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Governments mediate, through their architecture of machinery and policy, access to rights and, by extension, to services. There is limited but growing recognition in both the UK and other European governments that individuals' power to negotiate this access is limited by the structural inequality of groups in certain named categories of disadvantage (inter alia, people with disabilities), and they are adapting their machinery to provide the support they require to ‘level the playing field’. However, intersectionality (identities which cut across these recognised categories of disadvantage) prevents those affected from using such mechanisms effectively. Those whose disability impairs their mental awareness and understanding face an additional barrier. The paper explores how this limits the rights of those with both learning disabilities and mental illness, and looks at some of the ways in which this problem is being addressed.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to consider the (re-)emergence of the sport waka ama (outrigger canoe) in light of the broader historical, social, political, cultural and economic landscape of ‘post-colonial’ Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter draws upon a micro-ethnography of the 2011 Waka ama national competition to elucidate the ways in which the sport serves as an important site for sharing Māori identities and culture. The empirical aspects of the chapter utilise observations and semi-structured interviews with key gatekeepers of waka ama in Aotearoa/New Zealand and participants in the sport.

Findings – The key findings of the study offer new insights into the relationship between the (re-)emergence of waka ama and the wider context of ‘post-colonial’ Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Research limitations/implications – The restricted timeframe that the research took place within could be viewed as a limitation to the research project.

Originality/value – The chapter provides an alternative reading of the sport waka ama within ‘post-colonial’ Aotearoa/New Zealand. To date there has been little research conducted on the role sport has played within the process of colonisation in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There has also been limited research that illustrates the role of waka ama, as a uniquely indigenous sport, as a vehicle of social change within indigenous communities. The authors highlight the unique nature of waka ama and provide an alternative commentary on the colonial/neocolonial forces that have impacted waka ama in its emergence.

The purpose of this paper is to disrupt traditional, separate roles in preservice teacher (PT) education, moving toward hybrid mentoring spaces, which is practice-based and a collaborative model of supporting PTs into teaching.

Design-based research was collaboratively enacted by a research team. The authors focused analysis on video-recorded collaborative coaching conferences, as well as shared discussions of those conferences between researchers, cooperating teachers (CTs) and field supervisors (FSs). At each of three iterations of coaching conversations, changes were made to the practice of collaborative coaching, allowing the research/design team to reflect upon practices and deepen the understanding of the development of design principles.

Three design principles of collaborative coaching grew through this research – a need for shared understanding and valuing of a coaching model amongst participants to guide decision making; a partnership between CTs and FSs in centering the PTs’ reflection on problems of practice, including the need for CTs and FSs to continually reflect on how their shifting roles toward this goal; and a relational framework including transparent communication. The authors extend these principles through two narrative vignettes and a framework that focuses on hybrid spaces for coaching.

The research questions and design did not inquire into the relationship between collaborative coaching and PTs’ teaching practices.

Each narrative serves as a coaching model of how PTs, CTs and FSs, or triads, worked toward resolving practical challenges in coaching to better support PTs. The authors provide practical tools for teacher preparation programs to build collaborative relationships with teachers and schools.

Placing the PT into an active, leadership role in reflection on practice disrupts expert-novice and other binaries that may not serve programs that seek to prepare reflective practitioners. Previous studies have identified tensions when mentoring is not a collective process, but few studies have explored models that disrupt the two activity systems that often operate separately.

Family firms account for around 75 per cent of all business enterprises in the UK, but there is a lack of research on these businesses. The family firms literature recognises that there are differences between family and non‐family businesses; differences that can be explained by conflicts between a juxtaposition of family values and business values. Consequently, family firms tend to have different approaches to ownership and control, the composition of boards, employment practices, strategy formulation and succession management. This paper reports on the demographic characteristics, ownership configurations, boardroom arrangements, managerial and succession practices of a random selection of 1,065 family firms located in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Results reveal that the firms are well‐established, privately owned, small businesses in which the lead family retains almost all shares and dominates the board of directors. These firms give some preferential treatment to family members in employment and managerial matters but business objectives are not ignored. In keeping with previous research, succession matters are not regularly discussed and much more needs to be done to allow for a smooth transition from one family generation to another. The authors conclude by arguing that there is an urgent need for policy makers to address the problems and needs of small family firms and to develop frameworks and practices for assisting these businesses.

Attention has been drawn recently to the differences which exist between family and non‐family firms, but Ward indicates that there are different types of family firms. More specifically, as Dunn puts it, “in some families it is evident that the business serves the family, as opposed to the family serves the business”. For some families in business, economic rationality dominates decision making, yet for others a “family first” ethos is to the fore, while a third group recognises the need to respond to economic and family considerations. In this paper firms which pay attention to both family and business are not investigated. However, Ward’s model of the characteristics of family firms is discussed and data based on a Scottish and Irish sample of 234 firms which put family first when business and family objectives clash, and 830 firms which focus on business objectives, are presented. Results suggest that the former exhibit several of the characteristics defined by Ward. This suggests that a considerable number of family firms may be lifestyle – as opposed to growth‐oriented businesses. These results have major implications for policy makers. If a substantial number of family firms differ from rational economic ventures by their methods of operation, then policy makers should be flexible with regard to the methods of intervention required to support this important section of the SME community. Policy issues in connection with family firms in Britain are considered in the light of our findings.

To rescue at-risk historical scientific data stored at the McGill Observatory, the objectives of the Data Rescue Archive Weather (DRAW) project are: to build a repository; to develop a protocol to preserve the data in weather registers; and to make the data available to research communities and the public. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The DRAW project adopts an open archive information system compliant model as a conceptual framework for building a digital repository. The model consists of data collection, conversion, data capture, transcription, arrangement, description, data extraction, database design and repository setup.

A climate data repository, as the final product, is set up for digital images of registers and a database is designed for data storage. The repository provides dissemination of and access to the data for researchers, information professionals and the public.

Doing a quality check is the most important aspect of rescuing historical scientific data to ensure the accuracy, reliability and consistency of data.

The DRAW project shows how the use of historical scientific data has become a key element in research analysis on scientific fields, such as climatology and environmental protection.

The historical climate data set of the McGill Observatory is by nature unique and complex for preservation and research purposes. The management of historical scientific data is a challenge to rescue and describe as a result of its heterogeneous and non-standardized form.

Consistent with previous research, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the presence of workplace‐based return‐to‐work strategies would reduce the duration of work disability. Moving beyond existing research, the paper further seeks to propose that these strategies would also enhance mental health and affective commitment among injured workers. In addition, the paper aims to introduce interactional justice – injured workers' perceptions of the interpersonal and informational fairness of the person most responsible for their return‐to‐work process – to the return‐to‐work context, and to hypothesize that these factors would also contribute to the explanation of these outcomes.

Within five weeks of their injury, telephone interviews were conducted with 166 workers from the province of Ontario, Canada, who had experienced musculoskeletal lost‐time workplace injuries.

Multiple regression analyses indicate that certain workplace‐based strategies were associated with days on compensation, self‐reported days absent, and depressive symptoms, but not affective commitment. Further, as hypothesized, interactional justice accounted for additional variance explained in self‐reported days absent, depressive symptoms, and affective commitment. Interactional justice did not explain additional variance in days on compensation.

The findings have implications for employers engaged in return‐to‐work practices and researchers studying return to work. Both should address not only the workplace‐based strategies used, but also the way in which these strategies are implemented.

The paper replicates previous empirical work on return‐to‐work interventions and demonstrates the importance of the presence of workplace‐based strategies in explaining the duration of work disability.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the longitudinal effect of innovation programmes on improving the process of innovation in manufacturing SMEs. The process of innovation in organisations covers people, process and technology. Therefore interventions in the form of innovation improvement programmes often require high levels of complexity. This complexity is compounded in SMEs, where issues such as scarce resources and skill shortages must be recognised.

A multiple case research methodology combined with an innovation evaluation model is used to evaluate the longitudinal effect of an innovation intervention programme, which combined taught modules and Critical Action Learning networks over an eighteen month period. Within‐group comparisons are made.

The findings reveal that SMEs, which have high levels of innovation improvement, adopted a broad process based approach to innovation rather than using a narrow technical definition of innovation. These SMEs also developed a process of critically reflective action learning to ground the innovation in organisational practice.

There is a paucity of longitudinal research studies on innovation interventions in SMEs.