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This paper aims to report lessons learnt from six countries in addressing financial crises; what they have done and the impact. It is intended that these lessons are constructive in shaping responses to the current and future financial crises.

A multiple, mini case study approach is taken which makes use of social media.

The findings suggest that the strategy being pursued within the UK for addressing the financial crisis is generally untested and therefore high‐risk. The evidence cautions that local recovery can be expected to be significantly longer than one political cycle, that social impacts will be greater than expected, and there is over‐optimism in some of the strategic tools being adopted in the UK's deficit recovery.

Those participating, while in senior roles, were being asked to answer big questions, and although there is no reason to believe they were not answering truthfully, there are limits to what they could have reasonably been expected to know.

The research provides lessons for local government on how their international peers have responded to the financial crises. The intention is these international lessons will help central and local government shape timely, effective and appropriate responses, while minimising costly mistakes. It is also hoped the lessons will serve as a “reality check” for policy makers.

The research also suggests there is a high risk that existing policy may be ambitious and have unintended adverse social implications.

The research approach is innovative in its use of social media. The research probes the impact on councils of financial crises at a local level and reports unintended consequences which might not otherwise have been identified. Lessons from other countries' responses may also be of benefit in developing future responses.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of the SERVQUAL approach to assess the quality of service of Strathclyde Police in Scotland. Measuring service quality in public services is fraught with difficulty – especially in public services where customers are vulnerable citizens whose contact with the service may be limited.

The paper reports on a SERVQUAL survey of elected representatives serving the area covered by Strathclyde Police Force. The survey captures respondents' expectations of an excellent police service and compares these with their perceptions of the service delivered by Strathclyde Police. The paper also reports on a parallel SERVQUAL survey of police officers in Strathclyde to examine how well the force understands its customers' expectations and how well its internal processes support the delivery of top quality policing services.

While there is a significant shortfall in meeting customer expectations, the police force appears to have a good understanding of what these expectations actually are. There also appear to be gaps in the formalisation of service quality standards, in the force's ability to meet established standards, and in its ability to deliver the level of service it promises to customers.

A key technical result is that the primary SERVQUAL instrument appears to be internally consistent but lacks discriminatory validity between the five SERVQUAL dimensions in this service arena.

The paper will be of interest to strategic and operational police service managers and to academics investigating the reliability and value of service quality assessment tools.

The paper reports an original application of the SERVQUAL approach to police services.

This chapter identifies, defines and explores four news media roles of conduit, facilitator, mediator and political actor through which the media participate with corporate, social and political actors in agenda-building processes. The framework of the media’s four agenda-building roles sheds light on how the news media perform their various roles as well as how other actors, such as organizations and media audiences, are able to mobilize the media performing these roles. This framework helps explain how and why media roles affect the way actors are able to influence the media agenda with the intention of shaping the public agenda.

Professional learning has been highlighted as critical to improvement in educational practice for Autistic learners. Empirical evidence about what is effective for professional learning in education suggests it is a “bottom-up” process of intellectual, practical and emotional engagement and application of new knowledge to specific contexts. The purpose of this study was to gather information about postgraduate professional learning that sought to combine lived experience with reflection on practice in a critical pedagogy approach for practitioners working with Autistic learners in post-16 education.

Participants in the study represented all further education (FE) colleges in Wales and included experienced teachers and leaders, most of whom have a role focused on inclusion and learning support within their setting. Two phases of data collection were carried out, namely, a baseline survey (n = 36) and follow-up interviews (n = 15) at the end of the year of study. Interviews explored personal experiences of learning, knowledge and beliefs about practice and change in this respect and professionals’ priorities for the development of practice.

Findings present information gathered from the interviews and indicate that the course did not provide practitioners with new knowledge about autism but supported the development of more nuanced understandings of autism and more professional confidence about practice. However, familiarisation with lived experience and critical reflection on practice were described as supporting the questioning of basic assumptions and greater appreciation of the nature of difference for Autistic learners.

Study findings reframe what should be considered the focus of support practices for Autistic learners in FE.

A two‐component framework for strategic marketing research, focused on the corporate level and the business‐unit level, to structure an interpretation of the strategic dimensions of the acquisition in November 1998 of Star Markets, a Boston, USA‐based food retail chain, by J. Sainsbury plc the UK’s second largest food retailer. Set within a broader context of the wave of acquisition‐driven consolidation rapidly transforming the US food retail industry during the late 1990s, the paper considers the extent to which the acquisition of Star Markets represented a strategic fit with Sainsbury’s existing US business, the alternative strategies available to the company at the time of the acquisition, and the resulting strategic centrality of the US business to Sainsbury’s corporate future. Focuses on the highly contested nature of the retail internationalization process and issues of sustaining international expansion during periods of retrenchment and strategic reassessment. Highlights the tensions which can be created within the portfolio of business units of a large multidivisional firm during the internationalization process, and the stresses in the relationship between management and the capital markets which can develop if the internationalization process is perceived, correctly or incorrectly, to threaten the strategic credibility of the firm.

This chapter addresses one of the most common and long-standing problems among college students, namely depression, as well as a potential consequence of depression, suicide. A formal definition of depression is presented, and symptoms of depression are discussed. Notably, clinical depression is differentiated from “feeling down” or having “the blues.” Common measures of depression for college students are described, and the current prevalence of depression among college students is explored, along with data pertaining to trends and trajectories. Particular attention is devoted to differences in rates and severity of depression among students of various ethnicities, gender identities, disabilities and sexual orientations. Next, the chapter covers various theories about and studies on the causes and consequences of depression, as well as preventive and remedial efforts that students can engage in to minimize the adverse effects of depression. The chapter concludes with a focus on college student suicide, including its prevalence, predictors of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and prevention and treatment of college student suicide.

The theme of this year's conference on economic crime was hidden wealth in general — not necessarily dressed up as money laundering. Therefore the question becomes how is wealth ‘hidden’ rather than laundered — how can we best identify these funds — and are we politically willing to go after them and at what ‘costs’ to society in terms of dollars, but more importantly in terms of privacy and confidentiality considerations?

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.