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Teletext and Viewdata, recently developed information technologies collectively known as Videotext, could have a significant effect on the retail sector over the next few years. It is estimated that by the middle of next year there will be one million households with TV sets capable of receiving teletext, so that several million people will become familiar with the technology. From the retailer's point of view, Viewdata would appear to be more useful since it is “transactional”. The retailer could use it as part of an internal administrative system, or a customer information system, or as an extension of shop based selling. Through viewdata, retailers can offer teleshopping services — so that consumers can order and pay for merchandise by terminal from their homes or places of work. The authors argue that the ‘push button age’, will not radically alter ‘shopping’, as we recognise it today, although it will begin to modify shopping patterns. Customers will continue to visit shops to examine merchandise so that they can have the opportunity to speak to specially trained sales staff. Teleshopping is set to complement existing shopping methods, by offering us all a wider range of shopping choice and ways by which orders can be placed.

Do we want electronic funds transfer? Can we afford it? What's wrong with existing payment systems — cash, cheques and credit cards? These are some of the starting‐off points in a major research project into the impact of micro‐electronics on the banking and retail sectors carried out by the authors of this article during 1981. Interviews were carried out with around 200 people from 150 organisations — banks and major retailers, mostly supermarket groups, department stores, and multiples. Existing payment systems are of course expensive — and cumbersome and insecure. But there are three sets of needs to be considered: not only those of the banks, but also those of the retailer and the consumer. The researchers found that these three parties don't all want the same things, but what is apparent is that the existing payment systems are, in general, acceptable for the retailer and the consumer, but not for the banks. They provide banks with major problems and considerable costs. The researchers conclude: “We did not find the case for EFT proven beyond reasonable doubt.” Such a system has advantages, but the costs would be likely to be paid for by the consumer — for whom the benefits are not very pleasant. Their view is that it is more likely to be the 1990s rather than the 1980s before a total system of on‐line EFT is firmly established. The views expressed in this special feature are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Policy Studies Institute.

The COVID-19 pandemic emphasises the need for antiviral materials that can reduce airborne and surface-based virus transmission. This study aims to propose the use of additive manufacturing (AM) and surrogate modelling for the rapid development and deployment of novel copper-tungsten-silver (Cu-W-Ag) microporous architecture that shows strong antiviral behaviour against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

The research combines selective laser melting (SLM), in-situ alloying and surrogate modelling to conceive the antiviral Cu-W-Ag architecture. The approach is shown to be suitable for redistributed manufacturing by representing the pore morphology through a surrogate model that parametrically manipulates the SLM process parameters: hatch distance (h_d), scan speed (S_s) and laser power (L_p). The method drastically simplifies the three-dimensional (3D) printing of microporous materials by requiring only global geometrical dimensions solving current bottlenecks associated with high computed aided design data transfer required for the AM of porous materials.

The surrogate model developed in this study achieved an optimum parametric combination that resulted in microporous Cu-W-Ag with average pore sizes of 80 µm. Subsequent antiviral evaluation of the optimum architecture showed 100% viral inactivation within 5 h against a biosafe enveloped ribonucleic acid viral model of SARS-CoV-2.

The Cu-W-Ag architecture is suitable for redistributed manufacturing and can help reduce surface contamination of SARS-CoV-2. Nevertheless, further optimisation may improve the virus inactivation time.

The study was extended to demonstrate an open-source 3D printed Cu-W-Ag antiviral mask filter prototype.

The evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic brings new and unpredictable challenges where redistributed manufacturing of 3D printed antiviral materials can achieve rapid solutions.

The papers present for the first time a methodology to digitally conceive and print-on-demand a novel Cu-W-Ag alloy that shows high antiviral behaviour against SARS-CoV-2.

Discrimination is a widespread problem in organizations and has been linked to a variety of negative personal and organizational outcomes (e.g., Hughes & Dodge, 1997; Jones et al., 2016). Confronting is one way to assuage these harmful outcomes. However, several factors can influence whether these confrontation behaviors take place. First, for individuals to confront, they must recognize the discrimination, interpret it as an emergency, take responsibility, identify a response, and decide to intervene (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2008). In addition, factors like identity, type of prejudice, confrontation tone, and relationship to the perpetrator can influence decisions to confront, as well as the outcomes associated with these confrontation behaviors. Overall, this chapter reviews the literature on the antecedents, outcomes, and moderators associated with confrontation. Moreover, this chapter provides recommendations for organizations and future researchers based on the reported findings.

Microfoundational research increasingly strives to examine the interlinkages between various higher- and lower-level structures. To better capture microfounded change processes, I develop the multi-dimensional concept of institutional entrepreneurs’ skills that defines actors’ abilities to enhance institutional change. By a systematic literature review on institutional entrepreneurship, I identify seven institutional entrepreneurs’ skill dimensions: (i) analytical skills, (ii) empathic skills, (iii) framing skills, (iv) translational skills, (v) organizational skills, (vi) tactical skills, and (vii) timing skills. The established concept provides opportunities for future microfoundational research by examining the formation and the application of the seven skill dimensions.

This study used qualitative discourse analysis to explore how researchers use the concept of ingenuity to understand the everyday work of social entrepreneurs. Data were drawn from a sample of 69 research articles published across 41 academic journals between 1998 and 2018. The findings showed ingenuity to be an underdeveloped concept in the social entrepreneurship literature and revealed a paucity of research on the everyday work performed by social entrepreneurs. A framework for studying the work of social entrepreneurs at the “scale of the everyday” through the lens of ingenuity is proposed, and recommendations for future research are provided.

This paper explores the role of institutional objects in the constitution of institutional logics. Institutional objects depend for their objectivity on the goods produced through those objects, such as economic models, passports, or sacred texts. The authors theorize institutional logics as grammars of valuation that institutionalize goods through institutional objects. The authors identify four value moments through which goods are objectified: institution, the instituting of a good, a belief and an imagination of its objective goodness; production, how the good is produced, what practices are productive of the good; evaluation, how good is the good, the practices and objects through which worth in terms of that good is determined, and territorialization, the domain of reference of the good, to what objects and practices a good can and does refer in its instantiations. The authors assess the adequacy of our model through an institutional object based on the good of “market value” – i.e., an options pricing model. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for institutional logical theory and the sociology of valuation.