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This article describes the Mersey Care Reads, a collaborative project between The Reader Organisation and Mersey Care NHS Trust. Service users and staff read literature together in weekly groups that promotes confidence, raises mood and helps to develop communication and social skills.

Purpose: This chapter provides a contextualized understanding of the gendered anxieties expressed by elite sport regulators that motivated the formulation of sex testing policies in sport between 1937 and 1968. The focus is on complicating the claim that sex testing was first instituted to prevent explicit male bodies from fraudulently masquerading as women in sport. Rather, the chapter argues that sex testing policies were formulated in response to anxieties over sex binary pollution.

Methodology: The chapter is based on a genealogical study of the female category in elite sport, built on archival research conducted at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) historical archives and online newspaper archive collections.

Findings: Boundaries around female embodiment were navigated and written into sex testing policy in response to threats to presumed ideas around gendered and sexed normality in sport. These threats were embodied by athletes who polluted or crossed the border between female and male, to the extent that their bodies were rendered hermaphroditic, excessively masculinized, or hybrid. These bodies caused gendered anxieties for sport regulators, who reacted with policy responses that aimed to purify the sex binary from category pollution or sex abnormality.

Implications: As long as sex binary policing in elite sport continues, awareness of the contextual history of sex testing is essential for understanding the underlying ideas upon which sex binary policing in sport has been built.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the most recent (or emerging) trends likely to have a major impact in shaping the future of tourism in Europe.

The methodology of this paper involved in-depth literature review of European Union policies, initiatives and programs. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with key individuals/organisations, mainly at a European level, but also including pertinent global and national tourism organisations. Moreover, an online survey was also conducted and circulated to a wide range of organisations from all 28 EU Member States. Nvivo was used to analyse the documents as well as to conduct a content and thematic analysis of the interviews.

This paper identifies five trends associated with the future of tourism in Europe. Those main trends are: evolving visitor demand; marketing; stakeholders and tourism governance; new technologies; and sustainable and responsible tourism.

This trends paper provides five useful recommendations for the future of tourism in Europe, including: sustainable tourism development, investment in technology, effective tourism governance, enhance Europe's overall destination brand and marketing strategy, and the need for new skills and training.

In recent times there has been an explosion in the number and value of mergers and acquisitions. The pressing question that is argued by both managers and academicians relates to the performance of these high value decisions. This paper examines the literature relating to the performance of mergers and acquistions with a view to throwing some light on the question. Criticisms of the existing literature are provided, as also are specific recommendations for future research such as including more longitudinal instead of cross‐sectional studies.

A company may ignore its non‐obligatory responsibilities to employees during a major change such as a merger, leading to their disaffection and feeling of insecurity. The purpose of this paper is to explore how employee views of the merged organization differ by their pre‐merger background, and to explain the impact of the poorly perceived organizational virtue on employees' emotional response to the merged organization including satisfaction, emotional attachment, job security and loyalty.

The methodology involved a questionnaire survey of employees from an organization in crisis following a merger due to poor employee morale and high labor turnover.

The two major findings were: first perceptions of organizational empathy, warmth and conscientiousness were strongly correlated with employee loyalty, perceived job security, satisfaction and emotional attachment. Second, company background prior to the merger had a contrary effect to that expected from existing literature; employees from the acquiring companies had more negative feeling towards the merged organization.

The research findings highlight the importance of promoting the virtues of empathy and warmth as keys to ensuring the emotional attachment and loyalty of key employees to ensure the long‐term success of the merger.

Despite growing interest in applying virtue ethics into business, empirical studies assessing organizational level virtue are rare. This empirical study of the organizational virtue advances, complements, and distinguishes itself from existing studies on merger, by demonstrating the importance of non‐obligatory virtues (those beyond legal and economic responsibilities) perceived by employees.

Uses a case study from Hollywood to demonstrate the issue of age discrimination. Compares the experience against others in the “real world” and concludes that, whilst the experiences are less, there are still real issues in age discrimination, particularly in the case of women. Suggests that those who wish to make age a handicap will do so whilst others will overcome such barriers if they so want.