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In March 2020 the United Nations published an open brief for the creative community to propose interventions to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. However, when faced with unprecedented wicked problems such as these, the rigour of design and creative processes can tested. COVID-19 has demonstrated how important human centred design responses are in understanding the worldviews and ecosystems of users. Ad hoc design responses or design hacks have demonstrated that they have a role to play in how we create our future individual, community and societal ecosystems.

In terms of age friendly design, this pandemic makes us envision what should be, furthermore, how we could create better products and services through technology. For our ageing communities “Cocooning” and other social restriction measures have exposed technological deficiencies for the needs of older people and opens up questions of our future preparedness for a growing ageing society. Now more than ever, designers need to understand the behavioural mind-set of older people in their own ecosystem and understand existing mental models.

In this opinion piece we posit what acts of design hacking can lead us to greater understanding of users mental models and therefore better understanding of technology needs for both older and younger adults. While presenting various examples of how design hacking is conducted by citizens and participants alike, it shows that it offers designers differing perspectives, experiences and inspiration for technology.

Technologies are ubiquitous in modern Britain, gradually infiltrating many areas of our working and personal lives. But what role can technology play in the current COVID-19 pandemic? At a time when our usual face to face social interactions are temporarily suspended, many of us have reached out to technology (e.g. Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom) to help maintain a sense of closeness and connection to friends, family and vital services.

One largely unsung technology is the virtual assistant (VA), a cost-efficient technology enabling users to access the Internet of Things using little more than voice. Deploying an ecological framework, in the context of smart age-friendly cities, this paper explores how VA technology can function as an emergency response system, providing citizens with systems to connect with friends, family, vital services and offering assistance in the diagnosis of COVID-19.

We provide an illustration of the potentials and challenges VAs present, concluding stricter regulation and controls should be implemented before VAs can be safely integrated into smart age-friendly cities across the globe.

The rapid advancement of technology poses many social challenges including the emerging issue of technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) and violence. In Australia, women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds are found to be more vulnerable to domestic violence (DV) and abuse, including TFA. This chapter presents a snapshot of CALD women's technology-facilitated domestic abuse (TFDA) experiences in Melbourne through the eyes of a small group of DV practitioners. Findings show CALD women experience TFA similar to that of the mainstream, with tracking and monitoring through the use of smartphone and social media most common. Their migration and financial status, and language and digital literacy can increase their vulnerability to TFDA, making their experience more complicated. Appropriate digital services and resources together with face-to-face support services can be a way forward. Further research should focus on better understanding CALD women's perceptions of and responses to TFDA and explore ways to improve engagement with and use of community media channels/platforms.

As we reckon with the #MeToo movement, the gender-based violence that occurred during the 1947 Partition continues to remain forgotten in mainstream discourses and is an emotive and polarising issue within both India and its diaspora. Just like mainstream news in the United States covered the Gabby Petito case, causing a controversy as it led to the realisation that the rape and gender-based violence of missing indigenous women were not covered, it can be suggested that mainstream news channels both within India and in the diaspora construct narratives that privilege the stories of some over others – with issues of shame, izzat (‘honour’) and policing of women's bodies compounding the silence in South Asian communities. In this chapter, I argue that we need to rethink the Partition as a genocide to recognise the gender-based violence that occurred on women's bodies as the cataclysmic event occurred. I discuss the feminist historiographical research led by Urvashi Butalia, Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon who interviewed survivors in the aftermath of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that triggered their research and reminded them of the Partition violence. It is only recently when the 1947 Partition Archives (in 2010) and the Partition Museum (in 2017) that the conversations of Partition are also taking place in academic spaces.

Boards presently are considered the most critical component in improving corporate governance (CG). Board diversity is increasingly being recommended as a tool for enhancing firm performance. Academic research and regulatory action regarding board diversity are focussed mainly on gender and ethnic composition of boards. However, the perspective of board members on board diversity and its impact is mostly missing. Moreover, while strategic leadership perspective suggests that a broader set of upper echelon’s characteristics may shape their actions, empirical evidence investigating the impact of less-explored attributes of diversity is almost non-existent. While the research on the input–output relationship between board diversity and firm performance remains equivocal, an intervening relationship between board diversity and board effectiveness needs to be understood. The purpose of this paper is to address all three limitations and explore the subject from board members’ perspective.

The paper presents the findings of qualitative, exploratory research conducted by interviewing 42 board members of FTSE 350 companies. The data are analysed thematically.

The findings of the research suggest that board members of FTSE 350 companies consider the diversity of functional experience to be a critical requirement for boards’ role-effectiveness. Functionally diverse boards manage external dependencies more effectively and challenge assumptions of the executive more efficiently, thus improving CG. The findings significantly contribute to the literature on board diversity, as well as to strategic leadership theory and other applicable theories. The research is conducted with a relatively small but elite and difficult to approach set of 42 board members of FTSE 350 companies.

The paper makes a unique and significant contribution to praxis by presenting the perspective of practitioners of CG – board members. The findings may encourage board nomination committees to seek board diversity beyond the gender and ethnic characteristics of directors. The findings may also be relevant for policy formulation, as they indicate that functionally diverse boards have improved effectiveness in a range of board roles.

Board diversity is about building a board that accurately reflects the make-up of the population and stakeholders of the society where the company operates. The aim of board diversity is to cultivate a broad range of attributes and perspectives that reflects real-world demographics as boards need to continue to earn their “licence to operate in society” as organisations have a responsibility to multiple constituents and stakeholders, including the community and the wider society within which they exist. Building social capital through diversity has value in the wider context of modern society and achieving social justice.

The paper makes an original and unique contribution to strategic leadership theory by strengthening the argument of the theory. The paper explores beyond widely researched attributes of gender and ethnicity on boards and explores the impact of a less-researched characteristic of directors – their functional experience. Moreover, the paper opens the “black box” of CG – boards, and presents the perspectives of board members. The findings indicate that board members in FTSE 350 boards define diversity more broadly than academics and regulatory agencies often do.

This case study aims to investigate the forces and barriers to learners’ motivation in a blended learning environment. This study uses an online forum as a vehicle for useful interaction among learners and as an extension of traditional classroom face-to-face meetings. 48 first-year students in a UAE university participated in this study. A series of data were obtained through questionnaires and feedback from the students, which were subsequently analyzed and compared to the existing literature. The results revealed that online interaction can enhance learners’ motivation and engagement in the learning process.

In a fast evolving labour market, higher education graduates need to develop employability competences. Key in becoming employable is the ability to reflect on learning experiences, both within a curriculum as well as extra-curricular and work placements. This paper wants to conceptualise how an online learning platform might entail a reflective practice that systematically supports students in reflecting on their learning experiences.

When studying online learning platforms for developing students' employability competences, it became clear that the effectiveness of the platform depends on how the platform guides students' reflective practice. In turn, the authors studied which features (tools, services and resources) of the online learning platform are guiding the reflective practice.

This resulted in the introduction of an online learning platform, containing a comprehensive set of online learning tools and services, which supports students' reflective practice and, in turn, their employability competences. The online platform facilitates both feedback from curricular and work-related learning experiences and can be used as a start by students for showcasing their employability competences. The reflective practice consists of a recurrent, systematic process of reflection, containing various phases: become aware, analyse current state, draft and plan a solution, take action and, finally, reflect in and on action.

Future research revolves around studying the features of online learning platforms and their role in fostering students' reflection and employability competences.

The conceptual model provides concrete indicators on how to implement online learning platforms for supporting students' reflection and employability competences.

This is the first article that analyses an online learning platform that guides students' reflective practice and fosters their employability competences. The authors provide concrete suggestions on how to model the online platform, building further on reflective practice theory.

The purpose of this paper is to contend that the dominant voluntarism approach to the accountability of transnational corporations (TNCs) is inadequate and not fit-for-purpose. The authors argue for the establishment of an international legal mechanism for securing the accountability of TNCs, particularly in the context of developing countries with notoriously weak governance mechanisms to protect all relevant stakeholders.

The study adopts insights from the fields of management and international law to draw out synergies from particular understandings of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and international human rights. The challenges to governance in developing countries with regard to securing the accountability of TNCs are illustrated with the Nigerian experience of oil-industry legislation reform.

The specific context of the experiences of developing countries in Africa on the operations of TNCs particularly commends the need and expedience to create an international legal regime for ensuring the accountability of TNCs.

Mainstream research in this area has focused mainly on self and voluntary models of regulation and accountability that have privileged the legal fiction of the corporate status of TNCs. This paper departs from that model to argue for an enforceable model of TNC’s accountability – based on an international mechanism.