competitors to imagine they were having a vegetarian friend to stay and to plan a day's meals of breakfast, a packed lunch and special occasion meal for the evening. The twelve finalists were then invited to the Kraft kitchens in Cheltenham to prepare a few of their chosen dishes and to answer questions to test their overall knowledge of food, nutrition and healthy eating.

While a considerable amount of knowledge has been accumulated about dispute causation, disputes continue to prevail and disharmonise the process of construction with considerable cost. This paper seeks to identify the underlying pathogens that clients and contractors perceive to contribute to disputes in construction projects. The identification of pathogens can provide an ameliorated understanding of the origin of disputes and therefore enable their prevention.

Case law and focus groups with a client and contracting organisation from Western Australia are used to determine the pathogens of disputes.

Analysis of the case law findings revealed that the underlying issues that were brought to litigation were to do with points of law, namely “civil procedure”. A significant number of disputes are thus settled using alternative dispute resolution methods such as adjudication, arbitration and mediation. For clients the underlying latent conditions that resulted in a dispute were due to the nature of the task being performed (e.g. failure to detect and correct errors) and those arising from people's deliberate practices (e.g. failure to oblige by contractual requirements). For the contractor focus group the circumstances arising from the situation or environment the project was operating in were identified as the main underlying latent condition for disputes (e.g. unforeseen scope changes).

Focus groups are only undertaken with clients and contracting groups as they were identified as the main parties involved in dispute during the analysis of litigation cases within Western Australia. Input from consultants and subcontractors may provide a more balanced perspective as to the perceived causes and costs of disputes.

The research has been able to provide the initial building blocks for understanding the underlying pathogens contributing to disputes. However, more empirical research is required before conclusive findings can be made, particularly with regard to the influences on subcontractors.