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The purpose of this paper is to gain an in-depth view into how participants perceived their experience of engaging in an enhanced Intensive Intervention and Risk Management Service (IIRMS), which is a part of the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway based within the community.

Five participants were interviewed. They were at different points of engagement with the service. Interviews were taped, transcribed and analysed using the grounded theory methodology.

Participants were able to provide in-depth reflections about their experiences at the service. The main issues centred upon “managing fragile relationships” and “an emerging self”. Subcategories linked to managing fragile relationships were: “letting people in and keeping them away”; “surviving the ruptures”; and “treating me like a person”. Subcategories linked to an emerging self were: “readiness to change” and “making new connections”.

This study focused upon one enhanced IIRMS and findings are not necessarily generalisable to other services within the OPD pathway, although themes are likely to resonate for those leaving custody with complex interpersonal difficulties.

This study has provided access to participants’ perspectives on engaging with an IIRMS. Many factors impact upon the individual’s journey, which is central to the relational approach underpinning the pathway.

The findings have important messages for service providers and commissioners and crucially service user perspectives have been obtained that are integral to future development of the OPD pathway. The findings are also relevant for released prisoners attempting to reintegrate within the community.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether B corps’ (for-profit entities whose owners voluntarily commit to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, beyond traditional CSR, that generates profits, but not at the expense of stakeholders) commitment to social issues influences two aspects of financial performance: employee productivity and sales growth.

This paper is an exploratory analysis of B corps. This paper examines B corps with B Lab’s B Impact Assessment reports and PrivCo financial data, for descriptive information. This paper also analyzes the financial impact of obtaining and reporting on excellence in both employee and consumer focus, as well as the differences in financial growth between B corps and non-hybrid peers.

Overall, results suggest that, among B corps whose treatment of employees (consumers) is recognized as an “area of excellence,” employee productivity (sales growth) is significantly higher. Additionally, sales growth is significantly higher for B corps relative to their peer, non-hybrid, matched firms.

Results from this study inform states considering the adoption of the B corp legal status – this legal status does not hinder firm profitability, but instead enhances long-term firm value while allowing firms to beneficially affect their communities, consumers, employees and the environment.

Results from this study provide important insights regarding the current paradigm shift from the traditional business focus on profit maximization to a fruitful coexistence of profits with social interests and initiatives, within a structure of dissolving national boundaries and increasingly divergent logics.

This paper provides an initial empirical examination of B corp performance.

Since 1990 the National Health Service (NHS) has undergone a sustained period of change. This change has been necessary to prepare the NHS for the task of meeting a demand for services that continues to rise more rapidly than the availability of resources. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one of the most popular ways for trusts to improve their ability to meet demand is through mergers with other trusts. However, little rigorous research has been conducted to assess the extent or effectiveness of this strategy. A research project was, therefore, initiated to better understand the extent and impact of merger activity within the NHS. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to the chief executive, finance director, medical director and human resources director in all the 460 trusts that are currently members of the NHS confederation. In total the survey generated 459 responses out of a possible total of 1,840; an encouraging response rate of 25 per cent. The results of this research provide significant new evidence that “merger mania” has taken hold within the NHS. While 46 per cent of all responding trusts indicated that they had already merged, are actively involved in a merger, proposing to merge or are talking to prospective partners, a further 18.7 per cent of all trusts are forming strategic alliances rather than opting for a full merger. The dominant justification for merging are the beliefs that it will facilitate the reconfiguration of services and ultimately improve patient care. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of these results, before making recommendations with regard to their implications for future merger activity within the NHS.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the role played by three archetypal constructs pertaining to the individual sustainability-oriented entrepreneur, namely prior knowledge, sustainability orientation and sustainability intention, in legitimation behavior and explores their strategic utility.

The author studies legitimacy-seeking behavior in the case of ten sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs. A qualitative case study approach is used, capturing evidence of legitimation behavior in the startup phase through interviews, participant observation and documentation analysis.

Prior knowledge and sustainability orientation appear to offer little value beyond their role as necessary factors in maintaining legitimacy. Both appear to have limited strategic value for legitimation in comparison to sustainability intention. Intention as a construct embodies the “paradox” of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship, and learning to successfully overcome this paradox to strategically utilize intention in legitimation is crucial for these entrepreneurs.

Knowledge of these factors could assist sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs in strategically utilizing these factors as agency when dealing with diverse stakeholder expectations to achieve their enterprising goals. Strengthening knowledge on factors important for legitimacy is pertinent in supporting this shared value approach to entrepreneurship.

Little theoretical or empirical attention has been paid to the complexity of strategic legitimation behavior of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs. This paper provides novel empirical insight into what role these archetypal factors play in legitimation behavior and how they can be strategically utilized.

This paper aims to analyse how sustainable second-hand stores (SSHSs) use storytelling as a legitimization strategy. Second-hand stores have traditionally relied on a charity identity to attract customers. More recently, changing market demands, the growing popularity of second-hand shopping, “vintage” and online shopping have opened up new opportunities for these social enterprises (SEs). This study asks how SSHSs can maintain their legitimacy with incumbent stakeholders while also exploiting these new opportunities.

This paper uses an abductive approach starting from existing knowledge on how storytelling builds legitimacy in conventional enterprises. The authors collected qualitative data and interviewed owners and managers of second-hand stores in the Netherlands. This paper specifically looked at how second-hand stores are using their web shops to convey stories and build legitimacy with (new) audiences.

Contrary to the authors’ expectations, they found that the web shop is not used as a site for storytelling the mission of the store but is rather a stage for specific products that tell a story of trendy and vintage shopping. This attracts a new customer segment to the store that conventionally does not shop there. This paper concludes that second-hand stores use vintage products as symbols in storytelling through their web shop to gain access to a new market. By foregoing to tell the story of their mission on the web shop, the second-hand stores are choosing to keep their charity and business identity separate.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper makes an original contribution by analysing how second-hand stores are actively exploiting new opportunities created by a changing market context and seeking to maintain legitimacy while doing so. This paper argues that legitimacy is not a static “reward,” rather, something that evolves with the enterprise. This research adds to the body of literature on legitimacy and more specifically cultural entrepreneurship, which holds that entrepreneurs can actively gain and maintain legitimacy through storytelling.

This paper is about therapeutic containment. It makes links between what the author understands about containment in therapeutic communities and wider perspectives on containment in the context of organisational and social forces within which the author lives and works in modern society. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The author explores relational dynamics, focusing particularly on the English NHS, using evidence from a cross-section of disciplines including ethology, anthropology and economic philosophy.

The author suggests that the crisis in healthcare culture reflects a wider crisis of containment in the modern world; and that the theoretical legacy from, and lived experience in, therapeutic communities offers a rich perspective on the issues and points to ways forward.

The paper suggests ways that therapeutic community thinking can be applied more widely to topical problems such as the undermining of healthcare culture. The paper argues that an explicit focus on values is important in order to mitigate the forces that distract from co-operative and therapeutic relationships. To illustrate this, the author describes a simple model for nurturing the conditions for intelligent kindness.

The paper draws important parallels between therapeutic community philosophy and practice, and the culture at large.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of staff members working in a psychiatric therapeutic community in relation to ideas of “madness” and “chaos”.

The paper is a qualitative study based on oral history group witness seminars.

The findings indicate that many of the participants experienced working in a therapeutic community as both exciting and unsettling; some found themselves questioning their own mental health at the time. Despite a sense of “madness” and chaos in the life of the community, there was also a feeling that it provided a containing environment for some very disturbed patients.

This study is unusual in drawing upon staff member’s perceptions of their own relationship to “madness” in response to being involved in the life of a therapeutic community.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.