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Micro and small enterprises face growing expectations from stakeholders to behave responsibly in respect of environmental management. However, many continue to exhibit patterns of relative disengagement with both environmental management and associated training. The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes and experiences that underpin both.

The paper is based on survey data from 148 owner-managers of micro and small firms in New Zealand’s manufacturing sector. Binary logit regression and non-parametric testing were employed to examine influences on engagement with both environmental management and environmental training.

There is a lack of knowledge of, and participation in, training related to environmental management. Awareness tends to be from firms already engaged in training; signalling a potential circularity of exposure effect. A distinct division in attitude exists between those who identify with personal responsibility and autonomy as the pathway to responsibility in respect of their firm’s environmental impact and those who cede to the collective actions of other communities to dictate engagement (i.e. industry associations and government).

The survey is based on the perceptions of the respondents to the survey statements and as such it is a self-assessment.

The paper is one of few that investigate the challenge of securing engagement with training and development in environmental management by micro and small enterprises in the New Zealand context.

Biodynamics is a specific form of organic production with spiritual underpinnings. This chapter explores it as a form of rural entrepreneurship using the capitals framework of Bourdieu as a conceptual tool.

The chapter draws upon 11 qualitative case studies of New Zealand firms engaged in biodynamic growing methods. Data collected via in-depth narratively oriented interviews inform the chapter, along with other relevant secondary material.

The chapter suggests that the spiritual underpinning of the biodynamic approach imbues the experience with a form of spiritual capital that is not captured within traditional interpretations of capital. We conceive of this as a form of alternative capital and offer a conceptualisation as an attempt to capture that difference.

This is a niche, small scale, exploratory study limited to one geographic context (New Zealand) at one particular point in time.

This chapter offers a modest expansion to previous conceptualisations of capital in the rural context.

New Zealand firms display reluctance in embracing the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) standard. The low adoption rate suggests that the benefits of doing so are not adequately understood by New Zealand firms. The purpose of the paper is to report success factors for the implementation of ISO 14001, as well as the barriers to, and benefits of, adoption.

The paper is based on data from a survey of all ISO 14001 certified firms in New Zealand.

The key factors reported as being critical to the successful implementation of an ISO 14001 driven EMS for the respondent firms are planning and strategy, and capability building, with process management of lesser importance. Factors recognised as potential barriers to successful ISO 14001 adoption are primarily implementation processes and costs, with external engagement, information and infrastructure, and contractor commitments deemed lesser barriers. Perceived benefits of ISO 14001 adoption are reported as environmental operating performance, compliance related performance, environmental outcomes and perceptions and, lastly, competitive orientation.

The paper is limited to data from externally certified firms (i.e. it excludes any data from firms who “self‐declare”). The data are also post‐implementation (i.e. there is no measurement of whether the reported benefits, barriers and success factors were what the firm had expected pre‐implementation).

The paper is one of few that explore the phenomenon of ISO 14001 adoption by firms in the New Zealand context.

The objective of this chapter is to lay the foundation for the edited collection of contemporary research contributions contained in this book. Specifically, the chapter is concerned with defining and conceptualising rural entrepreneurship.

The chapter seeks to explore why and how a rural enterprise can be defined, and determines whether rural entrepreneurship is a distinctive category of entrepreneurship theory and practice. Building on descriptive rural enterprise taxonomies proposed in previous studies, the chapter considers the drivers and barriers impacting on firm start-up, growth and decline in rural environments.

The authors argue that there is little difference between a rural and non-rural enterprise in terms of structure, that is how the business is organised or managed, or how the characteristics of the individual entrepreneur are exhibited. Thus, it would appear that there is no specific category for, nor definition of a rural entrepreneur beyond that of ‘an individual who manages a venture in a rural setting’.

The chapter is based mainly on a review of extant literatures.

The chapter concludes that it is the exogenous factors that differentiate rural from non-rural ventures, and it is these factors that will have a significant impact on start-up, growth and failure rates.

Analysing the intersectional race and gender politics of the England women's national team, this chapter, based on oral history interviews, shows the historical forces shaping the diversity of the squad over time, from 1972 to the present. Class is important here, as many of the first black and mixed heritage England women players were the daughters of the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants who settled in working-class areas of urban, and to a lesser extent, rural England. In the case of London-based players, this gave a proximity to important development centres, available by public transport. In the case of Kerry Davis, from Stoke on Trent, access to private transport was important. As head coach, Hope Powell oversaw the first Black-British captain of an England women's side, but when succeeded by Mark Sampson much of this development receded, notably as Eni Aluko, a centurion capped star of Nigerian descent was de-selected for ‘Unlioness behaviour’. In the ensuing legal analysis, the FA showed itself to lack awareness of diversity and inclusion issues in its own sport. The chapter analyses the effect of this, on an England team that includes several high profile LGBTQ+ stars, which is diverse in different ways than the England men's team.

Service users very often interpret and respond to their experiences of death, dying and bereavement through a religious or spiritual lens. However, recent trends in religion and belief have influenced how professionals respond to indicators such as faith. Since the post-war years in Britain, and due to the transfer of services from church to state, as well as the change in the religious landscape, language has largely secularized. When people start addressing religion and belief again, they lack the appropriate literacy to do so, this is termed religious literacy by Dinham (2015). The purpose of this paper is to explore how professionals in end of life (EOL) care respond to service users’ religious and spiritual indicators, through the lens of religious literacy.

The paper draws from an ethnographic study undertaken across hospices in England, UK. In this study, healthcare professionals (HCPs) were observed for one calendar year.

Results show that lack of religious literacy on the part of HCPs may lead to subtle and unintentional microaggression. Three types of indications of microinvalidation have been noted: verbal, non-verbal and environmental.

This paper innovates in offering a first-hand phenomenological interpretation of observations in the field. The research data capture visually the impact of lack of religious literacy, an achievement which adds to the dialogue about service user rights in EOL care.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a piece of empirical work that examines gender differences in how academics make sense of performance within university business schools in the UK.

The research reported draws on data collected using a life history and repertory grid methodology with male and female interviewees from two university business schools.

The findings are discussed in relation to how academics understand what is valued about their role and what they believe the organisation rewards and values when it comes to promotion. Gender differences are shown to exist in the ways women and men define the academic role and in what they think is important both to themselves and the institution.

The paper presents original data on gender differences within a business school context.