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The UK construction industry has significantly increased the number of women that it attracts, due to an active marketing campaign by the industry’s representative bodies. However, this initiative does not appear to have been based on sound empirical evidence that women professionals will be afforded equal opportunities once they have entered the industry. This article reports on a research project which explored women’s careers in construction. Interviews were held with over 40 matched pairs of male and female construction professionals in order to establish the gender differentiated influences on career progression within the industry. The analysis revealed a hostile and discriminatory environment for women, in which pressures created by the demanding work environment were compounded by overt resentment from male managers and colleagues. It is argued that women’s careers are unlikely to progress in parity with men’s until the male culture of the industry has been moderated.

In order to retain and motivate employees, organizations must respond to their expectations, both in terms of meeting formal aspects of their employment contracts and in addressing their less formal expectations of the employment relationship. Within the current human resources management (HRM) literature, these informal expectations are known as psychological contracts. This paper reports on research that explored psychological contracts within the construction industry. In‐depth interviews were held with more than 80 construction managers and professional staff who worked for five large UK contracting organizations. The interviewees were asked to describe their career histories, and to discuss any tensions between the personnel policies of their organizations and their personal career aspirations and expectations. It emerged that responsibility for human resource development (HRD) had been largely devolved to divisional and operational management. This led to HRD becoming fragmented and unresponsive, and to employees becoming disillusioned by their employers' failure to meet their expectations. It is argued that construction companies require a more sophisticated understanding of their employees' expectations of the employment relationship if they are to be retained in the long term.

There have been a number of significant research projects that have explored aspects of women’s under‐representation and underachievement within the UK construction industry. These have demonstrated that, given an appropriate level of knowledge and insight, women could be attracted to the sector in greater numbers. However, they have also suggested that if women are to remain in the sector in the long‐term, then efforts must be made to ensure an equitable workplace environment. Presents the findings of research that explored the attitudes of both male and female construction professionals to a range of equality measures. There was a significant difference between their responses to most of the measures, as men were opposed to initiatives that threatened the current culture of the industry’s operating environment. A strategy of selectively implementing measures with some degree of consensus between men and women is suggested. Measures to promote equality in construction must offer mutual benefits to men and women if they are to be successful.

The past 20 years have seen a period of fundamental change for many construction businesses as they have restructured, downsized, de‐layered, merged and de‐merged to survive turbulent markets and rapidly changing demand cycles. Such change places significant new pressures, challenges and constraints on the employer/employee relationship. This paper argues that these changes are likely to have reconstituted employee expectations of the less formal aspects of the employment relationship, known collectively as the psychological contract. Explores this inductive research which examines the psychological contract of 30 construction project managers.

This work aims to understand how social value is created and delivered using community-based water supply projects. It examines social value creation given the enabling concepts – value co-creation and service ecosystems as business models for infrastructure.

Inductive reasoning, including qualitative research design, was applied to two water supply projects. The qualitative stage created social value co-creation features using the purposive sampling of 72 semi-structured interviews.

The qualitative analysis features social value co-creation, which includes a sense of social unity, end-user empowerment, Behavioural transformation, and knowledge transfer. Although value destruction also emerged while examining social value co-creation, the research identifies the “red flags” and value contradictions that must be avoided.

The enablers of sustainable infrastructure projects should include social value, service ecosystems and value co-creation.

There is a need for the government and non-governmental organisations to create enabling platforms that involve a planned dialogical communication process supporting the development and enhancement of relationships of stakeholders to maximise social value from infrastructure projects.

The work offers a widened perspective of social value creation and a new framework called “Social value co-creation/destruction” (SVCC/SVCD) as the business model for sustainable infrastructure projects. It is the first attempt to illustrate social value creation in construction from service ecosystems and value co-creation perspectives.

People experiencing homelessness often have complex needs requiring a range of support. These may include health problems (physical illness, mental health and/or substance misuse) as well as social, financial and housing needs. Addressing these issues requires a high degree of coordination amongst services. It is, thus, an example of a wicked policy issue. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenge of integrating care in this context using evidence from an evaluation of English hospital discharge services for people experiencing homelessness.

The paper undertakes secondary analysis of qualitative data from a mixed methods evaluation of hospital discharge schemes and uses an established framework for understanding integrated care, the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care (RMIC), to help examine the complexities of integration in this area.

Supporting people experiencing homelessness to have a good discharge from hospital was confirmed as a wicked policy issue. The RMIC provided a strong framework for exploring the concept of integration, demonstrating how intertwined the elements of the framework are and, hence, that solutions need to be holistically organised across the RMIC. Limitations to integration were also highlighted, such as shortages of suitable accommodation and the impacts of policies in aligned areas of the welfare state.

The data for this secondary analysis were not specifically focussed on integration which meant the themes in the RMIC could not be explored directly nor in as much depth. However, important issues raised in the data directly related to integration of support, and the RMIC emerged as a helpful organising framework for understanding integration in this wicked policy context.

Integration is happening in services directly concerned with the discharge from hospital of people experiencing homelessness. Key challenges to this integration are reported in terms of the RMIC, which would be a helpful framework for planning better integrated care for this area of practice.

Addressing homelessness not only requires careful planning of integration of services at specific pathway points, such as hospital discharge, but also integration across wider systems. A complex set of challenges are discussed to help with planning the better integration desired, and the RMIC was seen as a helpful framework for thinking about key issues and their interactions.

This paper examines an application of integrated care knowledge to a key complex, or wicked policy issue.

Internationalisation has been a theme in UK higher education for a decade or more. The review of this paper, a practice-based case study, is to find how Winchester formulated two successive internationalisation strategies.

The strategies were developed using a research-oriented method: grounded in the literature and an institutional development model, the work included a comprehensive survey of the university’s existing international engagement, two rounds of structured discussions with senior staff, and a formal organisational development process.

The survey of the university’s international engagement was a most useful exercise. It revealed a substantial and diverse range of engagement which provided confidence that the aim to be a “fully internationalised university” was realistic. There was general agreement that Winchester must demonstrate strong levels of engagement through five strategic priorities related to: curriculum and student mobility; European Union/international staff and students; collaboration with international organisations; academic and social integration of students and staff; coordination of practices and processes.

This is a case study of one UK university.

The process by which the strategies were developed should be relevant to other universities.

Winchester is “Values Driven University”: “We value freedom, justice, truth, human rights and collective effort for the common good”. Internationalisation is consistent with these values, fostering an understanding of diverse cultures and an awareness of global issues.

The authors found no published work describing such a structured and participative process for developing internationalisation strategies within a university.

This study explored the neighbourhood‐level personal safety concerns experienced by older people living in socioeconomically deprived communities in South Wales. While there is a wealth of criminological literature focusing on whether older people experience high levels of fear of crime, much of it conflicting in its conclusions, such studies tell us little about the social and physical cues for feelings of fear that are evoked in older people on a community level. To provide a richer understanding of these issues the study adopted a predominantly qualitative approach to identify community characteristics that shaped older people's views of personal safety. This was supplemented by quantitative data regarding their actual experiences of crime. The main finding was that personal safety concerns were overwhelmingly related to the social connotations of specific community locations, such as those associated with the presence and behaviour of perceived 'undesirable others', rather than specific locations themselves or their physical characteristics. This raises questions and challenges about the development of appropriate and effective crime and fear reduction strategies that enable older people to feel safer in their communities, and so facilitate their community engagement and social inclusion.

Over the past decade, the U.S. workforce has become increasingly diverse. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to uncover ways to leverage this increasing diversity to enhance business performance. To date, research evidence has failed to provide consistent support for the value of diversity to organizational effectiveness. Accordingly, scholars have shifted their attention to diversity management as a means to fully realize the potential benefits of diversity in organizations. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current wisdom on the study of diversity climate in organizations. Defined as the extent that employees view an organization as utilizing fair personnel practices and socially integrating all personnel into the work environment, diversity climate has been proposed as a catalyst for unlocking the full value of diversity in organizations. During our review, we discuss the existent individual- and aggregate-level research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, summarize the key research findings and themes gleaned from work in each domain, and note the limitations of diversity climate research. Finally, we highlight the domains of uncertainty regarding diversity climate research, and offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of diversity climate effects on organizational outcomes.

States that there has been a recent explosion in the publication of reference works in the field of African American studies which indicates the mature field of scholarship being achieved in this area. Provides a bibliographic guide for those wishing to identify and use research tools for studying African American literature.