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The purpose of this paper is to examine an oft‐neglected aspect of qualitative research practice – conducting a pilot – using the innovative approach of “e‐research” to generate both practical and methodological insights.

Using the authors’ “e‐research” pilot as a reflexive case study, key methodological issues are critically reviewed. This review is set in a broader context of the qualitative methods literature in which piloting appears largely as an implicit practice. Using a new and emerging approach (“e‐research”) provides a prompt to review “autopilot” tendencies and offers a new lens for analysing research practice.

The authors find that despite an initial focus on “practical” aspects of data collection within their “e‐research”, the pilot opened up a range of areas for further consideration. The authors review research ethics, collaborative research practices and data management issues specifically for e‐research but also reflect more broadly on potential implications for piloting within other research designs.

The authors aim to offer both practical and methodological insights for qualitative researchers, whatever their methodological orientation, so that they might develop approaches for piloting that are appropriate to their own research endeavours. More specifically, the authors offer tentative guidance to those venturing into the emerging area of “e‐research”.

This paper offers insight into an oft‐ignored aspect of qualitative research, whilst also engaging in an emerging area of methodological interest.

This chapter sets out to examine the role of masculinity in the development of a gendered organizational culture over time. The development of images of masculinity within one company—British Airways—is examined through content analysis of company newsletters, advertising copy, annual reports, internal memoranda, and written rules and regulations. Exploring the notion of “multiple masculinities,” the chapter traces the prominent forms of masculinity that emerged in British Airways and assesses their impact on the ways that organizational practices were developed, maintained, and understood. Four key corporate images of masculinity are examined—the pilot, the steward, the engineer, and the “native boy”—and it is argued that those images contributed to the exclusion of women and people of color from those occupations by laying down cultural rules about the ideal typical characteristics of the job holder. The chapter concludes by raising questions about the value of a multiple masculinities focus in explaining changing and contradictory practices of discrimination; the primacy of extra-organizational over organizational practices; and the relationship between multiple masculinities and hegemonic masculinity. Further research is suggested into the extent to which hegemonic masculinity is undermined, over time, by changing and contradictory forms of masculinity within definite sites of gender construction.

This paper seeks to propose a collaborative process for evaluating, piloting and selecting, new and emerging educational technologies. It aims to promote discussion about how such an evaluative process can be inclusive of interdisciplinary stakeholders and envision the actual application of these technologies in real teaching and learning contexts across disciplines.

The methodology applied in the piloting and evaluation of new educational technologies involves the design and identification of learning activities, the development of evaluation criteria which map to the goals of the learning activities and stakeholders' needs, and the incorporation of the technology‐enabled activities into the total course design.

Evaluation methodologies that involve interdisciplinary stakeholders collaborating on a software pilot expose participants to multiple perspectives and divergent views. The evaluation of new educational technologies within a teaching and learning context is more effective in exposing the benefits and weaknesses of the technology than a conventional software pilot.

The new educational technologies evaluation methodology proposed in this paper has only been fully applied in three product pilots and is still in its developmental stage. The research is limited to the evaluation of educational software, not the implementation of new educational technologies.

The re‐iterative and time‐consuming process of piloting and evaluating new educational technologies within a course context is one in which academics require pedagogical, technological and administrative support. This paper presents a methodology that ensures each of these varieties of support is included.

With the rapid expansion of new, sometimes costly educational technologies, universities can benefit from employing evaluation techniques based within an educational context, and ensure that their investments in these tools make an effective contribution to the enhancement of teaching and learning.

This paper aims to examine the development and piloting of a novel European framework for community engagement (CE) in higher education, which has been purposefully designed to progress the CE agenda in a European context.

The proposed framework was co-created through the European Union (EU)-funded project towards a European framework for community engagement in higher education (TEFCE). The TEFCE Toolbox is an institutional self-reflection framework that centres on seven thematic dimensions of CE. This paper follows the development of the TEFCE Toolbox through empirical case study analysis of four European universities and their local communities.

The findings in this paper indicate that the TEFCE Toolbox facilitates context-specific applications in different types of universities and socioeconomic environments. Incorporating insights from engagement practitioners, students and community representatives the TEFCE Toolbox was successfully applied in universities with diverse profiles and missions. The process facilitated the recognition of CE achievements and the identification of potential areas for improvement.

Despite a range of international initiatives, there remains an absence of initiatives within the European higher education area that focus on developing tools to comprehensively support CE. The TEFCE Toolbox and case-study analysis presented in this paper address this gap in knowledge. The broader societal contribution and social responsibility of higher education have become increasingly prominent on the European agenda. The TEFCE Toolbox represents an innovative, robust and holistic European framework with the potential to support universities in reflecting upon their pursuit of addressing grand societal challenges, whilst promoting CE.

With the proliferation of international education initiatives, research into the transfer of pedagogy across cultures is essential to ensure that quality education is delivered in a culturally accessible form. One of the factors impeding such research is the lack of widely accepted theoretical frameworks (Dimmock & Walker, 2005). This paper examines the development and effectiveness of a cross cultural framework that was used to compare a Business program at a Canadian College with its branch campus in Qatar (Prowse & Goddard, 2010). Findings are compared to results in the literature to gauge the robustness of the framework. The framework developed in the study was found to be a helpful means of allowing a comparison of pedagogy across two cultures.

This paper aims to describe the MacEwan University Library’s successful pilot of a fully blended information literacy (IL) instruction program for first-year English courses. Development, implementation and assessment of the pilot prior to full implementation are discussed.

The new sustainable blended model for the English Library Instruction Program reduced duplication of content and effort, incorporated online and in-person instruction and promoted self-directed learning opportunities through a new Learning Commons. This model places essential instruction online while maintaining personal relationships for students with the English Librarian and the Library through multiple points of interaction. Face-to-face instruction efforts were concentrated on developing critical thinking skills through a hands-on source evaluation activity and on providing point-of-need support. Librarians worked closely with English faculty to encourage early voluntary adoption of the new model for the Fall 2013 pilot.

The voluntary early-adopter model worked well for garnering and maintaining support from the English department: the authors had 42 per cent of English sessions piloting the new model for Fall 2013, surpassing the initial target of 25 per cent. Students scored well on an assessment of their ability to identify scholarly sources. Librarian preparation time has been greatly reduced.

Many academic libraries are looking to asynchronous online tutorials as a more sustainable model for delivering IL instruction. This case study demonstrates that it is possible to move some instruction online while maintaining the personal relationships librarians have forged with students and faculty.

This paper aims to describe the development and evaluation of a resource for use by practitioners to self‐evaluate their policy and practice in relation to the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007.

The self‐evaluation resource was developed in the context of multi‐agency adult protection policy and legislation to reflect key quality indicators relevant to stakeholders, the community, practitioners and their agencies.

The quality indicators were selectively piloted by 15 of the 28 multiagency partners in Scotland. The utility of the resource was demonstrated and in some cases the outcomes led to changes in policy and practice. The effect of resource restrictions was reported to have a bearing on the utility of the resource in some partnerships.

The quality indicators were not equally piloted with participants focusing on evaluation of case outcomes rather than wider structural and agency‐wide aspects of adult protection.

The adult protection, self‐evaluation resource has been identified as a potential means of enabling multi‐agency partnerships to establish the effectiveness of their own policy and practice and offers the potential for cross‐Scotland comparisons and bench marking.

The resource provides the basis for self‐evaluation and improvement in adult support and protection that will make the lives of adults at risk of harm safer.

An innovative approach is described to enable self‐evaluation by adult protection practitioners and policy makers to judge the effectiveness of their own performance and ensure improved performance.

The Scottish Government hope to pilot judge only rape trials to increase the woefully low rape conviction rates in Scotland. The reasoning is that by removing jurors, the court will be attenuating the role that rape myths and other cognitive and social biases have on conviction rates. However, a plethora of research from cognitive and social psychology, legal literature and decision-making science has shown that experts, including judges and other legal professionals, may be no less biased than laypeople. This paper aims to outline the research highlighting that experts may also be biased, why biases in judges can be elicited, and potential alternative recommendations (i.e. deselecting jurors who score highly on rape myths and providing training/education for jurors). Furthermore, piloting with real judges, in real trials, may not be best practice. Therefore, the authors recommend that any piloting is preceded by experimental research.

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Furthermore, piloting with real judges, in real trials, may not be best practice; therefore, the authors recommend that any piloting is preceded by experimental research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first of its kind to directly compared the decision-making of jurors and judges within the current Scottish legal context.

While a radical innovation can be embedded in new products or new processes, most studies to date have concentrated on barriers to radical product innovations, with little insights available about the challenges for implementation of radical process innovations.

We theorize a set of barriers to radical process innovation based on a critical case study of an oil company. Our study employs data from 14 semi-structured interviews, one complete participant-observer in the process and access to all corporate documentation. The organization being studied was eventually unable to bring the new process technology to commercialization despite the technology having both technical feasibility and substantive cost savings potential.

We identify five groups of challenges that the company faced: (1) challenges in resource mobilization, (2) challenges in piloting strategy, (3) innovation leadership tensions, (4) tensions in managing shareholders' expectations and (5) product-process innovation tension (i.e. a unique situation when a company implementing a radical process innovation and simultaneously pursues the path to commercialize it as a product innovation).

Sustainable development is one of the major challenges in our era. Process innovations are crucial for achieving sustainability without changing the final product. By providing a list of challenges that executives face in the process of commercializing a radical process innovation, we can help them to achieve sustainability more effectively.

The paper responds to the call to increase our understanding of radical process innovations by utilizing a unique ethnographic research methodology of active participant-observation complemented by independent third-party face-to-face interviews.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a number of initiatives currently being taken by the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority to improve food safety across the food chain. It focuses on the piloting of a new photographic food safety examination for food handlers designed to meet the needs of the multi‐cultural workforce. It is the fourth paper in a themed issue of Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes presenting international food safety management challenges and solutions.

The piloting of the photographic examination involved 121 candidates who undertook the examination in January 2011. The results were compared with the cumulative data from the previous three years (n=40,862) with additional analysis of the performance of each question.

The results of the pilot suggest that replacing the written multiple choice examination paper with a photograph‐based alternative, increased the pass rate by almost 20 per cent, whilst retaining the overall level of difficulty of the examination.

The paper will be of value to practitioners, trainers, education specialists, policy makers and other stakeholders involved in the food safety training initiatives.

This is a unique study providing a mechanism for food handlers with low levels of literacy to become “qualified” to international standards.