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Sustainability initiatives are important considerations for twenty-first century institutions. Employees, customers and other stakeholders expect responsible business practices that focus on people, profit and planet in unison. Sustainability efforts require a strong advocate who can champion relevant business practices and embed new practices within the culture and across the entire organization. The purpose of this paper is to explain the tangible actions described as necessary by change agents in order to move sustainability initiatives forward in their organizations. This research employs the narrative provided by these agents in interviews – to inform the activities outlined in an established model of political skill and reputation building. This analysis enables the model to illustrate the sequential patterns and process of events, i.e. antecedents and consequences that are simply assumed in the existing variance models.

This research is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with the sustainability managers from a variety of organization and industry contexts (e.g. building products, hospitals, banking, energy, environmental and manufacturing).

The exploration of sustainability initiatives reveals the importance of the change agent’s reputation for building trust in their organizations. Reputation is fostered through political skill and persuasion, while leveraging social capital.

The research is rich in the depth of individual-level phenomena, thereby highlighting the skills necessary to enact change within a variety of industries. However, given the limited sample size, macro-level issues cannot be addressed.

Political skill is a teachable skill that is enhanced through mentoring and coaching. Sustainability initiatives and their organizations can benefit from leveraging persons with strong reputations to facilitate change. When lacking, persons with content knowledge can be groomed to grow their reputation, network, persuasion and political skills.

Sustainability is vital to the future of our earth and humanity. Business and society would benefit from the growth of this phenomenon.

The authors aim to help change agents achieve their objectives through consideration of not just the goals, but the process as well.

The importance of involving subject matter experts (SMEs) in ERP implementations is well established. SMEs' knowledge of business and system processes are critical to conducting gap analyses and configuring enterprise systems. But what happens to SMEs on completion of the implementation phase? Prior qualitative research found that some organizations return SMEs to their old department, which can contribute to knowledge transfer; while other organizations retain the services of SMEs, to assist in ongoing efforts with support and enhancement of the systems. The purpose of this study is to understand post‐implementation organizational choices – when SMEs are retained and returned. The aim is to understand these choices relative to the goals of their project. Theoretically, organizations that return SMEs move toward a distributed or hybrid model, while organizations that retain SMEs employ a centralized functional‐support structure. In accordance with contingency theory, these structural choices should align with an organization's goals and measures of success.

This research conceptually builds on prior qualitative research, but is still exploratory in nature. The authors report on findings from an online survey conducted with 65 organizations. The sample included small, medium and large firms. Respondents were key decision‐makers in their organization's ERP initiatives (directors and managers) recruited from two user‐group associations (higher education and health care), primarily from the USA and Canada. Descriptive statistics and t‐tests (when appropriate) were utilized to analyze and report the findings.

The hybrid structure (neither completely centralized nor decentralized) was utilized most often (66 percent of the organizations in the sample). The organization's original goals and measures of success did not seem to dictate the final organizational structure, as would be predicted by contingency theory. The authors interpret this as an indication that the choice of structural form is not easily explained based on goals and objectives. They conjecture that devising a structural approach to supporting such a complex inter‐functional system such as ERP requires solving many complex simultaneous organizational problems.

This research involves a small sample of 65 organizations and is exploratory in nature; hence, it may not be projectable to a larger population. Future research should supplement this study with more industry user groups, expand the sample size, and utilize more advanced statistical methods.

Previous research has focused on successfully implementing ERP, neglecting post‐implementation design. This study contributes to a growing body of work with regard to post‐implementation design, taking into consideration SMEs and reporting structure, goals, and measures of success utilizing contingency theory as the backdrop.

For an organization to realize the intended benefits of an enternprise resource planning (ERP) investment, it must integrate both technical expertise and functional area knowledge, and it must have continuing support after implementation. The study aims to expand understanding of how organizations ensure the necessary support from functional experts during and after ERP installations. In particular, the study aims to address the question of the type of horizontal support mechanism chosen for this support and how managers make these choices.

The study is a replicated case study based on interviews with project leaders in nine universities judged to have successful PeopleSoft ERP implementations. Thematic analysis is applied to identify the factors influencing managerial choices and organizational decisions made to assure post‐implementation ERP support.

The findings indicate that managers of ERP implementations recognize the necessity for horizontal coordinating mechanisms both during and after implementation. The paper finds no single “best” structure in the cases, nor does it observe that the support structure decision is always based on a deliberate organizational strategy. The findings indicate that selection of post‐implementation support structure is often a negotiated outcome. Ultimately, the paper finds that the outcomes were based on three factors: the situated context of the original implementation project goals; the nature of early commitments made to functional subject matter experts and their departments; and the initial project structure used during the implementation phase.

This research fills a gap in research on ERP support structures by examining how localized organizations assure the necessary support from subject matter experts, commencing with project inception and continuing through post‐implementation. The results contribute to theory by illustrating the value of a process‐based approach to understanding the factors that affect the choice of support structures. The findings contribute to practice by highlighting how early management decisions and the methods executives chose to assure commitments from key stakeholders can restrict the range of options for post‐implementation organizational structures.

In this chapter, the authors discuss how school counselors may create a college-going environment for African American males in middle school. The authors use Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems Theory to explain how environmental influences impact African American males’ college trajectory, both positively and negatively. Moreover, they use Ecological Systems Theory to discuss how multiple stakeholders (e.g., school counselors and parents) and various structured activities that align with the Eight Components of College and Career Readiness (NOSCA, 2010) may promote college preparation among Black male middle school students. The authors also present two case vignettes as examples of how school counselors may assist African American males for postsecondary options. In closing, the chapter concludes with implications for educational policy, research, and practice.

This chapter is about child labour as slavery in modern and modernizing societies in an era of rapid globalization.

For the most part, child slavery in modern societies is hidden from view and cloaked in social customs, this being convenient for economic exploitation purposes.

The aim of this chapter is to bring children's ‘modern slavery’ out of the shadows, and thereby to help clarify and shape relevant social discourse and theory, social policies and practices, slavery-related legislation and instruments at all levels, and above all children's everyday lives, relationships and experiences.

The main focus is on issues surrounding (i) the concept of ‘slavery’; (ii) the types of slavery in the world today; (iii) and ‘child labour’ as a type, or basis, of slavery.

There is an in-depth examination of the implications of the notion of ‘slavery’ within international law for child labour, and especially that performed through schooling.

According to one influential approach, ‘slavery’ is a state marked by the loss of free will where a person is forced through violence or the threat of violence to give up the ability to sell freely his or her own labour power. If so, then hundreds of millions of children in modern and modernizing societies qualify as slaves by virtue of the labour they are forced – compulsorily and statutorily required – to perform within schools, whereby they, their labour and their labour power are controlled and exploited for economic purposes.

Under globalization, such enslavement has almost reached global saturation point.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the changing food culture of Ireland focusing particularly on the evolution of commercial public dining in Dublin 1700‐1900, from taverns, coffeehouses and clubs to the proliferation of hotels and restaurants particularly during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Using a historical research approach, the paper draws principally on documentary and archival sources, but also uses material culture. Data are analysed using a combination of hermeneutics (Denzin and Lincoln, O'Gorman) and textual analysis (Howell and Prevenier).

The paper traces the various locations of public dining in Dublin 1700‐1900 and reveals that Dublin gentlemen's clubs preceded their London counterparts in owning their own premises, but that the popularity of clubs in both cities resulted in a slower growth of restaurants than in Paris. Competition for clubs appeared in the form of good hotels. The Refreshment Houses and Wine Licences (Ireland) Act 1860 created a more congenial environment for the opening of restaurants, with separate ladies coffee or dining rooms appearing from around 1870 onwards.

There is a dearth of research on the history of Irish food and commercial food provision in particular. This paper provides the most comprehensive discussion to date on the development of commercial dining in Dublin 1700‐1900 and suggests that the 1860 legislation might be further explored as a catalyst for the growth of restaurants in London and other British cities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore English and Finnish paramedic perceptions of the healthcare blame culture, its relationship to complaints, the use of defensive practice and if this impacts on paramedic practice and clinical care.

Participants were recruited from English and Finnish ambulance services that have similar organisational and professional scopes of practice. The aim was to gain insight into the similarities and differences between the countries regarding the existence of a blame culture in paramedic practice. Semi-structured focus groups and interviews involving 20 English and Finnish paramedics were undertaken. Qualitative perceptions concerning the reality of a blame culture in paramedic practice and its impact on professional roles were sought.

Three major themes that were identified in the thematic analysis included: blame culture and its influences; the impact of complaints against paramedics; and the use of defensive practice within their roles. These data themes were similar for both groups of participants. The majority of participants thought the healthcare blame culture to be widespread and believed that this was likely to directly influence paramedics’ working practices.

Whilst the impact of blame culture and complaints on the medical profession has previously been examined, this study makes an important contribution by exploring the factors that impact on paramedics’ lives and their practice, within two European countries. The inappropriate use of social media by some members of the public in both countries was a disturbing issue for many participants and was identified as an area for further research.