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Bullying at the school or college level can have much more serious repercussions for students than educators may be aware of. Neuroscience research is suggesting more than ever that traumatic childhood is associated with the theory of vulnerability – in other words, a greater likelihood of psychiatric disorder spanning across a lifetime. This is the heart-wrenching story of the author’s younger sister, for whom racial school bullying at a school in England wreaked havoc. Almost four decades on she is marked by deep, indelible scars. Since the author’s life is inextricably intertwined with hers, this evocative autoethnographic account is the author’s story too.

The secondary analysis of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is used to examine inequality in the United Kingdom compared with other European Union (EU) countries and to analyse how inequality has changed over the period from the start of the great financial crisis in 2008–2015. The analysis compares inequality in market income, gross income and disposable incomes, and measured inequality using the Gini coefficient, 80/20 and 90/10 ratios. It includes an analysis of the impact of cash benefits and direct taxes on market income and how the composition of households in different parts of the income distribution has changed over time. In addition, inequality within the EU is explored. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what contribution the EU itself through its own institutions and policies plays in mitigating market inequalities. We find that the distribution of market income in the United Kingdom is comparatively unequal, but the UK’s relative position on disposable income is greatly improved, due to an effective system of direct taxes and transfers. The conclusions remain broadly similar for all the inequality indices that are considered. There is evidence that households with children have moved down the distribution between 2008 and 2014 and aged households have moved up the distribution in most EU countries including the United Kingdom. The chapter concludes that EU policies have relatively little impact on inequality and that inequalities can really only be tackled using national redistributive policies.

This chapter explores conflict in digital transformation as a leadership challenge. The authors maintain that conflicts cannot be left to HR managers; rather, they must be anticipated, handled adeptly and made a leadership priority. Although conflict resolution is a well-researched area, this is not the case for authentic leadership in digital transformation. Thus, the field is ripe for empirical research. Pitman and Reilly call for research on conflict in digital transformation, the role of leadership in averting and resolving conflicts and whether these roles change understanding of authentic leadership. The impact of AI warranting a revision of orthodox authentic leadership theory represents a further domain of potential research.

Purpose – This chapter explores the way in which the food crisis of 2008 and issues of food security have impinged upon debates about agriculture and agricultural support in Scotland.

Methodology/approach – Adopting a discourse analytic approach, a series of pivotal Scottish agricultural policy documents produced between 2001 and 2010 are examined. Official agricultural policy discourse over time is traced as is the nature of that discourse as the food crisis impinged upon and altered the context of debates about agricultural policy reform.

Findings – The chapter finds that prior to the food crisis, agricultural policy documents were dominated by neoliberal discourse that emphasised the importance of agriculture becoming more oriented towards the market and by a growing emphasis on multifunctionality. But after the food crisis, the dominant political rhetoric utilised different arguments to defend agricultural subsidies and argue for a continuing role for the state in perpetuating agricultural production. It is suggested, however, that the key factor in this retrenchment to continued farm support was not the food crisis per se; rather, it was the intersection of issues of food security with the rise to power of the Scottish nationalists and their resistance to the UK's neoliberal position.

Originality/value – The chapter provides the key insight that, for Scotland at least, the food crisis did not spark a change in domestic agricultural policies, but rather became an argumentative resource that was opportunistically deployed in established debates about agricultural policy reform.

This chapter explores the strategic motives behind the decision of hotels to internationalize. It approaches the subject from the perspective of the soft-service sector and aims to develop an understanding of this phenomenon. The literature covers several different factors that stimulate the decision to expand operations abroad. The process requires a trigger that will initiate the process and control the assignment until completion. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with international hotel chains to develop an understanding of the process. The findings reveal factors that can be distinguished between proactive and reactive and also be categorized under the four major motives behind internationalization: seeking natural resources, markets, efficiency and strategic assets or capabilities. The international strategy of hotel chains provides a roadmap for expansion and often acts as a trigger. The findings also reveal the significant role of vice presidents (VPs) of international development, development directors, agents and networks in initiating the process of internationalization and stimulating the chains towards specific parts of the world. One of the main differences between manufacturing and soft services is the wide variety of entry modes that are at the disposal of services. The findings are consistent with the literature published and provide an insight into the initial steps towards internationalization by hotel chains, in the post-COVID era.

Research question: What are the strategic motives behind the decision of hotels to internationalize?

Bose-Einstein condensation is a scientific innovation in experimental physics whose realisation required considerable time and resources. Its diffusion varied considerably between and within five countries that were comparatively studied. Differences between countries can be explained by the variation in the national communities’ absorptive capacities, while within-country differences are due to the impact of authority relations on researchers’ opportunities to build protected space for their change of research practices. Beginning experimental research on Bose-Einstein condensation required simultaneous access to the university infrastructure for research and to grants. The former is largely limited to professors, while the latter made researchers vulnerable to the majority opinion and decision practices of their national scientific community.

Childhood often represents a central arena through which we construct our fantasies about the future and a battleground through which we struggle to express competing ideological agendas. (Timimi, 2006, p. 35)One critical part of the future is our children. The way we bring them up is an indication of how we feel about the future; and of course our attitudes to the young and ideas on how they should be educated reveal much about the present …. Without a strong sense of how we want the future to be, the government tends to revert to a default position, thinking mainly about how children will fit into the economy. (Davison, 2005, p. 7)