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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.

Entrepreneurs can sometimes come to feel that they are not so much working for themselves as they are for a banker who is taking a smaller risk and enjoying a higher return. However, many such companies may not realise that their problem is not lack of money in the sense of debt, but a shortage of equity (Smitham, 1990). Depending on the nature of the small business this problem can be overcome‐a venture capital company could subscribe for part of the equity of their organisation. Venture capital is defined as an investment in an instrument that is not traded on a recognised stock exchange. Venture capital is not a modern phenomenon, although over the last 150 years, it has become more institutionalised within the international financial framework (Tulloch and Walsh, 1991).

IN the less‐than‐a‐century in which children's literature has developed, many types of books have emerged, and perhaps one class—the moral story—has disappeared (or if not entirely so, at least it is cold‐shouldered by modern young people). But the new literature has not displaced the fairy tale, one of the oldest forms, and still a favourite of children with imagination. A volume which should be added to the home bookshelf alongside Andersen, Grimm and Perrault, is Christina Hole's recently reprinted collection of tales from many lands entitled Folk Tales of Many Nations (H. Joseph, 10/6). They are related in a pleasant, straightforward style which presents no difficulties, and they are just long enough to hold the attention of young readers. In Norwegian Fairy Tales (Muller, 5/−) G. Strindberg has chosen old traditional folk legends about trolls, hulders, and other fairy people, and she has illustrated them herself. The Golden Treasury of Fairy Tales (Gulliver, 6/−) contains abridged and retold versions of childhood favourites by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Andersen, Frances Browne, and others. On the production side, the printing is rather lifeless and badly spaced. An interesting collection of tales handed down from father to son in the remote parts of the Irish countryside has been made by Gerard Murphy in Tales from Ireland (Browne and Nolan, 7/6). The volume is attractively produced and illustrated and will appeal to rather older boys and girls. Tom Scarlett's The Gnome and the Fairy and other Stories (Muller, 6/−) is in the modern vein and recounts the adventures of everyday people with fairies, wizards, birds and animals. Hettie Roe's simple line drawings are almost too tempting for children with a box of crayons.

There are explicit calls for research devoted to how political actors present their brand to the electorate and how this is interpreted. Responding to this, the purpose of this paper is to build an understanding of how political brand messages and values are received and aligned with voter expectations, which in turn shapes the consistency of a political brand.

Using an interpretivist perspective, this two-stage approach first focuses on semi-structured interviews with internal stakeholders of the UK Conservative Party and second uses focus group discussions with external stakeholders (voters) of age 18-24 years. Data was collected between 1 December 2014 and 6 May 2015.

The findings suggest that the UK Conservative brand had recovered from the “nasty party” reputation. Further, the Conservative brand was perceived as credible, trustworthy and responsible, with positive associations of “economic competence”. However, while the nasty party imagery has declined, the UK Conservative brand continues to face challenges particularly in terms of longstanding negative associations perceived by both internal and external markets.

It must be acknowledged that all research methods have their own limitations, and acknowledging these will strengthen the ability to draw conclusions. In this study, for example, due to time constraints during the election campaign period, 7 participants supported stage one of the study and 25 participants supported stage two of the study. However, participants from stage one of the study represented all three elements of the UK Conservative Party (Parliamentary, Professional and Voluntary). In addition, the elite interviews were longer in duration and this provided a greater opportunity to capture detailed stories of their life experiences and how this affected their brand relationship. Similarly, participants for stage two focussed on young voters of age 18-24 years, a segment actively targeted by the UK Conservative Party.

The brand alignment framework can help practitioners illuminate components of the political brand and how it is interpreted by the electorate. The increasing polarisation in politics has made this a vital area for study, as we see need to understand if, how or why citizens are persuaded by a more polarised brand message. There are also social media issues for the political brand which can distort the carefully constructed brand. There are opportunities to evaluate and operationalize this framework in other political contexts.

The brand alignment model extends current branding theory first by building on an understanding of the complexities of creating brand meaning, second, by operationalizing differences between the brand and how it is interpreted by the electorate, finally, by identifying if internal divisions within the political party pose a threat to the consistency of the brand.

Within public services there is a widely recognised role for workers who operate across organisational and professional boundaries. Much of this literature focusses on the organisational implications rather than on how boundary spanners engage with citizens. An increased number of public service roles require boundary spanning to support citizens with cross-cutting issues. The purpose of this paper is to explicate the emotional labour within the interactions that boundary spanners have with citizens, requiring adherence to display rules and building trust.

This is a conceptual paper which draws on illustrative examples to draw out the emotional labour within two types of boundary spanning: explicit and emergent.

Emotional labour theory offers a way to classify these interactions as requiring high, medium or low degrees of emotional labour. Boundary spanning theory contributes an understanding of how emotional labour is likely to be differently experienced depending on whether the boundary spanning is an explicit part of the job, or an emergent property.

Drawing on examples from public service work in a range of advanced democracies, the authors make a theoretical argument, suggesting that a more complete view of boundary spanning must account for individual-level affect and demands upon workers. Such a focus captures the “how” of the boundary spanning public encounter, and not just the institutional, political and organisational dimensions examined in most boundary spanning literatures.

The study of the history of Chinese science has attracted further attention over the past 50 years, with an increasing number of scholars, influenced by Joseph Needham and his project “Science and Civilization in China”, developing ideas in this field. There are a range of Web sites which have been produced and are available to the scholar of the history of Chinese science, and some of these are collected together and evaluated in this article.

Purpose — The chapter seeks to examine the impact of neoliberal language on the library profession in the United Kingdom. Since New Labour's election in 1997 public service restructuring in the United Kingdom took on a more oblique managerialist and consumerist approach. The impact of managerialism in the public library service has focused mainly on modernising and improving services to the individual user, and is based on scenarios where public libraries have to model themselves on the private sector, and where managers have been empowered over professionals.

Design/methodology/approach — The chapter uses a mixed methods approach by combining content and discourse analysis to examine how neoliberal discourses have impacted on public librarianship through examination of government policy documents, and other works on public libraries in the era under study.

Findings — The study highlights neoliberal narratives within public library policy documents in the period, with emphasis on deprofessionalisation and consumerist attitudes related to public choice evident. The discussion reveals how narratives of elitism and decline are used to describe the public library service, which reinforces negative stereotypes of a service in distress.

Research limitations/implications — The study only relates to the period 1997–2010 with an emphasis on the United Kingdom, thus cannot be seen to be representative of all public library services.

Originality/value — The study utilises a mixed method approach to examine narratives within public library policy, and reflects on an important period in public library development, and offers a unique insight into the period.

This paper examines and illustrates the process of setting technical intercommunication standards through a case‐study taken from the electronic voting industry. It begins by addressing the large number of types of standards and the many ways in which they are created. The tensions between the speed to market, stakeholder involvement, the mode of production and the legitimacy of a standard are explored. The modes of standards production are then presented in a linear model. The preceding discussion sets the context for a case which presents attempts to standardise the large number of competing electronic voting solutions. The importance of which actors back and influence a standard’s development up to successful adoption is exposed. The vital role government can play in preventing a standards market failure is raised and recommendations are offered on how governments can improve their contributions to standardisation.

David Hartstein started KaBloom in 1998 with the goal of creating “the Starbucks of Flowers.” He successfully built brand recognition for the gardenlike shops, but problems plagued the young organization. Nearly three years and one recession later, KaBloom failed to live up to Hartsteinʼs forecast of exponential growth. This case has been designed for a graduate-level course in entrepreneurship/innovation. Students can compare franchising with other business models, examine the impact of organizational structure and leadership styles on business effectiveness, relate issues of supply chain management and logistics to environmental changes, and recognize the impact of innovation on business sustainability.