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This paper aims to discuss the importance of building internal capabilities for change. The main elements of building capabilities are highlighted, along with the benefits. In particular, there is focus on building resilience and how it can help people to respond to and cope with changes more effectively and efficiently. The paper concludes by emphasizing that developing resilience takes time but that research shows that it can impact on how individuals engage in organizational change.

The approach taken is a review of the literature. Data are also used from a group of executive MBA students who were asked what capabilities they thought were necessary to lead and manage change.

Findings show that resilience is a key capability for leading and managing organizational change. The components of resilience play a vital role in enabling people to cope with change.

The practical implications are that organizations need to develop the capabilities for change to ensure that change is sustained in organizations. Managers and HR staff should consider ways of building capabilities for change, especially resilience.

The value of this paper is that it emphasizes the importance of building capabilities for change, especially resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the obstacles to women’s advancement in Saudi Arabia. The paper addresses the question “what are women’s experiences of becoming leaders and what influences their leadership practice?” It does this by drawing on gender and Middle Eastern literature, as well as empirical evidence of the perceptions, experience and challenges of women in Saudi.

The study contributes a consideration of the academic literature, supported by empirical findings from 25 interviews with professional women in Saudi Arabia. The data identify the perceptions, experiences and challenges of professional women in Saudi. It concludes by outlining the practical need for the review and promotion of policies to eradicate inequalities in the workplace.

The data show that the challenges faced by professional women in Saudi Arabia are social, religious, cultural and organizational. The findings reveal that women’s relationship to self, others, place and work are key influencers in how they perceive and experience leadership. The findings also indicate the need for a review and promotion of policies to eradicate inequalities which prevent women from becoming leaders.

The research limitations are that it focuses on a small number of professional women in Saudi Arabia (n = 25). However, Saudi Arabia is a country where research access is difficult; therefore, this research has significant implications for beginning to understand women and their experience of leadership in Saudi. It also addresses a gap in the scant research which does exist in this area.

The study highlights that unless significant barriers are removed, women will not progress to higher leadership positions in organizations. The future role of women as leaders in Saudi Arabia will require society, organizations and women themselves to change the traditional role-expectations of women. The paper considers what can be done to create a more levelled platform for women to operate in organizations at senior levels.

The findings and recommendations will prove useful in raising awareness among policymakers and practitioners regarding the experiences and the obstacles faced by women in Saudi Arabia because of the social, religious and culture context in which they live.

This study contributes to enriching the gender and leadership literature in a country that has been poorly addressed so far. Its originality lies in the context of Saudi Arabia. The research is significant in that, in examining women’s perceptions of the challenges and opportunities of leadership in the workplace, it provides an understanding of women’s experience of leadership in Saudi that has not previously been considered in the literature on women in the Middle East. This study therefore contributes to understanding the how and why of leadership by listening to the ways in which women learn and practise leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the transition of midlife women from employment in organizations to self‐employment. It examines how midlife women account for their transition from organizations to self‐employment; why they opted for self‐employment rather than simply changing organizations and their experience of self‐employment.

This paper is based on semi‐structured interviews (n=100), with women between the ages of 46 and 60 who have moved into self‐employment from organizational employment.

Two themes emerged from the study. The first was the negative organizational experience of some of the women which had caused dissatisfaction and disenchantment and therefore self‐employment was seen as the only next step. The second theme was changes triggered by a positive proactive choice to move into self‐employment.

There are limitations to using individual perceptions and anecdotes. It cannot be assumed that the women in this study represent the views of all midlife women.

Silence about midlife women leaving organizations perpetuates high costs for both the organization and the individual involved. Organizations need to address the negative and discriminatory perceptions about midlife women and recognize the trend towards more, not fewer, older women in the workplace and value the experience, skills and knowledge they bring.

The paper is original in that the focus is on women in midlife, which is unique, as previous research about women in organizations has rarely encompassed the experiences of this group of women moving into self‐employment.

This chapter uncovers the destabilizing and transformative dimensions of a legal process commonly described as assimilation. Lawyers working on behalf of a marginalized group often argue that the group merits inclusion in dominant institutions, and they do so by casting the group as like the majority. Scholars have criticized claims of this kind for affirming the status quo and muting significant differences of the excluded group. Yet, this chapter shows how these claims may also disrupt the status quo, transform dominant institutions, and convert distinctive features of the excluded group into more widely shared legal norms. This dynamic is observed in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, and specifically through attention to three phases of LGBT advocacy: (1) claims to parental recognition of unmarried same-sex parents, (2) claims to marriage, and (3) claims regarding the consequences of marriage for same-sex parents. The analysis shows how claims that appeared assimilationist – demanding inclusion in marriage and parenthood by arguing that same-sex couples are similarly situated to their different-sex counterparts – subtly challenged and reshaped legal norms governing parenthood, including marital parenthood. While this chapter focuses on LGBT claims, it uncovers a dynamic that may exist in other settings.

This chapter comments on the papers produced as part of the symposium on Law and the Imagining of Difference. The chapter observes that the diversity that marks the human species gives rise to differences across individuals and groups. These differences create a challenge for law, for legal rules, and categories tend, among other things, to flatten or suppress difference. How to ensure that law treats differences properly? One way is to require that legal rules be rationally related to a proper purpose. Another is to require that persons be treated equally. If the principle of equality solves certain problems of flattening, it also may create problems. The key to applying properly the principle of equality, then, is to answer a set of antecedent questions: “who” must be treated as equal to whom, “with respect to what” rights or interests, and “how”? Martha Minow has provided rubrics for addressing these questions in ways that uncover problematic applications of the principle of equality. The chapter addresses the distinct versions of equality presupposed in claims for Douglas NeJaime’s arguments for same-sex marriage, Julie C. Suk’s social and economic approach to sex-based equality, and Megan A. Conway’s and Zanita E. Fenton’s ambitious explorations of the value of equality in the law of disabled persons. The chapter concludes that law can be directly responsive to some claims of inequality, but that other claims will require something other than law.

After having read Julie McLeod's opinion piece on the lifecycle of records concept, I felt compelled to commit my own opinions to paper. Strange really, I never thought of myself as being a strongly opinionated person, which just goes to show that you do indeed learn something new everyday, even if it is about yourself!

The purpose of this paper is to examine and provide an insight into Canadian post‐secondary institutional repositories (IRs) with respect to user interface features and knowledge organization systems (KOS) used.

The approach is to explore all Canadian post‐secondary institutions and their user interfaces to establish the type of searching and browsing features they have used and whether or not they have made use of KOS such as subject heading lists or classification schemes.

A directory of 27 IRs in Canada is created. Incorporation of KOS in institutional repository is evaluated. The examination is focuses on accessibility, searching, KOS use, and retrieval. Evaluation shows that few IRs have incorporated complex KOS such as controlled vocabularies. Browsing and searching options are available, but user interfaces are usually not modified to enhance information retrieval.

This is the first paper examining Canadian IRs from the perspectives of searching, browsing and the use of KOS.

The purpose of this study was to examined the health effects of raw and cooked aqueous and methanol extracts of Vigna unguiculata on kidney function in Wistar rats.

Thirty-six Wistar rats (weighing 160 ± 10 g) were randomly assigned into nine (9) groups (n = 4). Group I (control): no extract. Groups II and III (aqueous extract of the cooked 350 mg/kg and 550 mg/kg). Groups IV and V (methanol extracts of cooked 350 mg/kg and 550 mg/kg). Groups VI and VII (methanol extracts of raw 350 mg/kg and 550 mg/kg). Groups VIII and IX (aqueous extract of raw 350 mg/kg and 550 mg/kg). After the seventh day of the trial, the rats were euthanized with chloroform, and blood samples were collected for biochemical analysis.

Results showed that the doses applied for cooked and raw V. unguiculata significantly (p < 0.05) enhanced kidney functions by increasing the body weight, glucose level, concentration of serum urea, creatinine, total protein, potassium and chloride in test groups compared with control. The packed cell volume and haemoglobin concentrations of raw aqueous extract at 550 mg/kg (36.5 ± 5.1; 12.3 ± 2.8) were significantly (p = 0.001) higher (29.8 ± 11.8; 10.3 ± 3.9) than the 350 mg/kg dose of the same extract, and cooked aqueous extract at 350 mg/kg dose was significantly (p = 0.001) higher (28.0 ± 10.1; 9.3 ± 3.4) than that of 550 mg/kg (25.8 ± 4.9; 8.8 ± 3.9) dose of the extracts.

The nutritional content of V. unguiculata potentially can augment the nutritional content of a diet and to a large extent, the regular consumers’ health. Essentially, V. unguiculata is composed of both macro and micronutrients capable of promoting normal kidney function.