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This paper examines students’ educational choices in vocational education and training (VET) to understand the low reputation of vocational education in China. By analysing the individualisation of these choices within structural and individual relationships, the study explores how the decline of state endorsement and the shift towards rational, individualistic actions influence students' decisions.

Multiple types of data were collected in this study, including administrative records, interviews and autobiographical stories, which were analysed using individualisation theory.

The research indicated three historical periods of the educational choice of Chinese VET students. Stage one (1978–1991) saw vocational education treated as “the first choice” for graduates. Stage two (1992–2000) was marked by the polarisation of educational choice during the social transition from a socialist planned economy to a market economy. During this period, more students started to choose academic high schools over vocational schools, even though the latter still had certain advantages for attracting the better-performing students. The third stage (2001-now) is a time in which vocational education is viewed as “the last choice” under the socialist market economy system. During this period, junior high school graduates prefer to enrol in academic high schools rather than in vocational schools. Aligned with the overall individualisation trend in Chinese society, vocational education decisions situated between societal structures and individuals are also experiencing a shift towards more micro-level individualized behaviours.

The paper provides a historical analysis of education and training provision in China and the complexity of students’ educational choices, revealing the influencing factors across different stages.

This paper draws a comprehensive analysis of the developmental trajectory of vocational education in China across different historical periods, notably under the socialist planned economy and the socialist market economy systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore two financial inclusion measures adopted within the local welfare context of the city of Milan, Italy, examining their functioning and underpinning representations. The aim is also to understand how such representations take concrete shape in the practices of local actors, and their implications for the opportunities and constraints regarding individuals' effective inclusion. To this end, this paper takes a wide-ranging look at the interplay between the rise of financial inclusion and the individualisation and responsibilisation models informing welfare policies, within the broader context of financialisation processes overall.

This paper draws on the sociology of public action approach and provides a qualitative analysis of two case studies, a social microcredit service and a financial education programme, based on direct observation and semi-structured interviews conducted with key policy actors.

This paper sheds light on the rationale behind two financial inclusion services and illustrates how the instruments involved incorporate and tend to reproduce, individualising logics that reduce the problem of financial exclusion, and the social and economic vulnerability which underlies it, to a matter of personal responsibility, thus fuelling depoliticising tendencies in public action. It also discusses the contradictions underlying financial inclusion instruments, showing how local actors negotiate views and strategies on the problems to be addressed.

The paper makes an original contribution to the field of sociology and social policy by focusing on two under-researched instruments of financial inclusion and improving understanding of the finance-welfare state nexus and of the contradictions underpinning attempts at financial inclusion of the most vulnerable.

Due to the rapid ageing of the continent's population, a significant surge in long-term care expenses for the elderly is expected across Europe in the coming years. Could a potential solution to this challenge involve the increased informal care provided by adult children? In this context, we examined a general view or moral duty of European citizens regarding whether adult children should assume responsibility for providing long-term care to the elderly.

Our multilevel analysis draws on individual-level data from the 2017 European Value Study and country-level data from various European sources encompassing participants from 21 member countries of the European Union.

The findings reveal that in nations where public long-term care services are sufficiently available and of superior quality, there is a negative sentiment towards the notion that adult children should bear the responsibility for elderly care. In total, 71% of the country-level variance in our dependent variable was explained by the availability and quality of formal long-term care in a country. Furthermore, various individual-level attributes contribute to shaping attitudes towards care-giving responsibility. We observed that women, middle-aged individuals, those without religious affiliations, those with modern gender role attitudes and non-immigrants tended to hold unfavourable attitudes towards the responsibility of adult children in long-term care provision.

There are relatively many studies on the general attitude of the population towards filial obligation. However, so far there have been very few studies available that examine the population's attitude towards the obligation of adult children to commit to their parents' long-term care. Our research explains the variation of the phenomenon in Europe with both country-level and individual-level factors.

Recently, the tourism and hospitality industry has been increasingly hit by serious crises. In particular, the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and phenomena such as a shortage of skilled workers and overtourism are presenting numerous destinations and their key stakeholders with new, increasingly complex challenges. In addition, the continued development of meta-processes such as demographic change and digitalisation in many respects implies an ‘end of tourism as we know it’ (Destinationthink.com, 2017). In order to successfully face these complex challenges, it is necessary – as with most wicked problems – to think and act ‘outside the box’. An increasing individualisation and pluralisation of lifestyles is taking place in most societies and represents another challenge that should not be underestimated. This implies that diversity and diversity management are becoming ever more important strategic success factors, both for human resource management and for the development of new markets and target groups. Unfortunately, however, far too few players in the tourism and hospitality sector value diversity management as part of their corporate strategy. This chapter therefore aims to raise awareness of diversity and diversity management as a concept that has become increasingly important in recent years but still only occupies a niche in tourism-specific contexts. The intensified strategic valorisation of diversity can actually sustainably increase the competitiveness of destinations and their key actors. Against this backdrop, this contribution explores conceptual understandings of diversity and diversity management from a theoretical perspective and uses specific case studies to illustrate how the corresponding management approach can be successfully valorised in tourist destinations.

This paper aims to conceptually unite an ontology of cybernetics, bridging living and technical systems, to facilitate future epistemological and theoretical advancements applicable to highly technical societies by crafting a set of definitions that elucidate the nature of the world in which these systems operate.

The research uses a thematic synthesis of two systems/cybernetic traditions: complex adaptive systems and mechanology. The primary sources for this research were the main theses and correlated papers published in the Simondon case for mechanology, and the seminal literature preselected by the Santa Fe Institute for complex adaptive systems.

The study proposes the following concepts: Individuation: the emergence of new properties in an individual composed of synergistically related parts; Technical evolution: the notion that technical objects evolve into living beings; circular causality: the notion that feedback and feedforward processes shape the organisation and structure of systems and their relationship with the environment; The milieu refers to the part of the environment that has a relationship of co-production, co-dependency, and co-evolution with systems. Metastability is a state that transcends stability and instability and motivates changes in the system. Transduction is the cumulative process of individuation in which systems change structure and organization to maintain operational coherence with their surroundings.

The concepts the paper identifies can serve as a starting point for an extended study on the ontology of cybernetics or as the basis for an evolutionary epistemology both in humans and machines.

This paper aims to point to the shift in the temporal orientation, going from reporting on the past to creating insights about the future, which might be suggestive of perennial managerial attempts to push the boundaries of bounded rationality.

In this essay, the authors want to critically engage with the concept of “data-driven management” in the context of digitalization. To do so, they sketch the edges of current discourses around the emerging idea of data-driven management and its relationship with the inner workings of organizations from an accounting perspective. They question the often-times supposed objectivity and increased rationality of the concept and instead introduce the idea of becoming “data-curious” (before being data-driven).

The authors observe that this push also seems to be accompanied by trends of individualized decision-making and prevailing hopes of technology to solve organizational problems. They therefore suggest that it is valuable for current debates to take a moment to give attention, in practice and in research, to the role of temporality, benefits of collective decision-making and changes in professions (of accountants).

The aim of this paper is to spark curiosity and engagement with the phenomenon of data-driven management by outlining a novel set of potential future pathways of research and point towards methods that might help studying the questions arising for a data-curious approach.

This study examines the role of CEO communication in effective crisis management. Specifically, it examines whether the communication of private information about a CEO can create a positive pre-crisis image that serves as a buffer during actual crises.

This study uses a 2x2 experimental design to analyze the effect of CEO communication (private information vs no private information) on pre-crisis image and its effectiveness in different types of crises (victim crisis vs preventable crisis).

The results of this research show that the communication of private information about a CEO contributes to the improvement of public image perceptions when a crisis occurs. This effect is influenced by the recipient’s identification with the organization as well as perceptions of empathy and competence toward the CEO. Notably, stronger effects are observed in the context of a victim crisis.

This study contributes to the field by highlighting the importance of CEO communication in crisis management and its potential to proactively build a positive pre-crisis image. In addition, it examines how this mechanism varies by crisis type, providing valuable insights for crisis communication strategies.

Pedagogical and digital innovation in vocational education training (VET) is scarce as well as research on the subject. The pandemic may have prompted a modernization of VET that needs to be examined with a focus on the main subjects: the students. The purpose of this paper is to analyse students' perspectives on henceforth VET pedagogies. We aim to investigate students' perspectives and satisfaction regarding the didactic strategies and teaching modalities they experience to inform further trends in VET.

A quantitative and cross-sectional study was conducted, gathering the views of 460 Catalan VET students through a questionnaire. Data were analysed descriptively and applying the generalised linear model (GLM) mediation model to address the specific aims detailed below.

The findings show that the most frequent and preferred teaching strategies are lecturing and active learning, while situated learning is found to be less frequent and preferred. Face-to-face is the preferred teaching mode for all teaching strategies. The internship modality does not affect students' satisfaction with teaching strategies, while the professional brunch does.

The limited responses gathered and the impact of the pandemic on the students' views limit the widespread applicability of the results. Future work must collect data from a broader sample and within a context of normality to determine current pedagogies and the use of digital technologies in VET.

Literature on VET pedagogies is scarce, and little is known about the predictable boost that the pandemic gave to the digitalisation and pedagogical modernisation of VET. Our study sheds light on the shift towards combined teaching strategies with a particular focus on active learning.

The paper explains how challenges and achievements of human social responsibility (HSR) are addressed by women innovators across the organizational borders of various industries. More precisely, this qualitative study’s goal is to clarify the empowering roles of discursive strategies employed by Women in Innovation (WIN) organization when communicating about women innovators’ demanding realities and about their collaborative initiatives meant to generate changes related to gender, diversity and intersectionality. The WIN members include women leaders in the innovation space with extensive professional, advisory and international experience.

The paper proposes an approach that brings together perspectives upon empowerment, perspectives on social, intellectual and symbolic capital and a social semiotic perspective on discourse. The WIN blogs are investigated to facilitate: first, an understanding of how discursive strategies recontextualize the women innovators’ identities and actions and second, an understanding of how these discursive strategies contribute to sustaining and legitimizing dynamic social capital while building new intellectual capital and symbolic capital across organizational borders.

The WIN discourses both disclose contemporary gender, diversity and intersectionality challenges across organizational borders as well as promote ways of breaking the barriers that prevent women innovators from thriving. The discursive strategies recontextualize women innovators as resourceful social actors with multiple identities. Their social actions are discursively recontextualized as collaborative challenge-solving enterprises. These recurrent discursive strategies accomplish empowering functions at individual, relational and collective well-being levels through materializing new intellectual and symbolic capital when revealing the manifestations of bridging and bonding social capital.

This paper provides a novel integrative approach to explaining in detail the complexity of empowering discourses at several levels of analytical delicacy. It responds to the needs of HSR research and practice for gaining more insights into the challenges of communicating effectively about how to create a more socially responsible world.

Secondary professional teacher education (onwards – SPTE) in Russia has gone through many stages, from ups to downs. There have been periods when SPTE was in low demand and associated with poor student success. However, SPTE has been able to meet the socio-economic challenges of the time, take its place in the hierarchy of Russian education and become a competitive and effective system of practice-oriented teacher training.

The chapter is devoted to the subject description of the dynamic process of formation and development of modern SPTE as an educational system. The authors analyse scientific and pedagogical publications and methodological works of Russian scientists and summarise the results on the basis of their analysis. The proposed chapter ‘Secondary Professional Pedagogical Education in Russia’ will consider the development of the modern system of secondary professional teacher education in Russia. Particular emphasis is placed on the continuity of the theory and practice of teacher training, the peculiarities of a person-centred educational environment and the strong continuity of secondary professional and higher teacher education.