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In recent times the relationship between social stratification and internet use has become more complex. In order to understand the new configuration of the digital divide, this paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic background and digital engagement among youths.

This study explores digital inequalities among Italian teenagers from a holistic perspective. It draws on primary data obtained with a triangulation of methods: a survey on a representative sample of 2,025 high school students and 56 semi-structured interviews with teenagers from different social classes.

The statistical models indicate that cultural capital and parents’ occupational status do not associate with broader social media use but are positively related with online information-seeking. The interpretative analysis suggests that teenagers from the upper-middle class make sense of the internet “vertically,” in affiliation with parental socialization, and are more concerned with capital enhancing activities. Instead, teenagers from less advantageous social contexts appropriate the internet “horizontally,” jointly with peers, and are mostly interested in social-networking and UGC production.

School track, along with parents’ socioeconomic status and cultural capital, influences teenagers’ internet use. Further studies could explore whether school tracking contributes to digital inequalities.

The study extends Annette Lareau’s theory of parenting styles and social reproduction, but also obtains innovative results related to digital inequalities among youth. Contrary to expectations, teenagers from less advantageous social backgrounds enrolled in vocational schools have better chances to actively participate in social media than teens from the upper-middle class in academic-oriented high schools.

At the end of the nineteenth century, in the era of the second industrial revolution, falling working hours, rising disposable income, increasing urbanisation, rapidly expanding transport networks and strong population growth resulted in a sharp rise in the demand for entertainment. Initially, the expenditure was spread across different categories, such as live entertainment, sports, music, bowling alleys or skating rinks. One of these categories was cinematographic entertainment, a new service, based on a new technology. Initially it seemed not more than a fad, a novelty shown at fairs, but it quickly emerged as the dominant form of popular entertainment. This paper argues that the take-off of cinema was largely demand-driven, and that, in an evolutionary process, consumers allocated more and more expenditure to cinema. It will analyse how consumer habits and practices evolved with the new cinema technology and led to the formation of a new product/service.

The key performance indicators (KPIs) are frequently used in organizations, and they help to transmit the strategy at all levels of the organization. However, the implementation of these indicators in small- and medium-sized companies remains a challenge. Many studies reveal two challenges faced by these firms, the lack of knowledge about the KPIs and the lack of alignment of these with the business strategy. For this reason, this chapter investigated the current level of knowledge about KPIs in managers of small and medium enterprises in the wood and timber sector in Peru.

The level of knowledge was measured using the framework of Bloom's Taxonomy in 21 firms. The use and importance that managers assign to performance indicators were evaluated, in order to identify gaps that exist between the strategy and its use.

The results of a survey study show a high degree of variability in the knowledge of KPI-related concepts as well as an average low level of usage. The importance attributed to KPIs was seen as a necessary but not sufficient condition for attaining higher levels of KPI usage.

This chapter provides some concluding reflections on the different experiences of structural change encountered by the TARGET partners. The various TARGET partners had different roles in the structural change processes: seven organisations designed, implemented and monitored gender equality plans (GEPs) for the first time, two organisations provided tailored support to implementing institutions and one organisation evaluated GEP implementation. This edited volume provides an account of these diverse experiences of engaging with and catalysing structural change in very different research organisations operating in extremely different contexts both within the EU and beyond. The volume thus contributes to the growing body of literature generated from structural change projects by offering a specific focus on the TARGET approach. The TARGET process of structural change – undertaken through the development and implementation of tailored, evidence-based GEPs – was found to be strengthened through formal top management commitment and by taking a reflexive approach that was powered by communities of practice and supported by financial resources, gender expertise as well as gender and organisational change competences. Engaged institutions thus managed to overcome unfavourable conditions and implement tailor-made, context-specific interventions, some of them in areas at the cutting edge of topics and issues linked to gender equality in research and innovation such as tackling sexual harassment, sustainability and integrating the gender dimension into research content and curricula.

Research-funding organisations (RFOs) and research-performing organisations (RPOs) are in a privileged position to significantly reshape the research and innovation landscape – not only by implementing gender equality plans (GEPs) as institutions but also in terms of the relationship and potential impact of these plans on the institutional context in which they are embedded. This paper reflects on the content and methodology of the GEP implementation at two RFOs and one non-university RPOs. Grounded in the knowledge base of each organisation, the analysis provides insights and expert feedback in order to understand to what extent and under which conditions GEPs are a systematic and comprehensive policy in promoting structural change that has a high potential impact on research policy definition and funding. Reviewing the internal assessment phase, the preliminary steps in the design process as well as the implementation and monitoring phase, the analysis detects both the strengths and challenges or resistance connected to external and internal factors as well as the specific strategies that small organisations employ to promote and sustain organisational and cultural change.

This chapter explores the relationship between emotional design and customer experience. It begins with an introduction to the concept of emotional design, comprising behavioral, visceral, and reflective elements. Next, the nature of service experiences is examined, leading to a framework that classifies services according to their functional and experiential positions. Understanding customer goals allows this framework to be used to design customer experiences, in terms of the journey that customers take when consuming a service. The chapter then discusses the cognitive traits associated with designers and argues that they are well suited to understanding the customer journey and designing the prerequisites for the desired experience. Two different approaches to understanding and acting on customer requirements are explored – user centered and design driven.

This chapter provides the background and relevant policy context information necessary to understand the approach to development and implementation of tailored gender equality plans provided by the TARGET project. It describes the development of European gender equality polices in research and innovation (R&I) since the 1980s and experiences with early structural change projects. TARGET refers to these experiences and aims at providing an innovative approach to overcome challenges towards gender equality, especially for research organisations located in countries that have been classified as rather inactive when it comes to gender equality policies in R&I. The chapter closes with an outline of the structure of the book and its individual chapters.