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Quality improvement (QI) processes in family medicine are becoming increasingly complex. Their influence on the organisation of the sector and on the daily work processes is profound and increasing. The literature indicates that many ethical issues are arising from QI work. Therefore this paper aims to identify the experiences of professionals involved in planning and performing QI programmes in European family medicine on the ethical implications involved in those processes.

Four focus groups were carried out with 29 general practitioners (GPs) and administrators of general practice quality work in Europe. Two focus groups comprised EQuiP members and two focus groups comprised attendees to an invitational conference on QI in family medicine held by EQuiP in Barcelona in November 2006.

Four overarching themes were identified, including implications of using patient data, prioritising QI projects, issues surrounding the ethical approval dilemma and the impact of QI. Each theme was accompanied by an identified solution.

Prioritising is necessary and in doing that GPs should ensure that a variety of work is conducted so that some patient groups are not neglected. Transparency and flexibility on various levels is necessary to avoid harmful consequences of QI in terms of bureaucratisation, increased workload and burnout on part of the GP and harmful effects on the doctor‐patient relationship. There is a need to address the system of approval for national QI programmes and QI projects utilising more sophisticated methodologies.

This study provides data from GPs who are experienced quality improvers across 17 countries. Many ethical issues were identified and it was possible to clearly map the themes and their relationships and to summarise the identified solutions from an international perspective.

A pressing educational concern is how to provide effective education for the growing population of dual language learners (DLL) in early childhood settings. Given the robust findings that family involvement promotes children’s academic success as well as recognition of parents’ “funds of knowledge,” one pathway to provide a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom environment for DLLs is to form collaborative relationships between parents and teachers of DLLs. The purpose of this chapter is to describe Project TAPP (Teachers and Parents as Partners), a community of practice (CoP) composed of parents and teachers of preschool dual language learners. The chapter describes the framework of Project TAPP, findings related to participation, and lessons learned.

As the number of imitator brands has risen, so too have legal actions for trademark infringement and passing off, because of consumer confusion, unfair misappropriation of brand owners’ intellectual property, and lost sales revenue. However, recourse to the law is time‐consuming, expensive, and can be unpredictable because of the highly subjective and inconsistent ways in which brand confusion is measured and proven. The formulation of more standard measures of marketplace confusion would have significant time and cost advantages for market researchers and lawyers. Using data from key informant interviews with expert legal professionals, critiques the current measures of consumer confusion and shows that in UK law confusion must result in mistaken behavior and any measure of behavior must be taken in situ within shopping environments. Shows most important legal measures of confusion, namely, subjective judicial analysis and witness testimony, to be methodologically flawed. Discusses implications for manufacturers, brand owners and legal policy and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the limited body of research that focuses on the efficacy of sexual orientation anti-discrimination legislation in reducing discrimination.

Reviews past research that documents overt and subtle forms of workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals and describes how legislation plays an important role in changing social norms and underlying attitudes.

Empirically demonstrates that legislation effectively can reduce discrimination.

Informs legislative debate and promotes the expansion and adoption of national, state, and local legislation on sexual orientation anti-discrimination legislation.

There are two purposes of this paper: first, to analyze the effect of size and other organizational factors (IT knowledge, IT external support and the level of employees' education) on the use of e‐business; and second, to identify similarities and differences among these factors in micro, small, medium‐sized and large enterprises.

The proposed model is empirically tested using data from the Sectorial e‐Business W@tch survey. A logit estimation for the whole sample and for each type of firm size has been implemented on the use of e‐business.

The study finds positive and significant effects of all the organizational factors on the intensity of e‐business use. When analyzing the effect of size, it was found that medium‐sized and large firms are more likely to use e‐business more intensively. Although medium‐sized and large firms are similar, some differences have been found between small and medium‐sized firms. Only small firms use IT outsourcing as a key factor to use e‐business.

This study is based on a cross‐sectional data set. Longitudinal research would be needed for comparing results over time. Future studies could focus on the use of each type of e‐business technology, instead of a global measure of e‐business use. Future research could also analyze the differences of e‐business adoption rates among countries.

The paper concludes that small and micro firms are less likely to conduct e‐business than medium‐sized and large firms. An important influence on the use of e‐business is workforce education, implying that training could substitute hiring IT employees. Outsourcing IT activities is a suitable strategy only for small firms.

The paper contributes to the literature on e‐business with new evidence of the importance of size and human capital. Additionally, an analysis for each firm size has been done, which allows comparison of results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of extrinsic factors, namely, age, education, gender, marital status and income on customers’ intention to support Islamic social enterprises via donation. The paper also assesses the influence of religiosity on support intention (SI). The impact of customers’ perceptual reaction to the credibility of social enterprises’ advertising is also measured to assess its influence on SI.

A total of 214 completed questionnaires from online and offline surveys were analysed using several statistical analyses, including structural equation modelling, to assess the effects of the independent variables on SI.

The study found that customers’ socioeconomic status and religiosity have no significant influence on their intention to channel their donations via Islamic social enterprises. It is the social enterprises’ advertising which significantly influences their SI.

The study focuses on an Islamic research context of social entrepreneurship. Thus, the results cannot be generalised directly to the non-Islamic social entrepreneurship context.

Findings of the study suggest that organisations should develop effective communication strategies through advertising to highlight organisational credibility as it plays an important role in shaping customers’ attitudes and intentions.

The study investigates the effects of marketing on customers’ SI. It also considers credibility, advertising, and the concept of branding in a context of social entrepreneurship, a concept that is still largely unexplored in the literature.

This paper aims to use systems thinking, systems theory and Camillus’ framework for responding to wicked problems to provide social marketers with a theoretically based framework for approaching strategy formation for wicked problems. The paper treats fast fashion as an illustrative case and takes a step back from implementation to provide a framework for analysing and gaining understanding of wicked problem system structure for social marketers to then plan more effective interventions. The proposed approach is intended as a theory-based tool for social marketing practitioners to uncover system structure and analyse the wicked problems they face.

Following Layton, this work provides theoretically based guidelines for analysing the black box of how to develop and refine strategy as first proposed in Camillus’ (2008) framework for responding to wicked issues.

The prescription thus developed for approaching wicked problems’ system structure revolves around identifying the individuals, groups or entities that make up the system involved in the wicked problem, and then determining which social mechanisms most clearly drive each entity and which outcomes motivate these social mechanisms, before determining which role the entities play as either incumbent, challenger or governance and which social narratives drive each role’s participation in the wicked problem.

This paper shows that using systems thinking can help social marketers to gain big picture thinking and develop strategy for responding to complex issues, while considering the consequences of interventions.

A notable number of young people self-harm, with only a minority receiving professional support. Evidence suggests that therapy can help recovery from self-harm, but little is known about the experiences of those who self-harm and participate in therapy delivered via videoconferencing.

Risk assessments were examined for evidence of self-harm and used to identify two groups for analysis: young people who had self-harmed in the past six months and those who had not. A mixed methods analysis was then conducted to examine process and outcome data for these two groups. Data included a number of sessions attended, late-cancelled and missed without notice; and patient-reported outcome measure scores (Young Person-Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation and Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale). End-of-treatment reports were subsequently analysed using thematic analysis.

Those with current self-harm risk appeared to start therapy with lower well-being. No notable differences in progress were found between groups on quantitative outcomes. There was greater reporting of poorer clinical outcomes in the reports of those with current self-harm risk, including two unique types of barriers to effective therapy: “general difficulties” (e.g. poor well-being limiting engagement, specific components of therapy being challenging) and “CBT was not preferred”.

Lower baseline well-being could explain the greater ongoing care needs and lower well-being post-therapy among those with current self-harm risk, despite both groups appearing to make similar levels of therapeutic progress quantitatively. Recent self-harm does not appear to reduce the utility of videoconferencing cognitive behavioural therapy; however, clients’ individual needs should be carefully considered.

The purpose of the editorial is to accompany this special issue on “Social marketing: social change”.

The editorial presents three invited reflections by Philip Kotler, Michael Polonsky and Gerard Hastings. It also discusses the articles in this special issue.

Overall, the contributed papers demonstrate that there are many layers to social marketing.

The articles featured in this special issue help to advance social marketing theory as well as offer valuable implications and recommendations for managers, practitioners and policymakers.

OUR publication date precludes more than the beginning of our study on the Library Association Conference which, from the point of view of numbers, has been one of the largest. We shall continue in our next issue such comment upon it as the importance of the subjects under discussion would seem to warrant.