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This paper aims to summarise key messages from a major evidence review of health inequality in England since 2010 – “the Marmot Review 10 Years on”.

Alongside “the Marmot Review 10 Years on”, which came out in February 2020, the author accessed the original Marmot review published in 2010, a 2020 article by Marmot, and Marmot’s online talk to the Royal Society of Physicians Edinburgh on 2nd of July 2020. The author drew out key messages from these sources.

Although many local authorities have taken up the 2010 Marmot review recommendations, they have been working against budget cuts under the system known as austerity. This has reduced funding to already deprived areas and probably explains worsened health inequality in England compared to other European countries. There are examples of successful local partnerships that have improved lives, but they rely on temporary charity funding. Health services can work for change locally, but central government policies must help. This has become even more urgent since the pandemic.

The original Marmot review and “the Marmot Review 10 Years on” are major evidence-based examinations of what causes and maintains health inequality, both physical and mental, and how this situation might be improved. It is impossible to study them and still believe that health is just about lifestyle choices. People need real options to choose from, and this is only possible if they live in places designed for human thriving from childhood to old age. As a nation, England can move towards this goal rather than further away from it. These reports show the way.

Suggests that declining product quality and manufacturers′ social responsibility is of increasing concern to consumers and to manufacturers, who must bear the cost of such faulty practice. Reviews documented cases of poor quality products and matches them with the ethical theories of utilitarianism, universalism, rights, justice and Natural Law. Obligations to stakeholders are examined, and future research suggested.

Editorial boards of academic journals represent a key institutional mechanism in the governance and functioning of the academic community. Board members play an important role in knowledge production and development of the discipline. The purpose of this paper is to enquire into the diversity characteristics of boards of accounting journals.

Drawing on a diversity framework that distinguishes between societal diversity and value of diversity, the paper examines two board characteristics: gender diversity and internationalisation. Moreover, it examines the influence of three journal and two editor characteristics on board diversity and analyses trends over time.

On gender, overall board trends are consistent with societal diversity and value of diversity: boards reflect the gender profile of senior academics. Further, female representation on boards is broadly consistent across the different journal nationalities; has improved over time; has experienced a convergence in “gender sensitive” sub-disciplines; and is influenced by female editorship. However, inequities appear to be present at the highest level: women appear to be less well represented than men as editors and women also have a lower representation on boards of higher ranked journals than on those of lower ranked journals. On internationalisation, once again, overall trends broadly reflect societal diversity and value at diversity. However, international scholars are less well represented on 4* boards than on 2* and 3* boards and on US boards than on Australian and UK boards. Further, there are signs of weakening US dominance in non-US journals.

Drawing on the diversity framework, this is the first study to comprehensively examine gender diversity and internationalisation of accounting boards.

A functionalist framework is used to synthesize well‐known ideas about societal integration and, conversely, disintegration. If the underlying Darwinian metaphor in functional analysis is retained, and supplemented by dialectical metaphors, then functional theorizing can insightfully address the forces of societal disintegration. The emerging theory revolves around, on the structural side, the dynamics of segmentation, differentiation, interdependence and exchange, structural overlap, structural embeddedness, mobility, segregation, and domination whereas on the cultural side, the theory emphasizes the dynamics inhering in systems of evaluational, regulatory, and legitimating symbols as well as generalized symbolic media.

Successive devolved governments have been attempting to address inequalities which are deeply rooted in Scotland, by adapting UK policies or by devising their own solutions. In addition, from 2007, Scottish National Party (SNP) governments have criticised the policies conducted at UK level – especially the austerity policies in response to the Recession from 2010. They have demanded further powers to be able to mitigate or reform them, thus adding a constitutional dimension which has been reignited after the referendum on Brexit. This chapter deals with some of the policies aiming at tackling inequalities related to incomes and capabilities in the fields of education and health. It sheds light on the ongoing debates in Scotland and on some of the results which have been achieved under SNP governments.

A striking feature of Jaques' work is his “no nonsense” attitude to the “manager‐subordinate” relationship. His blunt account of the origins of this relationship seems at first sight to place him in the legalistic “principles of management” camp rather than in the ranks of the subtler “people centred” schools. We shall see before long how misleading such first impressions can be, for Jaques is not making simplistic assumptions about the human psyche. But he certainly sees no point in agonising over the mechanism of association which brings organisations and work‐groups into being when the facts of life are perfectly straightforward and there is no need to be squeamish about them.

Objective – The first wave of experiences of exemptions policies suggested that poverty-based exemptions, using individual targeting, were not effective, for practical and political economic reasons. In response, many countries have changed their approach in recent years – while maintaining user fees as a necessary source of revenue for facilities, they have been switching to categorical targeting, offering exemptions based on high-priority services or population groups. This chapter aims to examine the impact and conditions for effectiveness of this recent health finance modality.

Methodology/approach – The chapter is based on a literature review and on data from two complex evaluations of national fee exemption policies for delivery care in West Africa (Ghana and Senegal). A conceptual framework for analysing the impact of exemption policies is developed and used. Although the analysis focuses on exemption for deliveries, the framework and findings are likely to be generalisable to other service- or population-based exemptions.

Findings – The chapter presents background information on the nature of delivery exemptions, the drivers for their use, their scale and common modalities in low-income countries. It then looks at evidence of their impact, on utilisation, quality of care and equity and investigates their cost-effectiveness. The final section presents lessons on implementation and implications for policy-makers, including the acceptability and sustainability of exemptions and how they compare to other possible mechanisms.

Implications for policy – The chapter concludes that funded service- or group-based exemptions offer a simple, potentially effective route to mitigating inequity and inefficiency in the health systems of low-income countries. However, there are a number of key constraints. One is the fungibility of resources at health facility level. The second is the difficulty of sustaining a separate funding stream over the medium to long term. The third is the arbitrary basis for selecting high-priority services for exemption. The chapter therefore concludes that this financing mode is unstable and is likely to be transitional.

International migration is a global challenge affecting peoples and nations all over the world. In the advanced economies and welfare states of Western Europe, integrating migrants presents political, social as well as economic challenges. Over the past 50 years, Denmark has made a remarkable U-turn on the immigration question. Once the author of one of the most liberal immigration policies in Western Europe, Denmark presently has one of the strictest. This chapter addresses the causes behind the Danish policy U-turn, and how it has affected the social, economic and political integration of immigrants in Denmark. The chapter shows how Danish immigration politics have turned from low to high salience and have undergone radical changes resulting in a tightening of both internal and external immigration policies. It has become far more difficult to obtain residence and citizenship in Denmark. These measures have limited influx although international refugee crises are difficult to control at the borders. Moreover, Danish integration policies have focused increasingly on obligations and incentives, primarily by cutting benefits. The Danish case however shows that reduction of social benefits only has a marginal positive short-term effect on employment but with some negative side effects. When it comes to education, the Danish welfare state has been relatively successful in integrating immigrants and descendants in the educational system.

This paper aims to examine the ethics of authentic talent development in socioeconomic context by considering a set of alternative ethical frameworks. It juxtaposes the ideals of civic virtue, which involve a concern for the common good, with the reality that socioeconomic deprivation and sociocultural practices severely constrain talent development opportunities and choice.

The paper draws on several frameworks complementary to the ideals of civic virtue – the basic goods approach, human capital theory, the capabilities approach and the ethic of care – to elucidate the barriers to talent development embodied in sociocultural context, as well as policy and institutional practices to overcoming these barriers.

While multiple ethical frameworks are necessary to fully capture the issues related to authentic talent development in socioeconomic context, a focus on the ethic of care and basic goods provision is an important starting point. There are also a few fundamental starting points for human resource development in responding to ethical concerns regarding authentic talent development.

While the prevailing approach to talent development is implicitly based on a logic of social identity ascription, this paper promotes an alternative approach based on the ethics of civic virtue. While the former is oriented to the support of social hierarchies based on identity, the latter is oriented to fostering both social and human well-being via choice and authentic talent development.

Much has been said about institutional change and the forms it can take, whether it is abrupt or incremental, path breaking or path dependent. This strand of research is highly relevant in times of welfare institutional reforms and changes. A puzzle, however, remains, and it concerns the empirical phenomena that there might be institutional inertia despite seeming change. One reason for this remaining puzzle is, as argued here, that the ongoing theoretical reflections have a certain blind spot: “institutional constellations” and their characteristics. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to analyse the “layering” of a welfare institution which results in an institutional constellation.

Such newly established institutional constellations, though they look roughly similar and are formed of comparable ingredients, can differ profoundly between themselves. This could be due to the fact that the characteristics of institutions depend on the regulating principles (the “spirit”) implemented in them. To validate this hypothesis, the author analyses in depth the institutional layering in two traditionally different social protection systems: the Dutch and the German pension systems.

In both cases, as the author shows, the traditional regulating principles are also implemented in the newly established institutional constellation, so that in the end pension systems do not change but differ as they did before.

The empirical phenomenon of institutional inertia despite seeming change has not yet been explicitly addressed. This is the case since the ongoing theoretical reflections have a certain blind spot: “institutional constellations” and their characteristics which are the focus of this paper.