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The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

This chapter discusses the findings of doctoral research into further education lecturers' and middle managers' perceptions of how Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the sector is planned and implemented. Thematic analysis revealed that mandatory CPD is perceived to: involve conflicting purposes between those planning it and its recipients (deriving from divergent understandings of professionalism and the role of CPD among stakeholders); and be characterised as mostly generic, didactic, and ineffective, leading lecturers to compensate by engaging in additional, separate forms of CPD. This chapter demonstrates the value of practice-based doctoral study in enabling the voices of educators to be positioned at the centre of an exploration of their own professional learning.

To date, few studies have incorporated female entrepreneurship into the context of a country that relies heavily on natural resources and still has a wide gender gap due to historically established cultural norms. This study aims to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial ecosystem factors on women’s ability and desire to become entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia.

The study applied a quantitative method using secondary data from the Adult Population Survey conducted by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and built upon the recently proposed “Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Approach,” which has three levels: institutional, organisational and individual.

The findings demonstrate the significant roles that different entrepreneurial ecosystem dimensions can play in determining female entrepreneurial activity. Relationships were found among the variables of the three dimensions, indicating that broader institutional conditions can impact women becoming entrepreneurs.

A multi-year analysis could not be performed because the country data from one year limited the research to conditions in that time frame.

The findings advance entrepreneurial research by empirically examining the influencers' factors on women becoming entrepreneurs in a fast-growing emerging economy, collectivist society and non-European and non-North American institutional environment. The research tested a framework that gives more insight into the diverse factors affecting women in entrepreneurship at different levels.

The development of inclusive education, characterised by both universal momentum and geopolitical differences, has largely omitted children and young people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. For this group, access to educational opportunities at all has been slow to be won, and separation for ‘special care’ for their very high support needs is the norm. There have been advances in recognising the human rights and indeed humanity of people with the most profound intellectual disabilities, but the focus of educationalists has often been on how to foster and document fine-grained learning gains and on the specialist nature of the teaching they need. In this chapter, in contrast, the emphasis is on how the spirit of ‘Nothing about us without us’ can extend to children and young people with profound intellectual disabilities such that they are at the heart rather than periphery of the education and research process. The potential for belonging in education and research is illustrated through exploratory work on doing research inclusively with children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities in two English special school classes. The starting point is seeking to know them from being with them in a particular way. The knowledge shared in the chapter is a mix of big picture state of the art overview and deep intersubjective knowledge/feeling created together with children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. The implications for future research in inclusion include the need to start from a different mindset in which belonging and reciprocity inform an asset-based approach.

This chapter examines the key issues around organisational resilience – what it means for organisations, and the key elements they need to consider if they are looking to increase the ability of their operations to withstand challenges in their environment. Organisations have always had to adapt to changes in their environment, whether as a result of market-based, political, regulatory or technological developments. However, the pace of change and the number and frequency of external shocks, such as the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 epidemic, war and increasing nationalism, inflation, labour shortages, cyber-security threats and environmental crises have increased over recent years. Whilst some of these events could have been foreseen, in that they emerge relatively slowly, such as increasing nationalism, other crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic could not have been readily anticipated, both for the speed at which it occurred, but the significant impact it had on people and organisations. Clearly, many of these events can have severe consequences not only for society but also for organisations, potentially threatening their survival. Hence organisations are increasingly recognising the need to be both more aware of potential threats or even opportunities by constantly monitoring their environment, but also creating contingency or mitigation plans to become more resilient to such change and shocks. By becoming more aware of changes in their environment and incorporating risk evaluations and mitigation plans into strategy and regular business planning cycles, organisations can become more adaptive and agile to respond more quickly and robustly to such events. Whilst it is not possible to fully mitigate all risks to the organisation, increased resilience can reduce the severity or longevity of negative impacts or support the organisation to seek opportunities from change.

This chapter introduces the concept of overall organisational resilience, and then discusses some more functional areas of resilience: operational, financial, technological, reputational and institutional. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the effects of building greater organisational resilience and what organisations should consider when evaluating where to start on such a journey.

To break the chains of inequality for access to education for marginalized groups across India and move toward an egalitarian society, where all people can live with dignity and fulfill their dreams, the need of the hour is to strengthen the education system and prepare teachers with secular and reformative thinking. This chapter attempts to examine the problems of various marginalized groups in Indian society and their educational provisions. This work also aims to analyze several issues and challenges related to preparing teachers for inclusive schools and to draw attention to the need to reframe and revise teacher education programs and enforce inclusive teacher education practices in India to promote inclusion.

This chapter discusses the global challenge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions to net zero by 2050. It explains what net zero means and how it is calculated, together with some of the debate around the suitability of the target to maintain global warming levels within ‘acceptable’ boundaries. The chapter then presents some of the opportunities and challenges that transitioning towards net zero will pose to countries and their inhabitants, in terms of changes to policies, products, processes and behaviours that will be required to attain the target. It then discusses the need for a strategy to achieve net zero across different sectors of society and provides a few suggestions of tools and concepts that could be adopted to support the changes necessary, such as planning for change, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), integrated reporting and the circular economy. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the need for the net zero target and how it is our collective responsibility to support the challenging transition to net zero for the benefit of all.

This study aims to explore the use of a double diamond design method to engage the industry in a sector-wide response to the issues of food waste as constructed by consumers. This particular design method is achieved by an exploration of a collective intelligence-participatory design (CIPD) project to engage industry participants in understanding and responding to consumers’ perceptions of the role of packaging in reducing food waste.

Using the UK Design Council’s double diamond design method as a guiding conceptual principle, the project recruited industry participants from medium to large food businesses across various food categories. Two scoping workshops with industry were held prior to the initiation of a 12-stage project (n = 57), and then two industry workshops were held (n = 4 and 14). Eighty participants completed an online qualitative survey, and 23 industry participants took part in a Think Tank Sprint Series. The Think Tanks used participatory design approaches to understand barriers and opportunities for change within food industry sub-sectors and test the feasibility and acceptability of package designs to reduce consumer waste.

For CIPD to work for complex problems involving industry, it is vital that stakeholders across macro- and micro-subsystems are involved and that adequate time is allowed to address that complexity. Using both the right tools for engagement and the involvement of the right mix of representatives across various sectors of industry is critical to reducing blame shift. The process of divergence and convergence allowed clear insight into the long-term multi-pronged approach needed for the complex problem.

Participatory design has been useful within various behaviour change settings. This paper has demonstrated the application of the double diamond model in a social marketing setting, adding value to an industry-wide project that included government, peak bodies, manufacturing and production and retailers.

This introductory chapter traces some of the impact COVID-19 has had on education in different global contexts. It traces the history of the Universitas 21 Schools of Education Deans Group and its Forum for International Networking in Education and sets the context for the subsequent contributions in this book. It provides points of reflection for scholars and institutions as they traverse through the ongoing challenges of the pandemic.