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An increasing number of international immigrant workers enter the EU labour market to fill the gap in many key economic sectors. Labour migration often implies a process of family adaptation and, in some cases, a breakdown in the community structure and networks. This study aims to provide insights into the dynamics of transnational families, focusing on changes in the redefinition of roles within family members and children care arrangements.

The study was based on the analysis of 12 biographical interviews conducted using semi-structured interviews between November 2018 and December 2019 among Romanian women who worked as caregivers in families in an Italian metropolitan city and the surrounding urban area.

Despite the economic dimension being essential, psychological well-being increasingly burdens workers’ migratory experience and that of their family members. Findings suggest including employers and children among the actively involved actors of the family decision-making process; working and contractual conditions as factors that significantly impact the opportunities and capability of workers to provide and receive care, mainly if the latter are employed in the informal market.

The study makes it possible to highlight that the dynamics in decision-making processes in transnational families change in the different phases of the migration project and involve numerous actors. These processes are not always rational and are strongly influenced by the labour market structure in which migrants are employed.

This paper aims to assess gender bias in Italian university student mobility controlling for the field of study. It uses data from the Italian National Student Archive (Anagrafe Nazionale degli Studenti – ANS) for the cohort of freshmen enrolled in the 2017 academic year. The macro-regional comparison unfolds across the following areas: North and Centre, Southern Italy and main Islands (Sicily and Sardinia).

The analysis is firstly carried out at the national level, and secondly, it focusses on macro-geographical areas. University mobility choices are thus investigated from a gender perspective, conditioning upon other theoretically relevant characteristics collected for the prospective first-year university student population enrolled in 2017. The authors analyse data in a regression setting (logit models) within the multilevel framework, which considers students at level 1 and the field of study at level 2. Gender differences in the propensity to be a mover – conditional upon the choice of the field of study – were captured by introducing random intercepts to account for clustering of students in fields of study and random slopes to allow the gender effect to differ among them.

Findings show that university student mobility in Italy leads evidence of gender bias. This has been detected using a multilevel random slope approach that allowed the authors to jointly estimate a slope parameter for gender within each field of study. Moreover, using a regression setting allowed the authors to control for heterogeneity in geographical, educational and socio-demographic characteristics across students. In line with previous empirical findings, the authors' data highlight the presence of a relevant mobility flow of university students from the South toward the North-Centre of Italy and lower mobility of female students compared to male students from the South and Islands.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no studies in Italy, which investigate if families' investment in higher education in terms of selection of no-local universities are affected by gender bias and if geographical differences in this behaviour between macro-areas are in place. Thus, investigating students' choices in tertiary education allows the authors to shed light on the presence of gender bias in families' education strategies addressed to increase the endowment of students' assets for future job opportunities.

This paper provides a historical case study, through the analysis of Luisa Spagnoli’s entrepreneurial life. Luisa Spagnoli was one of the most famous Italian businesswomen of the twentieth century, founder of “Perugina” chocolate factory and creator of “Luisa Spagnoli” fashion firm. The study aims particularly to examine the role of Luisa in the development of her businesses within the wider context of Italy of the 1900s, and to verify if and how gender has influenced the meaning and the shape of her entrepreneurial initiatives over time.

This study offers a historical analysis of entrepreneurial life of Luisa Spagnoli, developed through an archival study in a synchronic view. An interpretive historical method is adopted to deepen and better understand the links among personal, cultural, social and institutional domains.

This study contributes to the scholarship on businesswomen’s role in history and underlines the role of personal perceptions of female entrepreneurs to overcome external barriers.

The limitations of this study concern the nature of the analysis itself, which is a single-case study.

This analysis highlights the centrality of personal self-perceptions to face up to the difficulties of an unfavourable context, contributing to create the pre-conditions necessary to become an entrepreneur.

Because teacher training is an important component of high-quality early care and education (ECE), states are employing various efforts to increase the credentials of teachers in private ECE centers. In New Jersey, teachers who serve disadvantaged students in the state’s community-based Abbott preschools are under a court mandate to obtain a Bachelor’s degree and Preschool – Grade 3 certification by September 2004 or lose their jobs. This chapter describes a phenomenological study of five teachers’ experiences in attempting to meet that mandate, and offers implications for policymakers to consider when evaluating the overall success of this reform effort.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) has come along way since it began as a small,family‐operated soap and candle company in 1837. It now employs almost 98,000 people who provide products and services to consumers in 140 countries. The past three years of its history, however, have seen some ofthe most radical changes. Luisa Delgado, P&G’s general manager, human resources, Western Europe, played a key part in the company’s recent transformation. In 2001 it completely changed its business model in an effort to leverage scale as a global business while remaining intouch locally. The company is now driven by global business units rather than its previous country‐driven model.

The purpose of this paper is to study the portrayal of early accountants in the unfamiliar site of Portugal by examining Portuguese-language realist literature from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Two popular literary works – Uma Família Inglesa (An English Family), written by Júlio Dinis and published in 1867, and Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura (The Idiosyncrasies of a Young Blonde Woman), written by Eça de Queirós and published in 1873 – were examined through a qualitative content analysis.

The dimensions of the accounting stereotype discerned for the two early accounting practitioners featured in these works are portrayed as: modest; on-the-job trained practitioner; uncreative, conservative and unenergetic; honest financial manager; servant of the capitalist (i.e. merchant), and warm and sentimental. The accountant stereotype depicted from 1860s to 1870s period is similar to the conventional accountant stereotype, identified as the “traditional accountant” stereotype. Variations from this stereotype, however, are identified in the local, time-specific settings of Lisbon and Oporto.

The study’s portrayal of early accounting practitioners occurs during a period of transformation marked by liberalism. It augments an understanding of the image of early accounting practitioners, reflecting their social positioning at a time of significant social, economic, political and cultural changes, thereby contributing to an appreciation of the historical legacy of the accountant stereotype in continental Europe. Importantly, a taxonomy is proposed for content analysis that can be used and developed by future researchers.

Drawing on the pay-for-performance (P4P) and job satisfaction literatures through an analysis of qualitative studies published on the topic, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a P4P-based system on job satisfaction and dissatisfaction among health care workers.

A meta-synthesis of the qualitative literature was conducted to investigate health care workers' opinions, perceptions and behaviors and fully understand what processes generate job satisfaction or dissatisfaction under P4P systems.

The findings suggest that P4P systems impact the job (dis-)satisfaction of health care workers based on the institutional, organizational, geographic and cultural context of reference. Specifically, job satisfaction – and thus motivation, occupational well-being and work engagement – can occur when the context is supportive, whereas job dissatisfaction – and thus work stress and pressure, burnout and work-life balance issues and distraction – is generated in the case of unsupportive contexts. Moreover, the findings suggest a virtuous/vicious circle whereby job satisfaction leads to positive performance and further fuels job satisfaction, while conversely job dissatisfaction generates worse performance, and this further worsens worker satisfaction.

There is a lack of studies comparing and analyzing current evidence on the job (dis-)satisfaction of health care workers operating in different contexts based on the reward system. This is the first research to analyze a significant number of studies with reference to the relation between P4P and job (dis-)satisfaction, which are topics in need of further study and investigation in health care settings around the world.

Although there is great potential for diversity, library and information science (LIS) is a relatively homogenous profession. Increasing the presence of librarians of color may help to improve diversity within LIS. However, recruiting ethnic minorities into LIS has proven to be difficult despite various initiative including scholarships, fellowships, and locally focused programs. The central questions explored in this research can be divided into two parts: (1) Why do ethnic minorities choose librarianship as a profession? (2) What would motivate members of minority groups to join a profession in which they cannot see themselves?

The research was conducted through semi-structured, qualitative interviews of 32 ethnic minority students from one of four ethnic minority groups (African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American) currently enrolled in an LIS graduate program. Eleven themes emerged from the data: libraries, librarians, library work experience, LIS graduate program, career plans and goals, education and family, support, mentors, ethnicity and community, acculturation, and views of diversity.

The findings seem to support many assumptions regarding expectations and career goals. The findings related to libraries, librarians, mentors, and support illustrate that many recruitment initiatives are starting in the right place. However, the most noteworthy findings were those that centered on identity, acculturation, and diversity because they dealt with issues that are not often considered or discussed by many in the profession outside of ethnic minority organizations.

Credit unions offer an alternative to traditional banking given their distinctive ownership structure and their goal of maximising members’ benefits. Motivated by the increased expectations regarding more ethical behaviour in the financial industry, this paper aims to provide a better understanding of the relevant features and values that facilitated the emergence of the credit union movement in Australia.

Using social movement theory, this study analyses 23 interviews conducted in the early 1990s with the supporters of the credit union movement in Australia, in which the characteristics and values of the credit union movement are identified.

Findings demonstrate that the credit union ethos is rooted in family and religious influences, and that these organisations were keen on promoting their distinctiveness on “fairness” and “caring for their members”. Credit unions, however, have rarely tackled the movement’s most neglected value “cooperation between cooperatives”.

This research contributes to the discussion of ethics in business history as it elaborates on how values and ethos crafted the identity and ensured the survival of the credit union movement in Australia.

To achieve the strategic objectives necessary for an organization to face the future with confidence, human resource planning has been implemented in the library system of the Pontificial Catholic University of Chile (SIBUC). Analyses the environment and its impact on SIBUC using an organizational model, which also permits strategic objectives to be established and personnel to be analysed in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Based on this approach, specifies human resource objectives, and assures optimal achievement with well‐defined individual strategies that also include plans for action and control measures. Finally, and as a result of the whole methodology, creates a matrix to structure an organizational design of the direction of human resources in the library system.