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This chapter focusses primarily on the short-term measures and policy reactions of transport operators and regulators to the COVID-19 pandemic throughout 2020/2021 (such as the introduction of physical distancing and mask wearing) but also considers those policies which directly influence public transport (such as parking management and working from home). Emphasis is placed on the experience in a number of jurisdictions to identify the influence of varying governmental level responses to the pandemic. The approaches of different jurisdictions are compared using a narrative approach to help identify policy narrative elements by policy actors as the pandemic unfolded. Such an approach enables us to focus on how decision-makers can learn from the COVID-19 experience to better react to future unexpected incidents. In identifying the future policy implications and challenges, the chapter suggests that strategic planning will need to respond to both the ‘current normal’ and the ‘next normal’, and will require flexibility and tight integration between urban planning and public transport planning, as well as private transport and long-distance transport. The chapter also highlights the importance of learning from the experience of other jurisdictions and disciplines (such as disaster management) and offers suggestions for further research.

This study, using a longitudinal design, examined the relationship of perceived organizational support (POS) and job satisfaction among hospital‐based nursing staff survivors of significant healthcare restructuring. In addition, the role of both restructuring processes and restructuring stressors in affecting POS, and the potential mediating role of POS in the relationship between both restructuring processes and stressors and job satisfaction, was considered. Data were collected from 393 respondents at two points separated by three years. Levels of POS were relatively low on both occasions and declined slightly over the three year period. POS and job satisfaction were found to have a bi‐directional relationship over time. Both restructuring processes and stressors had significant relationships with POS, positive and negative respectively. POS fully mediated the relationship between restructuring processes and job satisfaction and partially mediated the relationship between restructuring stressors and job satisfaction.

There has been a significant rise in the number of patents originating from academic environments. However, current conceptualizations of academic patents provide a largely homogenous approach to define this entrepreneurial form of technology transfer. In this study we develop a novel categorization framework that identifies three subsets of academic patents which are conceptually distinct from each other. By applying the categorization framework on a unique database of Swedish patents we furthermore find support for its usefulness in detecting underlying differences in technology, opportunity, and commercialization characteristics among the three subsets of academic patents.

This chapter presents a novel visualisation tool, known as Flexible Integrated Transport Services (FITS) that transport commissioners, providers and administrators could employ to specify and edit the operating constraints as they redesign transport services.

The context of rural transport planning is discussed noting that where resources are fewer, effective co-ordination is required to provide passengers with efficient transport services. An overview of the FITS visualisation tool and its different sub-systems (e.g. general information regarding services, operating area, passenger eligibility, fare structure and surcharge structure) is given. Additionally, some key computational details of the system are discussed. Preliminary results of a sample case study that trialled the FITS tool in a specific test run, using simulated transport to health data in the Morayshire and North-West Aberdeenshire area of Scotland are presented. The concluding discussion considers the potential impact of employing tools like FITS in planning transport services in rural and low-demand settings.

Results from the case study show how these effects could be quantified in terms of changes in costs incurred by transport providers, the level of potential demand that could be covered and the associated revenues (fares and subsidies) which could be generated by providers.

The FITS visualisation tool has the potential to act as a planning tool to help transport commissioners, providers and administrators visualise the effects of shifting operating boundaries of flexible transport services.

This chapter introduces the concept of the Shared Mobility Services Agency for the planning and managing of collective transport services at urban and regional level.

Building on previous work which established the concept of the Flexible Transport Service (FTS) Agency as a single co-ordination centre for different flexible services, this chapter extends the concept to consolidate the role of the Agency as a Shared Mobility Centre, including the integration of different on-demand or New Mobility Services and the co-ordination of different key actors in a co-modal approach. Specific attention is given to the enabling information and communication technology (ICT) architecture and standards and to the actions needed for consolidating the Agency’s role.

Findings indicate the fundamental role of the Public Transport Authority (local or regional) to enable the implementation of the concept. Priorities include: recognizing the Agency as an added value service for the area; supporting possible interaction/synergy among different Dispatch Centres and/or with other paratransit services; and defining a specific set of indicators measuring the quality and quantitative of service that are different from those of the conventional transport service.

In a time when household and public expenditure are under pressure, coupled with rapid technology progress (especially enhanced connectivity) the shared mobility services Agency offers a co-ordinated solution to planning and managing collective transport services, including New Mobility Services (represented by recent solutions like Uber, Sidecar, Lyft and BlaBlaCar) which are not yet integrated with traditional transport services.

Business collective action (BCA) is often necessary to address sustainability issues, which are generally complex and multi-layered issues that cannot always be properly addressed by individual businesses. Firms participating in BCA for corporate sustainability have access to clearer rules and guidelines for managing sustainability issues, are more efficient in managing multiple stakeholder demands due to enhanced opportunities for learning, benefit from individual and joint reputation management, and are better able to capture weak signals about opportunities and threats in the external environment. Despite these benefits, our understanding of BCA for corporate sustainability is still limited. Most of the existing work in this area has examined different forms of BCA for corporate sustainability – for example, multi-stakeholder initiatives, trade associations, and other forms of business membership organizations – individually. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of BCA for corporate sustainability. The authors start the chapter by discussing the importance of BCA in general and BCA for corporate sustainability, in particular to research and practice, and its benefits to firms and society. The authors then present a typology of the different forms of BCA for corporate sustainability, discussing their differences and similarities from an issues management perspective. The authors conclude the chapter with a brief discussion of future research in this area.