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This article provides a plain language commentary on the distributive equity structure of the English Premier League (EPL) with the aim of introducing sport business practitioners to a foundational challenge facing professional leagues as they grow financially with market opportunities, namely financial inequality between clubs.

Introducing and discussing data from seasons 2009/10–2018/19, the article reveals that despite maintaining a consistent distribution of the EPL prize fund over time, the financial imbalance within the league has grown throughout the period.

The EPL's financial distributive equity is exacerbated by growing imparity in the acquisition of sponsorship revenues, the distribution of broadcasting revenues and the implications of policies concerning financial fair play and parachute payments, leading to a problematic differential in the talent distribution and win–wage relationship experienced by the top six teams and the remainder.

The EPL's market-driven continuation of its revenue allocation policies has led to a broadening financial imbalance, in favour of the top clubs, which could paradoxically undermine the financial security of the teams and league. Sport business practitioners should be familiar with this fundamental challenge for sport leagues that accompanies financial growth.

Whilst the percentage difference in prize fund allocation between top and bottom clubs appears minor, there is a significant financial variation across the league, primarily due to the large increase in broadcasting income. This is compounded by positive feedback via the relative dominance of the top six clubs receiving the larger share allocated to higher finishing teams.

For the past decade, sub-post offices (POs) in the UK have been subject to intensive pressures to marketise their business. Actual or threatened closures have led charities to become involved in projects to preserve community post offices. This paper aims to investigate the attitudes of the trustees and staff involved in six charity-backed POs to answer the research question “Do those involved with charity-backed POs prioritise profit generation or community resourcing?”

This research adopted a neo-empiricist stance on the collection and interpretation of data. The authors treated “attitudes” as real phenomena that are subjectively experienced and concretely expressed through activities in an objectively real world. Data were gathered from four or more people in each of six POs by sampling their services and conducting face-to-face interviews. The emphasis was on achieving verstehen – a rich understanding of a specific approach to social enterprise grounded in interpretations of human activity under conditions of naturalistic inquiry.

The authors found that charity-backed POs were focussed on preserving POs as a community resource but articulated this by framing profitability in three distinct ways: as a PO generating a surplus that can be gifted or reallocated to a (parent) charity’s other activities; as an activity that offsets a charity’s fixed costs; or enables or promotes its public benefit aims.

There are few peer-reviewed studies of the potential of sub-POs as sites for social enterprise, and none (that could be located) on the role of charities. In this study, the authors contest Liu and Ko’s view (2014, p. 402) that the key task is “to install market-oriented managerial beliefs and values into the charity retailer’s decision-making”. A counter view is offered that trading can represent a further diversification of the innovations used to support charitable endeavours.

This is the first academic study to confront the complexities of differentiating “profitability” from “profit generation” in charity-backed POs. The subtleties in the articulation of this difference by study participants helped to account for the findings of the study and to make sense of the strong consensus that POs should be seen primarily as a community resource while responding to marketisation pressures.

Designing a social marketing intervention for low-income earners requires an understanding of the key motivations. As part of the Low-Income Earner Energy Efficiency Programme, this study investigates the key factors that influence energy behaviours amongst Australian young low-income earners as part of the Reduce Your Juice social marketing programme. The authors also investigate the effect of gender.

An online survey of 753 low-income renters was conducted using validated measures. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The two factors that had the highest influence on intentions for energy-saving behaviours was the “mind” factor of self-efficacy and “money” factor of price concern. There were gender differences in the effect of bill control and price concern on intentions for different energy efficiency behaviours.

This study provides guidance on the factors to emphasise when designing an energy efficiency programme for low-income earners.

This study provides evidence for different motivations amongst low-income earners for energy efficiency programmes and that a “one size fits all” approach may not be effective.

While there is high interest in the public sector for motivating young-adult low-income earners to change their energy behaviours, little is known about the key factors that motivate intentions to engage in these behaviours.

Online trolling is a detrimental behavior for consumers and service businesses. Although online trolling research is steadily increasing, service research has yet to thoroughly explore how this behavior impacts businesses. Further, the role of bystanders, consumers who witness a victim (business) being trolled, remains largely unexplored. The purpose of this paper is thus to introduce online trolling to the service literature and begin to identify when (types of online troll content) and why (empathy and psychological reactance) bystanders are likely to intervene and support a service business being trolled by posting positive eWOM.

This research uses a two-study (Study 1 n = 313; Study 2 n = 472) experimental design with scenarios of a service business experiencing online trolling (moral versus sadistic). Participants' responses as bystanders were collected via an online survey.

Results reveal bystanders are more likely to post positive eWOM to support a service organization experiencing sadistic trolling. Psychological reactance is shown to mediate the relationship between trolling type and positive eWOM. Further, spotlight analysis demonstrates that bystanders with higher levels of empathy are more likely to post positive eWOM, whereas bystanders with low levels of empathy are likely to have a significantly higher level of psychological reactance.

This research is among the first in the service literature to specifically explore the consumer misbehavior of online trolling. Further, it provides new perspectives to online trolling by probing the role of bystanders and when and why they are likely to support service organizations being trolled.

This chapter explores the issue of ethnic diversity and race discrimination among elementary school teachers in Ireland. It examines both the historical precedents of this discrimination and uses the current experiences of Immigrant Internationally Educated Teachers (IIETs) living in Ireland to explore the phenomenon contemporaneously. The chapter begins by delineating the historical context of immigration in Ireland and more recent population data. It then explores the relevant legislative provisions to address employment and race discrimination in the Irish context. Owing to the deep-seated and historical origins of the current race discrimination, a particular focus is placed on delineating the evolution of the selection and recruitment of elementary teachers in Ireland imbued with the right to teach in elementary schools. Drawing on data ascertained through semi-structured interviews with a range of IIETs, positioned within the aforementioned analyses of relevant historical documents, the chapter then moves to explore some experiences of IIETs seeking to work in the Irish elementary school system. The chapter analyses these data through a Bourdieuian lens, paying particular attention to ways in which power has been, and continues to be, exercised by the State in regulating access to prestigeful mainstream teaching positions. The chapter proceeds to root these analyses within Kitching’s work on ‘race moves’, arguing that immigrant teachers have been racialized as other on the basis of an absence of proficiency in the Irish language.

REPERCUSSIONS of the Margate Conference will be felt for some time to come. There is still the suggestion that one or the other side won in the debate on central control, for example, but we would suggest that it was an occasion when a case was stated and combatted and that the result was the only wise one; that is to say, both parties agreed that the Council should consider the matter. It would be in the highest degree dangerous if at any open meeting of over 1,000 members of the Library Association any policy, then for the first time outlined, should be adopted as a settled rule of life. Such questions as central control have to be considered in all their bearings, and admirable as was the case Colonel Mitchell made for it, and forceful as was Mr. Berwick Sayers's rejoinder, they would not be regarded as final statements, even by themselves. There were some murmurings at the swift close of the debate, and there were more than murmurings that so important a matter should arise without due notice. These are not quite reasonable, and no one could have handled the meeting more quietly and impartially than the President (Mr. Savage) did. That no notice was given of the debate is hardly true although the words of the motion proposed by Colonel Mitchell were not known until the debate began; but the intention of the debate was to elicit opinions which might help the council in framing a policy; there was no intention to reach a decision or to publish the results of the meeting. A considered report, twelve months hence, on the deliberations of the L.A. Council on the matter should be far better than any account of the vapourings at Margate.

SINCE we wrote last the African victories have changed the atmosphere in a remarkable way. Lately pessimism had been absent and a calm confidence existed but now there is a sense of expectation. But we have been warned that the really tough conflict is still before us. However that may be, there is scarcely a library where the externals of the conflict are not reflected in the eyes and words of our readers, even affecting to an extent their reading. It must, of course, be so because it is a commonplace that books are good or bad in our estimation in accord with the mood in which we read.