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The purpose of this paper is to present an interview with Dr Marsha Firestone, Founder and President of the Women Presidents' Organization (WPO), to elicit her expert views on the support available to women entrepreneurs and the obstacles which are typically faced by businesswomen in start‐up enterprises and in a wider corporate context.

The interview was conducted via telephone in June 2008 by Helen Evans, Assistant Publisher for the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship.

Dr Firestone points to an aim towards economic security as the keystone of women‐led enterprises. She identifies the common trait of entrepreneurial women as the drive to succeed, often breaking the rules and coming up with better ways of doing things. Support for women entrepreneurs comes from role models and from associations such as the WPO who work to connect women entrepreneurs throughout the world. Dr Firestone criticizes some areas of the Media for their unrelenting focus on the work of women in leadership roles in corporations. The paper goes on to describe the WPO 2008 Conference and Dr Rebecca Henderson's workshop which won best workshop prize.

Marsha Firestone is the Founder and the President of the WPO. Dr Firestone was previously Vice President of Women Incorporated and of Training and Counseling at the American Woman's Economic Development Corporation. She has published research on adult learning theory, nonverbal communication and managerial competency, appearing in both business and educational journals, and The Busy Woman's Guide to Successful Self‐employment, an interactive, easy to read resource. This interview is an opportunity to gain an insight into her expert views of the state of women's entrepreneurship.

Management thinking has seen organisations group product development activities in a number of ways in the quest to improve performance. The implementation of multi‐disciplinary teams has been recognised as a means of rapidly improving the way product development activities are managed. However, such an approach is not without its ills. Moreover, Henderson's research (Henderson, R., “Managing innovation in the information age”, Harvard Business Review, January, 1994, Reprint no. 94105) indicates that what governs product development success is the ability of the company to overcome the boundaries of any organisational grouping, rather than the type of organisation structure adopted. This research seeks to corroborate Henderson's propositions in a number of different industrial settings. Social network analysis helped embody the theory into a specification for a model to visualise and manipulate the informal organisation and the on‐going research activities further developed the specification into a working model that has been trialed in a number of different industrial settings. This paper sets the research context and presents the results thus far, both in the context of knowledge from academic research and practical application of the model. The working model has been able to manipulate the informal organisation by enabling visualisation of “core knowledge communities”, generating discussion, and supplying focus for individuals and teams to manage relationships more effectively and hence improve product development performance. Implications for further use of the model are reported, together with its potential for improving performance in organisational areas external to product development.

South Africa as the most unequal country in the world.

Business schools are now facing the same type of radical restructuring as the corporation their students study. How often is strategy a part of the curricular mix?

With HR now at the center of efforts to address the talent crisis, how can HR strategists best deploy their resources to help their organizations to rise to the challenge?

Data-driven digital solutions can be a good starting point for discovering what’s working with existing employees. A new breed of high-tech tools are giving HR departments the means to more thoroughly and actionably understand the factors that attract, retain and drive away quality employees.

Based on data from these tools, HR teams can design inviting, engaging and productive work environments.

The struggle to attract and retain quality talent in the workplace is real, it is escalating and it has landed right at the doorstep of HR departments. It is perhaps the most pressing priority they – and their entire organizations – must confront to keep pace in the ongoing US economic expansion.

This paper aims to shed light on features of successful innovation and on the role played by downstream open innovation (OI) dynamics in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. It also explores the reasons for the decline in the number of disruptive innovations in this industry in the European Union (EU).

The authors interpret the data in a Kantar consumer panel dataset on disruptive innovations in Spain through an exploratory research including in-depth interviews with 19 managers in the industry.

Results show that downstream open innovation in this industry is mostly limited to the executional stage in the process and highlight the crucial role played by the point of purchase in the success of innovations. The authors build up a virtuous circle of innovation based on features such as the use of OI processes, company focus and marketing support, transparency and collaboration with retailers, as well as the product's uniqueness and its potential to become viral.

The paper focuses on Spain and, thus, results cannot be generalised. Further research in other countries would be interesting.

The study describes the features of disruptive innovators and develops an extensive list of success factors.

The development of disruptive innovation is a source of competitive advantages and one of the most relevant activities of managers today. Nevertheless, the number of disruptive innovations is in decline, and only a few succeed, negatively affecting consumer welfare.

Through this study, the authors provide insights on the features of successful innovators in FMCGs and describe the factors affecting the decreasing trend in the number of breakthrough innovations. Further, this paper fulfils an identified need to study OI in low-tech industries.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

This article focuses on the qualitative methodologies employed in a research project developed in collaboration with Aboriginal advisors and gaining an in‐depth understanding of Aboriginal Victorian peoples’1 connection to their ancestral lands. It outlines why qualitative methodologies were used and highlights the ethical dimensions of working with Aboriginal Victorian communities. A research partnership was developed between Aboriginal Victorian communities and the non‐Aboriginal researcher and this process was emphasised because in the past Australian Indigenous people have been grossly exploited in health research. The methods of semi‐structured interviews and focus groups were used to gain a better understanding of this topic. The novel point of this article is that it provides an honest reflection of the benefits and limitations of this qualitative research process from the perspectives of a non‐Aboriginal researcher and an Aboriginal participant, when emphasis is placed on a collaborative approach. The paper outlines what a successful qualitative research project looks like in Victorian Aboriginal communities. This can be used as a blueprint not only for working with Aboriginal Victorian communities, who have been marginalised within Australian society, but may also be relevant to other culturally diverse communities throughout the world.

Fiction has the potential to dispel myths and helps improve public understanding and knowledge of the experiences of under-represented groups. Representing the diversity of the population allows individuals to feel included, connected with and understood by society. Whether women and girls with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are adequately and accurately represented in fictional media is currently unknown. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Internet and library searches were conducted to identify female characters with ASD in works of fiction. Examples of such works were selected for further discussion based on their accessibility, perceived historical and cultural significance and additional characteristics that made the work particularly meaningful.

The search highlighted a number of female characters with ASD across a range of media, including books, television, film, theatre and video games. Many were written by authors who had a diagnosis of the condition themselves, or other personal experience. Pieces largely portrayed characters with traits that are highly recognised within the academic literature. However, some also appeared to endorse outdated myths and stereotypes. Existing works appear to preferentially portray high functioning autistic women, with limited representation of those whom also have intellectual disability.

This is the first exploration of the depiction of ASD in females within fiction. There is a need for more works of fiction responsibly depicting females with ASD, as this can help reduce stigma, develop public awareness and recognition and increase representation.

This article informs school leaders and staffs about existing research findings on the use of data-driven decision-making in creating class rosters. Given that teachers are the most important school-based educational resource, decisions regarding the assignment of students to particular classes and teachers are highly impactful for student learning. Classroom compositions of peers can also influence student learning.

A literature review was conducted on the use of data-driven decision-making in the rostering process. The review addressed the merits of using various quantitative metrics in the rostering process.

Findings revealed that, despite often being purposeful about rostering, school leaders and staffs have generally not engaged in data-driven decision-making in creating class rosters. Using data-driven rostering may have benefits, such as limiting the questionable practice of assigning the least effective teachers in the school to the youngest or lowest performing students. School leaders and staffs may also work to minimize negative peer effects due to concentrating low-achieving, low-income, or disruptive students in any one class. Any data-driven system used in rostering, however, would need to be adequately complex to account for multiple influences on student learning. Based on the research reviewed, quantitative data alone may not be sufficient for effective rostering decisions.

Given the rich data available to school leaders and staffs, data-driven decision-making could inform rostering and contribute to more efficacious and equitable classroom assignments.

This article is the first to summarize relevant research across multiple bodies of literature on the opportunities for and challenges of using data-driven decision-making in creating class rosters.