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The purpose of this paper is to describe a useful mentorship experience from the perspective of the current author. It is a one case study at the same time as it opens up for reflections on mentorship in a variety of contexts with implications for academia.

Storytelling and reflections for the sake of reviving the notions of mentorship in academia by paying tribute to a trusted mentor.

The story is about how the mentorship evolved as part of a friendship relation, but the story has also implications for how mentoring can be developed as a personal strategy.

Mentoring can either be planned as a deliberate process or it can just happen, growing out of experiences from working with another person.

The premise of this paper is that tension exists among participants and parties engaged in projects. The uniqueness of development virtually assures this. The purpose of this paper is to propose that tension is a product of the precursors of complexity, uncertainty and equivocality, and an attempt is made to characterize tension as it arises in projects – its genesis and its nature.

An in-depth case study was conducted in a manner in which the contextually sensitive empirical researches for which Nordic studies are known. Within discussions on the strategy, decision making, intra- and inter-project interdependencies and managing across development sites associated with a flagship project, 77 statements concerning tension were identified for analysis. Through a literature review, 12 tension-driving factors were identified. These factors were used as base for analysis.

These statements were analyzed for content to produce a model associating tension with its precursors and the literature on tension. It is found that due to innovation turbulence, tension-driving factors are cascaded in and around organization(s). Tension is manifested in various ways for different stakeholders and tension management is performed through cognitive and emotional responses. The texture of tension is characterized by fluidity, multiplicity and parallelism.

Case studies can of course not be generalized; they are valuable, however, in indicating important observations for further studies.

A contribution is made to management theory where knowledge about project context is seen as essential in order to understand best practices for project execution and effectiveness.

Although common, even virtually assured in projects, tension tends to be neglected in successful management. This study associates the genesis of tension through the underlying contributions of complexity, uncertainty and equivocality. It is believed to be the first study of its type.

This work is initiated under the premise that reliable evaluation methods are necessary to ensure investments in energy conservation, and the purpose of this paper is to contribute to that literature. It describes some pilot changes and their impact in an actual field study oriented toward upgrading municipal public housing (MPH) units.

The research for this paper was connected to an MPH refurbishment project situated in northern Sweden. The overall energy efficiency goal within the project was a 40-50 percent reduction in the supplied energy for central electricity, domestic hot water and space heating. In order to evaluate if these goals were feasible, a measurement system was installed in a pilot building and in a neighboring building used as a reference. The evaluation was conducted by comparing the post-retrofit performance of the pilot building with the performance of the reference building when it was kept in its initial state (a comparison possible because both buildings had initial similarities).

Impacts could be quantified insofar as a reference (control) building in the same environment was sustained for comparison purposes. A 43 percent improvement was observed in energy utilization in the pilot building compared to its reference companion (99.8 vs 174.5 kWh/m² per year). When the approach described herein was applied to new construction, the present goal of 65 kWh/m² was approached as measured by Swedish standards.

Results should be of interest to academics in the housing field, professionals involved in refurbishment and residents themselves, renting MPH flats.

This study is unique in the following ways: first, it really was a field experiment with a control, thus it did not have any exogenous interference in interpreting results. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind. The second interesting characteristic was that results were subsequently used in the refurbishment of other buildings in the complex and in the construction of others. The major value of the paper may be associated with its timing. It comes at a time when the Kyoto agreement has raised concerns about sustainability, but also at a time when many buildings are facing a need for refurbishment.

It is common that junior researchers struggle in finding their own way of doing research. The purpose of this paper is therefore to use the theory of “Muddling through” in order to theorize about the junior vs senior researcher collaboration process.

The theory of “Muddling through” is used in order to reflect on the qualities of shared collaboration between a junior and senior research colleague.

The research process share the characteristics of policy making where goals many times are fuzzy, and the relationship between means to end is far from self-evident. The research process therefore demands from the senior colleague to act firm, fair and friendly in order to support and inspire junior research colleagues.

It is a personalized single case study; still it provides advice for both junior and senior research colleagues that are in the process of research collaboration.

Junior colleagues need to have the courage of actively suggesting research topics to senior colleagues; they also need to actively reflect on the quality of their shared research collaboration process.

The study provides the research community with a sensemaking example of coaching, inspiration and mentoring in the research collaboration process.

The importance of mentorship in academia is discussed, and in particular the work of Timothy L. Wilson who has been instrumental for the author in this respect is described. Drawing on historical practices from academia and the arts, the purpose of this paper is to communicate why and how mentorship could be applied.

As a conceptual paper this draws knowledge from the author's experience.

The general message concerns the importance of mentorship in order to create a vibrant (and sustainable) academic community.

The value of this paper is twofold: primarily it celebrates Timothy L. Wilson as a model to mentorship in academia, second it communicates the importance of mentorship per se.

This paper describes work with patients/service users, students and educators, resulting in the identification of key issues to be addressed when planning patient/service user participation in interprofessional student learning. Preparation, communication, support and debriefing for both students and lay participants were revealed as essential for successful patient/service user involvement in education.

Improvements were delivered in the care of patients on anti‐coagulants through a collaborative improvement methodology within one primary care organisation. Although a key clinical governance priority, the project was conducted in a low‐key manner with minimal support. Practice teams were encouraged to apply evidence through small‐scale testing of changes, using measurements to monitor improvement and to share what they learned amongst themselves. No specific model of care was pursued and instead the emphasis was on demonstrating an improvement at the practice level, by whatever means worked best. The methodology used was similar to that applied in major national and regional collaborative programmes. This project demonstrates how it can be simplified and implemented within one primary care organisation to deliver improvements in care as well as to support the building of teams and learning about measurement and quality improvement.

In the UK, universities are coming under increasing pressure from government to strengthen university-employer co-operation and engagement in areas such as student placements, graduate internships, knowledge exchange, enterprise and work-based learning. Both the Higher Education (HE) White Paper (BIS, 2011) and the Wilson Review (BIS, 2012) encourage universities to focus on this agenda, putting businesses at the heart of the system alongside students to maximise innovation, promote growth and “ensure students come out of universities equipped to excel in the workforce”. (BIS, 2011, p. 39). The need for universities to engage with employers and build strong relationships to maximise mutual partnership value is integral to this work. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper examines the application of win-win principles (Covey, 1989) to employer engagement activities in HE via two case studies. Following an analysis of the results in each case study, they show that the adoption of such approaches has enhanced employer engagement, consolidated existing employer relationships and led to tangible outcomes such as new student placement opportunities.

The paper suggests that HE employer engagement activities grounded in Covey's win-win principles are likely to enhance results and relationships with employers than those that omit such principles. The paper concludes by encouraging the utilisation of such principles across the spectrum of HE employer engagement activities.

The authors believe this is the first time this method of analysis has been applied to university-employer relationships.