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Purpose: The issue of whether participation in online peer-support communities has positive or negative impacts on the psychological adjustment of cancer patients warrants further explorations from new perspectives. This research investigates the role of personality traits in moderating the impact of online participation on the psychological adjustment of cancer patients in terms of their general psychological well-being and cancer-specific well-being.

Methodology: Study participants consisted of adults diagnosed with leukemia. Questionnaires were collected from 111 participants in two leukemia-related forums in China, Baidu Leukemia Community and Bloodbbs. Information regarding the personality traits, online participation, and psychological adjustment were collected using an online questionnaire. A linear regression model was used to test the moderation effect of personality traits on the relationship between online participation and psychological adjustment.

Findings: The main effect of participation in online support communities on psychological adjustment was not statistically significant. Importantly, two personality traits (i.e., emotional stability and openness to experience) moderated the relationship between online participation and psychological adjustment to cancer. Leukemia patients with high emotional stability and high openness to experience reported better psychological adjustment as they participated more in the online community. However, this was not the case for patients with low stability and low openness, who reported worse psychological adjustment as their participation in the online support community increased.

Value: This study introduces two personality moderators into the discussion of how participation in online support communities influences the lives of cancer patients. The moderation effects help to explain why there have been contradictions in the findings of previous studies. In addition, this study adds to the current literature on online support communities as little research on this topic has been conducted outside of the US and Europe. Practically, this study not only highlights the need to evaluate the personality traits of patients who are recommended to participate in online communities, but also underlines the necessity of intervention in these communities.

This chapter seeks to explain cases whereby locationally advantageous countries do not give rise to internationally competitive national firms, as theory suggests. Rather, foreign firms enjoy equal access to the country resources and build strong competitive position based on them. It suggests that location resources vary in terms of the extent to which foreign firms experience liabilities in accessing them, and in the ability of MNE internal networks to provide substitute for them. It introduces a hierarchy of location resources along these two dimensions and suggests that the position of resources in the hierarchy determines variations between foreign and national firms in terms of their ability to access location resources. When critical advantages are based on location resources that are high on the hierarchy, that is, are exclusive to national firms, the latter are likely to take the lead in an industry, establishing strong competitive position based on these superior resources. In contrast, when critical advantages are based on location resources which foreign firms can access on similar terms to those of national firms, or else can rely on the MNE network for their provision, the leading firms in an industry are likely to originate in multiple countries and no apparent home country effect will be observed. This chapter outlines the implications of the findings for MNE location strategies and for policy makers.

In illustrating and reflecting on my use of constructivist grounded theory methodology, this chapter explores findings of a study involving perceptions of learning of eight career changing trainee teachers enroled across four one-year primary or secondary postgraduate initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in England. Through four sets of unstructured interviews over the course of 10 months, qualitative findings suggest that this group of trainee teachers experience a similar learning process of convergence, change, consciousness and confidence. Diagrammatic modelling of data plays a key role in enacting a constructivist approach to grounded theory by demonstrating coding relationships through constant comparison leading to theory generation. Along with other observations, significant findings include how career changers without prior education experience may adapt and adopt new, professional identities with more confidence more quickly than those with extensive prior education experience, and, alternative teaching placements that occur in the ‘middle’ of a postgraduate course may have a significant effect in a career changers perceived confidence in ‘being a teacher’. Recommendations for ITE programmes, future teacher recruitment policy and researchers employing grounded theory are included. Recommendations for postgraduate researchers in education are scattered throughout this chapter.

Our research is about the trade in material goods from Asia to Europe over this period, and its impact on Europe’s consumer and industrial cultures. It entails a comparative study of Europe’s East India Companies and the private trade from Asia over the period. The commodities trade was heavily dependent on private trade. The historiography to date has left a blind spot in this area, concentrating instead on corruption and malfeasance. Taking a global history approach we investigate the trade in specific consumer goods in many qualities and varieties that linked merchant communities and stimulated information flows. We set out how private trade functioned alongside and in connection with the various European East India companies; we investigate how this changed over time, how it drew on the Company infrastructure, and how it took the risks and developed new and niche markets for specific Asian commodities that the Companies could not sustain.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

This chapter examines the changes proposed to the current media ethics and regulation regime in Australia following a government inquiry by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein. The inquiry was prompted by The News of the World phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom, which resulted in that publication being closed down by its publisher, News International, and principal shareholder Rupert Murdoch. While finding no evidence of similar misbehaviour by journalists and proprietors in Australia, Finkelstein recommended the establishment of a statutory News Media Council, and the inclusion of online media outlets in this new regulatory regime. This chapter argues that such a regime is unlikely to come into effect, given that it will be opposed by media proprietors and working journalists alike, as well the Federal Opposition, and the taxpayer funded ABC, and that a government with low levels of political capital is unlikely to risk much of that capital in a fight with the media industries in an election year.