Keeping Your Financial Planner to Yourself: Racial and Cultural Differences in Financial Planner Referrals

Literature suggests that the use of a financial expert by Black households improves savings and investment behaviors. However, these households lack the financial knowledge and sophistication needed to select an appropriate financial expert. This admitted inability results in Black households relying on the recommendations of friends and family in selecting and hiring a financial expert. However results from this study suggest that Blacks who have successfully chosen a financial expert, i.e., are satisfied, are nearly two times (92 %) less likely than non-Blacks to refer their financial planner to others. Decomposition analyses indicate that over 80 % of satisfied Blacks should be willing to provide a referral yet only 50 % do. The largest significant component of the difference in referral rates is culturally based perception differences of the variables used in determining the net benefit of providing a referral.     

A Sorting Model for Group Decision Making: A Case Study of Water Losses in Brazil

Many water supply systems in Brazil have serious problems related to the high index of water losses, which provokes financial and environmental impacts. This is an immediate consequence of an inadequate maintenance plan, allied to natural and budgetary constraints. In addition, in these types of problems it is commonplace to consider the opinions of many managers, such as those from the operational, environmental and financial sectors of Water Companies. In view of this, a sorting multicriteria model to support group decision making is developed. We proposed an approach which sorts the areas of the system which are located in critical zones of water losses into categories, and which takes into account different points of view and considers uncertainty in criteria weights by using only ordinal information, so as to make it viable to manage the maintenance plan and to use the scant financial resources more efficiently. The SMAA-TRI method is used to tackle the group sorting problematic by categorizing the network into zones where losses are intense and thus to focus the managers’ effort on the most critical regions. A case study in Brazil is presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the approach proposed.     

Ethical issues in contemporary human resource development

Training and development activities are perhaps the aspects of HRM that are least likely to come under ethical scrutiny. However, despite an espousal of ethical humanism, and various attempts to develop professional standards, training and development activities can be vulnerable to unethical practice.     

Travail domestique et espace-temps des femmes

The subject of this article is the division of labour between the sexes which is specific to capitalism, and the characteristics of the space-time of women. On the basis of works written by historians, we are trying to show that the present division of labour which sentences women primarily to domestic work and men to productive work, is linked to the specifically capitalist separation between production and reproduction. The whole sphere of reproduction where specialized institutions such as school or medicine are closely linked to the family, contributes, through the transformations of domestic work, to the establishment of new social relationships: the children are permanent objects of care and education, the women are defined in terms of mother-wives. Those transformations can be seen in those of the space and time of urban structures and housing. Now the space-time of women seems mainly structured by domestic work. Concrete elements underline it: for example the space-time imposed upon women is delimited by a series of prohibitions bearing upon those places and times that do not belong to domestic work. The constitution of this space-time is based upon the negation of women's work within production. Reformulated in terms of mobility, the space-time of women differs according to social classes but its main features stem from the division of labour between the sexes and the status of the mother-wife.     

Hot or not? The role of cycling in ASEAN megacities: Case studies of Bangkok and Manila

The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recognizes the role of nonmotorized transport for sustainable urban development in its policy framework. National and local policymakers in Thailand and The Philippines, two tropical countries without a tradition of urban cycling, are increasingly paying attention to cycling as well. This article aims to assess the current situation and progress in cycling, using Bangkok and Metropolitan Manila as case study cities, and to describe the necessary conditions for advancing the significance of cycling in tropical megacities. This is done by operationalizing the so-called Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) framework, which has been used in transition studies since 2008, however, never for cycling. As such this article also “tests” this framework for its application in sustainable transportation. The two case studies are characterized with regards to the current role of cycling in the mobility system, its infrastructure, governance system, and existing research on the potential and barriers. We find that TIS can readily be applied to our cases, with the analysis showing that elements such as knowledge development, actor networks, e-bike adoption, infrastructure, resource mobilization and legitimation are not well developed; on the other hand, flat terrain, attention for cycling for health and environment, heavy congestion, expansion of public transport, growing bike industry, active university communities, and the emergence of advocacy coalitions, could open up opportunities for increasing its modal share.     

Australia Demonstrates the Rise of Populism is About More than Economics

Votes for established centre‐right and centre‐left political parties are falling across the developed world. Australia is not immune from this trend: in the 2016 federal election, more people voted for minor parties than at any point since the Second World War. Australia is an interesting case study for the rest of the world on the origins of populist support. Political scientists have struggled to separate the effects of cultural shifts and poor economic outcomes (low wages and rising inequality) in many countries because these shifts have occurred simultaneously. However, in Australia the economy was relatively healthy during the period of rising minor party support. Our analysis suggests that falling trust in government and a backlash against the pace of social change explain much of the collapse in support for the political mainstream.     

New development: Transparent impact reporting in charity annual reports—benefits,challenges and areas for development

The effect of charitable activities on beneficiaries and society is at the heart of what charities exist to do, and stakeholders’ reasons for engaging with charities. Reporting publicly and transparently on this impact can form the basis of improved effectiveness, accountability, legitimacy and trust: potentially securing stakeholders’ ongoing support and engagement. However, significant challenges to transparent impact reporting are also acknowledged. This article explores these possible benefits, and challenges and highlights areas for development in practice and research.