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The COVID-19 pandemic closed university campuses forcing rapid improvisation and adoption of online teaching. This paper explores the experience of converting three modules from proximate to online learning delivery in March and May 2020. This process was facilitated by reflective practice to support a process of improvisation as a buffering response to the pandemic. This paper distinguishes between the development of Distance Learning programmes compared to rapid adoption of online learning. Shifting to complete online teaching involves a process by which the lecturer's role transitions towards the curation of online and offline student experiences. This includes facilitating and blending extensive and intensive online learning experiences. Extensive involves the selection and curation of online learning support bundles. This requires the creation of learning roadmaps to facilitate student learning. Intensive revolves around online engagement between academics and students and takes two forms: shallow as involving a limited dialogue with students and deep which involves a co-creation process between students and lecturers. Online learning provides opportunities to adapt learning experiences in real-time. The paper evaluates the shift to online practice from the students' and academics' perspectives.

Identifies the A level as an advanced placement examination given to high school students in the United Kingdom. Discusses the dichotomy between the A level students' knowledge of geography (dependent upon rote memorization) and the requirements of university geography (critical thinking and application). Recommends the adoption of reflective learning practices. (MJP)

Technological innovation continues to play a fundamental role in disrupting many industries, but the impacts of digital innovation on accountancy and its effect on firms and individuals remain somewhat overlooked. Nevertheless, technological innovation is transforming accountancy work and business models as firms react to competition and regulatory restrictions. The analysis of sixty semi-structured interviews with UK accounting firms reveals how the adoption of new technology and alterations in regulations impacts on accounting practices. In turn, this research raises questions about the nature of professional occupations, the deskilling of accountancy and colonization of new service areas, challenging the extant conceptualisation of knowledge-intensive services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures implemented by the United Kingdom government from 23 March 2020 led to unprecedented adaptations from individuals and communities including places of worship, their clergy and congregations. This paper through a multi‐disciplinary dialogue between human geography and theology explores the interrelations between place, space and the spiritual. It identifies the bricolage mechanisms that were developed rapidly by churches to shift towards providing virtual church services. This was an uncommon practice by Christian denominations in the UK. COVID‐19 changed the rules requiring new practices to emerge resulting in a new form of infrasecular space to emerge. Such rapid transformations through the provision of online services and virtual embeddedness blurred the lines between sacred and secular spaces. During virtual services, the minister's home is temporally linked to the homes of congregants forming an intersacred space. Homes and spaces within homes are transformed into temporary sacred spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to a growing body of work on labour market migration to the UK from the new Member States (NMS) of the European Union, particularly the migration of Polish nationals to the UK, drawing attention to the weaknesses of existing data sets which attempt to quantify these migration flows and in particular to map the geographical distribution of migrants. The analysis of Worker Registration Scheme ( WRS) and National Insurance Number ( NINo) allocation data demonstrates that NMS migration has focused on urban and rural locales rather than having a predominantly rural or 'peripheral' area bias. The paper also argues that the discrepancies between WRS and NINo data potentially reveal a 'hidden' geography of self-employment and entrepreneurial activity among NMS migrants which merits further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1966, the UK economy has experienced a continual process of restructuring as manufacturing firms attempted to respond to new forms of competition, alterations in consumer demand and technological developments. Accounts of the British economy since the 1960s highlight deindustrialisation and the transfer of production and employment to newly industrialised regions. The UK is still an important location for manufacturing, but manufacturing has become increasingly mechanised and knowledge-intensive. This article draws upon evolutionary economics to explore the ways in which British manufacturers of carpets and technical textiles have responded to globalisation through the adoption or development of new routines, resources, capabilities, manufacturing strategies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost competitiveness remains a significant element of firms' advantage in developed economies. Input costs, particularly nonlabor costs, are important factors underlying the competitive position of firms that are competing both domestically and internationally. Energy costs are becoming an increasing threat to the long-term survival of firms because of their more volatile nature. The distinct geographic structure of energy prices combines both international markets and intranational policies and supply structures. It is vital to understand how firms manage the risk that is generated from such a complex input. This article explores the adjustment process of intermediate metal-processing firms in the West Midlands U. K. and their wider supply chain to the energy price risk and its interaction with existing long-term adjustments to the pressure of globalization. Formal and informal relational agreements between customers and suppliers are identified as critical factors in determining the capacity of supplier firms to transfer energy price risks to their customers and to adapt to energy-related pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the challenge of measuring the extent of immigration to the UK following EU Accession in 2004, and argues that the most commonly used databases (UK Census, Labour Force Survey and Worker Registration Scheme) can be supplemented by the National Insurance Number (NINo) Allocations database, and demonstrates the utility of this data for future research by outlining the geography of immigration derived from NINo. The paper makes three important contributions through the thorough analysis of a data source currently underexploited in migration studies; first that the NINo, when used as a indicator of migration per se offers some interesting insights into migration in the UK, and secondly that as a tool for comprehensively measuring the registration of migrants working legally in the UK, it offers a means of constructing a internal geography of (legal) labour migration, as the paper demonstrates. Third, the analysis also identifies self-employment as a potentially important missing driver behind EU Accession Migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the activities of two UK-based property development companies that have integrated sustainability into their business models as a source of competitive advantage in response to an evolving public sector sustainability agenda. These companies have combined different individual competencies and developed new routines and business practices that provide them with distinctiveness in the marketplace. These new routines represent entrepreneurial behaviour constructed around the identification of profitable market niches based on values derived from incorporating sustainability into private sector business models. This incorporation requires the development of a framework for balancing sustainability and related value systems against more mainstream concerns with maximizing profitability. This paper identifies this framework and explores the ways in which these firms have developed a discursive formation of profit and value that is used to balance the tensions that exist in a business model formulated around balancing a double bottom line. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the economically developed world, over 75 percent of all jobs involve some form of service work. Over the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic growth in business and professional services (BPS) or those firms that provide “creative” intermediate inputs into the activities of client companies. BPS firms have a double impact on regional economic performance: they add value in their own right but also create productivity improvements in client companies. This article explores the development of a BPS-focused regional economic development policy in the West Midlands, United Kingdom. Developing a policy framework for BPS is problematic as the heterogeneous nature of BPS activities means that no single lobbying group exists to represent their interests. The West Midlands has tried to overcome this difficulty by creating subregional networking organizations and, more recently, by developing a policy approach that attempts to enhance the added value BPS firms provide to their clients. This represents a major, but as yet untested, development in policy intervention as it recognizes the complex interactions that occur between BPS firms and their clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the growth and geography of Community Development Loan Funds (CDLFs) in the UK. CDLFs usually operate locally to overcome financial exclusion by providing a mechanism that enables wider social inclusion in disadvantaged areas. The article uses two cases studies of CDLFs to show how these alternative financial institutions balance the tension between profitability versus social objectives. CDLFs are 'alternative' financial institutions as their business model is based on alternative discursive formations of profitability related to value. Combining these variables produces a complex uneven regional geography of access; complex as local CDLF availability may still imply that organizations experience financial exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A person's image incorporates three principal elements: how you look, sound and present yourself. Alterations in the world of work have increased the importance of image in the work place and have created a demand for a new form of recipe knowledge — impression management. This has encouraged the formation of specialist image consultancy companies, as well as the development of new techniques of image construction and management. This article provides an analysis of the image consultancy industry in the United Kingdom. It explores the geography of the industry, motivations for establishing an image consultancy firm, the networks consultants develop and the methods of client acquisition. The results of a postal survey of image consultants are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the construction and circulation of the investment category of emerging markets. Reflection on the geographies contained in the category; Trace of networks of information, movement and command that connect fund managers and analysts in global financial centers; Basis of the distinctiveness of emerging market economies.

This paper goes some way towards redressing the lack of geographical literature on charity through exploring the geography of the British domestic charitable sector. The size and geography of the third sector is outlined, followed by an analysis of how almshouses can be understood as inherently geographical and deeply embedded in local social networks of inclusion as well as exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon empirical research into the image consultancy industry in the United Kingdom. This industry is becoming increasingly important as a provider of knowledge and expertise to employers and individuals. We suggest that the literature on new forms of service employment (emotional labour and hybrid forms of work) has neglected to explore well-paid professional employees. We argue that this group is equally implicated in societal pressures to conform to conventional heterosexual images of femininity and masculinity. Pressures to conform do not have to come from management, but from professional bodies, the media and clients. Image consultancy provides one way of encouraging employees to alter their image as the advice can be packaged as independent of the employer and professional. We conclude that the new profession of image consultancy is more about gender than image. Consultants are selling codified knowledge for the construction of particularly socially accepted or preferred forms of bodily identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1980, the United Kingdom has experienced a dramatic growth in firms and employment in information-intensive business services, such as management consultancy and market research. This article reports the results of the first substantial nation-wide investigation into the nature and causes of small professional business service firm growth in Britain, undertaken in 1991. It reveals marked differences in the characteristics, markets and competitive requirements of such firms, compared with small manufacturing firms. The demand for their services comes predominantly from large companies, and is more focussed on financial and other services and government. But small firms are also making increasing use of business services. Specialised expertise, reputation and educational and professional qualifications are essential prerequisites for the establishment of new business service firms. Their success is also being enhanced by increasing use of informal networking, collaborative partnerships, and subcontracting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]