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Activity planning was introduced in Somerset in 2004, to support modernising day services. We called it My Day. It is a structure for care staff to ensure they support people with learning disabilities to engage in everyday activities both at home and in the wider community, and a way to arrange individualised daily household tasks, personal self‐care, hobbies, social arrangements and other activities with people with learning disabilities. A recording process is integral to My Day to enable statistical returns to be produced that inform service delivery at the point of delivery. Its main purpose is to ensure that people with learning disabilities remain at the centre of daily activity planning and that their wishes and aspirations are recognised. My Day is one of the ways in which outcomes can be measured for people with learning disabilities in Somerset.

Before launching yourself into the cut and thrust of management consultancy, there are two important areas you need to explore.

The overall purpose of the paper is to understand the barriers to women's progression to senior positions in universities. It aims to explore similarities and differences between the career experiences and leadership styles of men and women in middle‐ and senior‐level positions at one university. The ultimate aim is to identify interventions to help create a more equal gender balance at senior levels.

A mixed methods approach was adopted. In‐depth interviews were conducted with a quota sample of 53 men and women in order to explore their lived career experiences. In addition, 50 questionnaires were received from the same sample in order to compare factual data about the participants' life histories and biographical circumstances.

The findings show that women's human capital and career progression to date are at least equal to those of men and that this has been achieved without women sacrificing a holistic family life. They also show that there are still some important differences between men and women in the way they plan and manage their careers and the leadership style that they adopt.

A five‐level framework is proposed which sets down the types of intervention that are required to create a more equal gender balance in senior positions. It is argued that this should be used to shape the gender equality schemes developed in universities under the Gender Equality Duty.

The paper provides new evidence about the residual differences between men's and women's career experiences, even in an employment context, which is particularly supportive of women. It also makes a significant contribution to the debate about the gendered nature of leadership.

Purpose – The case study described here showcases the way in which the University of South Australia (UniSA), an institution with a long history of being at the forefront of educational opportunity for all and with equity principles embedded in its founding legislation, has responded to the mainstreaming of widening participation and engagement. It does so by focussing particularly on the Foundation Studies access education programme, the cornerstone of the University's widening participation strategy for adults (although in Australia the vast majority of university entrants are aged 18 years and above and, therefore, by definition, categorised as adults).

Approach – We provide an overview of the development and structure of the Foundation Studies programme, the national and institutional contexts in which it operates, and key characteristic of students who undertake the programme. We also report on participation and success rates and briefly describe how successful access education students gain admission to undergraduate study.

Social implications – UniSA's approach to equity and widening participation provides an effective means of redress for people who have experienced educational disadvantage. It does so not merely by providing access but by also actively preparing them for future academic success. That success in turn builds social capital – serving a wider and increasingly pertinent imperative in today's global market economy.

Value of chapter – The case study described presents what has proven to be a viable and effective model, one which suggests strongly that socio-economic and educational disadvantage can be overcome and that ‘second chance’ does not imply ‘second rate’.

The place of social enterprise in providing innovation in the delivery of services previously undertaken by the public sector is currently receiving much attention, as is service user participation in the delivery of services. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the propensity of a service delivery model to positively influence service users' goals, fulfil their own expectations and life chances.

A case study of a social enterprise, providing services to children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and their families. The paper takes a Kantian perspective on the position of service users as ends in themselves, is informed by social capital theory and is carried out as a single case study with survey, interviews and triangulation.

The service delivery model is found to increase social capital and assists in the reduction of social exclusion and in the building of local sustainable development. It delivers positive social outcomes and the importance of innovative capacity in the social enterprise sector is demonstrated.

Lessons from the participatory service delivery model are felt to be transferable to other service delivery areas. Improvement in public sector understanding is shown to need attention in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, if, similar to other management initiatives, new public management may be a repackaging of already existent concepts. Emerging in the 1970s and 1980s as an innovative way to manage public sector elements, new public management affected both the ownership and management of public sector companies, services and utilities. Minimal research has been undertaken previously, using historic archival sources of public entities, to explore if elements of the concept originated prior to the 1970s.

This research draws on archival records from a publicly owned electricity company, covering about three decades from 1946, during which a large investment project was undertaken by the company. This study draws on key tenets of what is today called new public management, examining prior research to ascertain if similar elements were present in the case organisation.

When reviewing the progress of the investment project, many of the key elements of new public management emerged, even during the early part of the project.

There is little historical research on the origins of new public management, and the findings here suggest that it may not be entirely new. While this does not at all invalidate existing research, it suggests that new public management may be to an extent a repackaging of previously extant techniques. This opens up possibilities for future historic research in terms of how and why it was repackaged, and also what was/was not repackaged.