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As the foremost gossip in Ambridge, Susan Carter can lay claim to being the most powerful character in The Archers. Ridiculed for her social aspirations, Susan is bolstered by her proximity to the world of privilege through her son’s marriage to Alice Aldridge and her husband’s status as chairman of the parish council. Within the village, Susan is both feared and ridiculed, giving her an ambivalent status in the narrative, yet she is pivotal in her role at the heart of the ‘information superhighway’ of gossip within the community. Her role is tantamount to that of a Greek chorus, commenting on and judging the actions of her acquaintances, her position aided by her job as manager of the village shop, at the heart of village dealings. This chapter situates Susan within the tradition of gossips in British popular culture, exploring discourses centring on middle-aged femininities and working-class cultures. I will examine how Susan’s character is informed by the comic tradition of the unruly working-class matriarch, who is both strong and powerful, yet whose excessive talk reinforces the social divide that she longs to overcome.

The introduction of female writers to The Archers in 1975 brought a new perspective to the programme, revitalising its profile and cementing its place in the British psyche. This ‘feminisation’ of the programme was an important turning point for the women of Ambridge with increasing focus on issues important to them. This chapter argues that until this time storylines had tended to position women in the background of farming life, their identities shaped solely in terms of their relationships with the men of the village, as homemakers, carers and love-interests. The new band of female writers meant that the women of Ambridge were able to emerge as fully-rounded characters in their own right, as professionals, farmers, business women and matriarchs, at the forefront of village life. It goes on to discuss the character and function of Susan Carter, from the writer's perspective of both a research psychologist and the actor who plays Susan. It is argued that Susan utilises gossip not only as a tool with which to create interpersonal alliances and cement friendships but also to enhance her damaged self-worth and increase her status and power as a fount of all Ambridge knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential value of coaching as a learning method for driver development within police blue light environments.

An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study was undertaken with a sample of participants who had attended a five‐day coaching skills programme run for the Metropolitan Police Driving School, UK advanced driving instructors and a sample of police driving trainees who had been taught using a coaching approach.

The results indicate that the instructors who had taken part in the coaching training identified coaching as being of value in their work with developing advanced driving skills, specifically in raising awareness of police drivers and reducing drivers’ risk‐taking behaviour. The trainees indicated that they saw coaching as being of value in their learning in areas such as increased flexibility of approach and a focus on the relationship between attitude and driver behaviour.

The study suggested positive benefits based on the experiences of this small sample of police driving instructors and police trainees. As a result, the UK's Association for Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is reviewing the role of coaching for wider application in driver training and for further research on the wider application of coaching as a learning methodology.

This is the first empirical study of the application of coaching in a blue light and police driving environment. While further research is required into the impact on safety, the paper suggests coaching may be a useful learning approach to police driver training.

The purpose of this study is to explore consumer anticipation processes that occur after commitment to a purchase has been made, but before consumption occurs. The authors add to the knowledge and theory building about anticipation that occurs in this liminal phase by investigating the cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that interact to influence post-consumption evaluations.

An abductive research approach used a phase-based research design using semi-structured interviews. The authors identify interactions between cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that occur during anticipation and associate these with post-consumption outcomes.

Anticipation of a consumption experience, enacted through thoughts, emotions and actions, and undertaken with peers, is an experience per se, independent from and interdependent with the substantive experience, and contributes to performance of the substantive experience. The authors propose a framework in which anticipation – as a performative phenomenon – influences the overall evaluations of the substantive consumption experience in contexts of delayed consumption. The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal, and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful.

The theoretical grounding of performativity makes a useful contribution through its linkage of thought processes to outcomes. The authors further locate their findings within the literature on attribution theory. By engaging in anticipation, informants perceived the locus of causality to be internal and expressed pride in having anticipated if the subsequent experience was successful. By anticipating, informants perceived an ability to exert control over future events and felt ashamed of not having adequately anticipated if an experience was subsequently unsuccessful.

The authors discuss the trade-off service providers face between encouraging anticipation, which raises expectations that might not be met, and facilitating anticipatory preparations, which may reduce the risk of service failure.

The authors provide a new lens by conceptualising anticipation as a performative process and identifying mechanisms by which anticipation is embedded in total consumption experience. This study has important generalisable implications for contexts where mechanisms of performative anticipation may be a means for ameliorating uncertainty about future consumption experiences.

ARIES, PHILIPPE. Un lexique par phrases descriptives. Bulletin de l'A.I.D., vol. 5, no. 4, 1966, p. 99–101.

Multiple forces that shape the identities of adolescents and young adults also influence their subsequent career choices. Early work experiences are key among these forces. Recognizing this, youth service programs have emerged worldwide with the hope of shaping participants’ future trajectories through boosting engagement in civically oriented activities and work. Despite these goals, past research on these programs’ impact has yielded mixed outcomes. Our goal is to understand why this might be the case.

We rely on interview, archival, and longitudinal survey data to examine young adults’ experiences of a European youth service program.

A core feature of youth service programs, namely their dual identity of helping others (i.e., service beneficiaries) and helping oneself (i.e., participants), might partly explain the program’s mixed outcomes. We find that participants focus on one of the organization’s identities largely to the exclusion of the other, creating a dynamic in which their interactions with members who focus on the other identity create challenges and dominate their program experience, to the detriment of a focus on the organization and its goals. This suggests that a previously overlooked feature of youth service programs (i.e., their dual identity) might prove both a blessing for attracting many diverse members and a curse for achieving desired outcomes.

More broadly, our results suggest that dual identity organizations might attract members focused on a select identity, but fail to imbue them with a blended identity; thus, limiting the extent to which such organizations can truly “redirect” future career choices.

Acknowledging the claims of stakeholders is part of the new lexicon of higher education management. Institutions, through mission statements, now explicitly recognise their obligation to meet the needs of a range of stakeholders such as students, employers, professional associations, the government, the academic community, and wider society. However, while it is easy to list stakeholders, and promise to safeguard their various interests at the institutional level, significant conflicts can arise in managing their competing claims. Previously, stakeholder mapping has focused attention at the institutional level although the practical responsibility for managing these relationships often occurs at the micro or programme level. Drawing on interviews with programme leaders and lecturers involved in single company management education programmes, this paper explores lecturer understandings of stakeholder interests and relates these findings to different conceptions of quality. It is argued that such programmes face particular challenges in managing multiple, and often conflicting, stakeholder interests and expectations.