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This study aims to explore how not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) adopt service innovation and improve their employee resilience capabilities as a response to environmental changes arising from marketisation of public services.

Using a multiple case-study research design, this study involved 32 interviews with frontline employees working in a not-for-profit care-providing organisation.

This study finds that the development of absorptive capacity can facilitate service innovation adoption in NFPs and improve employee resilience in times of transition.

This study offers theoretical insights on service innovation, absorptive capacity and employee resilience in NFPs. It makes practical recommendations that will enable NFPs to help frontline employees better adopt service innovation practices in business models endorsed by the private sector.

In the 21st century, placing higher education institutions in the global world has become the norm. Therefore, many higher education institutions in Ghana and across the globe have set out to internationalise or become world-class universities as part of their strategic ambitions. Thus, finding ways to become visible on a global scale and transcend beyond the countries in which they operate has become of major interest to most universities. The authors of this chapter were curious to determine how universities adopt imported organisational templates as a strategic ambition. One should not assume that the semblance of such imported concepts is mere institutional isomorphism stemming from internationalisation and globalisation. The study employed semi-structured interviews and institutional documents as data collection tools among ten (10) university actors in a flagship university in Ghana. The study used postcolonial theory to critically examine the drivers and current practices embedded in dominant hegemonic global discourses, such as internationalisation. The findings revealed that the drivers and reforms underpinning university internationalisation ambition are framed within economic rationalities, producing human capital, self-marketisation to promote visibility, and a quest for global competition couched within global neoliberal ideology. The study recommends the need for university actors to (re)focus and (re)evaluate university internationalisation discourse to ensure a balance between local relevance and global forces.

This study introduces a non-orthodox approach to the dominant policy-based approaches to graduate employability through contextualizing international students’ everyday experiences within their educational and wider structural contexts of the labour market.

The study used narrative frames to collect data from 180 international students from China, Hong Kong, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Nepal at a New Zealand tertiary institution. Narrative frames as a research tool in educational contexts are used to ellicit the experiences of individuals in the form of a story as participants reflect on their experience. The frames use sentence starters to draw responses from participants about their experiences (Barkhuizen and Wette, 2008).

This study argues that, through a socialization process, international students develop identities that fit an ever-changing labour market. This process is catalysed by a higher education landscape that produces career-ready subjects capable of appropriating different social spaces that prepare students and graduates to enter the labour market. Further, it argues that graduate employability should be understood as a complex process through which students and graduates socialise themselves through negotiating the socioacademic spaces by (1) familiarising themselves with the dominant workspace norms, (2) positioning themselves as more career-ready individuals, and (3) imagigining employable selves capable of meeting the needs of the job market.

This study has limitations. Only one data collection source has been used. It would have been great to use narrative frames along with interviews. In addition, the data would have been stronger if the researcher could have used classroom observations, which could be a future initiative.

This study could provide practical insights to tertiary institutions about international students’ developing capabilities and identities so they could better prepare themselves for the world of work. Further, this study provides insights about some of the challenges that international students face in tertiary contexts to become career-ready. Hence, educators could employ strategies to better support these learners in their everyday learning spaces. This study also has useful benefits for future and current international students and international graduates regarding what investments they need to make so they can better socialize themselves in their tertiary and workplace practices.

This study has social implications. It helps international students better understand the social, cultural and academic expectations of their host countries. Therefore, they could better socialize themselves into those practices and contribute more effectively to their academic and workplace communities. The study also helps academic and workplace institutions strategize more effectively to address the social and cultural needs of international graduates. The study also contributes to the social and cultural understanding of the teachers that engage with international students on a daily basis by helping them devise activities that better address these students’ and graduates’ needs.

The study adds theoretical and methodological value to the debates around graduate employability. It includes the voices of 180 students and unravels their day-to-day experiences of capability building and employability development from their own perspectives.

This paper aims to communicate the relevant management model with optimal performance in the collection of construction resources (human, non-human), supervision of workers and activities in the development of adequate and quality school infrastructure facilities.

The study employed a mixed methods research approach in collecting and analysing research findings. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews and questionnaires which consisted of closed questions were the data collection tools. Numerical data collected were processed and analysed by using quantitative methods and techniques such as descriptive analysis, whereas text data were subjected to content analysis.

The findings revealed that the Post-New Public Management (PNPM) is relevant in the collection of construction resources and suitable for the supervision of workers and tasks towards the development of adequate and quality school infrastructure facilities. Based on the evidence generated, the PNPM model was recommended to be adapted to collection of construction resources and supervision of workers and activities.

This paper highlights the need for construction committees and other education policy implementers to adapt a relevant management model in realising optimal performance in the development of adequate and quality school infrastructure facilities.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

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.

This paper aims to examine how the fields of social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation have theorised and applied the concepts of narrative and storytelling.

A literature review and subsequent thematic analysis were used. A keyword search of three databases identified 93 relevant articles that were subsequently reviewed for this paper.

Four main roles for storytelling and narrative were found in the literature: to gain support for social innovation, to inspire social change, to build a social-entrepreneurial identity and to debate the meaning and direction of social innovation itself.

Following the literature review, capacities and applications of storytelling and narrative in other, related fields are discussed to highlight practical use cases of storytelling that might currently be underdeveloped in the social enterprise and innovation sectors.

The paper argues that the social innovation and enterprise literature predominantly views storytelling as a form of mass communication, while often overlooking its ability to foster communal debate and organise intrapersonal dialogue as possible aspects of strategic thinking and innovation management in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation.

This study aims to assess the alignment of South Korea’s government-certified social enterprises (GCSEs) with prevailing social enterprise (SE) models, notably the entrepreneurial nonprofit, social cooperative and social business models delineated in the “Emergence of Social Enterprises in Europe” (Defourny and Nyssens, 2012, 2017a, 2017b) and the “principle of interest” frameworks (Defourny et al., 2021). Thereby, it seeks to situate these enterprises within recognized frameworks and elucidate their hybrid identities.

Analyzing panel data from 2016 to 2020 for 259 GCSEs, this study uses tslearn for k-means clustering with dynamic time warping to assess their developmental trajectories and alignment with established SE models, which echoes the approach of Defourny et al. (2021). We probe the “fluid” identities of semi-public sector SEs, integrating Gordon’s (2013) notion that they tend to blend various SE traditions as opposed to existing in isolation.

Results indicate that GCSEs do align with prevalent SE frameworks. Furthermore, they represent a spectrum of SE models, suggesting the versatility of the public sector in fostering diverse types of SEs.

The concept of a semi-public sector SE model has been relatively uncharted, even though it holds significance for research on SE typologies and public sector entrepreneurship literature. This study bridges this gap by presenting empirical evidence of semi-public SEs and delineating the potential paths these enterprises might take as they amalgamate various SE traditions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the underexplored link between entrepreneurship education (EE) and graduate employability in the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK).

The study draws on a thematic content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 45 professionals in UK HE, representing the “supply” side of EE.

The findings demonstrate a unidirectional link between EE and employability outcomes. This link is affected by societal, stakeholder-related, and teaching and learning-related factors.

Although the value of universities’ initiatives connecting EE and employability for economic development is emphasized, the study does not provide direct empirical evidence for this effect. Macroeconomic research is needed.

EE and employability would benefit from knowledge exchange between universities’ stakeholders and a broader understanding of what constitutes a valuable graduate outcome.

The study reveals the benefits of EE on a micro level. Participation in EE supports the connection between individual investments in HE and employability.

Based on human capital theory, many policymakers regard EE as a vehicle through which the relationship between investments in HE and career success on a micro level and economic growth on a macro level can be nurtured. Challenging this logic, the study highlights the potential of institutional theory to explain a contextualization of the link between EE and employability on a national level.