Search results

Sally Reynolds, Chief Executive of Social Firms UK, outlines the latest developments in the social firm sector's mission to provide real jobs for people with severe disadvantages.

Travel Matters, based in Redhill, Surrey, is an independent travel agency offering a wide choice of travel and holidays at competitive prices. As a fully bonded travel agency, it operates in the same way as any high street or business travel agent. But, as Helen Lockett, Sally Reynolds and Peter Cobbett report, ten yeas ago it was one of a number of employment projects run by an NHS trust to provide work experience to service users. Here they describe the long journey towards independence.

One of the outcomes of European collaboration in the development of social firms has been the establishment of a network of businesses in the tourism sector called Access Tourism. These businesses range from hotels and guesthouses to travel agencies and package tour operators, all operating in a highly competitive market and aiming to provide the public with the highest standards of service. However, as well as employing disabled people, these businesses also have a social mission ‐ to make tourism accessible for people with special needs. One member of the network is Lyndhurst Guesthouse in the Lake District and a party of service users from Surrey decided to give it a try. Sally Reynolds describes the project and the team give their verdict.

The Network page is your chance to share information or make contact with others. If you are involved in an innovative project, network or partnership that might be of interest to others, why not use this space to tell our readers about it?

This index covers all issues between February 2005 (Volume 9, Issue 1) and November 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 4). Numbers in bold refer to yolume, numbers in brackets refer to issue, with subsequent numbers to pages.

While there have been many innovations in the field of work rehabilitation in recent years, there is still a paucity of research in this area. Nevertheless, interest in this area is steadily growing, and in this issue we include short profiles of two research networks that have emerged in the last couple of years‐the Mental Health Employment Research Network and the Inclusion Research Network. Interest in the newer service models has also gathered pace, and we profile Social Firms UK and its regional networks. These networks are playing a key role in encouraging the development of better quality options for work and meaningful daytime occupation.

THE first part of Professor Duncan Dowson's paper (March/April issue) dwelt on late 19th century development of machinery outstripping the performance of available lubricants. Contemporary lubricant research, and personalities involved, where described, leading to the concept of fluid‐film lubrication, documented by Professor Osborne Reynolds' paper read to the Royal Society in 1886.

This study aims to examine the effects of enhanced visualization of intangible service value through integration of means-end perspectives on advertising effectiveness.

Banking advertisements, incorporating message stimuli derived from salient values desired by the financial consumers and designed to assist message elaboration and stimulate personal relevance, were developed to examine the influence of cognitive connectivity on vividness of intangible service benefits and service advertising effectiveness.

The findings demonstrate that greater cognitive connectivity positively affects perceived tangibility, attitude toward the advertisement and attitude toward the brand. Additionally, the results indicated that perceived personal relevance has higher influence on envisioning service components, compared to one’s ability to connect visual cues to perceived benefits and to immediate end-goals.

This study incorporated visual stimuli limited only to financial security and social recognition. Future research should aim to examine the effects of different types of values on consumers’ elaboration process and their ability to visualize financial services.

This study extends knowledge of the means-end chain by proposing a means-end cognitive connectivity construct which influences the degree that consumers are able to mentally picture intangible service attributes. This study also provides insight that different values have different degree of influence on one’s ability to visualize service.