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This paper aims to investigate how mobile phones can be used to support women’s entrepreneurship in Arab countries. The objective is to explore new ways to close the gender gaps in terms of entrepreneurship in these countries.

The methodology used in this research is an in-depth analysis of the existing literature and recent reports on women’s entrepreneurship and on the adoption and use of mobile phones in Arab countries.

The findings of this research indicate that female Arab entrepreneurs are interested in using mobile phones. However, they have not yet realised the full potential of mobile technology in empowering them beyond its basic use. Several challenges facing women entrepreneurship in the Arab countries were identified. Mobile phones can be used to overcome these challenges.

This research is based on the collection and analysis of secondary data rather than primary data to support the findings.

There is a need for collaboration between telecommunication companies operating in the Arab region and government initiatives to build a solid environment in which female Arab entrepreneurs can operate.

This research provides new insights and recommendations for reducing the gender gaps in terms of entrepreneurship by using new and improved techniques to address women’s needs for economic independence. This will also increase the profit gained by the telecommunication companies operating in Arab countries and bring additional income to this region.

The alternative to using source lines of code (SLOC) for costing software projects is to use function points. Functional point analysis (FPA), which was first introduced in 1979, has now been widely accepted as the industry standard for estimating software size and costs. International standard bodies like the International Function Point Users’ Group (IFPUG) has been maintaining a repository of data based on projects that were drawn from 14 countries in North America, Europe and Asia/Australasia. This paper presents the results of the analysis that was performed on these data together with recommendations such as benchmarks for software projects. Project measures such as functional size, work effort, project delivery rate, speed of delivery and project duration were analysed using the statistical package, Systat. Apart from project duration, all distributions were log‐normal, thus suggesting that the results can be used for software benchmarking. Regression analysis on the data further identified correlation of functional size with other project measures that can be used as a basis for planning and estimating software projects. Further work on the repository involves other project measures such as team size and software defects.

We outline the standards for “good” performance measures and propose the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a method for performance measurement on individual level.

Using the example of a German cooperative bank with a cohort of 40 employees, we apply a multi-stage DEA approach to measure employee performance and report on the results. Based on those results a DEA-based approach for a strategic performance appraisal process is introduced.

We illustrate that DEA provides clear feedback information on an individual level, which enables management to accurately identify fields of specific improvement.

The proposed approach for a strategic performance appraisal process is yet of theoretical nature. Consequently, the practical implementation of this approach is a purpose of further research.

This study provides further insight into the experiences of five men who have committed sexual offences, with intellectual disabilities and have been recalled back to prison. The purpose of this paper is to increase professional knowledge to assist with improving working practices that support the reintegration of individuals convicted of sexual offences and with intellectual disabilities, back into the community.

Interview data was analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, to identify the key issues associated with criminal justice services.

The following superordinate themes were identified: “The label that sticks” and “Probation officer dependency”.

The key implications of the findings were the high level of dependency individuals had on their probation officers and the impact that this relationship had on the overall experience of recall. The stigma of the label “sex offender” was also found to have a profound impact on individuals’ feelings of safety and their future progression.

Research exploring the experiences of individuals convicted for sexual offences and with intellectual disabilities, being recalled back to prison, is limited. Future recommendations of how practice could be improved to better support responsivity needs of this group and to create a more positive self-identity are discussed.

Despite the focal position of school principals in Australian education, there exist hardly any data on the work that they actually do. This study reports on continuous observations — for three weeks each — of the principals of a State High School, an Independent College and a Catholic College in Melbourne. The variables of their work during the school day were recorded by the researcher, who attempted non‐participant observation, and the principals kept a diary of their “after‐hours” work. The content and characteristics of their work are described with the Findings expressed in a set of propositions about the principalship.

This chapter works with Lefebvre’s “Right to the City” (1996b) to understand how a Smart City initiative was being implemented and as a consequence who benefitted. While a model of citizenship is offered in smart cities, the “actually existing” smart city in fact reconfigures models of citizenship in ways that instrumentalize technology and data that can reinforce the patterns of exclusion for marginalized groups. Therefore, this chapter aims to understand how citizens participate in smart city projects and whether they can in fact lead to the exacerbation of existing urban historical, material, and social inequalities. The chapter focuses on some of those excluded by smart city projects: the urban poor, street traders, and those who live in informal settlements and explores the way in which they access and participate in the city. In the Global South context, India is a key actor in implementing a national-level smart city program, and research was undertaken in the city of Chennai to investigate the way that the India Smart Cities Mission was being planned and implemented and the corresponding implications for marginalized communities. The chapter argues that there is a need to recognize the value of a range of everyday, small-scale ways in which citizens employ technologies and data that meet their needs in a social and spatially embedded context. In this way, marginalized people may be empowered to have what Lefebvre describes as “the right to the oeuvre, to participation and appropriation” (1996, p. 173) in urban space.

This chapter provides an introduction to the smart city and engages with its idea and ideals from a critical social science perspective. After setting out in brief the emergence of smart cities and current key debates, we note a number of practical, political, and normative questions relating to citizenship, social justice, and the public good that warrant examination. The remainder of the chapter provides an initial framing for engaging with these questions. The first section details the dominant neoliberal conception and enactment of smart cities and how this works to promote the interests of capital and state power and reshape governmentality. We then detail some of the more troubling ethical issues associated with smart city technologies and initiatives. Having set out some of the more troubling aspects of how social relations are produced within smart cities, we then examine how citizens and citizenship have been conceived and operationalized in the smart city to date. We then follow this with a discussion of social justice and the smart city. In the fifth section, we explore the notion of the “right to the smart city” and how this might be used to recast the smart city in emancipatory and empowering ways. Finally, we set out how the book seeks to answer our questions and extend our initial framing, exploring the extent to which the “right to the city” should be a fundamental principle of smart city endeavors.

Economists have, in the last 20 years, made many contributions to the study of the deterrent effect of sanctions on criminals — these are surveyed in Brief & Fienberg (1980), Blumstein & Cohen (1978), Tullock (1974), Palmer (1977) and Taylor (1978). A considerable amount of the empirical work has dealt with crime supply functions for specific types of crime. Surprisingly little attention has been given to the switching of criminals between crimes in response to differentials in deterrence. Only three empirical studies of this phenomenon have appeared: Heineke (1978), Holtmann & Yap (1978), Hakim et al. (1984). All of these use cross‐section US data for property crimes. Their findings are thus somewhat tentative given that they may not hold up in other national contexts. This paper seeks to remedy this gap by studying substitution behaviour for burglary, robbery and theft using 1981 data for the police force areas of England and Wales. We compare our results with those of American researchers and also examine the impact of substitution on the broad conclusions of the conventional non‐substitution model.

Rob Knowles has been appointed Technical Service Specialist by Metech‐Ronal to support the company's rapidly expanding Thick Film Materials business throughout Europe.