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This paper aims to set out to share the reflections of safeguarding adult board managers as they worked through what is likely to be just the first wave of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper draws on the experience of small number of safeguarding adult board managers who have provided reflections from practice.

This paper illustrates just some of the responses developed by safeguarding adult board managers and their boards to continue to deliver the work of safeguarding those at risk of abuse and harm in the face of unprecedented impact of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on a key aspect of the safeguarding adult system in England.

The reflections reported here are not intended to offer a representative commentary on the experiences of those who oversee and manage safeguarding adults’ boards. It is intention to provide a flavour of some of the challenges and dilemmas faced and some of the creative solutions to address them used by one group of adult safeguarding practitioners.

Learning outcomes are as follows: to appreciate the people challenges imbedded in an acquisition; to assess and analyse the impact of an acquisition process; to propose appropriate strategies for managing an acquisition; to explore the advantages and disadvantages of mergers and acquisitions; to describe the main reasons for the failure of M&As.

Often mergers and acquisitions fail because of the inability to either manage or consider organisational and people management issues. It has also been acknowledged that during a process of extreme change or transition, such as a merger and acquisition (M&A), employees view the past as a time of safety and security with the future appearing as uncertain and confused. This teaching case study highlights these challenges and the change processes imbedded in an acquisition. The acquiring firm is Marshall Foods, a well-established branded continental distribution company with a strong emphasis on nutritional whole food products based in South Africa, and the target firm is Tru-Foods For You, a small Cape Town online company that sold natural and organic foods. The case study explores the challenges faced by the Tru-Foods For You owner and staff as a result of the acquisition process. The case describes the background to the acquisition, the processes during this phase and the resultant outcomes.

Business students who are studying at postgraduate or MBA level and executive short courses in strategy and change management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to review strategies to build capacity for school improvement in Australia. The focus is on public schools and strategies adopted for the system as a whole.

This paper traces developments from a national perspective and makes a case for the key contemporary policy shift that has provided the platform for a new era of educational reform. Two contrasting case studies are described in order to demonstrate the pathways embarked on by a large jurisdiction, namely the State of Victoria, which has led the nation in terms of devolved decision‐making for public schools, and second, a much smaller jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which is introducing a range of reforms to give public schools much greater autonomy in order to achieve improved performance. The paper concludes with a “futures” view of how strategies may continue to evolve. Shifting the language from “improvement” to “transformation” is canvassed.

It is concluded that a key to success has been to align strategies among different levels of the school system: central, regional/district, school and classroom. The possibilities for moving beyond improvement to transformation are canvassed.

The value of the paper lies in its up‐to‐date account of system‐wide efforts to improve schools and a summary of evidence on their impact. The paper is of particular interest to school and school system leaders as well as those engaged in the study of educational policy and educational leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the non-market strategies adopted by government-contracted small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in order to address the challenges they faced in the business of procurement. Although SMEs are important contributors to employment and the national economy, they demonstrated different levels of effectiveness depending on the management strategies they adopted.

Using case study methodology, data were gathered by conducting interviews with the owners/managers of Indonesian SMEs. Findings were analysed using the (ia)³ framework developed to assist the understanding of non-market environments.

Findings indicated that a key characteristic of the Indonesian non-market environment was the influence of the government and Indonesian society. This led to differing degrees of dissatisfaction among SME owners and managers who reported that they had to work within a number of constraints for business survival, while simultaneously learning how to “play the games” demanded by the business and regulatory environment.

Limitations relate to the number of empirical cases represented and the geographical area covered. Further research is recommended in order to provide the opportunity for research generalisation.

These findings illustrate the need for transparency and integrity in the procurement process in relation to Indonesian SMEs. It is proposed that SMEs in similar sectors may benefit from forming strategic alliances/industry clusters to support future knowledge sharing and promote their collective voice.

To date, studies on non-market strategies have largely focused on developed countries and large firms. Consequently, this paper goes some way towards bridging the gap in the non-market environment in developing countries concerning SMEs and potential strategies for adoption.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

Several theoretical models have been developed to describe the process of successful team adaptation. Testing the models through empirical research is lacking. This study aims to empirically examine the way teams adapt to unexpected or novel circumstances and investigate the four-phase team adaptation process (i.e. situation assessment → plan formulation → plan execution → team learning), as proposed by Rosen et al. (2011).

To test the positive relationship between the four team adaptation phases and their suggested sequence, a cross-sectional field study was conducted. Data were collected from 23 teams participating during an 8-week team project.

Results from random intercept models confirmed that the team adaptation process consisted of four phases that were positively related to each other. As expected, plan formulation mediated the positive relationship between situation assessment and plan execution. However, team learning was independently related to all three previous phases, and not only to situation assessment as theory suggests.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first attempts to test the theoretical model of the team adaptation process presented by Rosen et al. (2011). Findings illustrated that the team adaptation process is not a simple four-phase sequence, but it constitutes four dynamic phases that are strongly interrelated to each other.

Father involvement is a salient predictor of children’s development and recent studies suggest that African American fathers who are highly involved across infancy and toddlerhood have children who enter school better prepared to succeed. Little is known, however, about the specific dimensions of fathering (e.g., language stimulation) that contribute to the positive development of African American children during the early childhood period. Even less is known about psychological and contextual barriers to positive father involvement among African American men with very young children. The first part of this chapter briefly reviews empirical research that has delineated links between multiple dimensions of father involvement and child development in African American families. The second part of the chapter explores emerging evidence on the associations between fathers’ psychological functioning, father involvement and child development, and concludes with suggestions for future research, practice, and policy.

To what extent can resiliency reduce negative work outcomes to help employees recover from failure? This study investigates how the interaction of trait resiliency and mistake tolerance play key roles in reducing turnover intention in organizations. Specifically, trait resiliency is hypothesized to be negatively related to managerial turnover intentions. Moreover, the author investigates the interactive role of perceived mistake tolerance as a situational factor that may impact the extent to which resiliency decreases turnover intentions. In a sample of 209 working managers and executives, moderated path modeling reveals that resiliency reduces turnover intentions. Additionally, results suggest a more nuanced view that takes into consideration the interaction of trait resiliency and perceptions of mistake tolerance in reducing turnover intentions.

This paper draws on 26 in-depth interviews with people living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) to explore how experiences and interpretations of disability redirect and transform reproductive trajectories. I apply Almeling's conceptualization of reproduction as the “biological and social process of having or not having children” as a framework for understanding what occurs at multiple analytical layers (structural and cultural, interactional, self, and body) across the life course and influences how and whether people with disabilities feel having children is something they want or need or is within their reach. Findings reveal the lasting impact of viewing the film Steel Magnolias, pivotal interactions with healthcare providers, and interpretations of embodied T1D experiences as major sources of tension for participants as they reflect on their reproductive trajectories and outlooks. Considering especially the structural and cultural layer, this paper enriches our understanding of disability by demonstrating that both women and men with less noticeable or visible disability are subject to similar social imperatives of risk management and moral reproduction as those with more noticeable physical or sensory disabilities, although gender also matters for how participants experience these imperatives. Findings lend support for viewing reproduction as a lifelong process beyond the sequence from conception to birth, as some significant disability experiences that transform or redirect reproductive trajectories fall outside this timeframe.