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It is well known that culture is a catalyst for change, helping economies respond to societal problems and demands and that culture is where people turn to in moments of crisis. In this case study around designing and implementing evaluation methodologies/frameworks for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, it is suggested that in English public policy and within publicly invested arts there is a maturation of thinking around recognising/measuring the public value of culture including its social value. The purpose of this paper is to chart the recent policy of justifying cultural expenditure with social value claims and highlight challenges for evaluating activity within Coventry UK CoC 2021 as a change in wider policy is taking place.

This paper provides creative insights into the design and implementation of the evaluation methodologies/frameworks for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. The authors of this paper as the collective team undertaking the evaluation of Coventry's year as UK City of Culture 2021 bring first-hand experiences of challenges faced and the need for a cultural mega-event to evidence its value.

The case study aims to address the concepts of measuring value within cultural events and argues that a paradigm shift is occurring in methods and concepts for evidencing the aforementioned value.

The case study within this paper focuses on the build-up period to the UK City of Culture 2021 year and the thinking and logic behind the creation of the evaluation/measurement framework and therefore does not include findings from the actual cultural year.

It is acknowledged that there are papers examining measuring and evidencing the “value” of cultural mega-events, the authors bring real-life first-hand experience of the concepts being utilised by them on the ground in the delivery and evaluation design of Coventry, UK City of Culture 2021.

This chapter outlines the development of the Swedish Higher Education System that led to the evolution of the profession of research management and administration (RMA) in Sweden. Evolution from an informal network towards more formalised and structured work within the Swedish RMA community is highlighted. Discussion on the level of salaries development depending on the education level, gender, experience and roles are elaborated too. The majority of the Swedish RMA community are women, which does not differ from most other RMA communities around the world. Swedish Association of Research Managers and Administrators (SWARMA) is the bridge between national research and innovation funding agencies and researchers. SWARMA selected members actively participate in the reference groups for EU R&I programmes. The future for RMAs in Sweden looks bright!

Action Housing & Support commissioned an independent, external audit of its practices, policies and procedures. The articles outlines its findings, and considers the implications they will have for the service.

Purpose – There has been very little development of the capacity of dialectical logic during the last hundred years or so, while the capacity of post-Cartesian analytical logics has expanded greatly in response to efforts to understand more and more complex theoretical and empirical problems, though still within the limits of analytical strictures such as externality of relations and the principle of the excluded middle. This chapter pursues relative lines of development in analytical and dialectical logic.

Design/methodology/approach – After presenting as background a congeries of personal experiences, reflections, and reviews, the chapter addresses some of the lessons relating to the neglect of dialectical logic (e.g., the notion of contradiction as error, and the idealization that is condition to it), in order to work toward some clarifications, developments, and challenges of dialectical logic (past, present, and future). Along the way providing comparisons with analytical logic, the emphasis will be on the contributions of several theorists, including Adorno, Marx, and Habermas.

Findings – Some illustrations of under- and undeveloped capacity are proposed with regard to dialectical-conceptual formations of identity/difference relations, unity of opposites, and quality/quantity relations, as well as contradiction as condition and as consequence of processes wherein various realities are produced. A number of challenges are outlined, with an invitation to scholars to pursue better development of the power of dialectical logic.

Research limitations/implications – An unduly defensive posture against perceived threats from both analytics and empirics (experiences of world) has surely been part of the obstacle to advancing dialectical logic, though one should not underestimate the resistances stemming from poor institutional-disciplinary support for the risk-taking activities required for innovation and development.

Originality/value – Dialectical logic is important to investigations of process dynamics in a number of ways, most especially insofar as contradiction is a major driver of processes, in particular processes that tend to follow trajectories that from the perspective of analytical logic are unexpected and/or illogical; for dialectical logic takes the event of contradiction as not merely indicative of error in the process of propositional reasoning but instead or also as an outcome of specifiable sequences of structurally conditioned behaviors, actions, and chains of effects at supra-individual levels of the production of realities.

Business schools need to prepare students for effective, ethical decision-making. When faced with stressful life events that negatively affect wellbeing, making decisions can become more challenging. As future managers, students will need to learn how to make decisions when they are at the same time faced with stress and cognitive overload. In such situations, the brain looks for mental shortcuts in making choices to make things faster and easier, which leads to less optimal decision-making. Research shows that mindfulness meditation can effectively decrease stress and anxiety. Mindfulness meditation increases metacognition and, in the process, reduces the effects of biases, ethical blind spots, and psychological traps. Therefore, introducing students to these techniques has significant pedagogical potential for business education as students learn mindfulness meditation and show a need to include such practices in the curriculum. This chapter sheds light on two mindfulness technique cases with business school students in Lebanon and Switzerland. In these cases, the authors explore the impact of mindfulness practices on students by applying the emotional intelligence mood metre and mindfulness meditation. The authors also apply the ‘response time testing’ (RTT) methodology in the Swiss case to measure students’ attitudes. As a result, the authors provide simple confirmations from their classrooms that engaging in mindfulness activities and meditation is a simple and productive exercise that is essential for student wellbeing, learning, and decision-making. Therefore, the authors’ purpose is to encourage and give mindfulness practices a viable place in business education.

Historians have long understood that transforming people into property was the defining characteristic of Atlantic World slavery. This chapter examines litigation in British colonial Vice Admiralty Courts in order to show how English legal categories and procedures facilitated this process of dehumanization. In colonies where people were classified as chattel property, litigants transformed local Vice Admiralty Courts into slave courts by analogizing human beings to ships and cargo. Doing so made sound economic sense from their perspective; it gave colonists instant access to an early modern English legal system that was centered on procedures and categories. But for people of African descent, it had decidedly negative consequences. Indeed, when colonists treated slaves as property, they helped to create a world in which Africans were not just like things, they were things. Through the very act of categorization, they rendered factual what had been a mere supposition: that Africans were less than human.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context

What images does the term “big business” evoke? The 1929 Laurel and Hardy silent movie entitled “Big Business” depicts Stan and Ollie trying to sell Christmas trees out of the back of their car to a very reluctant customer. The film provides a comedic interpretation of business where salesmen and customers are engaged in a never‐ending battle, with both sides ending up as losers. Mayhem and much laughter is the outcome. The 1988 Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin film is another light comedy that nevertheless manages to make some serious points about business ethics. A big city corporation plans to sell off a small town firm with no consideration of how this will affect the townspeople and their way of life. While these fictional accounts are purely for entertainment, many people find it difficult to be amused by some of the business practices they have observed.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

Provides insights and practical thinking about the role of ethical values and sustainability in today's business environments

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) has recently gained increasing attention in the supply chain context, both from the practitioners' perspective and as a research area. Given the relevance of the topic, the aim of the present paper is to present a focused literature review, investigating the process of knowledge creation, transfer and development from a dynamic perspective within the context of SCRM.

A review of the literature on SCRM was undertaken. The new proposed methodology combines the systematic literature review approach to identify the most relevant articles to be included in the study with the citation network analysis in order to unfold the dynamics of the field under study. The authors define this new methodology as systematic literature network analysis.

The paper demonstrates that there are a number of key themes in the field of SCRM. The contributions that influenced the field were identified and, by analysing the evolution over time of key concepts, a number of research directions were identified and discussed.

The dynamic nature of current literature review allows the identification of the directions in which research is moving and thus the recognition of streams of research that appear most promising. However, the application of the research methodology, and in particular of the citation network analysis, requires the support of specific computer programs. Moreover, the underlying assumption of the citation network analysis is that, by analysing the network of citations made to and from articles, it is possible to explain the flows of knowledge used to generate new results. This is only partially true since the spread of measures based on impact assessment led many researchers to an excessive use of citations, even if their content is not always decisive for the outcome of their work.

The present paper outlines a research agenda that may facilitate the development of models for managing supply chain risk. Furthermore from the evidence of the performed literature review some managerial insights can be derived on how to manage supply chain risk: by considering uncertainty in the design of supply chains, by understanding the impact of risks arising from network collaboration and interactions between supply chain partners, by developing proactive mitigation capabilities to hedge the increasing level of risk.

The novelty of this research lies in the combination of two existing methodologies for reviewing the literature and in the adoption of a dynamic perspective in order to analyse theory development.

This work sets out to characterise the protective properties of conformal coatings and how they degrade.

The approach dosed several commercial coatings with two different contaminants, a synthetic generic flux mixture of dibasic acids in both a solvent‐ and water‐based carrier, and sodium chloride. The protective properties were monitored using three complementary techniques: surface insulation resistance measurements, sequential electrochemical reduction analysis, and diffusion measurements.

The experimental approach was verified and the SIR measurements were shown to be the most valuable. Coatings offered varying levels of resistance to the contaminants, with the silicone coating being the most resistant. The flux variants generally proved more harmful to the coatings, suggesting that flux diffusion through the coating exceeded that of NaCl and hence led to greater electrochemical corrosion. Flux transmission through the coatings was verified by the diffusion measurements.

The project only investigated a limited number of contaminates on simple single sided boards. Future work will investigate coverage effects and a wider range of contaminants.

The work shows that coatings can allow diffusion of contaminates, particularly organics, which can lead to corrosion. The test methodology described here can be used to characterise coating susceptibility.

This work starts to develop for the first time a test methodology to characterise the protective properties of conformal coatings, and shows that flux, and hence other similar organic contaminants, may represent a protection challenge for some coating chemistries.