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Knowledge is a key success factor in achieving competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to examine how mobile health technology facilitates knowledge management (KM) practices to enhance a public health service in an emerging economies context. Specifically, the acceptance of a knowledge-resource application by community health workers (CHWs) to deliver breast cancer health care in India, where resources are depleted, is explored.

Fieldwork activity conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with frontline CHWs, which were analysed using an interpretive inductive approach.

The application generates knowledge as a resource that signals quality health care and yields a positive reputation for the public health service. The CHW’s acceptance of technology enables knowledge generation and knowledge capture. The design facilitates knowledge codification and knowledge transfer of breast cancer information to standardise quality patient care.

KM insights are provided for the implementation of mobile health technology for frontline health-care professionals in an emerging economies context. The knowledge-resource application can deliver breast cancer care, in localised areas with the potential for wider contexts. The outcomes are valuable for policymakers, health service managers and KM practitioners in an emerging economies context.

The legacy of the mobile heath technology is the normalisation of breast cancer discourse and the technical up-skilling of CHWs.

First, this paper contributes three propositions to KM scholarship, in a public health care, emerging economies context. Second, via an interdisciplinary theoretical lens (signalling theory and technology acceptance model), this paper offers a novel conceptualisation to illustrate how a knowledge-resource application can shape an organisation’s KM to form a resource-based competitive advantage.

To study the reasons why UK social enterprises are not yet fulfilling their potential due to the lack of support and trust on the part of key decision makers.

The study was based in Tees Valley, the southernmost sub‐region in northeast England, which has suffered from a decline in its traditional industries over the past 30 years. Reports the results of in‐depth qualitative interviews with 18 local authority economic regeneration officers and leading local strategic partnership managers across the five borough councils as key stakeholders across Tees Valley to explore potential barriers to the development of the social enterprises sector in this sub‐region. Explains that each interview focused on: perceived differences in the culture of the social enterprise sector compared with private business and the public sector; representation of the sector in key decision making in the sub‐region; the potential for developing entrepreneurship and foresight in the sector; and opinions on the level of support required for capacity building.

The results indicated that key stakeholders in the public sector assume that there is a value continuum between the voluntary and community sector, through the social enterprise sector, to the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, while the assumption is also that the closer an organization is to the voluntary and community sector, the more likely that it will be driven by its social values. Supports the view that social enterprises are both “value led” and “market driven”.

Draws on previously unpublished data from a research project that aimed to assess the size, shape and scope of the social enterprise sector for Tees Valley Partnership.

The purpose of this paper is to review live-client learning activities in higher education, highlighting a lack of multi-stakeholder evaluation of “learning by doing” pedagogies in current literature. It extends existing discussion of employability outcomes, dominated by findings from larger organisations, towards arguably, a more meaningful concept: “employagility”; whereby graduates engage in “agile” life-long skills development, through exposure to learning within small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME), enhancing potential to contribute to local and wider economies.

Findings from in-depth, semi-structured interviews and reflective learning journals, captured from triangulated perspectives, presented as the “3Es”: employers, educators and engagers (in this case, undergraduate marketing students).

Students identified involvement in “real” live-client projects, applying knowledge learned in the classroom to solve a business problem, enabled them to develop skills demanded by employers. Clients noted how student work exceeded expectations, providing tangible outputs and innovative ideas for their business, even through limited periods of interaction. Educators explained how relatively simple changes to curricula and extra-curricular activities can enable the development of SME-relevant “agile” graduates.

With SMEs at the forefront of government programmes to lead economic recovery, it is imperative higher education institutions recognise the need for development of appropriately “agile” graduates. This paper contributes a new 3Es model illustrating mutual benefits of collaboration, proposing a “competence-employagility” continuum.

Describes the efforts of the owner/directors of a private limited company to put into place a succession strategy. Considers three major themes: second generation entrepreneurs/management succession; action learning as a human resource development strategy and philosophy; and the learning organization. Concludes that people (and organizations) “learn” best from the priorities of the business, once they have been identified, and that organizational learning is really based on institutionalization of what has been learned – requisite learning.

This paper reconsiders the role of critical theory within the field of consumer culture theory.

The paper is documentary evidence of a roundtable held at the 10th annual Consumer Culture Theory conference on the subject. The roundtable uses discussion and conceptual methods.

The author begins with a brief introduction to the use of critical theory in the academy and in CCT more specifically. In the course of the roundtable, it was discovered that the reason we do not talk about critical theory more often may be attributable to its success, rather than failure – indeed, it has inspired so many new academic traditions, that we rarely pause to think of the various critical traditions in one place. Building on this foundation, participants were asked to discuss what critical theory means to them; what theorists they have used; what engagement they have had with critical theory traditions in CCT; and what their vision for critical theory influenced consumer research would be. Participation came from both planned and emergent participants. The final conclusion was the felicitous discovery that critical traditions are alive and well in consumer culture theory, and that there are many pathways to pursue critical consumer research in the future.

The roundtable session and paper are a direct response to the conference theme, which asked conference attendees to reflect on the history of consumer research, and specifically the role of critical theory within it. Moreover, the paper builds upon important debates about the philosophy of science and the role of critical theory within consumer research.

Five years ago a conference on Children and Marriage would probably not have included a paper on marriages without children. Having children in marriage conforms to one of society's strongest expectations; conversely not having any is portrayed as both undesirable and deviant. Society's prescriptions relating to parenthood have given rise to a number of assumptions about childless marriages. Briefly, these maintain that the causes of childlessness are almost always involuntary, that marriages without children will be less satisfactory and more prone to divorce than parental marriages, and that childlessness is generally associated negatively with various measures of mental health. It is only recently that such assumptions have been questioned, and that voluntary childlessness has become a subject of research in its own right, rather than as an aberration from the “normal” pattern of behaviour. In Britain three chief reasons for an upsurge in interest in childless by choice marriages are apparent. Firstly, there have been indications that couples are delaying childbirth in marriage and this has led to speculation that in some cases, at least, this delay would lead to higher rates of childlessness when this cohort of women had completed childbearing. Figure 1 illustrates both this trend and the fact that in the past high rates of childlessness in early marriage were associated with high rates of final childlessness. Secondly, in 1976 a pressure group was formed by some voluntarily childless individuals; its aim was to campaign for a reduction in pronatalist pressure in society. This group attracted a good deal of interest from the popular press and in the late seventies and early eighties many articles looking at various aspects of voluntary childlessness have been published. Thirdly, and most significantly, voluntary childlessness represents an alternative family form and has come into the realm of sociological studies of the family along with other lifestyles (such as one‐parent families or homosexual couples) that were once considered deviant and therefore outside the mainstream of society. It is now recognised that such living arrangements are both valid as subjects for study in their own right and in terms of the understanding they may give of more traditional arrangements.

This paper develops and tests a descriptive model of management accounting system choice through an empirical analysis of the adoption of innovative cost accounting systems in not-for-profit hospitals. The logistic regression analysis indicates that management accounting system design is impacted by organi zational objectives, technological complexity, and other features of the organizational control system. Descriptive statistics indicate limited use of management accounting techniques common in manufacturing firms, such as standard costing and variance analysis. A cross-lagged model suggests that implementation of an innovative management accounting system may be causally linked to decreasing operating costs.

Human rights figure largely in both rhetoric and practice, and government policy seeks to value and enhance individual equality and quality of life. This paper draws on recent work, some funded by the Judith Trust, to illustrate gaps in the achievement of these ideals. The proposed new single body, a Commission on Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), may offer an improved framework for implementation of policy goals and more fulfilled lives. The Judith Trust aims to improve the lives of people with both learning disabilities and mental health needs.