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Job training, as traditionally conceptualized, is intended to improve the employment and earnings of disadvantaged individuals. Both theory and practice have approached the problem by segmenting the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders: the individual, the employer, and civil society. Such segmentation is problematic because it removes stakeholders from their contexts, and ignores the holistic and complex nature of the underlying problems and their remedies. Reframed as a form of business and community development, job training can focus on capacity building, stakeholder involvement, and expanded notions of skill achievement and geographic scope, thereby addressing stakeholder interests in context. The three cases presented in this chapter describe such reframing: from increasing human capital to building human capacity; from a partnership or individual business focus to a multi-stakeholder approach; and from job and employer-specific skill development to that which is multi-phased and geographically dispersed. Complexity theory will be used to explain these developments.

Business leaders, in increasing numbers, are looking to the creative power of the arts in their efforts to manage strategic change, to enhance innovation, or to strengthen corporate cultures. In this case study, we focus attention on what is widely regarded as one of the world's most extensive corporate arts‐based learning initiatives, the Catalyst program at Unilever.

In a wide‐ranging interview with James Hill, now a group vice‐president and Catalyst's leading executive sponsor, this paper explores the origins, operations, and outcomes of this innovative program.

Finds that Catalyst came about as a result of savvy leadership and a corporate willingness to take risks in developing an “enterprise culture;” it now flourishes in three divisions due to ownership at multiple levels of the organization as well as its ability to stimulate new product development, attract and retain creative people, and boost the company's marketing efforts; and it persists because its starting points are always actual business problems, the solutions to which improve financial performance and shareholder returns.

To management scholars, this case provides an additional data point in the ongoing study of strategy implementation and organizational change. To corporate executives seeking fresh ideas, the Unilever/Catalyst story offers a novel and intuitively appealing approach to the vexing challenges of leading strategic change, told from the perspective of an experienced executive.

A number of recent trends are influencing business schools towards better teaching and accounting for the role of “business in society” (BiS). The following article looks at selected results from the most comprehensive survey ever of BiS teaching and research in European academic institutions – undertaken in 2003 by the European Academy of Business in Society and Nottingham University Business School’s International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR), with the support of the European Foundation for Management Development (efmd). The survey found, among other things, that there is a clear demand from business and students for research, education and training on BiS issues; that teaching on the role of BiS is still far from being “mainstream” to the business curriculum; and that the diversity of European approaches and terms signal both a strength and a challenge for the BiS debate. The article looks at how a wide range of initiatives are being undertaken by both business schools and business, and often in unique partnerships, to address these challenges and move the BiS research and education agenda forward. Finally, the thorny issue of accreditation is tackled. Improving accreditation processes will play an important part in bringing the business education community up to speed with the new roles and responsibilities they are being asked to fulfill by a wide range of stakeholders (students, society, business and government). As both educators and mediators in the debate, business schools have a valuable contribution to make. In turn, they too are increasingly being made accountable for their own social and environmental impact. The article argues that business schools can choose whether they want to lead, respond, or partner with business to meet these challenges. However, it seems they can no longer afford to ignore it as a passing fad.

Contemporary labor economics has a ready explanation for the role of job training in the labor market. The human capital framework pioneered by Becker (1962, 1993) and Mincer (1962) and now extended by many, many others sees training as an investment in productive capacity that benefits both workers and employers. Employers enhance the productivity of their firms by investing in the skills of their workers, and these productivity gains are passed on to workers in the form of higher wages. Key to all of this is the distinction between general and specific skill. According to the theory, employers will not pay for or provide general skills (i.e. those that are transferable and hence valuable to other employers), because they are averse to being “poached” by more high-wage employers. They will, however, invest in workplace-specific skills, which assure them a return on their training investments.

This paper aims to explore the extensive roots of peer support in mental health, and to identify the values and principles that the authors wish to hold onto as choices are made as to how and whether to engage with formal peer support within the National Health Service (NHS).

The authors attempt to cover the ground of three types of peer support, but with an emphasis on informal peer support and participation in consumer or peer‐run groups as providing the roots for the third more formal type, which is often known as intentional peer support (IPS).

Professionalisation of peer support may endanger the equality that lies at the root of peer support relationships. Independence may also be compromised if peer support becomes just another part of mainstream services. Whilst an individual/personalised approach to providing services has many strengths, one must be careful not to remove all opportunity for service users to meet together, support one another, plan and campaign.

The findings suggest that commissioners of services should aim for a plurality of peer support and be careful to ensure that informal peer support is flourishing as an essential basis for more formal peer support.

The paper shows that, with an increased interest in providing peer support as part of mainstream services, it is important to stress the basic values and principles that underpin informal service‐user led peer support.