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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact gendered media representations of entrepreneurs may have on the reality of female entrepreneurship. It analyses the representation of women entrepreneurs in a women ' s magazine. Media representations influence, firstly, whether women perceive entrepreneurship as desirable and attainable, and thus impact the strength and direction of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Secondly, media representations shape how key stakeholders such as bankers or clients view and interact with female business owners, thereby impacting women entrepreneurs’ business relations and opportunities.

The paper reviews research on media representations of women entrepreneurs, gender inequalities in entrepreneurial activity and work before presenting an in-depth qualitative analysis of a magazine series reporting on female entrepreneurs.

The authors’ analysis reveals how the woman ' s magazine in question portrays female entrepreneurship as focused on traditionally female activities and pursuits and as domestically-centred. Relating these findings to evidence on gender inequalities in entrepreneurial activity, the paper raises important questions about the impact of media representations of women entrepreneurs.

The paper demonstrates the benefits of understanding entrepreneurial activity as work and includes analytical perspectives from the sociology of work in the analysis of media representations of entrepreneurship.

The UK has operated a lightly regulated approach to help employees balance their work and domestic obligations, an approach which employers have welcomed and which they and Government consider to be successful. On the basis of empirical studies this paper challenges these assumptions and outcomes. Apart from definitional difficulties, seven major problems associated with current UK practice over work‐life balance are identified. The first problem concerns unevenness of adoption across different sectors and organisations. The second is a lack of formalisation of policies at organisational level, with largely untrained line mangers having discretion over policy application. Third, there is restricted employee voice over the introduction and implementation of policies. Fourth, policies are introduced primarily to meet business needs, rather than those of employees. Fifth, there is no evidence of reductions in working hours. Sixth, tangible and intangible work intrusions into domestic life have been identified. Finally, domestic responsibilities are still conducted primarily by women irrespective of their employment status. The researchers conclude that many employees continue to face difficulty in reconciling their work and domestic responsibilities.

The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of different forms of organisational representation on the provision of work‐life balance employment policies.

The article uses on‐site semi‐structured interviews with employees, HR and line managers and trade union representatives in four case studies as well as survey responses from a total of 17 institutions in the financial services sector.

Employees do influence work‐life balance issues in the financial services sector, and work‐life balance initiatives had greater breadth, codification and quality where independent unions were recognised. In all cases however, the extent of departure from minimal statutory levels of provision was not great.

The nature of the study and its focus on Scotland may limit the generalisability of the findings into other sectors or regions.

In light of the evolving work‐life balance legislative framework, this article should be of practical interest to trade unions, practitioners and academics. It demonstrates that organisations and unions need to retain and develop a focus on work‐life balance applications.

The article indicates the prevalence of management control of the work‐life balance agenda and management's discretion in the operation of work‐life issues. Employees and their representatives accepted this control, and their private individualised responsibility for balancing work and life, without challenge. These results inform current understanding of how work‐life balance legislation, based on a voluntarist agenda, translates into practice.

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore media representations of opting-out and how these present particular professional identities as appropriate career choices for women. Through an examination of a UK women's magazine the paper looks at how opting-out in favour of work based on traditionally female housewifery skills and attributes is communicated and justified in the texts.

The paper adopts a social identity approach to a qualitative content analysis of 17 consecutive monthly magazine features.

While the magazine frames women's career choices as unlimited, identity is presented as gendered, biologically fixed and therefore inescapable. The magazine presents opting out as an appropriate route for women based on a “female identity” grounded in traditional female attributes of caring, hosting, baking, etc. However, this leaves women's work open to potentially negative interpretations of these traditional female attributes. The texts appeal to a post-feminist discourse and imply that problems experienced by women in public sphere careers are partly the outcome of the feminism of the 1960s and 1970s.

Future research should study how readers interpret the texts.

The paper demonstrates the explanatory potential of using of a social identity approach in the analysis of media texts.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

This article employs linear regression techniques to model the variables associated with work‐life balance outcomes of employees. Using data from employee surveys carried out in four financial sector companies in Scotland, it was found that while the level of perceived availability did not have an impact on work‐life balance, organisational culture was significantly associated. This indicates that without a supportive work‐life organisational culture, the provision of arrangements in themselves will not necessarily lead to better work‐life balance outcomes. The analysis also shows that longer working hours, job status, take‐up and experiences of limited access to arrangements were significantly associated with work‐life outcomes. The findings are discussed in the context of recent government legislation and initiatives and further research examining the impact of work‐life initiatives on employees is recommended.

This study aims to address the question of what coordination mechanism can be used for cultural production and, in particular, for the governance of music culture production. The authors locate their reflection within the specific institutional innovations introduced in Italy in 2017, focusing on the idea of shared administration and the public–private collaboration instituted in Trentino (a province located in northern Italy) in support of its cultural policy.

This study focusses on the Trentino’s music school system. This includes 13 organisations (musicians’ cooperatives as well as associations of musicians and students, plus one municipal school which do not overlap with the public school system). To analyse shared administration features, the authors rely on selected information from 50 interviews with Trentino Music Schools (TMS) teachers and administrators, and on the proceedings of the 1994 music school conference organised by the schools at the time when this novel educational system was created.

To offer an innovative educational service, the public actor (Provincia Autonoma di Trento [PAT]) and the schools (TMS) have developed a strong interdependence at the different levels of decision-making: PAT needs organisations that are sufficiently structured and organised to respect requirements of transparency and accountability, as well as educational standards, whereas TMS need public funding to maintain their service accessible for users, good labour conditions and be financially sustainable. Likewise, the success of TMS in educating thousands of students every year, including additional teaching programmes funded by PAT within general public schools, has contributed to decrease the exclusion from music education, raise interest in young people for music and fed enrolment in TMS as well as in the public schools related to the conservatoire filière. Conclusions emphasise the existence of a polycentric system of music culture production which needs to acknowledge the risk of being trapped in a static disequilibrium, while recognising change and the need to support and promote a culture of cooperation among schools and across layered institutional levels over time.

Further research can observe this system of cultural production over time, to appreciate changes and organisational tranformations, while introducing comparative analysis with other systems in different regions.

The relationship between the public and private sectors to design, organise and manage activities of collective interest (in the social, cultural, sporting and other fields) can increasingly become an effective and efficient alternative to the traditional bureaucratic as well as to the competitive method. For this to happen, however, all actors involved must be aware not only of areas of efficiency but also of inefficiency. To remedy the latter, corrective measures will have to be introduced. For example, fostering and improving “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione” means giving all stakeholders involved the opportunity to actively participate. Should the number of participants increase, more discussion fora could be set up because one alone may not be sufficient to foster maximum involvement, to enhance different points of view, to allow for intersectoral and multidisciplinary interpretations and responses.

The system governance based on co-programming and co-design has allowed – despite limitations – to pursue educational purposes and thus well-being for the users, as well as for the teachers and the community as a whole. The continuity of this educational and cultural action has been guaranteed by the economic and financial sustainability of the schools, which is highly dependent on the public actor funding personnel costs, and in turn tied to the number of students (demand) attending each school. Actors embedded in the system need to build awareness of industry and cultural changes and knowledge of how to introduce more adaptive capacity. This points towards the need for strengthening networking capacity and collaboration among schools and other relevant stakeholders.

The case presented is a unique system of music culture production in Italy, and its governance has never been addressed by previous studies. It provides an application of shared administration to which public administrations and communities can learn to improve access to music culture and education. For public and private organisations to take advantage of the method of “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione”, to make the production of a meritorious good more efficient and to favour its maximum accessibility, this study considers the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, or the areas of efficiency and inefficiency, for which new measures will have to be introduced.

Hybrid structures are emerging in the leisure sector that are neither museums nor amusement parks, but which borrow elements from both. Dedicated to the exploration of a cultural theme (cultural heritage, ecosystems and historic events), they use experiential marketing levers to entertain large publics while at the same time pursuing the cultural integrity of heritage. This study aims to examine how visitors perceive and experience the offer proposed by these hybrid museums and how they manage the dual (cognitive and sensorial) stimulation. The authors then consider the extent to which the experiential levers used to dramatize these venues help to deliver a unique experience.

The authors developed a qualitative approach based on a case study methodology. The authors first selected the case studies (the Cité du Vin – a wine museum in Bordeaux, France and the Cité de l’Océan – a museum dedicated to the ocean at Biarritz, France) and analysed them from two angles. The authors began by examining the managerial perspective from secondary data to identify the experiential levers used by providers and the promises made to visitors in terms of experience. The authors then analysed the visitors’ experiences through a netnographic approach. The data were drawn from visitor reviews of their experience as posted on Tripadvisor.

The authors show that hybrid museums manage to provide visitors with edutainment value, but the promise made by managers for a memorable experience by way of an immersive journey is not kept. The authors demonstrate that a hybrid museum environment contains certain elements that prevent visitors from enjoying immersion. More specifically, the authors note issues regarding the way the theme is expressed through spectacular buildings, the way visitors are free to choose their visit and the scenarization presented through digital devices. The authors also show that hybrid museums are perceived largely as traditional museums and so are subject to culturally-established preconceptions.

This contribution concerns a topic that has drawn little attention in the marketing literature, namely, hybrid museums. The authors adopted a qualitative methodology from the perspective of both the provider and the consumer to gain a global understanding of the hybrid museum. The data were analysed using a manual thematic analysis, completed with a QDAS to support the findings.

Advancements and innovation in engineering design are based on learning from previous failures but students are encouraged to “succeed” first time and hence can avoid learning from failure in practice. The purpose of this paper is to design and evaluate a curriculum to help engineering design students to learn from failure.

A new curriculum design provided a case study for evaluating the effects of incorporating learning from failure within a civil engineering course. An analysis of the changes in course output was undertaken in relation to graduate destination data covering 2006 to 2016 and student satisfaction from 2012 to 2017 and a number of challenges and solutions for curriculum designers were identified.

The design and delivery of an innovative curriculum, within typical constraints, can provide opportunities for students to develop resilience to failure as an integral part of their learning in order to think creatively and develop novel engineering solutions. The key issues identified were: the selection of appropriate teaching methods, creating an environment for exploratory learning, group and team assessments with competitive elements where practicable and providing students with many different pedagogical approaches to produce a quality learning experience.

This case study demonstrates how to design and implement an innovative curriculum that can produce positive benefits of learning from failure. This model can be applied to other disciplines such as building surveying and construction management. This approach underpins the development of skills necessary in the educational experience to develop as a professional building pathologist.