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Background: historical assumptions and knowledge about personality disorders (PDs) have inhibited efforts to improve PD services. Public and patient involvement in research has become a requirement of UK health services research. The potential for people with personal experiences of PD to ‘coproduce’ research knowledge as a means to transform PD services is largely unexplored.Objectives: to consider the extent to which research teams on two recent projects have ‘coproduced’ knowledge about PD, and the potential impact of coproduction on research findings and service delivery.Setting: two qualitative research projects were conducted by teams comprising conventional academic, clinical, service user and carer researchers. Reflective writing by researchers was analysed thematically to explore research objectives.Findings: researchers reported that their high expectations of research coproduction were mostly met, that findings would have been different without involvement of service user and carer researchers, and that the research would have wider credibility because of their involvement.Conclusions: coproduction is characterised by enabling perspectives from outside the conventional clinical‐academic health research team to inform the research decision‐making process, and by self‐conscious reflection to make explicit how findings are shaped as a result. The potential to improve PD services by coproducing knowledge was demonstrated.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a recent experiment in research coproduction in an evaluation of service planning at a London Mental Health NHS Trust. The paper aims to consider whether members of the research team who have themselves been users of mental health services are able to contribute to the research process as “experts by experience”, or if their experiential knowledge is “colonized” within the academic research team.

A qualitative, comparative case study approach was adopted, using structured observations and semi‐structured interviews. Researchers' reflective accounts and a reflective focus group were employed to explore the process of coproduction.

The paper concludes that, far from “colonising” expertise by experience, the experiment builds local capacity in research coproduction and usefully informs a service planning process that reflects the priorities and concerns of a range of stakeholders.

The paper describes a small, local experiment in research coproduction and so findings are limited in their scope. However, the study demonstrates an effective methodological approach to evaluating, empirically, the impact of coproduction on the health services research (HSR) process.

The paper demonstrates the potential for repeated exercises in coproduction to build capacity in collaborative approaches to both HSR and service planning.

The involvement of experts by experience is increasingly a policy requirement in the domains of both health service planning and HSR in the UK. There are very few empirical studies that evaluate the impact of that coproduction.

A range of one-to-one, group and online approaches to peer support are increasingly complementing formal mental health service delivery. Evidence is emerging of the potential benefits and challenges of peer support for individuals, communities and organisations. There is more limited evidence describing peer-led peer support networks. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In an evaluation of Prosper, a peer-led, peer support network and social movement, members of the network played a participatory role in the design, conduct and interpretative work of the evaluation. An online survey, one-to-one interviews and group discussions were used.

The evaluation describes an evolving network with planning and development meetings constituting core activity for many members alongside a monthly training programme supporting people to set up their own activities. There were strong shared values, and consensus that Prosper could strengthen social networks, improve individual well-being and impact on the way people used mental health services. Challenges were identified around feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability in relation to involvement in the network.

The participatory nature of the evaluation adds value to the learning offered. This was a descriptive evaluation; potential is indicated for the more formal modelling and testing of peer-led network and social movement initiatives.

Clarity is needed on the relationship of the network to statutory mental health services – specifically around taking on a “service provider” role – and on the advantages and challenges of a “hybrid” organisational model that combines traditional, hierarchical and new distributed forms of leadership and structure.

Prosper demonstrated potential to create a sense of common culture based on sharing lived experience and mutual peer support, providing an alternative to the traditional culture of mental health services.

This paper offers wider learning derived from evaluation of a highly original initiative in peer leadership, network structure and interface with statutory mental health services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dilemmas that challenge reputation management in the context of higher education (HE).

The paper introduces one Finnish multidisciplinary master's degree programme as a case in point. The empirical data comprises a student survey and semi-structured interviews with internal and external stakeholders whose work relates to the master's degree programme in question.

The findings identify different types of dilemmas arising from collaboration between stakeholders of HE.

The paper demonstrates how the dilemma-reconciliation method can be used to enhance reputation management in HE.

The novelty of the paper is in applying dilemma theory (Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 2000) in parallel with reputation theories. Dilemma theory attributes reputation risks to conflicting aims.

This study aims to add to the understanding of the interactive nature of brand love by using a multilayer perspective that incorporates individual, group and societal contexts.

The qualitative empirical study uses abductive reasoning. Its theories and conclusions are grounded in naturally occurring data from an online brand community. The approach revealed new interactive processes of brand love.

This study extends our understanding of the interactive nature of brand love by adopting a layered perspective incorporating micro- (individual), meso- (in-group), macro- (in-group vs out-group) and mega-layer (societal) social dynamics that complements the predominant focus on individual psychological processes. It challenges the linear, monodirectional trajectory approach to brand love, suggesting that brand love is in constant flux as individuals move across the layers in their identification with the brand.

This study provides data from one destination brand in Finland. Future studies could consider other types of brands and contexts in other countries and cultures.

This study shows brand managers that brand lovers can be divided into subgroups with distinct drivers of their love to which brand managers should attend.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to describe the interactive nature of brand love through interactions between and within four layers of brand love. Furthermore, this study enhances our understanding of the contradictory aspects of brand love.

This paper aims to investigate how consumption linked with life transitions can differ in its potential to bring about ongoing liminality. By examining how consumers can draw on overlapping systems of resources, different ways in which consumers negotiate ongoing liminality following the transition to motherhood are identified.

The authors conducted an interpretive, exploratory study using in-depth phenomenological interviews with 23 South Asian mothers living in the UK. The sample consisted of mothers at different stages of motherhood.

Following life transitions, consumers may encounter liminal hotspots at the intersection of overlapping systems of resources. The findings examine two liminal hotspots with differing potential to produce ongoing liminality. The study shows how consumers navigate these liminal hotspots in different ways, by accepting, rejecting and amalgamating the resources at hand.

The research sample could have been more diverse; future research could examine liminal hotspots relating to different minority groups and life transitions.

Marketers need to examine the different ways in which consumers draw on different systems of resources following life transitions. The paper includes implications for how marketers segment, target and market to ethnic minority consumers.

Due to increasingly fluid social conditions, there are likely to be growing numbers of consumers who experience ongoing liminality following life transitions. A preliminary framework is presented outlining different ways that consumers negotiate ongoing liminality by drawing on overlapping systems of resources, broadening the understanding of the role that marketplace resources play beyond life transitions.

Techno-empowerment refers to giving intelligent technology a decision-making power. It is a growing trend, with algorithms being developed to handle tasks like ordering products or investing in stocks without human consent. Nevertheless, people may feel averse to transfer decision-making autonomy to technology. Unfortunately, little attention was paid in the literature regarding what tasks people exclude from being performed autonomously by non-human intelligent actors. Our chapter presents two qualitative studies: the first one examining what decisions people think autonomous technology (AT) should not make, and the another asking workers which tasks they would not transfer to AT. Results show people oppose AT making decisions when task is perceived as (a) requiring empathy, (b) human experience, (c) intuition, (d) complex, (e) potentially harming human life, (f) having long-term effects, (g) affecting personal space, or (h) leading to loss of control. Workers are not willing to delegate such tasks to AT they perceive as (1) time-consuming, (2) demanding social interaction, (3) providing pleasure, (4) difficult, (5) risky, and (6) responsible. Exclusions are driven by three types of perceived risks: material, contextual, and competitive.