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Interest in employee mindfulness has increased dramatically in recent years, fueled by several important conceptual articles, numerous studies documenting the benefits of mindfulness for employee outcomes, and the adoption of mindfulness-based practices in many Fortune 500 organizations. Despite this growing interest, the vast majority of research on employee mindfulness has taken an intrapersonal focus, failing to appreciate the ways in which mindfulness may enhance work-related relational processes and outcomes. The authors explore possible associations between mindfulness and relationally oriented workplace phenomena, drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship examining mindfulness in romantic relationships, child–parent relationships, patient–healthcare provider relationships, and student–teacher relationships. A framework is proposed that links mindfulness to three distinct relationally oriented processes, which are expected to have downstream effects on work-related relational outcomes. The authors then take the proposed framework and discuss possible extensions to a variety of unique workplace relationships and discuss critical next steps in advancing the relational science of mindfulness.

Purpose – This chapter examines the evolution of new audit and traceability systems in New Zealand horticultural export industries. Identified as one trajectory in New Zealand agriculture partly resulting from neoliberal reform, the arrival of audit culture in food export industries has significantly repositioned these export sectors, particularly in relation to how they might respond to new energy and climate change challenges.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews the neoliberalisation of New Zealand agriculture in the 1980s and then examines the emergence of specific industry, audit and regulatory responses to new challenges around energy and climate change. Horticultural export sectors are used to demonstrate these responses and then compared with other, more productivist-oriented sectors in New Zealand.

Findings – The argument presented at the end of this chapter is that those food export sectors that have embraced the new audit approaches rather than taking a more productivist pathway will be better positioned to cope with the shocks of new energy costs and climate change requirements.

Originality/value – This chapter demonstrates the variable outcomes of neoliberal reform in agriculture. It identifies new audit and governance technologies as both an essential contributor to understanding the nature of global food chains and a potentially important contributor to achieving greater agri-food resilience in the face of future shocks like climate change.

At the outset of this book, we argued that it was important that we study agricultural “policy regimes” rather than agricultural policy itself. Our reasoning was that our interest lies in the actual outcomes in terms of farming practice, industry arrangements, global trade linkages, technology assemblages, and agroecological relationships in particular countries and regions. It is a convenient fiction that these practices and arrangements are the direct result of the formal agricultural policy arrangements in each specific country. In reality, the formal policy process in each country (including not only agriculture, but also, in some cases, rural, environmental, trade, and social development policy) can be argued to be in constant interaction with wider global politics, geographically specific environmental and cultural dynamics, prevailing farm practices, and new technologies. To recognize this full assembly of dynamics that coordinate to determine actual farm practice, we use the term “policy regimes.” In neoliberalized economies such as New Zealand, there is even a strong sense in which devolved governance at the industry and sector level now operates within these regimes in the same way that formal agricultural policy does in European countries.

Purpose – This chapter introduces the book collection and sets the theoretical framework for the subsequent chapters.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the book is to re-interpret major challenges to global agriculture – particularly climate change and the food crisis of 2008 – as demonstrating shocks to the resilience of global food systems.

Findings – Using resilience to shocks as a key quality of food systems enables recent crises to be understood as central to the ongoing dynamics of food systems rather than simply atypical events. Alongside climate change and food security, other potential shocks are identified: biosecurity, energy, financial and volcanic.

Originality/value – This framework establishes new criteria for examining the potential merit of multifunctional and neo-liberal policy regimes with world food systems.

Purpose – This study compares the historical evolution of two particular models of dairy policy: supply management in Canada and deregulated cooperative monopolisation in New Zealand.

Design/methodology/approach – Both cases draw on historical sources and other secondary data.

Findings – Despite national adherence to neoliberalism and global trade reform, both Canada and New Zealand have arguably developed dairy sectors that are operating according to unique local dynamics and with vastly different outcomes. The result is a model in Canada which is potentially more resilient to future shocks than the New Zealand model.

Originality/value – By identifying the contradictory outcomes of local dairy policy development within a neoliberalist context, the chapter is able to explore the potential resilience of each sector in a way that hasn't been achieved before.

Reidar Almås is professor of rural sociology and regional policy at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He founded and directed Centre for Rural Research 1982–2007 and is currently senior advisor at CRR. He has written the Agricultural History of Norway (2002), and has published more than 15 books on rural issues, included ‘Globalisation, Localisation and Sustainable Livelihoods’ with Geoffrey Lawrence. His current research concerns agricultural policy, climate change resilience and mitigation and power in the food chain. Currently Almås is president of the International Rural Sociological Association (IRSA).

EARL (Electronic Access to Resources in Libraries) is a collaborative approach to establishing a national networked information and resource sharing service for public libraries in the UK. This paper provides information on the early stages of EARL during 1994 and 1995 which resulted in a pilot demonstration service being developed as a result of a scoping study. The achievements to date are then outlined and these include membership of EARL by 120 library authorities who use it to provide e‐mail facilities, creation of web pages, access to databases and the development of EARLweb which provides a gateway to a number of Internet resources likely to be of use in public libraries. The current work is described including the British Library funded project, Readiness, the work of the Task Groups and collaboration with European partners. In conclusion the challenges presented to EARL members in the future are included.