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Examines how Wigan & Leigh College, in partnership with learning expert Academee, has put in place policies, practices, training and development to promote equality and inclusion for staff and students and to create a culture where diversity is valued.

Draws on information provided by the college's staff‐development co‐ordinator and by the director of diversity at Academee.

Describes how the strategic management team took part in a three‐day workshop to raise awareness of key issues and to expand the action plan. The college appointed internal equality and diversity champions. An ambitious target of training more than 150 college staff in under three months was achieved. Building on this, Academee and the college began to develop spin‐off training programmes aimed at different groups of staff.

Reveals that the college's mission statement and core values now reflect its focus on diversity and equality. There is an increased and broader awareness of equality and diversity across the college. Both staff and students are more conscious of how equality and diversity affect their day‐to‐day activities.

Shows that staff and students at the college have become increasingly diverse over the past four years, and the college is also helping to promote integration within the town as a whole.

Examines the impact of the Single European Market on small and medium‐sized firms (SMEs) in the food sector. The effects of complying with new Single Market regulations have fallen disproportionately on SMEs, which do not have access either to the resources or information available to larger firms. One consequence is that many small firm managers view the Single Market programme purely as an extra regulatory burden, with which they have to comply, without realizing the benefits. Advocates a more conciliatory approach to the implementation of European legislation by officials in the UK. Also highlights the need for a central body to co‐ordinate the implementation of standards and provide advice for SMEs.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

First January 1973 will not only mark the beginning of a New Year but a year which history will mark as a truly momentous one, for this is the year that Britain, after centuries of absence, re‐enters the framework of Europe as one of the Member‐States of the enlarged European Community. This in itself must make for change on both sides; Britain is so different in outlook from the others, something they too realize and see as an acquisition of strength. There have been other and more limited forms of Continental union, mainly of sovereignty and royal descent. Large regions of France were for centuries under the English Crown and long after they were finally lost, the fleur de lis stayed on the royal coat of arms, until the Treaty of Amiens 1802, when Britain retired behind her sea curtain. The other Continental union was, of course, with Hanover; from here the Germanized descendants of the Stuarts on the female line returned to the throne of their ancestors. This union lasted until 1832 when rules of descent prevented a woman from reigning in Hanover. It is interesting to speculate how different history might have been if only the British Crown and the profits of Tudor and Stuart rule had been maintained in one part of central Europe. However, Britain disentangled herself and built up overwhelming sea power against a largely hostile Europe, of which it was never conceived she could ever be a part, but the wheel of chance turns half‐circle and now, this New Year, she enters into and is bound to a European Community by the Treaty of Rome with ties far stronger, the product of new politico‐economic structures evolved from necessity; in a union which cannot fail to change the whole course of history, especially for this country.

Outlines previous research attempts to explain the behaviour of second moments of price and return distributions and theories of how Big Players (i.e. those with enough discretionary power to influence the market but little sensitivity to profit/loss consequences) affect the volatility and informational efficiency of markets. Contrasts the 1883‐1892 fluctuations in the exchange value of the Russian rouble under interventionist (i.e. big player) and non‐interventionist finance ministers; and analyses the statistics using GARCH techniques. Shows that under the Big Player, both unconditional variance and the persistence of conditional volatility increased. Suggests that policy regimes affect the degree of noise‐trader influence and calls for further research.

This paper will consider the notion of “parental responsibility” in British policy in relation to two major pieces of legislation, the Children Act 1989 and the Child Support Act 1991. These have considerable impact on the shape of policy in relation to families with children in the 1990s. These two Acts originate in different processes and address different areas of the family‐ state interaction — in the case of the Children Act, public and private law concerning who should care for children in case of dispute or problems; in the case of the Child Support Act, the question of how children should be financially maintained. But both embody a notion of greater parental responsibilities (as opposed to rights) which cannot be lightly surrendered or neglected. The differences and similarities between these two Acts will be examined, and the underlying theme of Conservative “family policy”, and its long‐term intentions and implications, will be addressed.

SHERRIE S. BERGMAN is College Librarian of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She served previously as director of the Roger Williams College Library and on the library reference staff at the New School for Social Research.

The main goal of the one semester long intervention for first-year Bachelor of Social Services students was to enable them to increase their awareness of a variety of cultures and practices encountered in social pedagogical work and to support the development of their ability to interact empathically with clients.

The aim of this article is to describe an educational intervention focused on teaching Qualified Empathic skills to social work students in higher education at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland. We introduce the concept of Qualified Empathy to describe professional empathic working skills and define it as: Qualified Empathy requires compassion for empathic action and it includes the ability for professional self-reflection, emotional skills and a healthy set of boundaries. Qualified Empathy encompasses the ability to tell the difference between sympathy and empathy, as it includes the capacity to use compassion to act in an empathic way in professional contexts (Raatikainen et al., 2017). The study was a case study, designed to explore the students' experiences of their one semester long educational intervention (n = 20). Our research question was: How do students construct Qualified Empathy as a dimension of their own professional expertise?

The results of the study demonstrate the progress areas of the students' Qualified Empathy skills. The development stages in the three progress areas are: (1) from emotional reaction to emotional response, (2) from understanding to empathic acting and (3) from client perspective to a more systemic approach. Implications of the results for Social Services students are discussed.

In this study, as in all studies, some limitations need to be taken into account. One limitation of this study is the size and “nature of data”. Secondly, challenges with the concept of Qualified Empathy need to be addressed and more research is needed to define it more concretely. Even so, as it is a new concept, we need more discussion on the differences in the definition of empathy and Qualified Empathy. However, this study offers one new perspective for discussion which is the need for empathy training, in social work education practices and in the field. An important ethical aspect of research emphasizes that its implementation must not be to the detriment of the people being researched (Juuti and Puusa, 2020, pp. 168).

Our findings demonstrate that educational interventions can improve students' empathy skills to more qualified skills. We emphasized that maintaining the skill demands continuous reflection as a lifelong process. This article provides an overview of an educational intervention to improve students' Qualified Empathy skills and suggests a definition for educators to frame the teaching of professional empathy or empathy in a professional context – especially in the social work context. Furthermore, with this educational intervention in social work, we offer a way to support the students to – not only – have a more professional approach to empathy but also to find a way to establish a more emotionally sustainable environment for professionals in social services. It is essential for social work education to focus on the growth of Qualified Empathy in students through supervision and guidance which supports their professional competence. By doing so, we contribute to the development of more sustainable working environments in the social work context.

Professional empathy is seen as an important factor in building a socially sustainable society from the perspectives of employees, clients and patients. We noticed that it is important to allow time and space for the learners to internalize the concept of Qualified Empathy. When we allow for this, students begin to recognize and assign more value to it and, as we suggest, they become more adept in their interactions and work with clients.

The study was a case study, designed to explore the students' experiences of their one semester long educational intervention (n = 20). Our research question was: How do students construct Qualified Empathy as a dimension of their own professional expertise? The results of the study demonstrate the progress areas of the students' Qualified Empathy skills. The development stages in the three progress areas are: (1) from emotional reaction to emotional response, (2) from understanding to empathic acting and (3) from client perspective to a more systemic approach. Implications of the results for Social Services students are discussed.

SHERRIE S. BERGMAN is College Librarian of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She served previously as director of the Roger Williams College Library and on the library reference staff at the New School for Social Research.