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The literature on precarious and insecure work rarely examines how workers with jobs in large bureaucratic firms experience insecurity. Current theories suggest two approaches. First, workers might focus on their individual occupation and detach their commitment from firms that no longer reciprocate long-term commitments. Second, employees might respond with increased organizational commitment because leaving an employer creates risks of uncertainty. Based on in-depth interviews with 22 financial services professionals, this paper refines our understanding of when workers focus on intra-organizational career development. This happens when large firms offer opportunities for advancement and foster loyalty. I develop the terms spiral staircase and serial monogamy career. A spiral staircase career results when workers take entrepreneurial approaches to advancement that include lateral job changes and vertical promotions within a firm. When the local labor market has multiple firms in their sector, career advancement may take an intermediate form, in which workers spend medium-to-long-term stints with multiple organizations. I call this the serial monogamy career. My research shows how sector characteristics and geography can impact worker commitment and mobility in insecure environments.

Medical uncertainty is recognized as a critical issue in the sociology of diagnosis and medical sociology more generally, but a neglected focus of this concern is the question of patient decision making. Using a mixed methods approach that draws upon autoethnographic accounts and third-party interviews, we aim to illuminate the dilemmas of patient decision making in the face of uncertainty. How do patients and supportive caregivers go about navigating this state of affairs? What types of patient–doctor/healthcare professional relationships hinder or enhance effective patient decision making? These are the themes we explore in this study by following patients through the sequence of experiencing symptoms, seeking a diagnosis, evaluating treatment protocols, and receiving treatments. In general, three genres of culturally available narratives are revealed in the data: strategic, technoluxe, and unbearable health narratives.

Seeing inclusive education as a process of removing barriers and dis-abilities and to foster participation and learning for all students in educational organizations (Ainscow & Sandill, 2010; Florian & Beaton, 2018), research approaches and perspectives are valuable for sustaining a theoretically, analytically and methodologically consistent perspective on social order and structural barriers as well as on their transformation. This analytical research perspective challenges researchers to reflect on the positionality and normativity of their research as well as the problem of reification of deficit-oriented categories in educational research (Messiou, 2017). The chapter analyses how the problem of normativity and reification is addressed in the practice of international qualitative research and publishing, in regard to inclusive education. It endeavours to provoke critical thinking about how inclusive education research can target these challenges by discussing interpretative and reconstructive research approaches. Hence, the paper explores how to develop ways of analysing processes and practices regarding inclusion and exclusion.

This chapter challenges and augments the received view of the history of symbolic interaction at the University of Chicago. The history of the discipline’s development at the University of Chicago between 1889 and 1935 is well-known, especially the work of George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, sometimes called “the Chicago school of sociology” or symbolic interaction. But the Hull-House school of sociology, led by Jane Addams, is largely unknown. In this chapter I explore her founding role in feminist symbolic interaction. Her perspective analyzes micro, meso, and macro levels of theory and practice. Feminist symbolic interaction is structural, political, rational, and emotional, and employs abstract and specific models for action. Addams led a wide network of people, including sociologists, her neighbors, and other citizens, who implemented and institutionalized their shared visions. Addams led many controversial social movements, including the international peace movement, recognized in 1931 by the Nobel Peace Prize. “Feminist symbolic interaction” expands the scope of symbolic interaction by being more action-oriented, more political, and more focused on a successful social change model than the traditional approach to this theory. In addition, many new sociologists are added to the lists of important historical figures.

Purpose: This chapter aims to critically explore the nature of mentoring initiatives through the conceptual lenses of social capital and communities of practice offering a distinctive understanding of talent management (TM) innovations in the international hospitality industry.

Methodology/approach: It achieves its aim through identifying and analysing current mentoring initiatives operating in the international hospitality sector, and scrutinises how they provide a sector level approach to TM challenges.

Findings: Industry level mentoring initiatives emerge as TM innovations connecting employees within networks across the international hospitality sectors. Mentoring creates bonds and bridges between senior and junior employees beyond their own workplaces, connecting them to the industry and supporting TM by enhancing the identification of opportunities and the recognition of talent. These initiatives also act as learning communities where contemporary TM dilemmas can be explored by participants from diverse backgrounds and between generations.

Research limitations/implications: The findings rely on the identification and exploration of publically available data, and therefore future primary data collection would yield richer insights into the experiences of stakeholders of these mentoring initiatives as TM innovations.

Social implications: Mentoring initiatives can exemplify innovative ways of supporting TM and addressing diversity and inequality issues in fragmented and dispersed sectors, such as the international hospitality industry.

Originality/value of paper: The exploration of contemporary mentoring initiatives in the international hospitality industry identifies the value of cross-industry TM innovations stretching beyond stakeholders, such as educators, employers and policy-makers. It identifies mentoring initiatives as mechanisms for creating bonds and bridges between those industry aspirants at various career stages where diversity and inclusion may be a challenge in a fragmented and dispersed sector.

In 2019, the Kaurna Nation and traditional custodians of the Adelaide plains in South Australia, challenged the City of Holdfast Bay to walk alongside them to create an exhibition exploring the true history of South Australia’s colonisation. This collaboration ultimately became the award-winning exhibition ‘Tiati Wangkanthi Kumangka’ (Truth-Telling Together). This project was envisioned, led, and implemented by the Kaurna Nation at the Bay Discovery Centre in South Australia. Ultimately, ‘Tiati’ became more than just another exhibition. It became a pathway to healing and possibility for both the Kaurna Nation and the City of Holdfast Bay. When considering indigenisation of museum spaces, ‘Tiati’ demonstrates how smaller museums and/or local government can play a pivotal role in reshaping the traditional narrative of colonialism in Australia’s museums, with the voice of First Nations people at the forefront.

To determine the influence of the development of clustering of the national business environment on the level of digital competitiveness.

The research was performed using the following methods: statistical analysis, correlation analysis and comparative analysis.

We study the influence of the development of clustering of the national business environment on the level of digital competitiveness. It is revealed that the studied developed countries (Singapore, Denmark and Switzerland) demonstrate a high level of clustering of business, which is assessed through the use of the indicator ‘State of сluster development’, and a high level of digital competitiveness. The considered developing countries (Peru, Mexico and the Philippines) have medium values of the above variables. Only Peru was able to use a highly effective mechanism of clustering, which influenced the digitalisation of sectors of the economy, which have business clusters. We also describe the competitive advantages of the development of cluster entrepreneurial structures, which ensure their economic and market success.

The scientific novelty of the results obtained is due to the elaboration on the specifics of the influence of the cluster strategy of business integration on the level of national digital competitiveness.

The authors analyse the development and implementation of the standard for the Legal Entity Identifier as a case of creating information-based assets through the establishment of an infrastructure that certifies the accuracy and validity of identity data. The authors term this process capitalization by certification. The findings describe a process whereby an identification infrastructure – including a non-replicable methodology for assessing data quality – is established that contributes to making the developer and controller of that methodology, an irreplaceable intermediary for users of the infrastructure; this in spite of the need for an associated reference data infrastructure to be open and widely accessible to all participants for the infrastructure to be successful. The findings indicate that in the process, assets are created on the basis of openly accessible data through certifying of a desired set of qualities to be achieved by adopters and the infrastructure. This, in turn, provides a starting point toward better understanding and theorizing of wider processes of data capitalization, encountered throughout the digital economy but which are also crucial to establishing information infrastructures that support cognitive action.