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The paper analyses the legislation upon union government enacted by Conservative Governments since 1979 and discusses possible criteria for evaluating its success or otherwise.

Since 1979, the Conservative government in the UK has introduced wide‐ranging and detailed regulations for the conduct of union internal affairs; a number of other Western industrialized countries have not done so (or have not done so to the same extent) but have continued their tradition of relying on unions themselves to establish democratic procedures. Alternative views of the role of the state in industrial relations underlie these differences. A second, linked article, appearing in Employee Relations (Vol. 15 No. 4), examines state approaches to union autonomy in the context of attitudes towards other controls on union activities and attempts to explain the successive shifts in British policy in the UK since the 1960s.

Purpose – To explicate how to design a digital internship that encourages both the teacher candidate and the K-12 student to participate in problem-based learning. Framed by the theories of academic motivation and new literacies, this chapter presents templates to demonstrate how a digital internship can be designed that results in the learning goals of both the students and the teacher candidates being met.

Design – Digital internships provide teacher candidates with the opportunity to teach K-12 students online, observe licensed teachers design and employ lessons, and analyze this pedagogical learning space, yet education preparation programs (EPPs) fail to harness this rich learning experience. This chapter makes a case for why EPPs benefit from participating in digital internships, how they can become involved, and results from this learning experience.

Findings – Findings from digital internship research studies indicate that despite frustrations, online mentoring opportunities give teacher candidates a chance to reflect on the work needed to create relationships necessary to instruct effectively. Through them, candidates can also develop dispositions of new literacies and bridge theory and practice in EPPs. Furthermore, digital internships may serve to empower teacher candidates and support them in being successful in teacher preparation coursework.

Practical Implications – Digital internships contribute to best practices in teaching digital literacies by providing examples of how EPPs can design curriculum that situates teacher candidates to observe pedagogy in online environments. These internships provide candidates the opportunity to mentor K-12 students in these spaces and provide teacher candidates time to process how they can best motivate students and give specific feedback to encourage learning. Furthermore, digital internships can include primary resources to enrich units of instruction across content areas and grade levels.

This paper aims to answer two key questions focused on increasing the understanding of consumer relationship proneness (CRP) and its role in customer relationship management. First, is CRP linked to trust and other relationship outcomes (e.g. customer share, adherence)? Second, does the nature of the service exchange (transactional versus relational) affect the association between CRP and commitment and trust?

Data were collected in three contexts: 270 travel industry call center customers, 345 insurance agency clients, and 897 patients responded to our surveys about their business relationships.

Structural modeling analysis and t‐statistic comparisons revealed that CRP is associated with trust and other important outcomes (i.e. share of customer and adherence) and that the nature of the service exchange moderates the association between CRP and commitment and trust. Specifically, as the nature of the service exchange moves from transactional to relational, the influence of CRP on commitment and trust strengthens.

Because CRP cannot be inferred from commonly measured variables, including measures of CRP, is important for relationship marketing and customer relationship management researchers.

Managers need to seek a greater understanding of individual consumer differences and to identify CRP in order to better manage customer relationships.

This paper is the first to report a direct association between CRP and trust. It is also the first to report the moderating influence of relationship type on the association between both CRP and commitment and CRP and trust.

Provides an example of a firm’s use of distinguishing product attributes to engineer and nurture strong consumer‐brand relationships. Ty Inc., manufacturer of the popular Beanie Babies brand, has effectively engineered the brand to incorporate attributes of nostalgic value, personification, uniqueness, facilitation, engagement, aesthetic appeal, quality/excellence, association, social visibility and image congruence, and price risk. By incorporating these attributes and actively nurturing consumer‐brand relationships, Ty has benefited from greater customer satisfaction, which has led to higher purchase volumes, brand loyalty, and positive word‐of‐mouth communications. The straightforward methodology used to examine customer perceptions of Beanie Babies involved asking respondents to rate Beanie Babies on the ten characteristics associated with high‐involvement, relationship‐prone products. The same measurement approach could be easily replicated by managers of other firms to evaluate the relational potency of their own brands.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

This study aims to examine factors that affect the effectiveness of transfer of English language training to the workplace. It investigates the effect of trainee characteristics, training design and work climate on the training transfer to job performance in hospitals in Thailand.

The quantitative method was adopted in this study. The conceptual framework was developed from Lim and Morris’ three-factor model, namely, trainee characteristics, training design and work climate. A total of 378 valid responses from staff of seven hospitals in Thailand were collected from surveys.

The findings suggest that training transfer depends more on trainees’ psychological state (affective response and self-efficacy) than extrinsic factors. Nearly every aspect of training design could affect training transfer, except trainer effectiveness. This could be related to the particular context of training and the trainees’ prior experience. Work climate factors had the strongest overall effect, with peer and supervisor feedback, compensation and incentives and transfer opportunities being significant.

This study proposes that training design and work climate-related factors deserve more attention than what they have received previously. This study is significant because of the limited empirical evidence for English training transfer outcomes, and the under-examined role of English as a lingua franca in the business world. The findings can help organisations refine training designs and adjust the work environment to improve training outcomes.

This paper aims to explore the market creation practices of farm-based entrepreneurs in the local food sector. Alternative marketing channels for farm-based products increase, but it is not known how entrepreneurs work to position their products in the marketplace. By expanding on the research of farm-based entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial marketing (EM), this study explores the entrepreneurial practices that farm-based entrepreneurs use through the lens of the EM mix (EMM) and its constituent dimensions: person, purpose, practice and process.

The study uses a multiple case study design and follows a phenomenological approach in conducting in-depth retrospective interviews with 11 successful farm-based entrepreneurs in the local food sector in Norway.

The thematic analysis revealed four key EM practices of the study’s farm-based entrepreneurs: transferring the farm or transforming the farm as the primary purpose; legitimising a local brand through the uniqueness of person, purpose and place; using a personal networking approach in the market development process and flexible and controllable market expansion practices. These elements constitute the pillars of successful, creative and resource-efficient market development.

The study represents a pioneering attempt to explore and conceptualise EM within farm-based entrepreneurship. The findings ultimately give rise to a novel framework: the farm-based entrepreneur’s marketing mix (FEMM).

Health science librarians occupy a unique place in librarianship, guiding healthcare professionals and the public to quality sources of medical research and consumer health information in order to improve patient outcomes and quality of life. A broader impact of health sciences librarianship is its advocacy for improvements in public health. In recent years, health science librarians have been actively involved in advocating for adequate, responsive, and culturally competent health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals. Health sciences librarians have advocated for LGBTQ+ individuals through a variety of specialized outreach projects to address health disparities found in the LGBTQ+ community such as HIV/AIDS, women’s health, or substance abuse, have collaborated with public health agencies and community-based organizations to identify health disparities and needs, and have implemented outreach to address these needs.

This chapter maps the landscape of health sciences librarian outreach to LGBTQ+ people. The authors develop this theme through case studies of health science librarians providing health information to the LGBTQ+ community and healthcare professionals. Following an overview of advocacy for LGBTQ+ health by the US National Network of Libraries of Medicine and professional information organizations, they conclude the chapter by discussing the “pioneering” nature of these projects and the common threads uniting them, and by identifying the next steps for continued successful outreach through the development of an evidence base and tailoring of outreach and resources to address other demographic aspects of the members of the LGBTQ+ community.

In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).