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Purpose: In this chapter, we develop a concept of social biographies which draws on social network and life course theories to examine how a diverse set of social relationships impacts health of sexual and gender minority (SGM) people over time.

Design/methodology/approach: We provide an overview of several decades of research on SGM people's social relationships, organizing this research within a social biographies framework.

Findings: We theorize about the importance of both the structure and content of SGM people's social networks for health, how these social relationships interact with each other, how these social biographies and their impacts shift across SGM cohorts and over the life course, and how they further are shaped by the intersection of a range of factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, social class).

Social biographies can remain constant or change over time, and relationships of all types and durations have the power to significantly improve or undermine health. This is in part because social ties both buffer and exacerbate the inimical effects of stress on health.

Originality/value: Traditional conceptualizations of relationships fail to reflect the diversity of relationships in SGM lives. Studying this diversity deepens our view of how social biographies influence health and how health inequities between SGM and cisgender and heterosexual (cishet) populations emerge. Studying social biographies of SGM people using theoretical and methodological tools from life course and social network perspectives reveals existing voids in the current literature, enabling researchers to better understand the shifting nature of social relationships in the twenty-first century.

The purpose of this paper is to produce a general Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model that is designed and delimited for managing research and development (R&D) activities.

A methodology based on the validity of content of an instrument of measurement, within the analytical framework of the validation of scales or constructs was employed.

The BSC model for R&D developed in this study has been subject to testing with recognised experts in management and in R&D. It has enabled a proposal to be put forward in respect of those indicators that best define the factors related to organisational effectiveness in the achievement of the strategic objectives set by companies, and to inter‐relate them and group them under five broad perspectives of the BSC.

The BSC will be validated as a construct in future research.

The result is the design of a scale of measurement that ranks the empirical indicators under the perspectives of the BSC; for the measurement of results, this instrument will provide unique values that group all the previous indicators in a single scale of measurement.

No studies dealing with the content validation of a BSC have been found in the literature on innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of corporate governance practices on firms’ financial performance, as measured by comprehensive income (CI).

Using a sample of 237 firms from the Standards & Poor (S&P) 500 index during the years 2004-2009, multivariate statistical analyses are conducted to confirm the authors’ main hypothesis.

The results indicate that having high levels of corporate governance culture has a positive impact on a measure of firms’ financial performance, namely, CI. Furthermore, they indicate a positive correlation between a higher percentage of external directors and financial performance, and a negative relationship between number of board meetings and financial performance.

The main contribution of this research is that good corporate governance strategies deliver superior financial performance for businesses in terms of CI. This serves as a method of value creation, which is the ultimate goal of a business. In addition to the use of CI as an indicator of financial performance, a unique measure of corporate governance level is tested.

This paper aims to study the impact of a significant negative shock (the reporting of an initial loss) on the stickiness of corporate governance. This paper examines whether corporate governance changes in response to the reporting of an initial loss and also whether ex ante corporate governance weakness impacts on the propensity for change.

The study uses three years of corporate governance information spanning the report of an initial loss for companies listed on the UK Stock Exchange. An industry- and size-matched control sample is used in a difference-in-difference analysis to isolate the impact of the loss from underlying changes in governance.

The results indicate that an initial loss precipitates an improvement in corporate governance and that this improvement is significantly more pronounced in those companies which displayed either weak or extreme governance before the loss. There is also evidence that the improvement in corporate governance begins before the loss is actually reported.

This study focuses on a three-year period in the UK only and so is a limitation of the research. Future research could be based on the findings from other jurisdictions or from using other conditioning variables.

This study contributes to the stream of research that examines negative shocks, and losses in particular, as an event likely to precipitate firm-level changes in corporate governance and offers insights into the reasons for firm-level corporate governance improvements. It demonstrates that, notwithstanding the recommendations of the Combined Code, firms tend to not make improvements without the impetus and need to do so, i.e. corporate governance is sticky.

A population survey was carried out to explore whether responses to health and life‐style questions were similar in telephone owners and non‐owners. Concludes that Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) gives an under‐representation of the socio‐economically disadvantaged and is unlikely to be of great benefit where precision is required.

The extent to which health service general managers set goals similar to those set by their commercial counterparts is explored. The areas in which goals are set ‐ and at what organisational levels ‐ are analysed from the survey results.

Purpose: This report analyzes relationships between chronic inflammation and quality of life (QoL). It assesses the potential role of intimate relationships in associations between inflammation, medical sequelae such as pain and disability, and QoL.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Limited longitudinal data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) were analyzed. Inflammation was assessed via the biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP). The authors examined pathwise associations between CRP levels and general happiness. The authors used ordinal logistic regression with companion OLS models, and conducted a variety of sensitivity analyses.

Findings: Intimate partnerships – especially marriage – appear to impact associations between inflammation and QoL. When QoL is measured using general happiness, intimate relationships appear to shape directional associations between inflammation and QoL along with medical consequences of inflammation.

Research Limitations/Implications: Inflammation and its clinical consequences may substantially alter intimate relationship involvement and quality that in turn impact QoL. These relationships should not be viewed as unilateral explanations of the tremendous variability observed in QoL among people with inflammatory conditions, but rather as possible elements of complex causal frameworks. Further investigation using advanced methods for longitudinal modeling from limited waves of data can help to shed additional light on the nuances of happiness and QoL among people living with chronic inflammation.

Originality/Value: This chapter provides an overview of possible causal relationships between chronic inflammation, associated clinical and social experiences, and QoL. Researchers interested in advanced causal modeling of relationships between chronic inflammation and QoL can build on this work using novel methods and data sources.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

The study of health and lifestyles was undertaken by Dumfries and Galloway Health Board, by means of a postal questionnaire. The results showed a change to a healthier way of life generally, although this can be widely different between socioeconomic groups.