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The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of environmental management initiatives in the furniture retail area. The specific aim is to present reflections of participants implementing environmental initiatives in an Australian furniture retailer, Living Edge, in alignment with a secondary snapshot of environmental initiatives from other furniture retailers.

Primary reflections from the retailer’s manager and external consultant, both involved in the implementation of environmental initiatives, are enriched with secondary review of environmental management system trends and examples from regions active in the designer furniture sector, including Europe, Southeast Asia and North America.

An integrated view has been distilled around environmental impact in the furniture supply chain and consumer pressure to minimise the impact. Stakeholders require furniture retailers to improve efficiency and profitability amid the countervailing market demand for environmental sustainability. Retailers may seek competitive advantage through effectively applied and communicated environmental management. The voluntary adoption of systems, international standards and innovative practices that conserve natural resources are amongst the key to success. A live case example of Australian experience is added to the knowledge base for the global retail furniture industry.

One Australian retailer is exemplified to highlight the lived experiences of implementing environmental initiatives. The secondary global review presents a cross-section rather than an in-depth analysis of furniture sector retailers.

There are limited Australian perspectives of designer furniture and its intersection with environmental issues, thus, the paper addresses this gap in the literature and adds to informed practice in a global industry.

Reports on an effort to implement good practices in learning evaluation. Reviews learning evaluation practices and gathers data using a dedicated software system. Demonstrates learning takes place within complex social systems populated by a multiplicity of factors that influence perceptions of learning and performance outcomes. Argues that technology enables cost‐effective evaluations to be implemented that encompass a broad spectrum of influencing variables and acknowledge the empowered status of the learner. Discusses the implications for evaluation methodologies and the role of trainers within organisations.

In this chapter we apply a range of insights drawn from social science studies of hope amidst contexts of illness, and studies of hope emerging from the sociology of emotions, in critically considering social processes of hoping amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. While much of the health sciences literature on hope emphasises positive outcomes in terms of coping and motivation, we also draw upon various perspectives which denote a dark side of hoping, whereby inequalities and injustices are tolerated, or where feeling rules insidiously coordinate collective hopes in ways which serve various political-economic interests. Reflecting this ambivalence across different literatures, our examples and analyses suggest that hoping as a social process is itself inherently conflicted, dissonant and rife with tensions. As we explore the contradictions of hoping amidst a pandemic, the tensions between expectations and desire, tragedy and optimism, aspiring to act and fatalistic acceptance make apparent that emotions of hope can be neither neatly delineated nor disentangled from a ‘messy’ web of related feelings and framings. We extend our emphasis of these blurry, dissonant and messy aspects of hoping through work on ‘tragic optimism’, following Frankl, wherein wider lifeworlds or imaginaries pertaining to deeply embodied and implicit notions of self and a good life are central to maintaining hope amidst heightened vulnerability and uncertainty. We close by laying out a post-formal approach to hope, which methodologically and conceptually focusses on contradictions and dissonance in narratives of hope, whereby living hopefully always involves living awkwardly with these tensions.

This chapter contrasts “ideal worker” with “real worker” characteristics among STEM faculty in gendered organizations. The gap between the two reveals the need for academic institutions to revise the notion of and the policies for typical faculty members.

All STEM faculty at a Midwestern research intensive university were asked to participate in a mail and web-based survey to study faculty experiences within departments. The response rate was 70%. Faculty were then categorized by their employment, education, and parent status, and by the work status of their spouse/partner, to assess how closely the faculty matched the ideal academic worker: a faculty member with a full-time home-maker partner.

Only 13% of the surveyed STEM faculty resemble the “ideal worker” by having a partner who is not employed and who ensures all family care giving. The vast majority of STEM faculty are men with an employed partner who is more likely to have a professional (33%) rather than a nonprofessional (22%) degree.

Only one, public, research-intensive institution in the Midwest United States was surveyed and therefore findings cannot be generalized to faculty at other research intensive institutions or to other types of institutions.

Rather than adding policies to attract women into academia, we find an urgent need make academic institutions rethink to match the reality of most faculty. Increasing flexibility in the academic workplace is not a “women’s issue” but a “faculty issue.”

This paper provides evidence that supports institutional change to accommodate the new academic workers, most of whom are part of dual career couples.

This chapter reflects on the construction of transnational marital bonds over time. First, based on multi-site fieldwork carried out in 2011 and 2012 in two regions of Mexico and one of the United States, an extensive discussion on the transnational family and the construction of conjugality is presented from the point of view of two dimensions: intimacy and domestic organization in heterosexual couples with young children and conjugal unions recognized as successful. The second part discusses the same results of the study after a decade, based on contact with the same participants and an exploration of their trajectories of intimacy and family organization. The notion of life cycle and family trajectory is introduced into the discussion, arriving at paths in the definition of intimacy that discuss the romantic component initially identified and add the confessional and post-romantic components as part of the experience of geographical distance for prolonged periods of migration, in addition to aging processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges facing the higher education system in Egypt particularly in the area of education quality. It builds upon several existing studies conducted in Egypt to make the case for improving education outcomes while analyzing the social, political, and economic ramifications of the current higher education system.

Samples were drawn from existing studies conducted in Egypt by experts in the education field.

Results suggest that the higher education admissions process should become more competitive thereby limiting the number of enrollments. More resources should be devoted towards higher education with a particular emphasis on workforce development and Egypt should seek the help of donor agencies and experts to advise and reform the system.

The findings were based on existing literature and were not conducted in Egypt which somewhat limited qualitative analysis.

A contribution is made to the literature as the research reinforces the view that the lack of quality in the higher education system fails to prepare graduates to the workforce and impacts on the social stability of Egypt. By questioning aspects of the current higher education system and calling for more freedom of research and expression, the research raises interesting questions about the impact of closed societies on education systems.

Purpose – This chapter explores the topic of free speech protections and social media use in academia through an examination of the current legal landscape as it applies to various stakeholders on university campuses in the United States. The authors focus this examination primarily on public universities. Methodology/Approach – Legal research methods were utilized, including an analysis of relevant United States federal and state laws, case law, and secondary sources such as law reviews. Non-legal sources, such as academic journals, were also reviewed, with particular emphasis on topics such as university policies, tenure protections, academic freedom, as well as current events. Findings – The law regarding personal social media communications in a university setting is a series of complex and interconnected legal questions. Courts are still flushing out how free speech protections, personal social media use, and other relevant legal protections (e.g., employment law) may interface in a university-related case. Outcomes of cases are highly fact driven, and legal precedent is still being established. Originality/Value – This chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the topic of free speech and social media use in United States academia by (1) examining legal protections as applied to various stakeholders on a college campus and (2) analyzing the current legal landscape of social media cases involving universities.

David Morgan’s (2011) influential concept of ‘doing family’ has yet to be applied to the cultural shaping of fatherhood and emotions. Drawing from two case studies, of a Scottish and a Romanian father, the author reflects in this chapter on the interconnections between ‘doing family’ and ‘loving’, as types of relational and emotional activities which maintain family bonds despite intimate separations and work migration. These two case studies are taken from a larger, qualitative research project, which explored the experiences of involvement and love for 47 fathers in their personal lives. The specific case studies of Sergiu and Keith, marked by relational give-and-takes across different spaces, illuminate the contradictions of their emotional involvement in their close relationships to their children and ex-partners. For these two fathers, the process of ‘doing family’ after separations was a disjointed and renegotiated one. It mainly involved developing their emotional reflexivity as a response to their changing life circumstances. In this process, both fathers recount how they began reconfiguring their masculine identity from providing to establishing caring fathering. These changes occurred when the normative precepts of their personal lives were transformed due to the separations. Situations of emotional upheaval, movement and relocation were thus created. As their families were in motion, fathers mentioned instances of changing their communication strategies to express love in more visible ways to their children, directly constructing their ‘good fathering’ identity from renewed positions. Family separations in this context offered the potential to challenge the traditional father’s role.

IN 1896 an early printed Missale speciale was discovered in the collection of Ludwig Rosenthal of Munich. Two years later appeared a thirty‐paged pamphlet, entitled Ein Missale speciale, Vorläufer des Psalteriums von 1457, from the pen of Herr Otto Hupp. Soon after the publication of this pamphlet an abbreviated missal, illustrated with a wood‐cut, was found in the Benedictine Monastery of Lavanthal, in Carinthia. Towards the end of last year, as a consequence of this further discovery, Herr Hupp issued a second work of ninety‐eight folio pages, entitled Gutenberg's erste Druke, in which he developed the theory, first embodied in his former pamphlet, that the Missale speciale and the Missale Abbreviation are earlier examples of Gutenberg's work than the Psalmorum Codex, the Mazarin or forty‐two‐line Bible, or even the thirty‐one‐line indulgence of 1454, which is generally attributed to him. These two treatises have sprung a learned squabble in German and other continental bibliogaphical circles. Dr. Gottfried Zedler, of Wiesbaden, has constituted himself champion of the opponents of the theory, and the chief parties in the quarrel have just fought the matter out in the pages of the Centraiblatt für Bibliothekswesen.

This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

Each of the chapters demonstrates the gendered nature of the academy and some of the ways in which women, especially women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, are disadvantaged. None of them provides complete catalogues of the issues confronting women and none reach definitive conclusions regarding the ways and means of transforming the academy. Additional research and experimentation will be required.

The gender transformation of the academy holds the promise of more opportunities for women, especially but not only in STEM disciplines and higher administration, and greater probability of balance between work and personal life for all.

The chapter serves as an overall introduction to the volume and the subject matter more generally.