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The purpose of this paper is to explore the perspectives of healthcare professionals on autism in adult females with intellectual disability (ID), including regarding the gender ratio of autism, the clinical manifestation of autism in females, and the recognition, screening and diagnosis of autism.

The questionnaire was developed following a review of the relevant literature and distributed to professionals within three healthcare trusts as well as members of two clinical research groups. The questionnaire was completed by 80 ID healthcare professionals. Data were aggregated and analysed using Microsoft Excel.

ID healthcare professionals had a lack of recognition of the smaller gender ratio of autism in patients with ID as compared to those without ID. Most respondents reported believing that autism manifests differently in females; with women demonstrating a greater ability to mask their symptoms. A considerable proportion of participants reported feeling less confident in recognising, screening and diagnosing autism in female patients, with many endorsing a wish for additional training in this area.

These findings suggest that ID healthcare professionals are keen to improve their skills in providing services for women with autism. Training programmes at all levels should incorporate the specific needs of women with ASD, and individual professionals and services should actively seek to address these training needs in order to promote best practice and better outcomes for women with autism.

This is the first published questionnaire exploring the perspectives of healthcare professionals regarding autism in adult females with ID.

This paper contributes to leadership categorization theory by advocating a new method to surface people's implicit leadership theories. The purpose of this new approach is to simultaneously capture individual difference in how they conceptualize leadership but within a common framework to allow for comparison of within- and between-person effects.

The authors conduct a narrative review of the implicit leadership theory, leadership categorization theory, cognitive mapping and verbal protocol literature with the purpose of surfacing a research method that will overcome the problems of over-simplification and over-individualization in existing methods.

The authors argue that using a combination of cognitive mapping and verbal protocols can capture the idiosyncrasies of individual lay theories of leadership while retaining the ability to compare people's responses through a common framework. The authors provide an example of how this method can be used to elicit people's perceptions of one aspect of implicit leadership theories, intelligence.

This new method will provide a methodology to test the subset propositions advocated by leadership categorization theory. These include the idea that subordinate level implicit leadership theories contain a subset of attributes found in the basic-level implicit leadership theories, that there is attribute integrity in superordinate implicit leadership theories through the levels, and the idea that people define leadership differently depending on the context they are observing.

Whereas previous approaches to surfacing people's implicit leadership theories either heavily constrain their responses with a predetermined generic suite of attributes or are totally open-ended and idiosyncratic, the authors advocate an approach that combines the best of both.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how resort managers respond to employment legislation (Law No. 02/2008).

The qualitative case study data from seven self-contained tourist resorts in the Maldives were used to investigate the managerial responses to employment legislation.

Resort managers’ responses ranged from passive compliance to active resistance, with decoupling through opportunism as the dominant strategy used to circumvent the legislation. Some human resource management (HRM) practices emerged from resort managers’ interactions with external stakeholders and employees. Strategic responses and HRM practices were driven by a search for legitimacy or efficiency and sometimes both. The findings show that there are differences between strategic responses and HRM practices by organisational subfield, local resorts and international hotel chains. The resorts’ market orientation also influenced resort managers’ responses and HRM practices.

The findings of this paper have limitations because it was limited to a single industry/sector and to a particular piece of legislation. However, it demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between institutional context and HRM.

This paper shows that responding to employment legislation entails a high level of interplay between the institutional environment and HR actors, and between stakeholders (e.g. employees) and HR actors. It demonstrates the difficulty of reconciling institutional requirements with the preferences of different stakeholders and organisational interests. HR actors actively make sense of institutional requirements and modify HRM practices to accommodate stakeholders’ varying perspectives and preferences. This suggests that in countries such as the Maldives, uneven institutional coverage (e.g. incomplete employment legislation) allows room for organisations to innovate – for better or worse.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the psychological contracts (PCs) of international volunteers (IVs) in international aid and development organizations (IADS). Specifically, it explores four questions: how IVs form PCs; what the content of these PCs is; how IVs’ PCs are maintained; and how they are fulfilled or breached.

The study used an inductive analysis of qualitative data: interviews with 27 IVs from a range of IADS.

The findings take the form of research propositions: RP1: IVs’ PCs, like those of domestic volunteers, include relational, transactional and, especially, values-based elements, but the balance of these is influenced by their values-based PC; the self-directed way IVs join their organizations; and reliance on peers rather than the organization’s management hierarchy. RP2: the PCs of IVs working for faith-based organizations have an additional element: spiritual support. RP3: the values-based PC means many transactional elements can be “adjusted away”, making it difficult to breach these PCs. RP4: experienced volunteers have very minimal PCs, but are more likely than inexperienced volunteers to expect basic safety and adequately skilled colleagues.

The authors suggest areas of new inquiry and specific ways each research proposition could be tested empirically.

To alleviate IVs’ expatriation and repatriation adjustment problems, international aid organizations could facilitate the ways IVs already help each other. This would also help fulfill IVs’ PCs.

IVs are a growing but underexplored group and aspects of their PCs may be unique.

Barrett compared the perceptions of female management students and senior female managers about effective and probable workplace communication strategies, and the extent to which each group's perceptions were influenced by gender norms in communication. The purpose of this paper is to compare male students' perceptions of the strategies to those of female students and female managers.

In total, 255 second‐year male management students evaluated strategies for the same dilemmas as the two female groups.

Overall, male students resemble female students rather than senior female managers. They reject some stereotypically male strategies, seeing them as more effective for women. Yet, male students regard an ineffective but probable approach to getting credit for ideas as even less effective for men than for women, and an effective, but feminine, strategy for getting noticed for promotion as more effective for women. Male students may believe using overtly feminine strategies penalizes men. Like female students, male students' confidence affects their personal choice of strategy.

The study used a limited number of dilemmas and demographic factors, limiting the results' generalizability. “Paper” scenarios, even if drawn from typical workplace dilemmas, may not reflect the work world. Nevertheless, the findings suggest language ideologies at work are changing for both genders.

This paper describes the first study comparing students' and senior women managers' reactions to classic workplace communication problems. In addition, it investigates the perceptions of young men rather than stereotypical males.

Changing language ideology and the decreased popularity of overt feminism suggest that aspiring female managers may be less influenced than senior women managers by the gender of the speaker in evaluating whether specific communication strategies are effective and probable. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue.

A total of 255 second‐year female management students evaluate strategies for the same workplace dilemmas as senior women managers (Barrett).

For short‐ and medium‐term dilemmas students, like senior women managers, regard masculine communication strategies with a feminine element as effective. They are less influenced by the speaker's gender than senior women managers in evaluating the strategies' probability. But when seeking promotion, students avoid some strategies they consider effective, and believe men would use. Students' confidence as communicators affects their personal choice of strategy.

The paper investigates a limited number of dilemmas and sought information about a limited number of demographic factors, limiting the results' generalizability. Nevertheless, it suggests future women managers could learn from their senior counterparts if they want to advance at work. Future research should investigate whether future male managers' reactions to these dilemmas are similar to women students and senior managers, and whether scenarios using female dyads yield similar results. Cross‐cultural extensions of the research are also possible.

This is the first study comparing aspiring and senior women managers' reactions to classic workplace communication problems. The findings show similarities between aspiring managers and their senior sisters, but also differences which could affect aspiring managers' career success.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the scepticism that persists among medics regarding appropriateness of some aspects of services provided by extended scope physiotherapists (ESPs). This paper aims to highlight the extent and appropriateness of surgical and radiological referrals by ESPs working in an adult orthopaedic service.

The patient pathway following ESP assessment was audited over 31 months. Parameters explored included ESP referral rates to orthopaedic consultants; the percentage of patients where the entire episode of care was managed by the ESP; whether orthopaedic referrals were appropriate in terms of surgical interventions; and numbers of radiology referrals specifically for knee or lumbar complaints.

Of the patients, 79 per cent had their entire episode of care managed by ESPs. Of the patients, 9 per cent were referred on for a surgical opinion (of which 42 per cent knees, 20 per cent lumbar). 13 per cent were referred for x‐rays, 10 per cent for magnetic resonance imaging. Of the patients referred on for surgical opinion surgical intervention was appropriate in 89 per cent of cases.

Data from an ESP service with broad guiding protocols in a specific hospital are not readily extrapolated to ESPs elsewhere. Appropriateness of onwards referrals was based on the opinions of consultants to whom patients were referred. The potential benefit of a second opinion even if surgery is not offered is not taken into account by this model.

These audits reinforce the impact ESPs have on efficiency within orthopaedics. They document referral rates for x‐rays and magnetic resonance imaging by ESPs for lumbar and knee complaints that may benefit units proposing new ESP services.

This paper reinforces published data on ESP management of the entire episode of care of the majority of referrals to orthopaedics, and on the highly appropriate nature of onwards referrals. Documented for possibly the first time, data regarding investigations for lumbar and knee disorders highlight low referral rates.

The purpose of this paper is to study women’s entrepreneurship from the family-firm context and radical subjectivist (RS) economics. While women’s entrepreneurship is a long-standing topic of research interest, there have been calls for more theory-oriented research and research which takes context factors in women’s entrepreneurship seriously. The paper responds to this by using an RS’s view of economics as a theoretical lens to consider women’s entrepreneurship in family firms.

The paper briefly reviews the potential of the family-firm context for examining women’s entrepreneurship in a non-reductive fashion, then outlines radical subjectivism (RS). The three main elements of RS’s “entrepreneurial imagination” are explained, then linked with other theories of family-firm behaviour and applied to casework on women entrepreneurs in family firms.

Each element of the entrepreneurial imagination, empathy, modularity and self-organization, generates new research questions which contest previous apparently settled views about women entrepreneurs. Protocols for investigating the questions are suggested. The third element, self-organization, while more difficult to operationalize for empirical testing, suggests how women’s entrepreneurship might generate new industries.

While this is primarily a conceptual study, its case studies invite further exploration of both women entrepreneurs and family firms. The RS perspective could also increase understanding of shared leadership and innovation in family firms. Specific research questions and protocols for investigating them are offered.

Insights from the research have practical implications for entrepreneurship education, for understanding entrepreneurship at the level of society, the firm and the individual.

The importance of both family firms and women entrepreneurs to society makes it important to understand both of them better. The RS perspective can help.

The paper highlights the value of combining attention to entrepreneurial context (family firms) and theory (RS) to reinvigorate some old research questions about women entrepreneurs. The combination of family firms and RS is also novel.

This editorial aims to investigate the interface between gendered processes and family business by exploring the extent to which gendered processes are reinforced (or not) in family business operations and dynamics. This approach will complement the agency and resource-based view theoretical bases that dominate family business research (Chrisman et al., 2009) and further contribute to extending gender theories.

Acknowledging that gender is socially constructed, this editorial discusses the interface between gendered processes and family business within entrepreneurship research.

Despite a growing interest in gender and family business, there is limited literature that explores gender theory within family business research. A gender theory approach embracing family business research contributes to a needed theoretical deconstruction of existing perspectives on the operations, sustainability and succession of family businesses in the twenty-first century.

This editorial makes a contribution to extant scholarship by extending gender theories through an exploration of the gendered processes in family business research.