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Despite the extensive study of director interlocks very little is known about gendered director networks. Boards of directors are primarily male; globally, only 5‐20 per cent of directors are women and change is described as glacially slow. The extent to which women directors are central to the network, or pushed to the margins, is unknown. Using the tools of social network analysis we extract the components of three director networks, a global and two national networks and locate the women directors. The paper aims to examine the persistence of director networks over time to determine whether gender related differences – apart from size – contribute to the apparent resistance to change.

The paper uses a longitudinal approach, comparing director networks on a global network scale (2004 and 2007 Fortune Global 200) and a national one (2004 and 2007 New Zealand Stock Exchange) with the iconic 1999 Fortune US 1000 dataset. After extracting the largest connected component, the female directors are separated out. From the 2004 and 2007 data director turnover is calculated to determine the stability of the networks.

Female directors are more likely to be found in the largest connected component of the mixed gender network, indicating that they are not marginalised. Despite high turnover rates, director networks are stable over time which may manifest as resistance to change.

The structure of gendered director networks is unknown and the location of women directors in the network components has not been considered in board diversity research. The results point to an underlying gender equity in all director networks. A new theoretical approach, glass network theory, has implications for boardroom diversity interventions.

Institutional abuse is a worldwide phenomenon with the UK also subject to several high-profile abuse scandals perpetuated on people with learning disabilities and/or mental health conditions living within institutional settings. This study aims to provide a broad perspective of safeguarding practices within institutional care to inform practice and service development in this area.

A narrative overview was undertaken of a range of empirical evidence, discussion papers, enquiry reports, reports from regulatory bodies and professional guidance to explore safeguarding practices within institutional care for individuals with learning disabilities and/or mental health conditions.

A range of literature was identified that exposed and explored abuse in this context. Three key themes were identified: failings within institutional care; safeguarding issues and concerns; and good practice within institutional care. Whilst guidance is available, standards are explicit and protocols facilitate improvement potential in this area, a consistent message was that statutory recommendations for reform have not been effective.

This paper provides an important resource for practitioners and service providers involved in institutional care. An accessible overview of both the empirical evidence and grey literature on adult safeguarding within institutional settings is provided, along with a range of standards and resources that specify practice in these settings.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the response to the scandal of abuse in services for people with intellectual disabilities in the light of research evidence and analysis.

Critical reflection and review of literature. In particular, recent research into possible indicators that a service is at risk of becoming abusive is used to test the hypotheses and implied solutions that are currently being adopted.

That some of the responses to recent scandals are necessary but not sufficient to prevent future harm. Furthermore, some of the proposed solutions may actually increase the likelihood of further abuse. Prevention of abuse requires a broader and more evidence-based response.

The synthesis of research and analysis presented here has not been presented previously in the published literature.

Government appointed and sponsored committees of every description—select, ad hoc, advisory, inquiry—such a prominent feature of the public scene since the last War, are understandable, even acceptable, reflect the urgency of the times in which we live. In the gathering gloom of more recent twilight years, they have flourished inordinately, especially in the socio‐political field, where most of their researches have been conducted. Usually embellished with the name of the figure‐head chairman, almost always expensively financed, they have one thing in common—an enormous output of words, telling us much of what we already know. So much of it seems dull, meaningless jargon, reflecting attitudes rather than sound, general principles.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Mobile robots become more and more important for many potential applications such as navigation and surveillance. The paper proposes an image processing scheme for moving object detection from a mobile robot with a single camera. It especially aims at intruder detection for the security robot on either smooth paved surfaces or uneven ground surfaces.

The core of the proposed scheme is the template matching with basis image reconstruction for the alignment between two consecutive images in the video sequence. The most representative template patches in one image are first automatically selected based on the gradient energies in the patches. The chosen templates then form a basis matrix, and the instances of the templates in the subsequent image are matched by evaluating their reconstruction error from the basis matrix. For the two well-aligned images, a simple and fast temporal difference can thus be applied to identify moving objects from the background.

The proposed template matching can tolerate in rotation (±10°) and (±10°) in scaling. By adding templates with larger rotational angles in the basis matrixes, the proposed method can be further extended for the match of images from severe camera vibrations. Experimental results of video sequences from a non-stationary camera have shown that the proposed scheme can reliably detect moving objects from the scenes with either minor or severe geometric transformation changes. The proposed scheme can achieve a fast processing rate of 32 frames per second for an image of size 160×120.

The basic approaches for moving object detection with a mobile robot are feature-point match and optical flow. They are relatively computational intensive and complicated to implement for real-time applications. The proposed template selection and template matching are very fast and easy to implement. Traditional template matching methods are based on sum of squared differences or normalized cross correlation. They are very sensitive to minor displacement between two images. The proposed new similarity measure is based on the reconstruction error from the test image and its reconstruction from the linear combination of the templates. It is thus robust under rotation and scale changes. It can be well suited for mobile robot surveillance.

ONE of the pressing problems that faces the public librarian of to‐day is the finding of adequate protection for the property committed to his care. The open‐access library loses books; at any rate now‐a‐days. But there is no means of prosecuting borrowers who take an extra book from the library in their pockets. There are model standing orders which may be adopted, which regulate the conduct of readers in reference libraries and reading rooms, but a book‐thief may plead that he meant only to borrow a book that has been found in his possession, and his offence will be treated merely as a technical breach of the rule that a book must be “charged” before it is taken from the library. When a clear case has been made, as in the notorious Walthamstow case, a foolishly sentimental Bench will refuse to help the libraries. We would urge the Library Association to give some consideration to the drafting of model standing orders which will give legal effect to the present “rules” under which libraries work, rules which the vicious may defy almost with impunity. The safety of the books in most libraries depends, actually, on public ignorance of the fact that most of our rules have no legal authority behind them.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review on evidence-based intervention concerning the reduction of stress/burnout and the improvement of wellbeing for professionals working with people with intellectual disabilities (IDs).

Theoretical models and literature related to stress reduction are reviewed from a classical cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) approach up to the novel contribution of the third generation of cognitive-behavioural therapies, with a specific focus on contextual behavioural sciences and acceptance and commitment Therapy (ACT).

Despite the improvement of CBT-based interventions in reducing risk factors for stress and burnout, the limitations of a problem-solving approach when applied to challenging environments like those of direct support to persons with ID, are still large. Interventions based on the core processes and the related techniques of ACT appear to be promising in promoting the well being of paid carers reducing the risk of burnout, and increasing psychological flexibility. Such factors can increase the ability to clarify personal and professional values, as well as the opportunities to act consistently with such values and achieve greater social reinforcement in the work environment.

The limitations of the existing research are presented and discussed. There are several aspects that future research should address in order to promote staff training protocols that could be extensively applied with preventive aims. Organisations could take the available procedures and methodologies and implement these evidence-based practices within existing training.

The research on the application of ACT and third generation of behavioural approaches to the wellbeing and behaviour of staff supporting persons with IDs remains limited. The present paper is the first narrative review on this topic.

In this chapter, we review the literature on the relationship of work–family conflict with health outcomes and well-being. We discuss the meaning of work–family conflict and then present a theoretical model that depicts the psychological process by which work–family conflict affects negative emotions, dissatisfaction with life and its component roles, health-related behavior, and physical health. We conclude with suggestions regarding the development of a future research agenda.

Drawing on evidence from ten towns (across England, Wales and Northern Ireland) participating in the High Street UK 2020 (HSUK2020) project, the purpose of this paper is to reveal how local stakeholders involved in place management respond to high street decline through a strategy of repositioning.

This paper identifies the challenges faced by the towns considering repositioning, and highlights examples of good practice of relevance to the practitioners. First, it outlines the perspectives on repositioning from the academic research and theory, before drawing on evidence from across ten UK towns that participated in the HSUK2020 project, to reveal how repositioning involves more than just taking a snapshot profile of a place.

The research revealed major challenges faced by local stakeholders in clearly identifying and communicating their market position, in particular, the maintenance of up-to-date information on catchments was lacking at all the locations. Despite having local knowledge and some data, stakeholders still did not possess a clear (or shared) understanding of the identity or function of their towns. This evidence reflects the complexity of analysing and understanding repositioning and developing coherent strategies.

Knowledge exchange between stakeholders involved in place management can help inform the identification of new strategic objectives, appropriate interventions and project planning and delivery. Where resources are limited, particularly in smaller towns and settlements, the research demonstrates the significance of collecting and sharing data and analysis with other stakeholders, because this can generate positive outcomes for all.

By offering empirical evidence based on the experience of local practitioners, this paper provides valuable insight into how town centre stakeholders collect, interpret and analyse data, revealing the challenges, opportunities and practicalities involved in developing and implementing repositioning strategies.