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Bootstrapping is a practitioner-based term adopted in entrepreneurship to describe the techniques employed in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to minimise the need for external funding by securing resources at little or no cost and applying strategies to effectively use resources. Working capital management (WCM) is a term used in financial management to define a set of practices used to manage business resources, including cash management. This paper explores the overlap and divergence between these two disciplinary distinct concepts.

A dual methodology is employed. First, the usage of the two terms in prior literature is analysed and synthesised. Second, the study uses factor analysis to explore how bootstrapping practices described by owners of 167 established MSMEs relate to the components of WCM in financial management.

The factor analysis identifies two main bootstrapping practices employed by MSMEs: (1) delaying payments and owner-related bootstrapping and (2) customer-related bootstrapping. Delaying payments is an integral practice in trade payables management and customer-related bootstrapping includes practices that are integral to trade receivables management. Therefore, links between bootstrapping practices and WCM practices are firmly established.

The study is not without limitations. Based on cross-sectional evidence for established firms in Ireland only, future studies could explore cross-country longitudinal panel data to fully examine life cycle and sectoral effects, as well as other external shocks (for example, COVID-19) on bootstrapping and WCM practices. This study does not explain why some factors (for example, joint utilisation and inventory management) are present in some bootstrapping studies and not in others; further case study research might help explain this. Finally, changes in the business environment facing start-ups and established enterprise, including increased digitalisation, online trading, self-employment, remote hub working and sustainability, offer new avenues for bootstrapping research.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore the conceptual and empirical links between bootstrapping and WCM. This study will enable researchers and practitioners in these two distinct disciplines to learn from each other. Accounting researchers and practitioners can broaden their understanding of how WCM “works” in MSME settings. Similarly, entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners can deepen their understanding of how bootstrapping can be adopted by businesses to manage resources effectively.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the acceptance and support of neurodiverse people in society, with a focus on autism, and to use this to propose a framework to enhance inclusivity that can inform pedagogy within the education sectors.

Three case studies from higher education have been presented and mapped onto a multi-dimensional spectrum of characteristics normally associated with autistic people. Further examples have been taken from the general population and these have been used, along with user scenarios to propose a framework for inclusivity.

A framework, the human spectrum, has been proposed which encompasses all of society, regardless of diagnoses and within which people have mobility in terms of their characteristics. It is proposed that this framework should be incorporated into pedagogy in primary, secondary and tertiary education so that teaching and assessment is inclusive and so that people’s understanding of human nature is built from an early age to counter stigma and herd mentality, or othering.

The contribution of this paper could have significant implications for society as the framework provides a structure to enable people to consider others with new perspectives.

The framework proposed provides a new and original way of shaping the way people think within the education sector and elsewhere.

Prison officers face severe work-related stressors stemming from their interactions with detained people and the professional attitudes they enact, both of which are shaped by the prison culture’s social norms. However, research neglected to investigate the role of prison social norms on officers’ behaviors and well-being. This study aims to test whether promoting prisoner-supportive norms can improve officers’ relationships with and attitudes toward detained people, in turn promoting their professional and psychological well-being.

The study was conducted on 1,080 Italian prison officers and adopted a mixed correlational-experimental approach. The first correlational part of the study tested the hypothesized processes linking social norms to officers’ well-being. The second part of the study adopted a two-level between-subject experimental design to manipulate supportive vs. punitive norms toward detained people using a priming procedure.

The correlational results indicated that supportive norms were associated with higher supportive attitudes and emotional closeness with detained people, in turn sustaining officers’ well-being. However, emotional closeness with incarcerated people also contributed to higher burnout. The experimental results confirmed that priming prisoner-supportive norms increased officers’ supportive behavioral intentions toward detained people, in turn predicting greater anticipated psychological and professional well-being.

The research provides correlation and experimental evidence of how prosocial norms can influence officers’ well-being by shaping their attitudes and relationships with prisoners, offering practical implications for interventions in prisons and contributing to improving correctional environments and officers’ mental health.