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The widespread deployment of telehealth (TH) has been conducted in the absence of any clear understanding of how acceptable these devices are to patients. One potential limitation of the widespread deployment of TH is that patients may refuse. Moreover an understanding of the reasons for refusing to use TH devices will provide an understanding of the barriers.

This investigation from the Whole Systems Demonstrator (WSD) programme, a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial into the effectiveness of TH, examined reasons for patients in the intervention cohort of the trial refusing TH, and the potential barriers to its deployment.

Active rejection of the TH intervention was the most frequent reason for withdrawal. After examination of trial-related, health, socio-demographic, cognitive, emotional and behavioural factors, patients diagnosed with diabetes, as opposed to heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and patients’ beliefs about the acceptability of the intervention predicted whether or not they withdrew from the trial because of the intervention.

Beliefs that the TH intervention resulted in increased accessibility to care, satisfaction with equipment and fewer concerns about the privacy, safety and discomfort associated with using TH equipment predicted continued participation in the WSD trial. Findings suggest that potentially modifiable beliefs about TH predict those more likely to reject the intervention. These findings have important implications for understanding individual differences in the acceptance of TH and subsequent success in mainstreaming TH in healthcare services.

Based on a review of multiple literatures, a comprehensive content domain of essential intercultural competencies for effective global leaders is presented. This domain is then used to guide the development of the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI), a 160-item self-report measure that assesses the degree to which individuals possess the intercultural competencies that are associated with global leader effectiveness. Using sample sizes ranging from several hundred to nearly 9,000 subjects, evidence from several studies is presented showing the GCI to have convergent validity, predictive validity, and freedom from demographic and ethnic subgroup biases. Implications for theory and future research are also discussed.

The paper aims to describe research undertaken in two post‐1992 universities into staff perceptions of and reactions to the rhetoric of the national quality agenda in the UK as expressed by bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency and the discourse about quality implicit in that agenda. The research examined how academic staff engaged with the discourse and the extent to which the rhetoric of quality is reflected in the day‐to‐day realities of post‐1992 universities.

The research involved a qualitative investigation of the personal experiences of six academics employed in two post‐1992 universities and comprised in‐depth interviews around three themes which were undertaken during 2005 and 2006. The data from the interviews are summarised and paraphrased in a way which faithfully and accurately captures the sense and spirit of each of the interviews as validated by the interviewees.

The paper concludes that from the point of view of the academic staff who formed part of this research there is a considerable mismatch between the rhetoric of the official paragons of quality represented by the Quality Assurance Agency and the experience of quality by academic staff embroiled in the quality systems that the two universities involved in this research had developed as a consequence of the requirements of government and government agencies.

This paper will be of interest to academics and academic managers with responsibilities for quality assurance not only in universities with mature quality assurance systems but also in those in which such systems are being introduced or developed.

Sport sponsorship—seemingly well established—is coming under sharp attack. Yet sponsorship remains a flourishing sub‐industry, and sponsors are fighting off accusations that they are not playing the game. Chris Phillips

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of specific local development policies and partnerships for SME enterprises in Thessaloniki one of the metropolis of south Europe. The two main research questions are: first, what are the most important development policies for firms’ development? and second, in what level these policies receive different significance from firms belonging in different production sectors?

In order to achieve the aims of the paper and answer the research questions, the study uses an extensive use of bibliography, and field research that has been implemented by administering questionnaires on a representative sample of 227 enterprises. The study comes up to valuable conclusions for the firms and the city through the use of exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis and clustering.

The present research brings on important issues and questions about local economic development because it presents directly the estimations and views of a large number of local enterprises that reflect the image of local economy. Finally, this research gives a satisfactory overview of the inner growth of Thessaloniki and further the results could lead to an evaluation, planning, implementation, rejection or reconstruction of specific actions and policies locally.

The analysis is constrained by weakness since the sample of enterprises is rather small and the results concern only the enterprises located in Thessaloniki. Based on this fact, general conclusions can be drawed for other regions as well as for the whole Greece. This is subjected to more analysis.

The added value of this research is essential since there are only few similar researches in South-East Europe and in Greece. Especially, the relationship between local development policies and firms’ development competitiveness has not been studied enough in the area under consideration.

Enterprises understand and designate the importance of specific policies that affect their development while at the same time through their evaluations they outline the character and dynamics of these policies in a unique dynamic, geographical and productive city like this of Thessaloniki.

The analysis showed that enterprises recognize as positive factor the effort of the local authorities to set the area as a business pole in favour of enterprises and the broader area but policy problems of organization and planning arise that concern mainly the operation and support of local enterprises and specific those from the tourist and service sector. This image raises issues of competence on planning and organization of development polices by the local authorities focusing on specific productive sectors so as the effect of these policies to be effective with positive results for enterprises.

In this chapter, we focus on virtual teams and emotions during postmerger and acquisition (M&A) integration. Our main research question is “How to manage emotions and virtual teams following cross-border M&A?”. We answer this question through the following research subquestions: (1) What virtual interaction can be identified post-M&A?; (2) What emotions arises from virtual communication; and (3) What emotions and challenges do virtual teams encounter following cross-border M&As? This research is based on a single case study. The main findings imply that emotions, trust, and cultural differences play an important role in virtual interaction following a cross-border M&A.

In a study of merger-evoked cultural change in three organizations, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from individuals at all employment levels in both merger partners within each organization. Results were that most individuals perceived that the merger had impacted significantly on them personally. There was, however, a perceived lack of congruence between the organizational cultures of merging partners, resulting in culture clashes and significant changes to the organizations’ organizational cultures. More specifically, outcomes for both individuals and the subsequent acculturation following the mergers were related to the approach adopted to manage the merger process: incremental, immediate, or indifferent.

This chapter shows that Mead has a field theory and that the explanatory method of symbolic interaction is that of a field. A field, in this sense, is a systematic network of meanings. When someone or something enters that field such as a protest rally or a cocktail party they are given the meaning that is characteristic of the field. This explanation is not one of causation but one of context. I show that a major field theory of Mead’s concerns the agent and how decisions or actions are made. He also has a developmental field theory based on the play-game-generalized other relation. With Mead’s agency model I then show how it can be applied, in macro fashion, to the recent rise in American minorities, especially that of women, African Americans, and gays. This example shows the macro or social structural power of Mead’s idea.