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The purpose of this study is to examine what the most significant aspects of environmental sustainability in the forest biorefinery sector are and what kind of criteria should be applied to an evaluation of environmental sustainability in the forest biorefinery context.

The topic is approached by themed interviews in Scandinavia and North America with 23 representatives from the forest and bioproducts sectors. The interviews were examined using the thematic analysis method.

The study indicates that environmental sustainability may be an important driver for the forest biorefinery business. From the perspective of environmental sustainability, harvesting feedstock will be the most challenging part of the value chain to manage. Raw material availability and its sustainability, life‐cycle perspective and beneficial products were the most important criteria in the environmental sustainability assessment of forest biorefinery value chain companies.

A sector‐specific guideline was formulated for the most important criteria to be included in an environmental sustainability assessment of forest biorefinery value chain companies. The criteria comprise the first step of a more elaborate evaluation framework, which can provide more accurate information about the sustainability performance of biorefinery value chain companies. The criteria can encourage companies to analyze environmental sustainability challenges holistically, increase a company's transparency for its stakeholders and offer information to investors about the environmental status of the company.

The novelty of the study lies in the sector‐specific, holistic environmental sustainability evaluation in the emerging forest biorefineries.

The purpose of this study is to gain more understanding of how competence might matter from the perspective of well-being at work. The authors explore how perceived competence is connected to perceived work-related well-being among Baby Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y employees.

The authors explore how perceived competence is connected to perceived work-related well-being among Baby Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y employees. The frames of reference of the study are based on literature on employee well-being (measured with work engagement and overcommitment) and competence, as well as on generational discussions. The quantitative, questionnaire-based study was conducted in 88 companies in Finland, with the total number of respondents being 4,418.

The main finding was that perceived competence related to current duties is statistically significantly connected to employee well-being. The results indicate that high competence results in high employee well-being in all generational groups. Further, Generation Y estimated their work well-being, both in terms of work engagement and overcommitment, lower than Baby Boomers or Generation X. The results suggest that developing competence of employees in organizations seems to be an important means to also support work well-being. It is especially important to pay attention to that among Generation Y, who take their first steps in working life. Competence is a meaningful factor for coping in working life in continually changing work environments. Incompetence is not just a factor for poor performance but also a potential threat to employee well-being.

Most of the competence/workplace learning results research concentrates on cognitive competence and skills, often from the employers’ benefit viewpoint (useful skills, productivity increase). This study starts from the finding that new generations of workers rather look for a meaningful work life, and thus, a feeling of having the necessary competences directly improves their well-being and, thus, life quality. Furthermore, the study is based on an original questionnaire-based study conducted in 88 companies in Finland, with the total number of respondents being 4,418.

This chapter focuses on spy action as a way to answer the question: where can we find queer female action heroes? The chapter will identify three films – D.E.B.S. (Advocate, 2005), Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, 2017) and The Spy Who Dumped Me (Susanna Fogel, 2018) – worth attention to highlight the potential and problems of the queer female hero in spy action. This chapter examines how each of these spy action films contributes to the ongoing yet uneven development of the female hero as a queer figure in post-millennial action cinema. The chapter will consider to what extent these queer female-led action films may pose a challenge to some of the dominant standards and conventions associated with the action hero, gender roles and the representation of sexuality, but also reinforce others. Some comparisons will be made to James Bond in recognition that the Bond franchise has played an important role in the spy action genre.

Over the past few years, several scholars have focused on innovation strategies with specific regard to family food firms. In line with this research stream, the purpose of this paper is to understand how family food firms with long-standing traditions can implement innovative productions while remaining anchored to the past.

By adopting a qualitative research methodology, mainly based on a multiple case study, this paper seeks to cover some unexplored areas regarding the opportunity of combining tradition and innovation to achieve success in the highly competitive international arena in which family food firms operate. The authors analyze the cases of “La Torrente,” “Cioccolatitaliani” and “La Fabbrica della Pasta di Gragnano.”

Successful family food firms leverage their deep-rooted knowledge of both family and local traditions to innovate. At same time, they establish continuous info exchange flows with all of the firm’s stakeholders by adopting an open innovation approach.

From a theoretical perspective, there is a need for an in-depth study of how an effective blend of tradition and innovation is formalized, above all, in family firms. As for the practical implications, all the three case studies represent a best practice, especially for family firms with a long-standing history and strong local connections.

The paper shows how important it is to keep traditional factors in food industry and offers hints and suggestions to decision makers of family firms on how to valorize, in terms of competitiveness, their traditional resources – almost bound to their territory with innovation tools and processes.

The paper is interesting because it offers an analysis of a specific group of firms – family firms – that characterize many industries in Italy and in Europe. Although often small, these firms can show dynamism and creativity. The paper offers hints on how to approach innovation in the sector while keeping the value of tradition.

The originality of the proposed conceptual model stems from the need to overcome the previous theoretical models, which deal separately with sources of past knowledge and sources of new and/or external knowledge.

A growing body of evidence confirms that good teaching is the most important school-specific factor impacting student achievement and growth. Concerns over teachers’ effectiveness have led to escalating demands for reliable systems that measure teachers’ effectiveness. Such performance systems require a stable and explicit definition of knowledge, skills, actions, and dispositions that comprise the work of teaching. In this chapter, we refer to these as teacher “core competencies” (CCs). Well-defined core competency constructs can anchor investigations of teacher effectiveness for purposes in many different settings, but the field currently lacks a set of common stable descriptors. The descriptors encoded in current standards and assessments are plagued by confusion arising from multiple ideological perspectives, conflicting political views on teacher preparation, and disconnects between stakeholders (e.g., university versus alternative preparation routes).

This chapter presents a study designed to move from descriptive, “input-based” ways to describe teaching to the development and early testing of specific construct descriptors. We begin by distilling many disparate sources of authority regarding what teachers should know and be able to do and assess the validity and usefulness of the resulting descriptors across several measurement applications. We find evidence of stability across multiple populations and different settings and evidence that the constructs can describe preparation program emphases, as well as evidence that some program-level aggregate scores correlate with student assessment scores. We also investigate the stability of competency constructs in different settings, attempting to understand the implications of k-12 school contexts for interpreting core competency measurements of preparation programs.