Preserving a Professional Institution: Emotion in Discursive Institutional Work

We studied the discursive institutional work written by pharmacy leaders as part of a larger institutional project to preserve the institution of pharmacy. Our analysis of monthly editorials printed in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association from 1960 to 2003 shows how different discrete emotions were systematically incorporated in specific rhetorical argument structures over the course of an institutional project. In contrast to previous research, we show how discursive institutional work that is directed to members of the same specific social group (e.g., a profession) can vary over time in response to significant events and changes in practices of the target audience. Our longitudinal study shows that the relative frequency of argument types, the incorporation of emotion, and the content of rhetorical argumentation changed over time. We contribute to theory about the role of emotions in discursive institutional work by unpacking the role of discrete emotions and showing how such discourse evolves over time in concert with field conditions.     

Seasonal Adjustment in a Market for Female Agricultural Workers

This article explores seasonal adjustment in the market for temporary agricultural labor. We estimate a model of participation allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity/selection bias using daily observations from Chilean panel data, and a model of daily earnings. Results indicate that seasonal wage variation is an important aspect of labor-market adjustment, contributing to a large change in labor force participation. The labor force participation rate of women is significantly more elastic to changes in the expected wage than is that for men. Nonetheless, we find evidence of substantial open unemployment during the slack season, especially for females, probably due to frictional and efficiency wage effects.     

routledge economics

Alan Jarvis, economics editor of Routledge, outlines his publishing plans for the coming year. He also describes Routledge's role as Hayek's publisher.     

ON MANAGING HYBRIDS: SOME DILEMMAS IN HIGHER EDUCATION MANAGEMENT

This is an exploratory and conceptual paper. It argues that the concept of a hybrid organisation offers a useful way of conceptualising some dilemmas of current higher education management. The process of hybridisation captures some of the internal stresses and management problems facing higher education institutions caught between quasi-market and commercial market pressures. The increasingly widespread contractual management style may offer an inappropriate coping structure for some of these dilemmas. An open, negotiating management style, making explicit the problems of accountability and legitimacy generated by hybridisation, may be the only way to maintain staff commitment, but is very hard to achieve in the current context.     

Factors that Influence Children's Developing Perceptions of Technology

Two instruments designed to ascertain children's conceptions of ‘technology’ were given to 315 English children in Years 2–6. A subset of 81 children and their teachers were interviewed. Responses to the same instruments were collected from 745 Western Australian children in the same year groups. Subsequently their teachers and 164 Australian children were interviewed. The Australian and English children had a similar range of concepts to explain technology, but the frequency of concepts varied. The results suggest that the stages of developing an inclusive concept of technology are mainly chronological, but the rates vary with individuals depending on a number of inter-related factors including home and school influence, ability, gender and opportunity to discuss ideas. Examination of these factors suggests there is a need for specific curriculum provision in technology based on adequate in- service training of teachers, which should also clarify the differences between science and technology. Children also need to be enabled to clarify their ideas through focused activities. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Leveraging customers’ multiple identities: identity synergy as a driver of organizational identification

Marketers want to encourage constituents to strongly identify with their organizations, because organizational identification contributes to positive firm outcomes. However, the extant research on organizational identity largely has overlooked the fact that an individual??s ??self?? actually is a collection of multiple social identities. This study is the first to propose and empirically demonstrate that marketers can leverage customers?? multiple societal roles (e.g., parent, environmentalist, professor) to build and reinforce their relationships with the firm. Specifically, the research introduces the concept of ??identity synergy.?? Identity synergy occurs when individuals?? involvement with an organization facilitates their pursuit of other important social identities. Our study shows that customer perception of identity synergy is positively related to identification with an organization. Moreover, the study helps explain the process by which antecedents of organizational identity (identity affirmation, identity support, and value congruence) positively affect customer-firm relationships by proposing and testing identity synergy as a mediator between these antecedents and organizational identification. The study also contributes to our understanding of organizational identity theory by introducing the new concept of peer identification, or identification with other members of the organization, such as other customers or volunteers. The empirical evidence demonstrates identity synergy??s role in building peer identification, as well as peer identification??s role in building organizational identification.     

A company model for research and development

A company model is presented which may be used to assess the effecton future company performance of the level of investment in research and development. A distinctive feature of the model is the postulation of research return curve which relates the available return on potential new capital investments to the amountof capital invested and the size of a research pool. The latter is related to past R & D expenditure. It is shown how the research return curve may be adjusted to represent different types of industry and how a suitable form for this curve may be derived from company records. Examples are given of the use of the model for sensitivity and optimization studies.