Redefining the Recruitment Niche for the Guide Association in the United Kingdom

This article shows how the concept of a recruitment niche can be valuable in understanding the difficulties the Guide Association in the United Kingdom has in recruiting new volunteers. Understanding Guiding as career volunteering, within serious leisure, shows how the distinctive ethos of the existing volunteers contributes to the social construction of the recruitment niche. The defining boundaries of the niche restrict the ability to recruit new volunteers. Thus the article gives an example of how a recruitment niche for a voluntary organization can be defined using the socially constructed ethos of volunteers involved in career volunteering rather than by characteristics such as level of educational attainment. It also demonstrates the implications of this for voluntary organizations wishing to increase recruitment.     

Preparations for the Euro by U.K. SMEs with Trading Links with the Euro Currency Area

This paper examines euro preparations by U.K. SMEs with trading links with the euro currency area. It suggests, notwithstanding the U.K.'s decision not to join the euro in the first wave, that SMEs with euro area trade links are particularly likely to have had to make some adjustments for the introduction of the euro. The paper assesses this level of preparation and seeks to understand if it is contingent upon the characteristics of the business, its geographic location, its business orientation and the type of trade link (e.g. importer/exporter). The paper finds, contrary to previous research, that business characteristics, geographic location and business orientation are, on the whole, of limited value in explaining euro preparation. What, instead, seems more significant is the type of link with the euro area: importers, exporters and those with subsidiary businesses in the euro area appear more likely to have made preparations for the euro than U.K. SMEs that are part of a euro supply-chain or are a subsidiary of a euro area business.     

Applying Foucault to a future-oriented layered analysis in a post-bubble Japanese community

In this paper I argue that a hybrid research methodology that integrates Foucauldian post-structuralist approaches and concepts enhances future-oriented layered analyses. This hybrid application of post-structuralism in conjunction with Causal Layered Analysis to a real-world problematic facilitated greater depth of understanding of and insight into the specified futures problematic, augmenting the repertoire of identifiable preferred futures. Using this approach I present a retrospective account of an actual case study within the context of a post-bubble Japanese community revitalisation program and the community’s struggle to articulate and communicate preferred images of the future. I conclude with a post-investigation critique scrutinising this research methodology and offer suggestions for the futures of layered analyses.     

The use of incremental goodness of fit indices in structural equation models in marketing research

Indices of the incremental goodness fit of structural equation models can provide useful information beyond that provided by statistical significance tests. Two such indices are described, and their advantages are illustrated with several marketing research studies. Additional discussion focuses on the issue of appropriate null hypotheses against which to test proposed models.     

Leaders in change : Solar energy owners and the implications for future adoption rates

Information on the characteristics of the initial wave of homeowners who installed solar energy systems is presented and then used to anticipate future solar market penetration patterns. Surveys of these adopters reveal high education and income levels; professional and executive occupations; economic, energy saving, and environmental concern as the principal purchase motivations; and high satisfaction levels. As a group, these individuals conform to the “early adopter” type identified in innovation diffusion research rather than the “innovator” type that would be expected at this early stage of commercialization. This characteristic, the influence of economic motivations, owners' high satisfaction levels, and the findings of other surveys indicate that widespread solar system adoption is probable if the initial high cost barrier can be reduced.     

Review article. Kalecki on imperfect competition, inflation and money

This paper reviews the final two volumes of Kalecki's CollectedWorks. It first discusses, based on the papers in Vol. VI, hiscontributions on cartels, on Nazi Germany, the development ofindices of business fluctuations and of national income accounts,and the movement of prices and costs over the business cycle.Drawing on the papers reproduced in Vol. VII, this paper continuesby discussing Kalecki's writings on rationing, inflation, imperfectcompetition and unemployment, money and finance, the nationaldebt and the welfare state, international economic arrangements,the post-war American economy and econometrics and methodology.     

Housing Finance in the 1980's

Strains evident in the housing finance system on the eve of the 80's suggest significant difficulties in meeting the housing demands of the decade ahead. The annual increase in residential mortgages outstanding had climbed to historic levels, relative to GNP, without raising residential construction spending above its ordinary share of GNP. This very weak housing bang for the mortgage buck is traceable, ultimately, to the soaring volume of sales in the used home market, relative to those in the new home market. With significant inflation rates continuing through the 1980's, mortgage lenders will be under great pressure from demands to refinance the existing housing stock, even if the rate of ownership turnover does not persist at the levels of the late 70's. And, as the dollar demands mount, for new and used housing purchases, lenders may find repayment flows from earlier loans continuing to provide a historically small fraction of the funds they need in supplying these demands.     

Collective Personality,Culture, and Team Effectiveness

By viewing personality from knowledge structures and behavioral regularities perspectives as functionally isomorphic, referent-shift compositional models of self-concept and conscientiousness are developed. In these models, common measures of personality at the individual level are applied to the collective as a whole and hypothesized to influence team effectiveness linearly and interactively. Culture is also proposed to moderate the collective personality and team effectiveness relationship. The results supported some of the hypotheses in a sample of 62 teams of business students from the United States and Ghana. Implications for team research and management are discussed.     

Shark bytes: message sensation value and emotional appeals in shark diving websites

Websites designed to promote risky activities provide a novel context for studying the role of emotional appeals and message sensation value (MSV) in risk messages in order to ultimately understand the type of messages that motivate people to engage in risk behaviors. Framed in theories of message design and emotion, this study investigates representations of threat, efficacy, and the extent to which risk messages appeal to a range of positive and negative emotions through the examination of 53 shark diving websites using content analysis and computer generated linguistic analysis. Results indicate that few websites provide explicit threat information (i.e. severity and susceptibility) but many do present implicit threats. Efficacy-related messages were present on all websites. Positive emotion was more common than negative emotion and there is little representation of the traditional components of MSV. Implications for theory development and communication about risk-seeking are addressed.