Flexible Working Practices In the Public,Not-For-Profit and Commercial Leisure Sectors In SCotland

Public sector leisure managers in the UK have been struggling, since the extension of compulsory competitive tendering to leisure management in 1989, to reconcile the conflicts between becoming more consumer led and satisfying the needs of the ‘recreationally deprived’. Rationalization has ensured that a fundamental priority for managers has been the introduction of more cost-effective working practices. This article examines the diversity in employment practices across the three sectors of the leisure industry, that is, the public, not-for-profit and private sectors. The case study evidence presented found clear differences between the sectors. Although managers in not-for-profit leisure facilities have more freedom to use greater flexibility in employment practices as compared with their public sector counterparts, they are still somewhat constrained by having to meet the social objectives set by their Board of Directors. Private sector managers were found to be providing the highest proportion of full-time jobs, although they offered lower conditions of employment. This was made possible by the funding certainties created by regular monthly/annual customer memberships.     

Kalecki on money and finance

It is argued that Kalecki had a greater appreciation of the role of the monetary sector than has been generally recognized, and that Kalecki presented ideas which can be seen as now embedded in the structuralist post Keynesian analysis of endogenous money and in the circuitist approach. Six key features of Kalecki's monetary analysis are identified. The paper outlines Kalecki's dismissal of the ‘Pigou effect’ and the ‘Keynes effect’, and then discussion the relationship between the ‘principle of increasing risk’ and the nature of the supply of credit. It discusses interest determination in Kalecki's writings and the manner in which he distinguished different types of money.     

The impact of SARS on China's human resources: implications for the labour market and level of unemployment in the service sector in Beijing,Guangzhou and Shanghai

In this paper, we examine the effects of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) on China's human resources, its labour-market and its level of employment and unemployment, looking specifically at what was one of its economically most vulnerable points, the hotel industry. The paper hypothesizes that the greatest impact would be on human resources in the service-industries and on particular sub-sectors, such as employment in hotels, located in three main cities in the PRC, in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, catering to both overseas as well as domestic tourism. It tentatively concludes that the almost dramatic demand and supply ‘shocks’ may have directly affected both the demand for and the supply of labour in the sub-sector, with discernable employment consequences.     

The Motivation and Effectiveness of Gas Industry Economic Regulation in New South Wales, 1912–39

The oldest industry in Australia subjected to economic regulation is the gas supply industry in the state of New South Wales. In this paper the aims and motivation of the New South Wales Government in establishing the regulatory regime in 1912 and the subsequent effectiveness in achieving them are determined. Initially the regulatory regime was based on ad hoc arrangements, but eventually a more permanent structure was devised that effectively defused political controversy over gas market pricing and stabilised prices rather than substantially lowered them.     

A framework for evaluating CDT practice with respect to the ethos of CDT

The increasing pressures of account-ability faced by schools have been the application of various adaptations of self-evaluation methods. However, charges of lack of objectivity (Simons in Skilbeck, 1984 p. 52) have been directed at such responses, and these were fuelled by observations that teachers lack the skills and understanding to undertake evaluation (Mathias, 1983).These pressures are intensified for Craft, Design & Technology as a result of its youth and the nature and brief existence of the subject. As a curriculum area it is different from its forerunners, yet most CDT teachers were not purposefully educated to teach it. The centralist nature of its introduction together with a misunderstanding of CDT and the skills demanded produced varying degrees of support and interpretation. This was compounded by the lack of CDT research and literature (Toft in Cross & McCormack, 1987 p.298).     

Tourism and the Australian economy

Consideration of the economic significance of tourism requires synthesis of a discrete tourism ‘industry’ from selected sectors of the economy and identification of its component activities which may then be used to relate expenditure by tourists, sectorally and spatially, to other elements in the economy. This approach is applied to create a profile of the Australian tourism industry at a national level and shows that tourism contributes a significant proportion to GDP and employs at least 3% of the labour force. This is comparable with the UK and other developed countries.