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Increasingly, customers expect suppliers to deliver a high standard of service before and after purchase, and in a competitive market this can mean the difference between success and failure. Explores the role of employees in providing customer satisfaction, and ways in which management can support and motivate them. Concludes by offering hints to help leaders achieve this.

This longitudinal study investigated the ways in which virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) can support the well-being of teachers in managerial roles during stressful changes and crises. Specifically, it examined the experiences of these educators to better understand how VCoPs contribute to sustaining well-being in the face of challenges.

A qualitative study methodology was utilized, consisting of three rounds of interviews with seven teacher-coordinators, coupled with content analysis to discern patterns and insights. A multidimensional model was then applied to pinpoint the associations between the community’s characteristics and the different approaches implemented by these teacher-coordinators to address stress and crises.

The analysis revealed a range of coping strategies within the VCoPs for handling stress and crises. Participation in virtual spaces was shown to foster in-depth, rich discussions. The multidimensional model captures how social, emotional and cognitive factors can help teacher coordinators navigate challenges.

This study contributes to a broader understanding of the well-being of educational staff, especially in managerial roles, by exploring the subtle dynamics of a VCoP. The findings highlight the impact of the community on teacher-coordinators' well-being in routine, stressful and crisis situations. These insights can provide valuable guidance for educational practitioners and policymakers to enhance the resilience of the education system to diverse challenges.

Here are three contributions from mental health service users who feel very positive about the help and support they have received. David is from Kent and works with the Shaw Trust, who believe in releasing the potential of disabled people. John and Nettie work with Restore, ‘a creative mental rehabilitation service’ in Oxford.

The concept of agency has a role in a variety of fields and theoretical traditions and has recently taken on the strange role that Emre Amasyali and Axel van den Berg discuss in their two papers, as a term of moral or political approbation and blame, in cases where people fail to act against a structure that is supposed to be blameworthy. But this role is confused. Structures are made up of agents. But the kind of intentionality that is being blamed is ascribed to the structure, as though it is the agent. But blaming, it turns out, is not closely connected to cause but rather to social conventions of justification. Action explanation itself is culturally relative and faces the problem that intentions are unknowable. Self-reports are based on a combination of public facts and inner feelings, which are private. But the reports follow cultural conventions, particularly of justification, which vary wildly. We can resolve the apparent muddle here and make reasons into causes by appealing to a cognitive science view of action as involving predictive processing: the potential justifications are part of the expectations that go into a causal account of action. But they do not determine actions, much less represent them.

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the use of the term accountability in the twenty‐first century and its role in “remaking the world in favour of the most powerful” using the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan.

The paper examines the notion of accountability by analyzing a case study of the hostile takeover of Manchester United Football Club by the Glazer family. The field of football presents an interesting arena in which to study accountability because of its extremely interested and active fans who search for information on every aspect of their clubs. Lacanian theory is drawn upon to add to understanding of the psychopathology which the demands for accountability and transparency place on individuals. Bourdieu's work on illusio is drawn upon to understand the motivations of the field of football.

The paper finds that calls to “hold the most powerful to account” in practice lack political force. Thus the case study demonstrates the common (mis)recognition of the term of accountability. The ability to correct the abuses of the most powerful requires power.

The conflation of Bourdieu and Lacan adds to understanding of accountability as an empty cipher with performative power.

Children's Book Week, which occurs during the last week of November, was first inspired by a speech delivered by E.W. Mumford of the Penn Publishing Company at the American Booksellers Association (ABA) annual convention in 1912. Mumford regarded reading as an act of habituation. He said that a child raised on trashy novels will grow up to read such fare, but that a child instilled with a taste for better books will ultimately develop mature and catholic reading interests.

THIS number of THE LIBRARY WORLD closes one of the most distinguished years in the history of libraries. The opening of the National Central Library by the King on November 7th was undoubtedly the most important public happening in this country, not only of that particular day, but for a very long period. For the first time the highest personage in the land gave his countenance and approval to the work of the public library through the National Central Library which is its natural crown. In describing the Library as “a university which all may join and which none may ever leave,” His Majesty added a memorable phrase to library literature, and gave a new impulse to library activity.