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The financial crisis of 2008 resulted in calls for change. Commentators suggested that co-operatives, in particular credit unions, could provide accountability and sustainability through their open governance and mutual status. However, such suggestions assumed that co-operative principles and practice continued to underpin the efficacy of co-operative banking, and that credit unions, one of the most prevalent forms of co-operative banking, could offer a viable financial alternative. Instead, in the case of Cyprus, the financial crisis and the associated aftershocks triggered the nationalisation and demutualisation of credit unions. This prompted the researchers to question both the viability of a co-operative banking future and the extent to which co-operative principles were shaping decision making, governance, accountability and sustainability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A case study approach was adopted to explore the degree to which co-operative principles still shaped credit union thinking and stakeholder relationships.

As is the case elsewhere within the co-operative movement, the findings point the fact that governance is weaken by the low membership participation and that the principles are no longer universally applied. Credit unions, if not co-operative banking, may not offer the financial assurances that commentators have called for. Moreover, the guiding principles may no longer be embedded within the fabric of the movement.

Findings are important for practitioners/supervisory body as they highlight possible impacts on co-operative’ future and especially on their governance model and level of autonomy and independence in case of state intervention.

The research undertaken is original as it is the first time credit unions in Cyprus were examined for adherence to co-operative principles.

The purpose of this research was to understand the lived experience of mentoring to provide insight for those who manage and experience mentoring at work.

Semi-structured interviews with a cohort of 43 mentors and their mentees plus key informants were conducted. It is a longitudinal qualitative study undertaken with a year's cohort of mentors (referred to as “devilmasters”) and mentees (“devils”) in the profession of law, amongst Scottish barristers, advocates.

The meanings of mentoring differed widely between individuals. Mentoring relationships differed in their depth, quality and benefits the mentees received. The research findings reveal the inconsistencies and inequalities that are a fundamental part of the experience of mentoring that, as yet, the research literature has missed. The research also revealed how mentoring alone was not enough and that structured training was required to supplement mentoring. Further, there is a dependency to be found in mentoring. The mentoring process is power laden.

Researchers may need to provide a definition of mentoring to those they research. Power needs to be fore-grounded in research.

As almost all previous research on mentoring is survey based, this is one of the few studies of the lived experience of mentoring, socialization and cognitive apprenticeship.

The purpose of this paper is to question our faith in numbers. It asks how much credibility can numbers and quantification of data offer us as researchers?

The research asked the question “Does gender matter?” in the case of banks lending to male and female business owners. To test this the bank loan officers were given an identical fictional bank loan proposal from either Jack or Emma Jones. It was assumed that the more positive statements made, the more likely there would be a positive decision to lend to either Jack or Emma.

The main finding was that no link was found between the number of positive statements made and the final decision on whether or not to lend to either gender. While counting, we assume, injects precision into analysis, in this case it provided no support for the existence of a relationship between the numbers of positive statements and final decision on whether or not to lend. Some reasons are presented.

The paper features a small sample of 35 interviews. It would be interesting to see if this same finding is replicated in other studies of bank loan decision making using bank loan proposals and investigating the effect of gender on decisions.

This research builds upon the 1993 research of Fay and Williams.

Men have power in organizations that women often lack. Investigates generally men′s and women′s employment, job segregation, and part‐time employment. Discusses the barriers to women′s progress. The first barrier is the role women have been socialized to adopt, for example, passive. The second is lack of support including limited financial resources, education and training, lack of child care arrangements, networks, role models, mentors and domestic constraints. A third barrier is attitudes such as employer biases, negative perceptions of women, attribution of female behaviour and use of language. Suggests how women could gain more power. Positive action is required within schools to encourage girls to pursue non‐traditional career plans. Further awareness of the problems arising from sex stereotyping is needed. Through mentoring women could have access to the power network. However, peer mentoring can be an egalitarian alternative for women. Discusses the importance of assertiveness training for women.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how female bank lenders are locked into a position of disadvantage in a UK bank. The work of Bourdieu is used to explore women's position of disadvantage and inequality. As Bourdieu helps us predict, the women are symbolically constructed as different, and face different problems to men. Women's social capital is not perceived as the same as men's.

The research method involved preliminary research interviews with seven key senior staff in the bank followed by focus group discussions with 35 male and female bank loan officers on bank premises within a nine-month period. Six focus groups were held – three with men and three with women in four British cities – London, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh. All the interviews were tape-recorded and analysed. The participants were told that the discussion was completely confidential, and that we were interested in the role gender played in entrepreneurial and corporate life. Findings were verified by taking them back to a selection of those who had been involved in the focus groups.

The findings show how the power dynamics are played out within the immediate workplace environment and influenced by the wider macro systems of society. The women differed in their views as to whether gender mattered. Despite the evident inequities these women face, some wished to deny or resist being seen as unequal or wanted to acknowledge inequity. The paper explains how and why this might be the case.

The research is limited by its sample size to 35 bank loan officers.

The paper demonstrates some of the difficulties faced by those who wish to implement equality of opportunity in the face of women's denial of inequality.

The paper clearly illustrates the difficulties and challenges faced by female bank loan officers in banking.

This paper discusses the subjective experience of equality, inequality and exclusion among female bankers showing how they are not a homogenous group, as they say they experience equality/inequality differently. These women face ideological dilemmas that are not widely discussed in the research literature. It is very unlikely that as a divided, heterogeneous group who find themselves in a very small minority in this bank, that greater equality for them is likely to come about.

This is the title of an article by Valerie Fawcett in Volume 15 Number 3 of Library Management. This programme has been helping many women in library and information work to fulfil their potential. Women who have taken part in this personal development course have become more confident and assertive, and their managers have found them more willing to put forward their ideas, take the initiative, and take on additional responsibilities. Many achieve promotion, but women set their own agenda on the course, decide what they want to achieve and the steps they need to take.

States that the idea of grouping a number of cultural, commercial and industrial activities together under the banner of the “creative industries” is relatively new but it has already been the focus of considerable interest, discussion and policy making within the UK. Acknowledges that the government has been keen to promote the creative industries as a major success story and a key element in the knowledge economy. Looks at what is seen to constitute the creative industries, reviews some of the evidence about their contribution to the economy and outlines some of the management challenges and the support and promotion initiatives associated with these industries.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

The study aims to investigate the effects of bodily feelings on preference for robotic service by examining direct and indirect sensations from physical and metaphorically projected bodily feelings.

Through four empirical experiments involving video and recall tasks to metaphorically manipulate participants’ bodily warmth and directly manipulate ambient temperature, the authors explored the mediating role of the need for warmth and the moderating role of robotic features (warmth vs competence) on consumer willingness to engage with and pay for robotic services.

Warmth perception exhibits a positive correlation with robotic services. This relationship is mediated by the need for warmth. Moreover, when customers experience a sensation of physical warmth, they show a greater willingness to pay for a robotic service exhibiting competence versus warmth.

This research contributes to the literature by integrating the feelings-as-information theory and the mind perception view to understand the judgment of robotic services. It extends the application of the embodied cognition theory, highlighting the significance of bodily feelings as a source of information in customer decision-making processes. Furthermore, this research explores the metaphoric influence of service features on bodily responses, providing new insights into the role of embodiment and mental perception in robotic service evaluations.

Managers should consider using different robots based on seasonal settings to meet customers’ need for warmth. Understanding customers’ bodily feelings and the metaphoric influence of service features contributes to the design of more effective and customer-centric robotic services.

This inquiry explores the metaphoric influence of service features on bodily responses, providing new insights into the role of embodiment and mental perception in robotic service evaluations.

The purpose of the article is to show, through a case study, that the reasons motivating members and non‐members of a quality circle to improve quality are not limited to those formulated in the literature. We thereby concur with Fiona Wilson who, in an article published in a recent issue of Employee Relations, showed that the psychological reward is not enough. In the workshops under study, members and non‐members obtained better working conditions – for example lay‐offs have stopped, transfer of employees from one workshop to another or from one job station to another is a thing of the past – by improving quality through the direct impact that their action was having on the organisation′s position in the market and, consequently, on the increase of production volumes.