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In every industry there are resources. Some are moving, others more fixed; some are technical, others social. People working with the resources, for example, as buyers or sellers, or users or producers, may not make much notice of them. A product sells. A facility functions. The business relationship in which we make our money has “always” been there. However, some times this picture of order is disturbed. A user having purchased a product for decades may “suddenly” say to the producer that s/he does not appreciate the product. And a producer having received an order of a product that s/he thought was well known, may find it impossible to sell it. Such disturbances may be ignored. Or they can be used as a platform for development. In this study we investigate the latter option, theoretically and through real world data. Concerning theory we draw on the industrial network approach. We see industrial actors as part of (industrial) networks. In their activities actors use and produce resources. Moreover, the actors interact − bilaterally and multilaterally. This leads to development of resources and networks. Through “thick” descriptions of two cases we illustrate and try to understand the interactive character of resource development and how actors do business on features of resources. The cases are about a certain type of resource, a product − goat milk. The main message to industrial actors is that they should pay attention to that products can be co-created. Successful co-creation of products, moreover, may require development also of business relationships and their connections (“networking”).

In the context of lifelong learning society, education experts pay more and more attention to online assessment (OLA) correlated with the concept of e-learning environment. This chapter builds upon these issues concerning the e-learning environment and the inevitable move to using OLA which is a natural outcome of the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) assisting in enhancing flexible learning and assessment.

The main purpose of this research is to (a) analyze the postgraduates’ perceptions toward OLA they had taken part in, and (b) identify if there are significant differences in these perceptions based on the variables of gender and skills of using ICTs. Subjects were postgraduate students of master third level enrolled in “Advanced seminar in Islamic Education” syllabus in Faculty of Education, Umm Al Qura University, K.S.A. The study used an e-questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to investigate postgraduate students’ attitudes and opinions about OLA.

The results of the study indicated highly positive perceptions of OLA. In addition, the study concluded that gender and ICTs familiarity significantly affect postgraduate students’ responses in most of the areas studied. The study recommended the necessity of implementing OLA culture as a way to the formation of the knowledge-based society.

This study focuses on the guide role, experience context, and the subsequent cocreation strategies regarding the tourist experience. The guide role and the guide–tourist interaction are explored by using a qualitative research design. To illustrate how guides perceive their role, the experience context, and the strategies adopted in order to cocreate experience value for tourists, two different experiences are discussed: a guided tour at a rock art site and a guided nature-based tour in a northern landscape. Interpretive data analysis reveals how the tourist context may encourage or restrain the guides’ uses of different cocreation strategies, in particular storytelling. In addition, the findings indicate that the guides have different perceptions regarding their role, which influence their view and use of the available cocreation resources.

This chapter presents an exploration of the ways in which humanitarian non-government organisations (NGOs) and communities affected by the 2014 floods in Solomon Islands interpreted and responded to the disaster, identifying factors that assisted and constrained stakeholders in disaster response and recovery. The research investigates the extent to which communities were consulted and participated in NGO responses, and the factors which informed community–NGO relationships. A qualitative case study approach was used, employing interviews, focus groups and document analysis, guided by a reflexive discourse analysis and narrative inquiry approach, which places the focus of the study on the experiences of participants. Communities played very limited roles in NGO responses, especially non-dominant or marginalised sectors of society, such as youth, women and people with disabilities. Failure to respond appropriately to the differentiated needs of affected populations can exacerbate their risk of experiencing secondary disaster. The authors argue that there is a need to improve the inclusiveness of responses to disaster, engaging women, youth and people with disabilities in decision making in order to respond more appropriately to their needs.

This chapter offers a selective review of the emerging Indigenous Pacific educational research from 2000 to 2018. The Pacific region is home to many and various cultural groups, and this review is an opportunity to celebrate the consequent diversity of thought about education. Common threads are used to weave this diversity into a set of coherent regional patterns. Such threads include the regional value to educational research of local metaphor, and an emphasis on relationality or the state of being related as a cornerstone of education, both in research and as practice. The relationship between indigenous educational thought and formal education in indigenous contexts is also addressed. The review pays attention to educational research centered in home islands and that which focuses on the education of those from Pacific Islands in settler societies since connections across the ocean are strong. Because of the recent history of the region, developments are fast paced and ongoing, and this chapter concludes with a sketch of research at the frontier. Set within the context of an area study, the chapter concludes by suggesting what challenges the region has to offer in terms of re-thinking the field of international and comparative education.

This chapter begins by exploring the critical tenets of strategic human resource management (SHRM) and then discusses what the study and practice of SHRM needs to do in a new era of sharing economy and artificial intelligence (AI) for delivering successful business and individual employee performance in a new world of technological disruptions in work and employment. Using examples from popular platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, Ola, Zomato and Swiggy in India, to name a few, this chapter illustrates the changing ways of how non-standard employees are managed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) through the use of technology platforms and apps, including the specific use of AI, in implementing a number of these changes. We highlight the need for new skills and knowledge by HR professionals to successfully engage in the new and brave world of AI-based technological disruption that we are all facing.

In terms of the concept of broken home as a juvenile delinquency risk factor, whilst Nigeria and Ghana are culturally different from western nations (Gyekye, 1996; Hofstede, 1980; Smith, 2004), parental death (PDE) and parental divorce (PDI) have been previously taken-for-granted as one factor, that is ‘broken home’. This paper aims to deconstruct the singular model of ‘broken home’ and propose a binary model – the parental death and parental divorce hypotheses, with unique variables inherent in Nigerian/Ghanaian context.

It principally deploys the application of Goffman’s (1967) theory of stigma, anthropological insights on burial rites and other social facts (Gyekye, 1996; Mazzucato et al., 2006; Smith, 2004) to tease out diversity and complexity of lives across cultures, which specifically represent a binary model of broken home in Nigeria/Ghana. It slightly appraises post-colonial insights on decolonization (Agozino, 2003; Said, 1994) to interrogate both marginalized and mainstream literature.

Thus far, analyses have challenged the homogenization of the concept broken home in existing literature. Qualitatively unlike in the ‘West’, analyses have identified the varying meanings/consequences of parental divorce and parental death in Nigeria/Ghana.

Unlike existing data, this paper has contrasted the differential impacts of parental death and parental divorce with more refined variables (e.g. the sociocultural penalties of divorce such as stigma in terms of parental divorce and other social facts such as burial ceremonies, kinship nurturing, in relation to parental death), which helped to fill in the missing gap in comparative criminology literature.

Reports from the Norwegian police indicate that actors in the architecture, engineering and construction industry face severe competition from criminal actors. Sub-contractors working within the law struggle to be competitive compared to dubious sub-contractors. This study aims to examine (1) what the sub-contractors’ perceptions of current contracting practices are, (2) what problems they face and (3) what countermeasures can be used to improve the situation.

The research was carried out on the basis of a qualitative approach. A literature review and a document study of reports from the sub-contractors, public agencies and other relevant organisations were conducted. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with the management of eight sub-contractors in the Norwegian architecture, engineering and construction industry.

There is a significant difference in the perception of the reality between contractors’ management and the blue-collar workers. Management among the contractors maintain that their control systems work; however, the result from this study shows that it is easy for the sub-contractors to take advantage of loopholes or avoid the countermeasures.

This paper is limited to Norway and use only the paint industry as a case study.

This study shows that sub-contractors constitute an important source of information in the effort to prevent dubious sub-contractors as they are the actors who experience the greatest pressure and competition from them. Therefore, contractors should include the sub-contractors in the process of developing measures to prevent this misconduct.

A very little research has been carried out within this field of study in Norway.

The national immigrant rights campaign of 2006 stands as one of the largest mobilizations by people of color in US history, yet less scholarly attention has been given to systematically comparing these mobilizations at the local level. To develop an understanding of what led to sustained mobilization, a comparative case study analysis of seven cities in California's San Joaquin Valley is employed. The empirical evidence is based on interviews with key organizers and participants, newspaper documentation of protest events, census data, and other secondary sources. I find that the presence and size of policy threats explained the initial protest during the spring of 2006 in all localities, but cities with elaborate resource infrastructures (preexisting organizations, histories of community organizing, and coalitions) had more enduring levels of collective action.