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International Accounting Standards are steadily becoming the norm. The European Union agreement that all listed companies in Europe must comply by the year 2005 has hastened the process further. This brings particular challenges for all organisations in the financial services world but for insurance companies in particular. The authors assess what changes will be required in insurance company reporting and lay particular stress on risk management.

The purpose of this paper is to assess brand commitment levels demonstrated by luxury brand consumers in China and seeks to identify the most significant combination of antecedents from brand affect, image, value and trust.

A self-completion, researcher-supported questionnaire was disseminated within four Beijing shopping malls, generating 501 participants. The questionnaire comprised a range of scale sets covering brand affect, image, value, trust and commitment. The analysis comprised a summary overview of brand attainment followed by a substantive analysis involving confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modelling to identify the most significant combination of antecedents relating to brand commitment.

Regarding absolute consumer endorsement, brand affect was the most positive area, with image, trust and value representing relatively positive brand attributes. Declared commitment was relatively low, representing a potential commercial challenge. Value, represented by its social and symbolic components, and trust were identified as providing a significant and direct explanation of consumer commitment, represented by its affective and continuance dimensions. The role of value and trust must be central in marketing luxury brands given their direct and combined impact on consumer commitment.

The findings are transferable to other “Tier 1” locations in China, but take no account of either consumer behaviour outside of these wealthier conurbations, or segmentation of the associated markets.

Geographic setting and consideration of a vast consumer group provides research value and contribution to marketing planning in the pursuit of higher levels of consumer commitment to their brands.

Purchases of luxury fashion brands continues to grow rapidly in metropolitan China, creating a significant global marketplace. Associated behaviour is maturing, exhibiting levels of sophistication and is risk averse, consequently, purchasing intention and willingness to pay more represent areas for marketer consideration, as do the potential impact of consumer‐perceived brand value and affect on these outcomes.

A survey of 431 Chinese consumers located in Beijing was undertaken within shopping malls specialising in luxury brands, fashion items included. The analysis undertaken considers the influence of value and affect on purchase intention and consumers’ willingness to pay extra, achieved by deploying confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modelling (SEM).

Functional and social value positively influence consumers’ willingness to pay premium prices, impending purchase intentions and affective attitude towards luxury brands, functional value consistently acting as the more dominant predictor, with attitude further directly influencing purchase intention. Symbolic values afforded by consumers influence to some extent affective attitude, but not willingness to pay, whilst the direct effect on purchase intention is counter intuitive.

The research was restricted to Beijing, where consumer behaviour understanding is transferable to other key Chinese conurbations, but not necessarily to the majority of the country, where disposable income levels and consumer relationships with fashion and luxury are recognisably different.

This centres on setting and recognition of the key antecedents of purchase intention and a propensity to pay more for items of fashion and luxury.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how sharing stories of being a mental health professional and academic, based more broadly on serendipity and searching in life, can serve as means for bridging and developing cross-cultural understandings and collaborative work.

This paper is a relational autoethnography based on face-to-face and written conversational dialogue between five mental health academics from the UK and Norway.

The very practice of writing this paper displays and serves the purpose of bridging people, cultures and understandings, at several levels, in the facilitation of new research and writing projects. Troubling traditional boundaries between “us” and “them, and the “knower” and the “known,” the writing is theoretically underpinned by Friendship as Method, situated in a New Materialist context.

Through its conversational descriptions and explorations the paper shows how doing relational autoethnography can be purposeful in developing cross-cultural understandings and work at both professional and personal levels. It also demonstrates how autoethnography as relational practice can be useful in the sharing of this methodology between people who are more and less familiar with it.

The purpose of this paper is to explores the influence of socialization upon the constitution and integration of learning leading to the development of entrepreneurial competence while at university, from the learner perspective. Self-reported learning is analyzed to illustrate ways in which students make use of institutional and social contributions of the university context.

The study investigates entrepreneurial journeys of 18 participants, either currently attending or recently graduated from three universities in three countries with both comparable and distinctive contextual elements. In depth analysis of individual life stories, focusing on self-identified critical incidents, is used to illustrate ways in which students, while at university, develop entrepreneurial competence for current and future practice.

Formal and non-formal learning remain important foundations for entrepreneurial competence development, delivered through designed content-centric structures. Informal learning – particularly mentor supported socialised learning – centring around the learner is key to solidifying learning towards entrepreneurial competence, through know-how and access to resources. The university emerges as an entrepreneurial learning space where students constitute and integrate learning gained through different forms.

Cross-cultural analysis is limited as the paper emphasizes the individual’s learning experience relative to the immediate university context.

Universities play a critical role as entrepreneurial learning spaces beyond formal and non-formal learning. This includes dedicating resources to orchestrate informal learning opportunities and enabling interaction with the different agents that contribute to socialised situated learning, supporting entrepreneurial competence development. Universities need to take responsibility for facilitating the entirety of learning.

Socialised learning in combination with other forms of learning contributes to student development of entrepreneurial competence while situated in the university context.

Sport leagues are subject to the potential market entry of new leagues playing essentially the same sport. The economic analysis of market entry and exit is used to interpret two Australian cases of new league entry. These new entrants were World Series Cricket (cricket) and Super League (rugby league). The role of the media in the creation of both new leagues was crucial, providing commercial rationale, seed-funding and organizational capabilities. In addition, strategic input competition for venues and players helped weaken the incumbent league. The two cases analyzed provide a template for intending sport league entrants.

This study examines the experiences of five teachers working in two English secondary school subject departments after being given the opportunity to engage with Lesson Study (LS) to increase student performance in their subject areas. This study aimed to reveal the drivers for the teachers' engagement in LS, and how this experience of Joint Professional Development (JPD) might be contributing to their learning as teachers.

This study applies an analytic approach to evidencing teacher learning, based on the work of Knud Illeris, offering this as a methodological contribution to the field of professional development literature.

Findings reveal that, despite all the teachers developing a passion for learning through LS, there are constraints on its sustainability and impact which can be attributed to the teachers' broader contexts and which affected them differently. The constraints centre on tensions between priorities and agendas within and beyond the school, related largely to budgets and visions of staff development.

This focused study on two subject departments engaging in LS limits its generalisability in terms of findings. However, the study offers a practical research application of a model of learning for analysis of teacher reflections on collaborative learning experiences.

Understanding individual teacher reflections on LS experiences is under-represented in the literature, in particular studies providing insights into conditions conducive and constraining to JPD.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of prison experience in ex-political prisoners in Northern Ireland in the context of changing and conflicting master narratives.

A series of nine interviews were conducted with Loyalist and Republican political ex-prisoners in Northern Ireland. Eight were male and one was female. All had been in prison for substantial sentences relating to the Troubles.

This study highlighted the challenges faced by political ex-prisoners regarding the changing conflicting master narratives in Northern Ireland and identified how they deal with these challenges. The participants adapted to post-conflict society by attempting to understand and make sense of their experiences, including justifying their actions as appropriate for the era and identifying positive changes in society resulting from the conflict.

A narrative approach can be beneficial for understanding the experiences of political ex-prisoners. It enables a theoretical perspective to look not only at the personal but also at social elements of why people behave as they do. The findings demonstrate that political ex-prisoners do have different experiences to non-political ex-prisoners. The sample size was small and was drawn from a specific group of political ex-prisoners who were actively seeking reconciliation. The findings may be different for other groups.

A narrative approach can help the practitioner understand the context in which a person lives; ex-political prisoners may be very different from ordinary ex-prisoners because of the context in which they were imprisoned and the reasons for which they were imprisoned. They are likely to continue with the narrative of the conflict they fought in and may still have the same aims (e.g. Northern Ireland to become part of Ireland), though they may or may not believe in the same means. These are issues that should be discussed and elaborated when working with ex-political prisoners.

The master narratives active in the society into which the political ex-prisoner is released may impact the success or otherwise of their re-integration into society.

Understanding the role of conflicting master narratives in dealing with the implications of being an ex-political prisoner.