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The purpose of this paper is to briefly assess social accounting methods and tools to measure business and social enterprise (SE) contributions to sustainability in relation to their usefulness and applicability to SEs. Using a case study example, the paper aims to describe and evaluate the process of developing and applying indicators to measure contributions to sustainability.

The researchers worked with three senior members of staff at Wastesavers to develop a set of sustainability indicators. First a literature review of existing sustainability indicator sets and sustainability tools was undertaken. Then a scoping exercise was undertaken to understand what the company wanted out of the process and to decide on which indicators to use. A list on eight key indicators was developed and data on each of these collected and collated and a report was written. Discussion is focussed on the requirements, difficulties, appropriateness and potential pitfalls of such an approach, including commentary on the integration of indicators into working practices, organisational change and strategic development.

No one method of social accounting has been universally accepted in the UK. This requires greater coordination by those developing such models and a common research agenda on this area for SEs in the UK.

The development of social accounting methods in SE is a relatively new field and undertaking a pilot study such as this is an excellent means of identifying the organisational capacity limits present and identifying the changes that need to take place if such tools are to be developed further.

Using a navigational metaphor, this chapter introduces readers to the sometimes stormy seas of implementing new learning technologies into a course, especially those that have pre-existing design flaws (lack of rigor, accountability, content and time constraints, etc.). In addition to presenting what we feel are some best practices in using iOS devices, we analyze nearly 600 students’ reactions to these devices related to how they were used in a 100 level survey style course. For every student who told us that they were “awesome” or helped them “learn and discover new things through [the] course,” there were multiple students who felt that “they are damaging [the] learning experience because they are distracting.” The central argument of this chapter is that without engaging in a dialectic course (re)design process that puts the affordances of the learning technology in conversation with classic principles of instructional design, the utility of adding iOS devices will be limited at best and distracting at worst. The instructors in the course described here did use the devices in a variety of ways and many students were satisfied with the learning experience. However, for others, the combination of the course being too easy and too forgiving along with putting the Internet into students’ hands was a recipe for incivility and off-task uses of technology.

Drawing on Shakespeare, and in particular Hamlet's psychological crisis, this paper examines the relationship between emotions and meaning, a key theme in artistic work since Aristotle but, it is argued, largely ignored in psychology and the social sciences. Now, however, against a background of international terrorism, lessons are being learned from literature's insights.

This study examined how audience characteristics and attitudes relate to their perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness of apologies by public figures posted on YouTube.

Four hundred twenty-seven adult participants recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk completed an online survey via Qualtrics. Participants were randomly assigned to view two of four public figure apologies posted on YouTube.

Results indicated that audience fandom and perceived reputation and attractiveness of the public figure were related to perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness; and perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness were related to intentions of future support.

“Sameness” between the public figure and audience did not garner a more favorable response to the apology, and this is not consistent with earlier studies. For race similarity, the results could have been a reflection of the low number of non-White participants. However, results could indicate that “sameness” is not as simplistic as demographic sameness, such as race, sex or age.

The authors’ findings elevate the importance of gathering and benchmarking pre-crisis attitudinal research to better equip and inform communication professionals for crisis response. In addition, the study suggests that a public figure's strong reputation and fanbase provide a type of inoculation, lessening reputational damage.

The finding that perceived attractiveness relates positively to perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness is consistent with psychological research indicating attractiveness has many positive social implications – even in mediated communication.

Evidence suggests social media apologies matter. Communication professionals need to approach apology opportunities with a keen awareness that relational outcomes and intentions of future support can shift based on social media audiences' attitudes related to the public figure.