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The purpose of this paper is to find out what role intermediaries have in facilitating communication with victims and prisoners at Parole Board (PB) oral hearings.

A survey was designed and administered to 39 PB members to find out their perceptions of, and experiences with, the use of intermediaries. Frequency tables and verbatim quotations are used to report the results.

Overall, participants had not experienced any use of intermediaries with victims or family members presenting victim personal statements at an oral hearing. Further, there had been limited use of intermediaries for prisoners attending oral hearings. Nevertheless, there was a good recognition of a range of communication needs that a prisoner might present with at a hearing. There was also general support for the use of intermediaries with some caution about possible delays to procedural fairness.

The early identification of communication support needs for prisoners and victims attending an oral hearing is essential. The PB should raise awareness with the PB Membership about the role of intermediaries. The PB should continue to develop guidance and policy surrounding intermediaries. Prison lawyers and HM Prison and Probation Service may require specialist training in identifying communication needs in vulnerable prisoners and identifying when a communication specialist might be required for an oral hearing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published paper examining the role of intermediaries at PB oral hearings. It builds on the evidence base of the use of intermediaries in other criminal justice contexts.

Disaster risk reduction is of prime importance in informal settlements in the Global South, where several forms of vulnerability coexist. Policy and official programmes, however, rarely respond to the needs and expectations of citizens and local leaders living in these settlements. Even though these agents constantly attempt to reduce risks in their own way, we know very little about their activities, motivations and effective impact on risk reduction. Here we seek to conceptualize bottom-up initiatives to better grasp their origins, limitations and success.

Through a four-year action-research project in Colombia, Cuba and Chile, we theorize about the production of change by local agents. Through detailed case studies we explored the activism of 17 local leaders. Through narrative analysis we studied their motivations and explanations. Finally, by documenting 22 initiatives, we revealed effective changes in space.

In the face of risk and disasters, residents and leaders in informal settings engaged in symbolic, physical and social spaces of interaction. Their actions were guided by trust, emotions, time cycles and activism. Local agency was justified by narratives about risk and climate change that differ from those of authorities and scholars.

There is still limited understanding of bottom-up initiatives in informal settings. It is crucial to conceptualize their origins, limitations and success. The focus on three specific countries necessitates further research for broader applicability and understanding.

A better comprehension of bottom-up actions is crucial for informing policies and programmes aimed at reducing risk in informal settings. Stakeholders must recognize the political, social and cultural roles of these actions for more impactful climate action.

We borrow Simon’s concept of “artefact” to introduce the notion of “Artefacts of Disaster Risk Reduction”, providing insights into the multifaceted nature of bottom-up initiatives. We also emphasize the simultaneous political and phenomenological character of these actions, contributing to a deeper understanding of their origins and impact.

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people imagine civic futures through speculative fiction writing about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The authors argue that young people’s speculative fiction writing about AI not only helps make visible the ways they imagine the impacts of emerging technologies and the modes of collective action available for leveraging, resisting or countering them but also the frictions and fissures between the two.

This practitioner research study used data from student artifacts (speculative fiction stories, prewriting and relevant unit work) as well as classroom fieldnotes. The authors used inductive coding to identify emergent patterns in the ways young people wrote about AI and civics, as well as deductive coding using digital civic ecologies framework.

The findings of this study spotlight both the breadth of intractable civic concerns that young people associate with AI, as well as the limitations of the civic frameworks for imagining political interventions to these challenges. Importantly, they also indicate that the process of speculative writing itself can help reconcile this disjuncture by opening space to dwell in, rather than resolve, the tensions between “the speculative” and the “civic.”

Teachers might use speculative fiction writing and the digital civic ecologies framework to support students in critically examining possible AI futures and effective civic actions within them.

Speculative fiction writing offers an avenue for students to analyze the growing civic concerns posed by emerging platform technologies like AI.

Research highlights that residential care experienced children and young people in Scotland have poorer educational outcomes than their peers within the wider population. Despite this, poor educational attainment is not inevitable, and further research is needed to increase the understanding of long-term trajectories. This paper aims to address a gap in contemporary literature that is of benefit to practitioners, academics and policymakers. Despite experiencing adversity, attachment, separation and loss, school attainment data on leaving care only reflects part of the educational journey.

Using a mixed methodology and social constructionist theoretical framework, a practitioner-led PhD study gathered data from questionnaires and qualitative information from 13 semi-structured interviews with young people who had experienced residential care in Scotland. Recruitment was through a gatekeeper within a national third-sector organisation. The educational trajectories for young people with experience of residential care in Scotland are complex. A lived experience perspective from a PhD study illustrates that statistical data only captures part of the journey and the author needs to reconsider how success is measured.

Of the 13 participants in the study, 12 achieved success educationally, although for the majority of those interviewed, attainment continued after leaving compulsory education. Barriers to greater success included placement uncertainty and movement, stigma, low expectations, pressure to not become a statistic, procedural obstacles and inconsistency or poor relationships.

Supportive relationships and stable placements can create circumstances conducive to effective learning, but evidence reflects that support is necessary throughout the life course if children, young people and adults with care experience are to reach their full academic potential.

Research into the educational outcomes for those with experience of residential care in Scotland is limited. This paper, from a PhD, provides lived experience accounts from a practitioner-led study.

Several conceptual works suggest that more digitalized information systems in management accounting have the potential to make this corporate function more effective. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the impact of information systems quality in management accounting on the effectiveness of management control systems. Additionally, this study examines the moderating effect of process automation.

A cross-sectional survey of 125 German Mittelstand firms and hierarchical regression analyses were used for data collection and analysis.

The findings confirm the assumed positive effect of information systems quality in management accounting on management control effectiveness. They also confirm the assumed moderating effect of process automation. The authors find that the relationship between information systems quality in management accounting and management control effectiveness is more pronounced if the firm features a higher degree of process automation.

Several earlier case studies and a few quantitative studies indicated the potentially positive effect of high-quality information systems in management accounting on management control effectiveness. To the best of the authors‘ knowledge, this study is among the first to deliver quantitative proof of this relationship in the context of German Mittelstand firms. Moreover, the authors add to this literature the moderating effect of process automation in the relationship between information systems quality in management accounting and management control effectiveness.

In August, 2015, Serena Williams, one of the most successful female athletes of all time, was body shamed in a New York Times article. The incident highlights the issue of unequal treatment of male and female athletes – while a muscular frame enhances masculinity for male athletes, a muscular physique invites body shaming for female athletes. In this study, symbolic interactionist theories regarding the generalized other are called into question. While George Mead's theorizing exhibits a nonproblematic role taking of the generalized other in a cooperative manner, this study reports the presence of paradoxical generalized others, and consequently, the incongruent role taking of a latent generalized other by individuals. This study investigates if the issue of body image exists among college female athletes, if college female athletes experience the dilemma of choosing between outstanding performance with a muscular frame or maintaining traditional female appearance. To provide answers to the question, female athletes in a midwest university were invited to fill out a survey. The survey results confirm the existence of a paradox between performance and appearance among some college female athletes.

The paper follows Jason Cope's (2011) vision of a holistic perspective on the failure-based learning process. By analyzing the research since Cope's first attempt, which is often fragmentary in nature, and providing novel empirical insights, the paper aims to draw a new comprehensive picture of all five phases of entrepreneurial learning and their interplay.

The study features an interpretative phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with 18 failed entrepreneurs. Findings are presented and discussed in line with experiential learning theory and Cope's conceptual framework of five interrelated learning timeframes spanning from the descent into failure until re-emergence.

The study reveals different patterns of how entrepreneurs experience failure, ranging from abrupt to gradual descent paths, different management and coping behaviors, and varying learning effects depending on the new professional setting (entrepreneurial vs non-entrepreneurial). Analyzing the entrepreneurs' experiences throughout the process shows different paths and connections between individual phases. Findings indicate that the learning timeframes may overlap, appear in different orders, loop, or (partly) stay absent, indicating that the individual learning process is even more dynamic and heterogeneous than hitherto known.

The paper contributes to the field of entrepreneurial learning from failure, advancing Cope's seminal work on the learning process and -contents by providing novel empirical insights and discussing them in the light of recent scientific findings. Since entrepreneurial learning from failure is a complex and dynamic process, using a holistic lens in the analysis contributes to a better understanding of this phenomenon as an integrated whole.

This chapter explores how the intersection of disability and family has evolved in the US medical field over the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Through an analysis of the Proceedings of the American Medical Association, this work demonstrates how physicians describe and view the connections between disability and family in bureaucratic activities. The exploration of the Proceedings documents elucidates the changing process around how physicians define the relationship of disability and family in the US through bureaucratic and policy discussions. A qualitative approach of content analysis is employed to evaluate the American Medical Association Proceedings of the House of Delegates from 1846 to 2022. Data collection applies deductive coding focusing on various terms related to the conceptualization of families with analysis exploring themes around disability within the searched terms. Results demonstrate how US physicians describe the relationship between disability and family over time in the US context. The findings highlight cases in which the medical establishment recognizes itself as a potential source of burden, families choosing burdens of supporting or not supporting family members with disabilities, and the medicalization of social phenomena related to disability. Additional findings include discussions of support systems that families with disabled family members can leverage for assistance. This first-of-its-kind longitudinal content analysis study provides insights on the meaning-making processes of physicians in relation to how conceptualizations of disability and family are described in medical proceeding documents. The value of this work lies in both the findings of how physicians describe the intersection of disability and family as well as the viability of medical proceeding documents for analyzing cultural-social phenomena. Additional value is added with the notion that physicians view disability in a familial context as being caught between problems and support.

Although the literature provides insights into the role of experiential learning based on prototypes in identification of latent customer need, it offers different views on the role of product prototypes in improving the efficacy of learning customer need, and also neglects the role of vicarious learning in prototype-based experiential learning. In a data-rich environment, market big data create new opportunities to learn from vicarious, digitalized experiences that are not observable with prototype-based learning. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare the effects of product prototype strategies – basic prototype strategy and enhanced prototype strategy – on identification of latent customer needs, and determine how each prototype strategy interacts with vicarious learning based on market big data to identify latent customer needs.

We collected data from 299 Chinese manufacturing firms via on-site surveys to explore our research question. All of our hypotheses were supported by the regression results.

This study finds that both the enhanced and basic prototype strategies (experiential learning from direct market experience based on prototyping) have positive effects on latent need identification, but the effect of enhanced prototypes is stronger. Furthermore, the enhanced and basic prototype strategies have different interaction effects with market big data (vicarious learning from indirect market experiences) on latent need identification.

This research extends the literature on prototype-based learning for latent need identification. It also contributes to the experiential prototype-based learning literature by exploring the role of vicarious learning based on market big data.

The purpose of the paper is to examine study probes into the association between work–family balance (WFB) and workplace wellbeing (WWB), as there has been a dearth of studies in this domain. Furthermore, the study deciphers the mediation and moderation effect of work engagement (WE) and turnover intent, respectively, on this primal relationship.

The present study undertakes a quantitative analysis of full-time regular employees (n = 334) in the USA, with a minimum experience of two years in current employment. The data was collected in two phases to minimize common method bias. The collected data was analysed via structural equation modelling.

Results indicate a positive association between WFB and workplace well-being. The mediation effect of WE on the primal association between WFB and workplace wellbeing is also substantiated. Though turnover intent failed to moderate this association between WFB and WWB; but mitigated the linkage between WE and workplace wellbeing.

The study demonstrates that the direct relationship between WFB and WWB is more pronounced than its indirect association. This insight could help organizations to design policies that include WFB; which can further accelerate WWB and work immersion attitudes amongst employees. Finally, this paper illustrates that employee attrition can be controlled by championing a climate of WE and WWB.

The present investigation offers an insight into the direct association between the WFB and workplace well-being of employees; and the pivotal role of WE in the whole nexus, an investigation which has been largely ignored, in the past. Furthermore, it refutes the effect of negative constructs like turnover intention, in the presence of positive associates like WE and WFB; which is an important lead for both practitioners and theorists.