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Community rugby clubs are now becoming small businesses, which are mostly led by volunteers. This paper aims to document a case study on the Leadership Academy developed by the Rugby Football Union to improve the effectiveness of community rugby club leaders.

The programme content is explained, and written evaluations and observations analysed to assess the effectiveness of the Leadership Academy as a tool in helping to develop the community rugby club leaders.

The results showed that the Leadership Academy helped the leaders to build stronger local relationships with other rugby clubs and to improve confidence levels. These outcomes are also factors that help small business owners become more effective as leaders.

The findings from this paper provide useful input for any other organisations or governing bodies that want to improve the effectiveness of their current or future leaders.

We use student-level online resource usage data for students in four different introductory accounting courses to explore the impact on exam performance of both student study effort and students’ revealed preferences for reading text or watching video lectures. The online learning tool tracks student study choice (read text, watch video, or skip) on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. We match these usage data with student performance on course exams. We find that students who study more material earn higher exam scores than do students who study less material. We also find that students who self-select to do relatively more of their studying through reading text score higher on exams, on average, than do students who self-select to do relatively more of their studying through watching videos. Specifically, holding the overall amount of study constant, a student who chooses to spend the highest fraction of her or his study time watching video mini lectures earns exam scores 10 percentage points lower (six-tenths of a standard deviation) than a student who chooses to spend the lowest fraction of study time watching videos. Our results demonstrate that at least for introductory accounting students, increased study effort does indeed have a positive impact on exam performance. Our evidence also suggests that the highest performing introductory accounting students choose to learn accounting proportionately more through reading than through watching. These results are a reminder that when we talk about using “technology” to help our students learn accounting, the written word is still an important technology.

Summarizes the basic principles of Bioenergetics along with its origin in Riechian psychology. Clarifies that Bioenergetics is used at Cranfield not as psychotherapy, but as an aid to personal development for a specific population of high‐functioning individuals, i.e. managers. Places the Bioenergetic body‐mind notion into a philosophical context of human goodness and potential; thus expanding the focus to body‐mind‐spirit. Examines five body‐mind types through the following aspects: how they operate at work; how they were formed; key attitudes; unique gifts; body shape; development path; how they are best managed. Case histories illustrating the different types in various modes of consultant intervention, i.e. individual development, team building and culture change.

Drawing inspiration from C Wright Mills exhortation to sociologists to locate themselves and their experiences in the ‘trends of their epoch’, I consider how first-hand experience of imprisonment can help criminology account for the growing trend towards the use of imprisonment in many Western democracies. Using interviews with a small group of British criminologists who have experience of imprisonment, I explore the connections between personal stories and collective narratives. Drawing reflexively from my own imprisonment, my subsequent professional trajectory and experiences of prison research, I consider the difficulties and potential of crafting a collective criminological project from disparate and profoundly personal experiences of imprisonment. The chapter combines methodological reflections on the use of autoethnography, autobiography and vignettes as a means to an end: establishing collective narratives from personal stories. I argue that the task of connecting these narratives to the ‘trends of the epoch’ that manifest in expanding prison populations is difficult but developing some momentum in convict criminology.

At a time when governmental corruption seems rife and administrations grow ever more secretive, the whistleblower is a crucial resource in journalism’s attempts to make accountable those who wield power. Yet despite legislation that is meant to protect employees and officials who expose wrongdoing, a governmental “war on whistleblowers” has made the hazards faced by many whistleblowers increasingly grim. This chapter explores the role of the journalist/whistleblower collaboration in disclosing important, but sensitive, information involving national security. In discussing case studies of those who have braved the government’s anger, we examine not only the circumstances of these breaches, but also their political and legal repercussions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore aural representation of the countryside and English rurality through the contemporary cultural product of folk song.

A textual analysis was undertaken of the sleeve notes and lyrics of Steve Knightley, songwriter and founder member of the folk/roots band Show of Hands.

The concept of the rural idyll is thoroughly debunked in the majority of these lyrics. Many songs make specific reference to place, and these, in the main, focus on the historical and contemporary hardships of living in rural England, in many cases also making explicit reference to the historical or contemporary social issues deemed by the lyricist to be at the root of the problems faced by people living in English rural communities.

This paper analyses data obtained in lyrics of only one songwriter within only one music genre, but the artist is one of the most respected within the contemporary folk genre, and Show of Hands have won a number of prestigious nationally recognised folk awards.

The extant literature contains little concerning aural representations of place identities through song. The contribution this paper makes is therefore in presenting a conceptual framework that shows how folk song, as a contemporary cultural product contributes to the construction and communication of rural place identities.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the internal branding process from the employees' perspective; it will empirically assess the relationship between internal branding and employees' delivery of the brand promise as well as the relationships among their brand identification, brand commitment and brand loyalty.

On a census basis, a quantitative survey is carried out with 699 customer‐interface employees from five major hotels.

Internal branding is found to have a positive impact on attitudinal and behavioural aspects of employees in their delivery of the brand promise. As employees' brand commitment does not have a statistically significant relationship with employees' brand performance, it is not regarded as a mediator in the link between internal branding and employees' brand performance. Furthermore, the study shows that brand identification is a driver of brand commitment, which precedes brand loyalty of employees.

A number of significant managerial implications are drawn from this study, for example using both internal communication and training to influence employees' brand‐supporting attitudes and behaviours. Still, it should be noted that the effect of internal branding on the behaviours could be dependent on the extent to which it could effectively influence their brand attitudes.

The results provide valuable insights from the key internal audience's perspectives into an internal branding process to ensure the delivery of the brand promise. It empirically shows the relationship between internal branding and the behavioural outcome as well as the meditational effects of employees' brand identification, commitment and loyalty.

When the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL) was developed, one of the hopes was that the exchange visits among international sites would stimulate the development of collaborative working relationships. This article reviews one such collaborative project, the development and implementation of a comparative study of assertive community treatment teams, or assertive outreach teams as they are called in the UK and New Zealand.