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In recent years, scholars, business practitioners and consultants frequently talk about building the networked enterprise. The purpose of this paper is to examine the connections between networked enterprises, organizational legitimacy and organizational performance.

A survey was developed that measured the following aspects of a networked enterprise: employees who network and communicate extensively via internal digital platforms across their organizations; leaders who actively use internal digital platforms to communicate with employees; leaders who actively communicate with stakeholders via external digital platforms; and an innovation culture. The survey measured the following forms of legitimacy judgments: moral; instrumental; and relational. Altogether, 501 executives and managers were surveyed (207 executives, 147 senior managers and 147 managers) in mid-to-large sized (over 500 employees) companies.

The analyses showed strong statistical significance for nearly all relationships. Internal communication on digital platforms, networked employee communication and an innovation culture all contributed to moral, instrumental and relational legitimacy. Leadership communication on external digital platforms (social media) was not a significant contributor to moral or relational legitimacy but was a significant contributor to instrumental legitimacy. Higher organization legitimacy was correlated with higher profit growth.

Leaders and communicators should prioritize a networked enterprise in several ways. They should actively communicate with employees on internal digital platforms. To be absent on internal digital platforms is a significant missed opportunity by leaders to build organizational legitimacy. Further, leaders and communicators should actively promote networked communication among employees as much as possible. Finally, leaders and communicators should communicate, model and reward an innovation culture.

There are no known scholarly studies that accomplish the following: empirically examine a model of networked enterprises comprised of vertical and horizontal communication and an innovation culture; and make connections between leadership communication on digital platforms in networked enterprises with legitimacy judgments. The large sample of contemporary executives and managers bolsters the strength of the findings.

Junior doctors rotating through psychiatry often practise in isolated environments with little prior experience in this field. This can cause anxiety amongst doctors, and may potentially lead to patient safety concerns. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A novel peer-led simulation style teaching session was developed to improve junior doctor knowledge and confidence when working with psychiatry rotations out of hours.

Following successful completion of two iterations of the teaching, junior doctors reported increased confidence, reduced anxiety and a more positive attitude following the session. Facilitators were similarly positive in their feedback, being able to gain formal teaching experience and appraisal.

A novel, inexpensive and easily replicable teaching session is introduced, which can improve junior doctors’ practice and experience when working in psychiatry settings out of hours.

The differences of urban and rural as social spaces, their functions in society, as well as their mutual dependence have been a subject of scientific thinking since the antique times. This chapter revisits the topic from a sociological point of view, studying the evolution of the functions of rural in relation to urban, and how this evolution was reflected in the basic streams of rural research. The text ends by discussing rural research in relation to present social, economic and ecological tendencies. It is argued that the post-productionist phase of rural studies is losing its plausibility, because of the return of material functions for the countryside, during such recent trends as the global food crises and the greenhouse effect. This chapter discusses the prognosis made by the three founding fathers of rural sociology, Pitirim Sorokin, Carle C. Zimmerman and Charles J. Galpin (1932) that the society is melting together into a ‘rurban’ society, and takes distance from this prognosis for several reasons, for example because ecological tendencies seem to renew rather than diminish the differences between rural and urban. It is further argued that ecosystems have increasing impacts on societies in the form of adapted ‘greenhouse rationalism’. Such changes place rural research in a crossroads, posing the question whether to pay attention to increasingly important impacts of ecosystems on society, or not.

Working as a consultant in the field of team development, I frequently find myself at odds with people who have different perceptions about the nature of the work. This confusion was actually expressed in print when in 1980, following the publication of my article on team problem diagnosis, another consultant wrote of his “simpler” method. This turned out to be the “LIFO” system. Again, similar misunderstanding arose in 1982, within a large client organisation in the public sector. The client had undergone major reorganisation, and it had been decided to create an internal consultancy role, a central function of which was to be team development. I was engaged to train those appointed to the role, with emphasis on the skills required by internal consultants. It came as some surprise therefore to be told during a seminar with some of the organisation's directors, that “team building” had recently been conducted in the area concerned. I had not yet trained the internal consultants. It emerged of course that their “team building” and my “team development” were entirely different processes. Impatient to “get things moving”, the organisation had initiated a programme of “team‐building” activity based on packaged exercises, mainly concerned with the analysis of management style.

Frances Wilson, international manager at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), and freelance journalist Peter Williams examine reward and recognition from a global mobility perspective and look at how Cadbury Schweppes is managing global growth through reward design principles.

The authors ask whether individuals tasked with persuading others have distinct and important concerns regarding their occupational stress and well-being. The authors argue that a well-known model from the marketing literature – the persuasion knowledge model (PKM; Friestad & Wright, 1994) – illuminates a number of issues for future study. The authors further argue for a number of extensions to the PKM to account for the persuasion agent’s side of the interaction. Next, the authors consider potential stressors that are distinctive to the persuasion encounter, as well as the strategies that persuasion agents engage to cope. This discussion reveals a number of potential negative consequences for the agents themselves, as well as their employing firms and customers. Finally, the authors present some thoughts on what persuasion agents, their managers, and external regulators can do to mitigate these negative consequences.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were established during an era of legal segregation in the United States and, by providing access to higher education, added considerably to the progress of millions of Black Americans. Moreover, to the benefit of their students, faculties, staffs, alumni, and local communities, most HBCUs sponsor intercollegiate athletic teams. No doubt on these campuses, student-athletes are under pressure to meet academic and athletic demands. In this chapter, the central narrative is on the academic and athletic experiences of Black male student-athletes matriculating at HBCUs with National Collegiate Athletic Association affiliation. This chapter adds to the extant literature on the athletic status and academic plight of Black male student-athletes at HBCUs.

There has been in recent years a surge of interest about new software products that make it possible for libraries to offer assistance to online users via chat. Such software offers far more interactivity than instant messaging programs and allow for a richer experience for both librarian and user. Surveys chat reference services around the globe and analyzes trends in the provision of this new mode of assistance. Also presents discussion of why chat reference service is gathering attention as well as its limitations and drawbacks.