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While there is some evidence of bias against curly hair, this chapter provides a more comprehensive analysis by examining comments made by women about their hair experience, how it affects their identity, their experiences in the workplace and the challenges it presents to them in their decision to straighten their hair or leave it naturally curly. Utilising a qualitative inductive approach, we identify themes in the comments that could be tied to relevant theories and provide a framework for future research. This chapter also includes an empirical examination of individual beliefs regarding the impact of female hair texture (curly vs. straight hair) on others' perceptions of her and her workplace outcomes. Responses from 235 participants show that straight-haired women were rated significantly higher than curly haired women on job characteristics that are important to professional positions. Thus, a bias against curly haired women appears to exist in the workplace.

This study aims to assess the nature and scope of dog-based programmes in prisons, assessing critically the potential opportunities, benefits, challenges and risks of developing innovative dog-based programmes for older prisoners in England and Wales. This paper outlines the potential benefits and challenges of developing dog-based programmes for older prisoners and sets out next steps for future research and practice.

This study is based on a scoping review of published research literature on prison dog programmes (PDPs) in the USA, the UK and other countries, with particular reference to older people in prison, followed by semi-structured interviews with six members of an expert advisory group. The literature review and data from the qualitative interviews were analysed thematically.

There is a substantial body of published research literature which supports PDPs as having identifiable positive impacts for people and also dogs, and also published research which highlights the benefits to older people of dog ownership or participation in dog-based activities. However, much of this research is small-scale and qualitative, and it has been argued that there is a lack of a quantitative evidence base. This research concludes that findings from the literature review and the semi-structured interviews support further research and the creation of pilot projects to develop dog-based projects for older people in prison.

This study was small-scale, and the findings need to be approached with caution. The literature review searched a small number of databases and filtered out articles published in languages other than English, and the review of the grey literature focused on reports from the UK. The number of experts interviewed was small and there was no direct consultation with older people in prison nor with older people with recent personal lived experience of imprisonment and community resettlement. A more extensive future study would benefit from a more extensive literature review, a larger group of participants and the inclusion of service users, prison managers and government policymakers, subject to the appropriate ethical and security approvals. At the time the research took place, ongoing COVID-19 restrictions on prison research meant that research with current prisoners and prison managers would not have been approved by the HMPPS NRC.

This research provides a research-based justification for future dog projects for older prisoners, leading potentially to improved well-being for older people in prison.

This study brings together the published research literature on PDPs with the research literature on the needs and experiences of older people in prison for the first time, and identifies potential directions for future research.

Aster Retail (AR) is the retail pharmacy division of the Aster Dr Moopen's Healthcare (ADMH) Group. The group delivers healthcare services across the Middle East, India and the Far East, with a portfolio of hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centres and retail pharmacies. AR, under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jobilal Vavachan, is well known for its people-centric approach, unique culture and innovative human resource (HR) practices. AR has won multiple awards for HR practices, service quality and business performance. In a recent corporate restructuring (2018), “Aster Primary Care” was carved out by combining the group's Clinics and Retail businesses. This case discusses the evolution of AR's HR journey and the challenges associated with integrating culturally diverse businesses without compromising the values of ADMH and its promise, “We'll Treat You Well.”

This paper aims to understand how cultural and creative industries (CCIs) contribute to regional innovation.

This paper explores the process of CCIs contributing to regional innovation and assesses the accumulated outcome of this process.

The authors conclude that CCIs contribute to a city’s innovation involving five dimensions (time, space, tangible, intangible and division) and four phases (people, tool, collaboration and brokerage) and the contributions are accumulated into positive innovation outcome; however, a highly developed economy is relatively unsupportive of CCIs contributing to regional innovation.

The main contributions are that the authors configured the detailed process of CCIs contributing to regional innovation and the authors quantitatively measured the impact of CCIs on regional innovation, using the Porter diamond model and Shannon entropy to construct the CCI index.