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Children’s health and life chances are affected by many factors, with parents and schools holding influential roles. Yet relatively little is known about parental engagement in school-based health education and specifically, from the perspectives of health and education professionals. The purpose of this paper is to examine professionals’ perspectives on parental engagement in school-based health education.

An exploratory qualitative study was conducted with ten health, education and local authority professionals from a socio-economically deprived area in England. Semi-structured interviews explored the role of professionals within the school health curricula, roles that parents played in school health, and barriers and enablers to parental engagement in school health education.

Reported barriers to engagement related to assumptions about parents’ own health behaviours, impacts of funding and inspection regimes, and protected time for health within the school curriculum. Enablers included designated parental support workers based in the school, positive role modelling by other parents, consultation and engagement with parents and a whole school approach to embedding health within the wider curriculum.

Findings from this study suggest the importance of building meaningful partnerships with parents to complement school health education and improve child health outcomes.

This paper addresses an important gap in the research on parental engagement in school-based health education from the perspectives of health and education professionals. Effective partnerships with parents are crucial to the success of school health education.

The authors have identified a new type of innovator that combines the rascal‐like idealism of Robin Hood with the network‐based business models of early internet businesses to revolutionize many markets. These innovators are initially non‐profit entrepreneurs who develop organic, cellular, distributed network structures to accomplish their work. They use financial, transportation and communications networks in novel ways to circumvent normal barriers to market entry.

The authors studied the business practices and culture of a number of these network idealists.

Network idealist succeed by undermining at least four of the barriers to market entry. They use networks to ramp up scale quickly. They differentiate by appealing to idealistic or radical impulses, often creating a charismatic brand in the process. They overcome capital requirements by using contributed labor and public infrastructures. And, they skirt the regulations that restrict innovation in many industries.

As network idealist organizations like Craigslist mature, researchers will need to analyze how their business model changes and develops.

An incumbent options matrix describes four strategies available in response to network idealist competition: eliminate, join, barricade, align.

The authors identify a new and very successful form of competition, explain its strategies, and suggest ways to counter attack.

Limits may be placed on sociability through a sense of social superiority (middle‐class people separating themselves from working‐class on a housing estate), through strength of sociability within the nuclear family limiting outside contacts, or through placing a value on solitude and personal privacy. Inadequate attention has been paid to those who actually “choose” social isolation; in particular, the group formed by those who never marry but choose the single life and its attendant type of social isolation would be worth study, giving consideration to the reasons behind such choices.

This paper aims to recount the genesis of a successful innovation cluster among Irish-based divisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and Irish universities in the pharmaceutical industry. This cluster was actively “narrativized” through the language of obligation, desire, competence and know-how. As such, it is typical of the “hero’s quest” literary genre in which challenges are faced, obstacles are overcome and victory is ultimately won. Importantly, in this story, the cluster was morally and pragmatically charged with dealing with significant challenges faced by the Irish pharmaceutical industry. Broader societal discourses operated as a resource for actors to use in proposing collaboration and innovation as the appropriate response to such challenges. Specifically, through narrative and discourse, actors created the necessary conditions conducive for a cluster to develop. These created a discursively constituted shared purpose which ultimately ensured successful innovation collaboration. Essentially, through narrative and discourse, the key actors identified the collaboration a protagonist in pursuit of a quest. By linking theoretical and empirical insights, the paper offers a conceptual framework that can be used in future studies to understand the emergence of clusters.

Adopting Wengraf’s (2001) structured approach to narrative interviewing, 18 key actors shared their understanding of how the cluster came into being. Each interview began with a single question intended to induce narrative, in this case “tell me the story of the cluster as you see it.” This allowed participants to be in control of their own story (Wengraf, 2001). Each interview was transcribed in full and appended to notes taken at the time of the interview. Each narrative offered a “purposeful account” (Jovchelovitch and Bauer, 2000) of how and why the cluster was formed and the centrality of the participants’ roles. In line with recognised protocols, in the authors analysis of data, they paid specific attention to how stories were told, the roles assigned to key protagonists, as well as how events and actors were linked in stories (see Czarniawska, 1997).

This paper further demonstrates how language, metaphor and narrative and discourse (Hatch, 1997) becomes a strategic resource on which actors can draw to create desired realities (Hardy et al., 2000) particularly in terms of collaboration and innovation. Further, this case highlights how dialogue was encouraged throughout the process of establishing the cluster and has continued to be an important element. Rather than imposing some grand design, the SSPC cluster is and always will be emergent. In this sense, in the early stages of collaboration, detecting and supporting existing and emergent communities is essential to success, and shared identity which is the outcome of members’ discursive practices appears to be a powerful driver of collaboration.

There are important insights for cluster and innovation theory development that can be extrapolated from this study. First, context-specific narrative accounts provided in this study further extend the authors’ understanding of the process through which fundamental changes (innovation) in organisational activities are enacted (Ettlie and Subramaniam, 2004). Second, the authors’ understanding of how new ventures are attributed organisational legitimacy through language and story is augmented (Gollant and Sillince, 2007; Pentland, 1999). Third, the authors have articulated how different discourses are mobilised by actors at different stages of development and for different audiences to create desired innovation outcomes, illustrating that innovations can result from advances in knowledge (McAdam et al., 1998). Finally, the authors see how discourse and practice are dynamic as participants articulate their intention to exert further influence on innovation discourse through their lobbying activities.

By focusing on the specific problem of crystallisation, and using the discourse of collaboration, particularised ties emerged around SSPC and this inspired synergistic action. When seeking approval from host organisations, they spoke in terms of return on investment and the potential to add value, part of the discourse of organisational effectiveness. Consequently, the authors stress the benefits of understanding audiences and adjusting discursive approaches on this basis. As such, this study provides evidence that tailored discursive approaches can be used as a resource for managers and practitioners that are seeking to inspire innovation through collaboration.

The discourse of collaboration also became a resource upon which actors could draw to articulate how they might respond to the context and realise the vision. Because this discourse is promoted in government reports and embodied in government strategy, the protagonists were able to borrow from the discourse to secure the necessary resources (in this case funding) that would enhance the possibilities of more effective collaboration. This is because different stakeholders engage with discourse in ways that help to create the outcomes they desire. It was noticeable that the leaders within the Solid State Pharmaceutical Cluster recognised the importance of discourse to innovation collaboration, and on this basis, they successfully adjusted the use of terminology in relation to the exchange partners they were addressing. When addressing potential partners within industry and academia, they utilised both the “burning platform” and “Ireland Inc.” metaphors to create generalised membership ties around the need for innovation and action.

First, context-specific narrative accounts provided in this study further extend the authors’ understanding of the process through which fundamental changes (innovation) in organisational activities are enacted (Ettlie and Subramaniam, 2004). Second, the authors have articulated how different discourses are mobilised by actors at different stages of development and for different audiences to create desired innovation outcomes, illustrating that innovations can result from advances in knowledge (McAdam et al., 1998). Finally, the authors see how discourse and practice are dynamic as participants articulate their intention to exert further influence on innovation discourse through their lobbying activities.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The environment of most organizations is beset by continuous change, instability, flux, and unpredictability. If organizations are to survive and prosper under such conditions, they must be capable of dynamic adaption and stable and reliable performance. Organization theory recognizes the importance of both imperatives, but typically assumes that they pull organizations in different directions. Building on Selznick’s theory of institutionalization, we argue that institutions can, should and sometimes do master the challenge of being responsive and stable, while avoiding the potentially destructive tendencies of rigidity and opportunism. Contrary to a prominent view that strong institutionalization leads to inertia, Selznick’s theory suggests that strong institutions are capable of preemptive adaptation to protect the character of their institutions. We describe this state as one of dynamic conservatism and explore four types of preemptive internal reform strategies: strategic retreat, self-cannibalization, experimentation, and repositioning. We conclude with a consideration of factors that might moderate the ability of strong institutions to proactively change in order to remain the same.

Faith-based nonprofit organizations often do not track the transformational outcomes of programs because these outcomes are considered intangible and difficult to quantify. Bible League International’s (BLI) Board of Directors commissioned the development of an instrument to assess the transformative impact of BLI’s programs. This was accomplished in collaboration with the Metadigm Group. From field interviews and from relevant literature, three measurement domains emerged: Program Participant Outcomes, Worker Capacity and Affiliation, and Program Function. In pilot tests, qualitative methods were used to refine the instrument. Due to time and budgetary restraints, the project ended prior to conducting reliability studies. This case study presents factors driving faithbased nonprofits to measure transformational outcomes, exposes some of the methodological challenges in accessing transformational outcomes, and provides an approach to developing an instrument to quantify transformational outcomes

This paper aims to systematically unpack the ideal of organizational transparency by tracing the concept's origins in the era of Enlightenment. Based on a genealogical reconstruction, the article explores different transparency understandings in key areas of online public relations (PR) and discusses the opportunities and challenges they present for the field.

This is a conceptual paper that unfolds a genealogical reconstruction to uncover different transparency ideals of modernity. These perspectives are then transferred to the field of online PR to discuss their ethical and practical implications in the context of digitalization.

Claims for transparency manifest in three distinct ideals, namely normative, instrumental and expressive transparency, which are also pursued in online PR. These ideals are related to associated concepts, like dialogue, control and authenticity, which serve as transparency proxies. Moreover, each transparency ideal inherits an ambivalence that presents unique opportunities and challenges for PR practitioners.

Instead of an unquestioned belief in the ideal of organizational transparency, the paper urges communication practitioners to critically reflect on the ambivalent nature of different transparency regimes in the context of digitalization and provides initial recommendations on how to manage digital transparency in online PR responsibly.

The paper contributes to the vivid debate surrounding organizational transparency in the context of digitalization by offering a novel and systematic analysis of the multifaced concept of transparency while opening new research avenues for further conceptual and empirical research.