The contemporary NHS in Scotland.

This session provided an overview of the health services in Scotland. The challenges faced by healthcare services was discussed and the efforts made to ensure healthcare provision is of good quality while remaining efficient and affordable for all.

Working for Families Phase 1 Evaluation 2004-2006 Executive Summary.

This report presents an evaluation of Phase 1 of the Working for Families Fund (WFF) covering 2004-06. WFF was established to invest in new initiatives to improve the employability of parents who have difficulties in participating in the labour market, specifically in employment, education or training. The Fund supported these parents through helping them find sustainable childcare solutions and through providing or accessing other relevant employability-related services. In rural areas, barriers created by poor transport, limited services and the lack of a critical mass of clients were also particularly important. WFF contributes to the Scottish Executive’s Closing the Opportunity Gap approach to tackling poverty and disadvantage, by improving rates of employment and economic activity, and to its commitment to eradicating child poverty within a generation.

A rewarding experience? Exploring how crowdfunding is affecting music industry business models.

This paper provides an exploratory study of how rewards-based crowdfunding affects business model development for music industry artists, labels and live sector companies. The empirical methodology incorporated a qualitative, semi-structured, three-stage interview design with fifty seven senior executives from industry crowdfunding platforms and three stakeholder groups. The results and analysis cover new research ground and provide conceptual models to develop theoretical foundations for further research in this field. The findings indicate that the financial model benefits of crowdfunding for independent artists are dependent on fan base demographic variables relating to age group and genre due to sustained apprehension from younger audiences. Furthermore, major labels are now considering a more user-centric financial model as an innovation strategy, and the impact of crowdfunding on their marketing model may already be initiating its development in terms of creativity, strength and artist relations.