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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of timing of first childbirth on the child wage-penalty experienced by working mothers in Japan. There is an increasing age of first childbirth and increasing labor force participation rate of Japanese women: does it indicate that the presence of children causes women to pay a high price for motherhood?

This study estimates regression equations explaining the labor wages of working women, using a longitudinal data set from the Japan Household Panel Survey (the JHPS/KHPS 2004–2015). The fixed-effect method is utilized to control the bias that results from unobserved individual-specific characteristics.

The results indicate that having children negatively affects the wages of Japanese women. However, there is no variation in the child wage-penalty between early child bearers (age 27 years or younger) and late child bearers (older than 27 years). In addition, an additional year of post-birth work experience contributes equally to an additional year of pre-birth work experience on wage gains. These findings remain robust with an alternate cut-off age of 30-years old.

There is no previous study that relates the timing of the first birth to the motherhood wage-penalty in Japan. This study indicates that the timing of childbirth does not seem to be an important factor in the improvement of women’s labor wages. Thus, delaying childbirth may not be an optimal birth timing to maximize the lifetime earnings of Japanese women, especially for those who are career-minded.

This article examines the use of emergency intervention for child protection in England by the police and social services to establish when and why powers are used and what subsequently happens. It is based on two studies in England between 1998 and 2004: 1) The Police Protection Study (PP), which examined the use of police protection through a survey of 16 (of the 43) police forces in England and Wales and record reading (311 cases) and interviews (57) in eight forces. 2) The Emergency Protection Orders (EPO) study, which examined EPO applications though a national survey of courts, an analysis of cases (86) from six social services departments, and interviews (78) with social workers, lawyers, court staff and magistrates. There are wide variations in the use of emergency powers. The police act independently and in response to social workers' requests. Social workers resort to emergency powers in well‐known, serious cases when parents refuse co‐operation. EPOs are followed by care proceedings.

The purpose of this paper is to collaborate across disciplines to agree a better map of human development.

This paper used an iterative process of consultation with professionals and specialists in relevant disciplines, and service users, continually refining the diagram and text until a “good enough” consensus was reached to produce a diagrammatic form and explanatory text.

The process revealed a strong commitment across many disciplines to find a common contextual framework within which specialist understandings could be accommodated. The consultation process and iterative development of the diagram and text was marked by widespread interest and many detailed discussions. The substance of this paper is the result of that process.

The model places research in different specialist fields onto a single “map of the territory”. It can encourage collaboration across disciplines when they are studying similar areas from different perspectives. It indicates the value of collaborative rather than competitive research enterprises.

Too often, professionals involved in fields concerning human development become focussed within narrow frameworks of specialisation. The model supports better understanding of how different elements relating to developmental life interrelate. This can facilitate the basis upon which a wide range of training, education and research programmes can be formulated.

The model proposes greater use of a “whole-person/whole-life” perspective, which should allow greater integration between disparate approaches, and less experience of fragmentation. For a wide range of public sector activities, the quality of relational activity should be central to effective organisational and human outcomes. Without a unifying context, the understanding required to support relational work is weak: this model ad-dresses that deficit.

This work is entirely original. It should be of value to all those interested in working in holistic ways; to policy makers wishing to avoid duplication, waste and ineffective interventions; and to researchers interested in working across disciplinary boundaries. Most importantly, it is for staff involved in health, justice, social care and education services at all levels. Their effectiveness relies on relational, as well as procedural working, and this model will support confidence in the primacy of these activities.

The paper analyses the management development and learning implications for organizations in the early stages of “going international”. From an empirical study of companies which had recently internationalized, it highlights the requirement for different types of learning at different stages of the process. Some of the learning requirements for successful internationalization are of a “programmatic” type but mostly the implications of internationalization are for “tacit” knowledge, requiring reflective, action‐oriented approaches to learning. The requirement for generative, double‐loop learning is shown to be a key feature of the later stages of the internationalization process. A five‐staged model of internationalization is produced which establishes the implications for management learning throughout the process. It provides those involved with businesses which go international an opportunity to analyse the management learning needs of the organization and so to enhance the success of this form of business development.

Child neglect is the most common form of maltreatment but is also one of the most complex. Neglect has a long-term negative impact on children and young people’s development and wellbeing. This study examined 20 recent serious case reviews that had taken place in England where neglect was a feature. The purpose of this study is sought to explore the barriers, which exist for social workers in England in identifying and responding to neglect in a timely, appropriate and effective manner.

Thematic analysis identified four main themes that were likely to impact upon effective interventions.

Challenges in terms of the definition of neglect and how to identify it; the use of neglect toolkits; the impact of organisational cultures on practice and the voice of the child.

In spite of its prevalence there is a dearth of literature relating specifically to the issue of neglect. There is a need for further research to be undertaken because of the acknowledged, seriousness and potential longstanding negative impact on children even into adulthood (Horwath, 2013). It is hoped that this study provides a useful insight into some of the barriers that exist for social workers in working effectively with children and families for whom neglect is an issue.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of ability, desire and opportunity on the individual’s intention to be self-employed.

The authors created a database from Swedish national registers consisting of all individuals residing in Sweden sometime during the period 1997-2010 and selected all 333,001 full sibling pairs, 12,810 maternal half sibling pairs and 15,944 paternal half sibling pairs. Three types of entrepreneurs were defined based on information from the Swedish Tax Register. The authors divided the intention to be self-employed into ability and desire and defined ability as a genetic factor and desire as a common family factor. A classical twin model was used to separate the variance of the outcome variables into genetic, common and unshared environmental factors.

The study demonstrates that the influence from opportunity on the intention to be self-employed is generally strong and that all factors, ability, desire and opportunity, differ, both in size and content, for the three outcomes of entrepreneurs.

The authors divide self-employment into three distinct company types, which enables a sophisticated additive genetic analysis of the ability, desire and opportunity to be self-employed. The authors contribute to the understanding of why individuals become self-employed by examining the influences from internal and external factors of family on the intentions of self-employment.

The Internet and its commercial applications in electronic commerce, particularly new ventures like B2B e‐markets, are experiencing a volatile introduction to the business environment. Businesses are restructuring and forming networks in an effort to accommodate and use this new phenomenon to their advantage. From this perspective, this article offers a conceptual framework on the process of creating these new ventures, the impact of network champions in the creation process and the strategic significance of the competency‐destroying innovation (Internet) for buyers and sellers who join the B2B e‐market. Several working propositions are developed from the extant literature that should be useful for empirical work on how new B2B e‐markets are implemented. The paper presents a refined proposition based on a field study of a B2B e‐market case.

It proved difficult to recruit sufficient mothers to a prospective cohort study designed to explore the factors and characteristics of mothers whose children are the subject of the public care system as a result of their drinking, retaining or losing care of their children. In conducting interviews instead with social workers in six local authorities, the repurposed study aimed to explore their views of the barriers and facilitators to involving this “hard to reach” population of mothers in research at the beginning of care proceedings.

For this study, 36 semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with child and family social workers and social work managers located in six English local authorities. Transcripts were analysed using Nvivo and coded thematically.

Workforce issues and social work workload, court timescales and the additional burden that participating in research at a time of enormous stress for mothers were described as barriers to recruitment. Social workers suggested that the criteria for including participants could be widened to include mothers in pre-proceedings and that recruitment could take place via substance use services with whom mothers do not have an antagonistic relationship.

The perspective of social work practitioners and not mothers themselves on barriers to engagement in research is a limitation of the study. Innovative and flexible research design is needed to include the participation of mothers whose alcohol use has led to court proceedings in research.

Few studies have investigated the barriers and facilitators to engaging mothers in research at the point that care proceedings have been issued. The re-purposed study highlighted the particular stresses on mothers and social workers and made recommendations for alternative strategies for recruiting these mothers and representing their experience in research.