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In a knowledge‐based society the onus is placed upon teachers to provide their students with high‐quality experiences that will enable them to work autonomously in the rapidly changing world of work. The Times 100 has created a range of partnerships between The Times, it's sponsors and educational users by providing opportunities for young people to use up‐to‐date case studies as part of their learning.

Introduced into the literature a decade ago, grit originally defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals has stimulated considerable research on positive effects primarily in the academic and military contexts, as well as attracted widespread media attention. Despite recent criticism regarding grit’s construct and criterion-related validity, research on grit has begun to spill over into the work context as well. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of the initial theoretical foundations of grit as a motivational driver, and present newer conceptualizations on the mechanisms of grit’s positive effects rooted in goal-setting theory. Furthermore, the authors also draw attention to existing shortcomings of the current definition and measurement of grit, and their implications for its scientific and practical application. After establishing a theoretical understanding, the authors discuss the potential utility of grit for human resource management, related to staffing and recruitment, development and training, and performance management systems as well as performance evaluations. The authors conclude this chapter with a discussion of necessary and potential future research, and consider the practical implications of grit in its current state.

Non-entrepreneurial passions may be the beginning of an extensive entrepreneurial journey. However, current passion theories cannot fully capture the essence of such passions and their effects. The purpose of this study is to explore and explain the real-life composition of passion and performance.

The investigation was conducted with comparative causal mapping (CCM) on a qualitative sample of people we designate rock “n” roll entrepreneurs (i.e. individuals driven by a passion for music and who are successful both artistically and economically). Aggregated causal maps of passion elicited through semi-structured interviews were analyzed and contrasted with performance indicators.

Passion is revealed to be an individual phenomenon, one composed of central and peripheral concepts that include—contrary to prior theories—personality traits and life contexts. Furthermore, the results suggest that the concordance of concepts determines the scope, degree and performance of passion.

This study complements prevailing passion theories in psychology and entrepreneurship. As a context-bound study, the generalizability of the results is limited to its context, which, however, paves a clear way for future research.

Creative economy entrepreneurs and educators can use the mechanism of concordance to consciously reflect passion-driven tensions between artistic, social and entrepreneurial demands and to translate passion into behavioral effectiveness.

This study is the first to use a CCM approach to investigate passion. Findings highlight the potential to research entrepreneurial phenomena at the intersection of emotion, cognition and action.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effectiveness of a self-directed cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) booklet allowing immediate access to treatment for anxiety during alcohol use disorder (AUD) interventions.

Parallel pilot randomised controlled trial: 69 individuals in AUD treatment, continued to receive treatment alone (control: n=29) or in addition, a self-directed, four week CBT booklet to manage anxiety (intervention: n=40). Primary outcome measures were changes in state (SAnx) and trait anxiety (TAnx) at four weeks. Secondary outcome measures were changes in adaptive (ACop), maladaptive (MCop) coping and quality of life (QoL, physical (PHQoL), psychological (PSQoL), social (SQoL), environment (EQoL)) at four weeks.

Participants had significantly higher SAnx (p < 0.01) and TAnx (p < 0.01) baseline scores compared to the general population. There were no statistically significant group changes in SAnx or TAnx (p > 0.05). Control group allocation predicted improvement in ACop (p < 0.01), MCop (p < 0.05), PHQoL (p < 0.01), PSQoL (p < 0.05) and SQoL (p < 0.01); CBT group allocation predicted improvement in EQoL (p=0.05). All effect sizes were small to moderate (Cohen’s d < 0.50). Percentage of book completion did not determine changes in anxiety, coping or quality of life.

A four week self-directed CBT booklet did not significantly reduce anxiety during AUD treatment. Larger sample sizes will determine the most suitable treatment delivery mode for this type of CBT.

Many academic libraries have staffing arrangements where library employees work in more than one library branch or unit. These can be dual assignments or less formal agreements in which employees spend several hours per week away from their home departments. Zimmerman Library reference department, the social sciences, humanities, and education reference unit of the University of New Mexico (UNM) General Library (an ARL library serving over 25,000 students), uses “volunteer” staff from other library departments to help provide reference services as part of a library‐wide cross training program. According to library policy, “Cross training is an arrangement whereby a library employee from one department spends time training and working in another department. Cross training is that time an employee spends in another department or unit of the library learning to perform a task or a group of tasks and includes the time spent performing those tasks after training.” This article discusses a staff‐initiated and committee‐coordinated in‐service training program designed for these reference desk workers. This method is innovative, as library training, as evidenced by the literature, is typically viewed as the responsibility of the supervisor or manager. This training approach may serve as a model for other academic library reference departments requiring in‐house training for similar needs.

Extant research on job insecurity has traditionally investigated this construct as a hindrance stressor, based on theoretical developments and meta-analytical results that have shown consistent negative relationships between job insecurity and a host of organizational outcomes. In this chapter, the authors take a person-centered perspective based on the transactional theory of stress and argue that employees can and do appraise job insecurity in different ways which is manifested by qualitatively distinct latent profiles. The authors also argue that certain positive psychological variables (i.e., hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and grit) might influence one’s odds to belong to specific appraisal latent classes. Using a cross-lagged dataset of 322 US-based employees, the authors found evidence of five qualitatively different latent profiles (i.e., employees who viewed job insecurity as: (1) irrelevant, (2) simultaneously moderately challenging and hindering, (3) primarily hindering, (4) both highly challenging and highly hindering, or (5) primarily challenging). Further, the results showed that higher grit was associated with higher odds of belonging to any of the appraisal profiles compared to the high challenge/high hindrance group whereas higher self-efficacy was associated with higher odds of belonging to the irrelevant group compared to any of the appraisal profiles. Hope and optimism, however, did not influence latent class membership. The authors discuss the implications for theory and practice considering seemingly paradoxical findings demonstrating sometimes positive and sometimes negative outcomes of job insecurity, as well as traditional assumptions that employees primarily view job insecurity as either a hindrance or a challenge.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between board of directors’ composition (independent directors’ ratio, board size, CEO-duality) and financial transparency and disclosure (T&D).

The paper analyzes board composition and financial T&D of Italian listed companies using multiple linear regression analysis.

The results of this paper show a significant link between board composition and the level of financial T&D. In particular, the authors found a positive and significant relationship between the independent directors’ ratio and the level of financial T&D and a negative relationship between board size and the level of financial T&D.

While this paper focuses on a sample of 100 Italian listed companies, the authors acknowledge the importance of extending the results to other national context and to other type of firms (e.g. non-listed firms or SMEs). Moreover, while this paper concerns the amount of information disclosed by firms, it does not look at the quality or accuracy of disclosure.

This paper reveals the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms (such as board composition) in enhancing the level of financial T&D. Indeed, the authors provide some indications to firms to improve their internal governance mechanisms (e.g. the importance of high proportion of independent directors and of small- and medium-sized boards of directors).

This paper provides interesting insights to firms which are under pressure to improve the level of information to stakeholders. Moreover, has the level of information that is not legally required vary among companies and countries, the authors shed light on a context characterized by high level of ownership concentration, where firms can experience different types of conflict of interests.

The Ranfurly Library Service recently changed its name to Book Aid International. Describes the activities of the charity with particular emphasis on matching books supplied with specific requirements within developing countries. Gives specific examples of aid projects providing books to different requirements within developing countries and of the importance of the aid to those countries.

The purpose of this study is to synthesize unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) research that has empirically examined consequences of UPB and to provide an actor-based perspective rooted in a dual pathway self-regulation model.

We first systematically reviewed the literature on the consequences of UPB. Given the duality of UPB (i.e. pro-organizational and unethical simultaneously), we followed with the theoretical development of a dual pathway model of UPB consequences and suggest propositions from an actor-based perspective.

We posited that the distinctive attributes of UPB give rise to corresponding and distinct employee attitudes and behaviors.

Taking an actor-based perspective and drawing on theories of moral self-regulation and self-consistency, we seek to (1) determine why some UPB actors’ self-evaluations of their UPBs focus on the pro-organizational nature of their behaviors versus the unethical nature of their behaviors (i.e. dual pathway) and (2) determine the potential consequences (i.e. actor’s behavioral and attitudinal responses) of each pathway.