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The threat of fire in the office environment is always present. To combat this, it is essential to establish appropriate fire safety measures and procedures and routinely carry out a fire audit.

This chapter critically engages with ways that teaching excellence has been operationalised in practice. Specific focus is on developing individual teaching excellence, rewarding of success and recognition of teaching excellence and the building of evidence around what works in teaching for the benefits of students. We consider the daily interactions with students that form the basis of frameworks of teaching excellence before arguing that operationalisations of teaching excellence are highly context specific and operate at the level of institutions and the whole higher education sector. We discuss the criteria that underpin teaching excellence awards. This includes governance as well as development frameworks. After considering the complex links between research and teaching and the importance of the disciplinary dimension of teaching excellence, the chapter finally looks at the skills and attributes commonly associated with individual teacher excellence and argues that these are exceptionally difficult to pin down let alone measure. It concludes with some reflections on some of the challenges faced by institutions as they seek to develop the quality of teaching whilst meeting the requirements of the TEF.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

This paper aims to investigate different ways in which faculty members of sustainability-related departments in universities across the world perceive, understand and define sustainability and how these definitions are linked to their demographics and epistemological beliefs.

Scholars from different disciplines investigate the sustainability of social-ecological systems from different perspectives. Such differences in the understanding of, and approaches to, sustainability have created ambiguity within the field and may weaken its effectiveness, impact and reputation as a field of research. To contribute to the discussion about sustainability definition, a survey was conducted involving university faculty members working in sustainability-related academic departments around the world. Participants’ responses were analyzed using SPSS 24.0 involving descriptive and inferential statistics and principle component analysis. Additionally, responses to open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed.

Factor analysis on sustainability definition items reveal four emergent universal definitions of sustainability, labeled as Environmentalism concerns, Common understanding, neo-Malthusian environmentalism and Sustainability as well-being. Statistical analyses indicate that individuals from developed countries are more likely to define sustainability as Environmentalism and Common understanding; however, individuals from developing countries tend to define sustainability as well-being. Also, more heavily engaged scholars in interdisciplinary research of sustainability are more likely to perceive sustainability as Common understanding. Logistic Regression models demonstrate a connection between epistemological perspectives of researchers and sustainability definitions. Qualitative content analysis indicates that interdisciplinarity and collaboration are the most common challenges to sustainability research.

The findings of this study demonstrate disconnects between scholars from developing and developed countries in understanding and defining sustainability, and these disconnects may present further challenges for global sustainability scholarship.

This article seeks to broaden how researchers in supply chain management view supply chain resilience by drawing on and integrating insights from other disciplines – in particular, the literature on the resilience of social-ecological systems.

Before the authors import new notions of resilience from outside the discipline, the current state of the art in supply chain resilience research is first briefly reviewed and summarized. Drawing on five practical examples of disruptive events and challenges to supply chain practice, the authors assess how these examples expose gaps in the current theoretical lenses. These examples are used to motivate and justify the need to expand our theoretical frameworks by drawing on insights from the literature on social-ecological systems.

The supply chain resilience literature has predominantly focused on minimizing the consequences of a disruption and on returning to some form of steady state (often assumed to be identical to the state that existed prior to the disruption) implicitly assuming the supply chain behaves like an engineered system. This article broadens the debate around supply chain resilience using literature on social-ecological systems that puts forward three manifestations of resilience: (1) persistence, which is akin to an engineering-based view, (2) adaptation and (3) transformation. Furthermore, it introduces seven principles of resilience thinking that can be readily applied to supply chains.

A social-ecological interpretation of supply chains presents many new avenues of research, which may rely on the use of innovative research methods to further our understanding of supply chain resilience.

The article encourages managers to think differently about supply chains and to consider what this means for their resilience. The three manifestations of resilience are not mutually exclusive. For example, while persistence may be needed in the initial aftermath of a disruption, adaptation and transformation may be required in the longer term.

The article challenges traditional assumptions about supply chains behaving like engineered systems and puts forward an alternative perspective of supply chains as being dynamic and complex social-ecological systems that are impossible to entirely control.

The purpose of this paper is to create a synchronous online learning community through the use of Blackboard Collaborate! to promote and enhance transactional engagement outside the classroom.

This paper employs a quantitative and qualitative approach where data were sourced from a third year finance unit across one semester using a survey instrument. SPSS v20 was used to perform basic descriptive analysis.

The study revealed that by providing an online learning community through the use of Blackboard Collaborate! significantly enhances transactional engagement beyond the classroom. In particular the use of Blackboard Collaborate! allowed the teacher to be more accessible, supportive, expect and support high standards and provide challenging activities that generated rich and meaningful interactions and promoted higher order thinking skills.

The positive results emanating from this study may encourage other educators and their institutions to adopt a synchronous online learning community to enhance student's engagement levels and increase the quality of student learning and their university experience. This study was conducted at only one university so it may not be feasible to form generalisations resulting from the findings.

This study adds new insights towards the scarce amount of literature on engagement in a blended learning environment. In particular the study adds a student perspective to the student engagement literature and to what constitutes quality in higher education and/or improved student experience.