Business history is expanding to include a greater plurality of contexts, with the study of Chinese business representing a key area of growth. However, despite efforts to bring China into the fold, much of Chinese business history remains stubbornly distal to the discipline. One reason is that business historians have not yet reconciled with the field's unique origins and intellectual tradition. This article develops a revisionist historiography of Chinese business history that retraces the field's development from its Cold War roots to the present day, showing how it has been shaped by the particular questions and concerns of “area studies.” It then goes on to explore five recent areas of novel inquiry, namely: the study of indigenous business institutions, business and semi-colonial context, business at the periphery of empire, business during socialist transition, and business under Chinese socialism. Through this mapping of past and present trajectories, the article aims to provide greater coherence to the burgeoning field and shows how, by taking Chinese business history seriously, we are afforded a unique opportunity to reimagine the future of business history as a whole.

Multiple transitions across care settings can be disruptive for older adults with dementia and their care partners, and can lead to fragmented care with adverse outcomes. This scoping review was conducted to identify and classify care trajectories across multiple settings for people with dementia, and to understand the prevalence of multiple transitions and associated factors at the individual and organizational levels. Searches of three databases, limited to peer-reviewed studies published between 2007 and 2017, provided 33 articles for inclusion. We identified 26 distinct care trajectories. Common trajectories involved hospital readmission or discharge from hospital to long-term care. Factors associated with transitions were identified mainly at the level of demographic and medical characteristics. Findings suggest a need for investing in stronger community-based systems of care that may reduce transitions. Further research is recommended to address knowledge gaps about complex and longitudinal care trajectories and trajectories experienced by sub-populations of people living with dementia.

This study explored the coping strategies and social comparisons used by older adults on different loneliness trajectories (decreased loneliness, stable loneliness and degenerating loneliness). The adaptive consequences of social comparison in later life are recognised as an important strategy for preserving life satisfaction regardless of age-related losses. Coping strategies are also important in managing loneliness. Narrative interviews were conducted with lonely older adults (N = 11) who had participated in Wave One of the Maintaining Function and Well-being in Later Life Study Wales (CFAS Wales). The study found key differences in the coping strategies employed by older adults on different loneliness trajectories. Differences in coping styles between those who reported decreased loneliness and those who were chronically lonely stemmed from perceptions as to whether loneliness was modifiable or not. Different types of social comparison were also found to modulate the loneliness experience. The findings indicate that higher-order strategies (problem, emotional and meaning focused) are not distinct entities but are part of a dynamic process. The management of loneliness in later life may be dependent on several factors, including older adults’ interpretations of the cause of loneliness. These interpretations will have implications for interventions aimed at alleviating chronic loneliness, where the focus may have to be on changing older adult's perceptions of unmodifiable loneliness.

A grounded theory approach, consistent with the work of Strauss and Corbin, was used to undertake semi-structured interviews with 17 older people, to explore their experiences of living in a care home, during the four- to six-week period following the move. Purposive sampling was initially adopted, thereafter, theoretical sampling was employed to recruit individuals identified by care managers within older peoples’ community teams and care home managers within a large Health and Social Care Trust in the United Kingdom. Consistent with grounded theory methodology, data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously. Constant comparative analysis underpinned data analysis and data management techniques. Data analysis revealed five distinct categories that captured these experiences. These were: (a) wanting to connect – ‘I am so lost here’, (b) wanting to adapt – ‘Well mentally you have to make the best of it’, (c) waiting for assistance – ‘it's a frustration for me’, (d) ‘waiting on the end’ – I am making no plans’ and (e) wanting to re-establish links with family and home – ‘I love getting home and I like getting out to the town’. Together these five categories formed the basis of the core category, ‘Waiting and Wanting’, which encapsulates the initial adaptation experiences of the men and women in the study. Findings indicate that individuals were dependent on others to create a sense of belonging, independence and wellbeing. Moreover, risk aversive practices were perceived as a threat to individuals’ independence and autonomy. Recommendations include the need to amend policy and practice for the development of a bespoke induction programme for each resident facilitated by a senior member of the care home staff working in partnership with individuals and families, in addition to the health and social care team, to support a more positive transition for new residents, relatives and care home staff.

To adjust future care policies for an ageing population, policy makers need to understand when and why older adults rely on different sources of care (e.g. informal support versus formal services). However, previous scholars have proposed competing conceptualisations of the link between formal and informal care, and empirical examinations have often lacked a dynamic approach. In this study, we applied an analytical method (sequence analysis), allowing for an exploratory and dynamic description of care utilisation. Based on 15 years of data from 473 community-dwelling older individuals in Denmark, we identified four distinct clusters of care trajectories. The probability of belonging to each cluster varied with predisposing factors (such as age and gender), needs factors (such as dependence in activities of daily living and medical conditions) and enabling factors (such as co-habitation and contact with adult children). A key finding was that trajectories characterised by sporadic use of informal care were associated with low needs and strong social relations, whereas trajectories characterised by reliance on formal care were associated with high needs and limited contact with children. Taken together, our findings provide new evidence on the associations between care use and multiple determining factors. The dynamic approach to studying care use reveals that sources of individual care utilisation change over time as the individual and societal determinants change.

Researchers note that the transitions of secondary students with disability in and out of the juvenile justice system are problematic for both the young person and leadership teams of their sending and receiving schools. Much of the literature focuses on barriers to successful transitions; however, there are some accounts of positive transition practices. In this article, we identify these positive practices and outline the steps school principals and executives involved in transitioning secondary school students with disability in and out of juvenile justice settings can take to smooth the way and improve student outcomes for this vulnerable population.

Informal carers, also referred to as partners in care, provide the bulk of care to people living with dementia across a range of community settings; however, the changing experiences and contexts of providing informal care for people with dementia in rural settings are under-studied. Drawing on 27 semi-structured interviews with former partners in care in Southwestern and Northern Ontario, Canada, we examine experiences of providing and accessing care over the course of the condition and across various settings. Our findings illustrate the challenges associated with navigating the system of care, finding people who understand dementia in the surrounding community, negotiating hours of home support, facing resistance to respite from the person with dementia, and feeling pressured into long-term care. We argue that partners' time, bodies and choices are spatially constrained within rural and small-town settings and the current systems of home, community and long-term care.

The decision to start a new career might seem an unusual one to make in later life. However, England has seen a steady rise in numbers of workers undertaking an apprenticeship in their fifties and sixties, through a government-funded policy initiative opening up training to adults at all stages of the lifecourse. At the same time, in most Western contexts, the amalgamation of ‘older’ and ‘apprentice’ presents a challenge to normative understandings of the ‘right age’ to undertake vocational training. What is it like to make a new start as an older worker? This paper draws on new qualitative research conducted in England with older apprentices, exploring how they found the experience and management of training ‘out of step’. Inspired by Elizabeth Freeman's temporalities approach, our findings reveal how powerful norms of age-normativity routinely structure understandings, experiences and identities of older-age training for both organisations and apprentices. While these norms demand careful negotiation by both apprentices and trainers, if managed successfully older workers gain significant benefits from their training. These findings have resonance not only for England, but for other international contexts considering expanding vocational training into older age. The paper concludes that if adult training schemes are to succeed, some fundamental changes may need to be made to understandings of age and ageing within contemporary workplaces.

Extra-care housing has been an important and growing element of housing and care for older people in the United Kingdom since the 1990s. Previous studies have examined specific features and programmes within extra-care locations, but few have studied how residents negotiate social life and identity. Those that have, have noted that while extra care brings many health-related and social benefits, extra-care communities can also be difficult affective terrain. Given that many residents are now ‘ageing in place’ in extra care, it is timely to revisit these questions of identity and affect. Here we draw on the qualitative element of a three-year, mixed-method study of 14 extra-care villages and schemes run by the ExtraCare Charitable Trust. We follow Alemàn in regarding residents' ambivalent accounts of life in ExtraCare as important windows on the way in which liminal residents negotiate the dialectics of dependence and independence. However, we suggest that the dialectic of interest here is that of the third and fourth age, as described by Gilleard and Higgs. We set that dialectic within a post-structuralist/Lacanian framework in order to examine the different modes of enjoyment that liminal residents procure in ExtraCare's third age public spaces and ideals, and suggest that their complaints can be read in three ways: as statements about altered material conditions; as inter-subjective bolstering of group identity; and as fantasmatic support for liminal identities. Finally, we examine the implications that this latter psycho-social reading of residents' complaints has for enhancing and supporting residents' wellbeing.