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Middle managers play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between senior leadership and employees, often navigating competing demands and pressures. This study investigates experiences of autonomy, competence, and relatedness among middle managers serving as department heads in the University and University College (UUC) sector in Norway. The study adopts a qualitative approach in the form of semi-structured interviews with six participants. The findings underscore the significance of autonomy, trust, and support in facilitating the effective execution of middle managers' roles as executive and inclusive leaders. Autonomy emerges as crucial, which aligns with the principles of the Nordic work–life model. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of internal motivation and the support provided by the immediate leadership in enhancing middle managers' performance. Personal competence in one's subject areas and relatedness emerge as key factors ensuring employee confidence and fostering a positive work environment. The implications of these findings suggest that nurturing autonomy, competence, and relatedness may mitigate the perceived stress associated with being a middle manager in the UUC sector. By addressing these fundamental needs, organisations can potentially enhance the well-being and effectiveness of middle managers, ultimately contributing to organisational success.

AbstractThough the federal government impacts private forest management across the United States through legislation such as the Clean Water Act, state-level regulations applied to private forest landowners vary remarkably. Despite this diversity of policies, little is known about how variations in regulatory intensity (defined here as number of forestry regulations) correlate with state-level political and socioeconomic characteristics. In this study, we use a quantitative approach to explore the intensity of regulation on forest practices impacting private landowners across all 50 states. We quantified intensity by tabulating the number of regulated forest practices, then used a quasi-Poisson regression to estimate the relationship between regulatory intensity and state-level characteristics, including forestland ownership types, the economic importance of the forest industry, and measures of state environmentalism. Results indicated a positive association between regulatory intensity and the percent of private corporate land, environmental voting records of elected officials, and direct democracy. Foresters and landowners may learn from these relationships, consider how to influence different policies, and build or achieve greater levels of public trust. This study starts to help us explain why state-level forestry policies differ, not just how they differ.

AbstractThis study evaluates the quality of 30 biomass pellets sold for residential use in Poland. It provides data on their physical, chemical, and petrographic properties and compares them to existing standards and the information provided by the fuel producers. The results reveal considerable variations in the quality of the pellets and show that some of the purchased samples are not within the DINplus and/or ENplus certification thresholds. Among all 30 purchased samples, only one passes the quality thresholds set by the PL-US BIO, a newly established quality certification in Poland that combines quality assessment following DINplus with optical microscopy analysis. The primary issues causing a decrease in pellet quality include elevated ash and fines content, compromised mechanical durability, too low ash melting temperature, and additions of undesired additions like bark, inorganic matter, and petroleum products. Our research highlights the need for improved fuel quality control measures, and transparent and accurate product labeling, as well as the need for a comprehensive and publicly available national database of solid biomass fuel producers and fuels sold. These are essential steps toward increasing customers' awareness and trust, encouraging them to embrace biomass fuels as reliable and sustainable sources of energy.

The article is devoted to the relevant issue of modern science and ethical support for scientific research using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Despite a significant number of foreign and domestic publications about AI, the conceptual framework for the ethics of scientific research using AI remains undeveloped. Based on the international recommendations and articles, as well as own research experience and membership of research ethical committees, the authors define and analyze the basic ethical principles for the scientific research using AI. The proposed principles are considered in the context of their practical application in the field of biomedicine, which are connected with protection of the mankind and nature, maintaining the confidentiality of participants' data, preventing discrimination, protecting against errors of AI, respecting informed consent, as well as observing the norms of "open science", mutual trust from developers and users, etc. The application of the proposed principles orients the scientists, the developers of artificial intelligence, ethical committees, realizing review process, all society, to the priority of the humanization of science, respect for man and nature, as well as education of society regarding to AI, the creation of a regulatory framework, ethical recommendations and codes of ethics for the using of AI in scientific research.

The impact of fake news in Malaysia is vast and complex, posing threats to democratic processes and social cohesion. However, fake news research often relies on Western definitions, contributing to a lack of understanding within the Malaysian context. The introduction of the Malaysia Anti-Fake News Act in 2018, which encompasses all types of information and ideas, have also left confusion regarding the definition of fake news. This research aims to serve as a guide, starting from how "fake news" is defined in the country and then addressing potential issues associated with constituting the term from both legal and journalists' perspectives. Utilizing quantitative content analysis and qualitative interviews, the research reveals challenges in combatting fake news in a semi-authoritarian context. Balancing media freedom and regulation is challenging, and distinguishing between sensational and fake news is complicated by subjective interpretations. While enhancing professionalism in journalism is crucial, the utmost importance lies in establishing transparent governance. This is because establishing trust in government-owned new media is key to encouraging reliance on credible sources. This research assists in providing a clearer understanding of the underlying problems related to fake news dissemination in the country and suggests possible long-term solutions to curb its impact.

ABSTRACTStability is vital for the development, health and relationships of children in family foster care. Instability can lead to social and school issues, low self‐esteem and diminished trust in caregivers. This article examines the risk and protective factors for stability for these children. Data, drawn from case files in six municipalities (n = 116), combine qualitative and quantitative analyses for a comprehensive understanding. Twenty children from each municipality were selected, with 10 in stable placements (lived in one family foster home for over a year) and 10 in unstable placements (lived in at least two different family foster homes). Quantitative results highlight the importance of factors like familiar placements, a child's age at the time of placement, behavioural challenges and the number of children in the foster home. Stable placements were more common in homes with fewer children (including foster and biological children). Qualitative findings show that in some instances, breakdowns in foster care placements could not be foreseen, often arising from stressful events within the foster family's life after the child's placement. Additionally, we observed that breakdowns sometimes resulted from foster parents lacking the necessary resources to address the child's requirements, particularly in cases involving children with behavioural challenges or extensive needs.

AbstractInduced by worsening environmental conditions, pursuing purpose, not solely profit, now constitutes an ethical obligation for leaders of business organisations, towards future generations. Consequently, increasing numbers of businesses seek to become purpose-led (PLBs), but challenges exist. Despite the significant growth in PLB research since the turn of the millennium, attention has mainly focussed on multinational companies, although small- and medium-sized businesses (MSBs) hugely impact any economy. This research sets out to better understand the challenges faced by leaders of companies undergoing purpose-led MSB transitioning. Thematic analysis of the interview data from founders and leaders of B-Corp certified purpose-led MSBs revealed six specific challenges consistent with literature findings, but also provided uniquely useful insights from the leaders' perspectives. Integrated business strategies or solutions, which meet multiple challenges simultaneously, revolve around a strong corporate reputation and organisational identity driven by corporate communication. Corporate communication engages stakeholders, builds trust, reinforces reputation, and serves as a strategic intervention for differentiating purpose-led MSBs in the marketplace, shaping organisational identity. Overall, the work provides leaders of MSBs with a practical guide for navigating their challenges and developing leadership practices to enable purpose-led transformations.

I introduce the practice of somaterapia (somatherapy), an eclectic synthesis of Gestalt therapy, capoeira Angola, anti-psychiatry, collective trust exercises, radical pedagogy, and anarchism developed as an anti-fascist practice aimed at healing the violence of oppressive forms of social organisation as they manifest in bodies. Somaterapia takes an immanent and materialist view on what constitutes a body, eschewing mind-body dualisms and transcendent forms of organisation in lieu of an affective somatic reality. The fascisms somaterapia thus seeks to eliminate are not just the macro-fascisms of the political milieu, but also the micro-fascisms that stem from and reciprocally enrich these, forming blockages of libidinal energy or tesaõ that affect everything from our thoughts and our posture to how we treat ourselves and how we treat each other. In this sense somaterapia has much in common with the enactivist view of cognition. Like somaterapia, enactivism sees brains, bodies and environments as complex, reciprocally presupposing imbrications of nested autonomous systems sustaining themselves through the maintenance and exploration of ongoing adaptive tensions between self-production and self-distinction. Viewing somaterapia through the lens of enactivism thus allows us to potentially enrich the anti-fascist potential of this revolutionary practice. 1

Leaders and organizations worldwide faced tough decisions while responding to the complications of operating during the pandemic, COVID-19. Schools were not exempt from this mayhem. The rapid need for transition to virtual classrooms stressed teachers even as they battled with the virus. Teachers required a compassionate leader during the crisis. With stress at an all-time high, accompanied by uncertainty about the future, compassionate leadership was a crucial factor to navigate through such crises. Regarding compassionate leadership of school principals, researchers are yet to thoroughly study its conceptual and empirical relationship with teacher attitudes and behaviours. Although evolving research addresses the outcomes of compassionate leadership, little is known about how compassionate school principals impact work attitudes and behaviours of teachers. Hence, we present a broad theoretical framework of how compassionate leadership of school principals influences teacher work attitudes and job performance. Mainly, we analyse the relationships between compassionate leadership and teachers' resilience, work engagement, psychological well-being, and job performance. We base our study on trust, positive emotions, and self-efficacy theories to explain the compassionate leadership process. We advance research propositions and discuss the implications for future research and compassionate leadership practices at schools.

Abstract
Institutional gatekeepers play an increasingly important role in social work research, and their involvement in the research process is essential for the development of a usable knowledge base. This article explores the experience of recruiting participants through institutional gatekeepers for research on hard-to-reach populations in social work. The article aims to find out how researchers negotiate access to research participants with institutional gatekeepers. A qualitative research strategy was used to accomplish this goal. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with researchers revealed that the researchers enter into negotiations with institutional gatekeepers with some idea of the challenges and risks, but in part they enter into the unknown and are forced to make situational assessments in joint interactions. Research evolves and transforms based on how the researcher moves through the research process, what types of gatekeepers the researcher seeks at different stages of the research process and for what purpose. We identified three basic forms of negotiating access with institutional gatekeepers: logistical assistance, barter transaction and trust-based collaboration. This article looks at the different kinds of relationships that exist between researchers, gatekeepers and hard-to-reach population. It examines the power dynamics involved in the recruitment of marginalised groups through gatekeepers in social work research.

AbstractFramed within the social constructionist interpretive phenomenological approach, I explore the perceptions and social experiences of two Arab girls living in Sweden. A phenomenological interpretive analysis was used to examine the unstructured in‐depth interviews. The research focuses on the migrants' perceptions of social integration framed as a 'melting pot' to a 'salad bowl' integration. The 'melting pot' is a metaphor for assimilationists' perspectives on integration which means melting down into a new identity while losing oneself. This was expressed as submission, drawing a line of 'differences' between 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' integration. Contrary, 'salad bowl' is a metaphor for social integration as a process of creating and nurturing social connections that lead to co‐existence with trust, reciprocity, and a sense of belonging. I present a two‐fold argument connecting social resilience and social integration as the foundation of migrants' social experiences in the host country: (1) the visibility of migrants as 'beings' rather than 'becomings' should guide the pragmatic approach to integration; and (2) the social and political space for migrants should include their voices and engagement in right‐based policies, as well as a shared sense of responsibilities, connectedness, and co‐existence.

AbstractFrom the classic gene-centred view of evolution, cooperation is a mystery. This paper reviews the cultural evolutionary approach, which asks how genes and culture both carry information across generations to produce adaptive responses. Cultural evolution approaches ritual, religion and spirituality as collective responses to cooperation challenges. Ritual engages with individual and collective neuro-biological responses that cue group cohesion and facilitate trust. Ritual simultaneously cues social learning and can alleviate anxiety by downregulating neurological arousal. Religion forms a complex set of socio-cultural behaviours and beliefs that facilitate group identification and may help to resolve classic dilemmas of cheaters and free-riders who threaten the long-term survival of cooperative systems. Spirituality engages ways of being that are targeted at relational, holistic, and communal awareness that facilitates healthy relationships among individuals, communities and ecosystems. The cultural evolutionary view can reveal an underlying sensibility to beliefs and behaviours that seem on their surface nonsensical to an outside observer—helping to explain why they persist across groups despite costliness to individuals. It can also help to shed light on why some religious and spiritual forms spread while others do not, providing insight into how these forms change when groups mix.

In an era where corporate social responsibility (CSR) dominates organizational agendas, the dimension of team diversity remains largely overshadowed. Despite its transformative potential, the interplay between team diversity and consumer product acceptance has been under-represented in the literature. This study illuminates the potency of team diversity as a critical CSR dimension, revealing its impact on bolstering product acceptance. In the context of clean meat, two experimental studies demonstrate that consumers are more willing to try a product developed by a company with a more diverse team (e.g. race and gender), as such firms are likely to account for a diversity of perspectives, thus enhancing consumer trust. Additionally, perceived authenticity moderates this effect, in that consumers of more authentic brands will be more trusting, regardless of the level of team diversity. The study provides critical insights into how consumers' perception of team diversity within the firm influences product adoption, and how both team diversity and perceived authenticity drive trustworthiness. The findings offer practical implications for marketers of clean meat and other novel products to accelerate market acceptance and consequently, address broader societal challenges, whilst emphasizing the importance of fostering diversity and promoting brand authenticity.

Abstracts
Informal groupings like the G7 aim to address global development challenges but lack the administrative and budgetary capacity to drive change directly. Instead, the G7 seeks to catalyze international action that reflects its priorities. For example, the G7 attempts to set the international development agenda by publishing annual communiqués with actionable commitments designed to influence the behavior of G7 donor countries, non-G7 donor countries, and international organizations. But questions about the G7's ultimate impact persist, as critics contend the informal G7 can do little more than pay lip service to development challenges. We provide empirical evidence that the G7 shapes international development in two ways. First, when the G7 emphasizes a policy area in its annual communiqués, donors allocate more aid to that policy area. Second, when the G7 highlights a policy area in its annual communiqués, donors establish more trust funds in that policy area. This suggests the G7 serves simultaneous coordination and orchestration roles in international development: it coordinates its member states' aid and orchestrates non-G7 bilateral and multilateral aid. The study's theory, approach, and findings can inform further research on whether and how informal organizations ultimately affect states, formal international organizations, international cooperation, and global governance.

AbstractConcerns about affective polarization are on the rise globally, and it has been associated with negative outcomes such as diminished trust in government and discrimination against out‐partisans. While elected politicians are typically thought to be a major source of mass‐level affective polarization, and despite the policy and representation consequences of heightened partisan hostility in legislatures, existing research has focused almost exclusively on the measurement and explanation of affective polarization among citizens. As a result, we know far less about the magnitude and sources of elite affective polarization. Here, we take a step towards addressing this gap using an original survey of hundreds of Canadian local politicians, a setting uniquely situated for addressing the role of a host of individual‐level and institutional‐level predictors of affective polarization. We find that Canadian local politicians are, on average, less affectively polarized than the citizens they represent. However, levels of affective polarization among these politicians vary considerably, with higher levels of affective polarization among politicians who are ideologues, partisans, and who harbor strong progressive ambition. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on affective polarization and describe the need for comparative studies of affective polarization among political elites.