The influence of branding on adolescent smoking behaviour: exploring the mediating role of image and attitudes

• This study investigates the continuing effects of tobacco marketing communications in a post advertising era, focusing on the constructs of brand awareness, brand image, attitude formation and intention to smoke by adolescents.
• A conceptual model is presented, based on 926 respondents from a UK wide study, to assess brand‐related interrelationships and influences of peers on adolescents' attitudes toward smoking and intention to smoke.
• Results show the strong influence of branding on both attitude and intention, and have implications for government anti‐smoking policies specifically in regard to generic packaging and point of sale displays.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The temporal nature of legitimation: the case of IFRS8

Legitimation can operate on an episodic or continual basis [Suchman, M.C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610]. We examine the temporal legitimation of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB)’s actions during the adoption and review of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 8 ‘Operating Segments’. We conceptualise the controversy surrounding IFRS8 as an episode when the IASB sought segmental reporting convergence with the US standard, Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 131. Interpreting evidence from 15 (20) semi-structured interviews undertaken in 2009 (2011), before (after) entities reported under IFRS8, reveals its adoption precipitated an episodic legitimacy threat from selected audiences to the actions of the IASB. We discuss the IASB's attempt to influence legitimation for this episode through commitment to a post-implementation review [IFRS Foundation. (2011). Post implementation reviews: Plan for developing the framework for conducting post-implementation reviews. IASB Board meeting February 2011. Retrieved July 27, 2011, from http://www.ifrs.org/NR/rdonlyres/3E1502E4-F1E8-4907-838B-FFB20C7268ED/0/PIR02111st2ndb04obs.pdf] of IFRS8. Interpreting legitimacy concerns across diverse audiences about specific actions of the IASB (the introduction of IFRS8) enables us to draw conclusions about the resilience of the IASB as a standard setting organisation, in itself.     

Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability

This article examines the existing confusion over the multiple leadership styles related to successful implementation of corporate social responsibility/sustainability in organisations. The researchers find that the problem is the complex nature of sustainability itself. We posit that organisations are complex adaptive systems operating within wider complex adaptive systems, making the problem of interpreting just in what way an organisation is to be sustainable, an extraordinary demand on leaders. Hence, leadership for sustainability requires leaders of extraordinary abilities. These are leaders who can read and predict through complexity, think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive organisational change and have the emotional intelligence to adaptively engage with their own emotions associated with complex problem solving. Leaders and leadership is a key interpreter of how sustainability of the organisation ‘links’ to the wider systems in which the organisation sits, and executing that link well requires unusual leaders and leadership systems.     

How do firm characteristics affect the subsidies provided by the unemployment insurance system?

The experience-rated method of financing unemployment insurance in the US is incomplete because of the imposition of both maximum and minimum tax rates. The result is a pattern of cross-subsidization to those firms that generate considerable layoffs from those firms that exhibit a stable pattern of employment. Past studies have investigated this cross-subsidization by industries, but have not examined in detail whether or not the characteristics of the firm play an important role. The research presented herein examines the relationship between particular characteristics of the firm – age, size, average wage, and seasonality of employment – and their effect on whether the firm is subsidized or not. Other than the industry classification, age appears to be the most significant determinant of subsidization. It appears that both young and old firms display a higher probability of subsidizing middle-age firms.     

Affectual trust in the workplace

While trust is increasingly recognized as central to the functioning of relationships in general and to business relationships in particular, there has been very little attention paid to the nature of the experience of trust – as distinct from its antecedents and outcomes. When the nature of trust is considered, it is most often presented as a rational calculus of cost and benefit. This ignores the emotional content of trust that, we argue, is central to the understanding of the phenomenon. An understanding of these emotions and the way they combine with the cognitive elements of trust allows a clearer view of why differing conditions lead to different manifestations of trust, and how these in turn lead to different relational benefits. This paper presents an affect-based framework for trust consisting of cognitive and emotional elements. This is used to consider in-depth interviews with service providers talking about their jobs and their employer. The affect-based framework allows us to understand the distancing that has occurred between employer and employee and to consider the reasons for this distance. Suggestions for the remedying of this situation are proposed.     

Swedish engineering employers: The search for industrial peace in the absence of centralised collective bargaining

The Swedish engineering employers’ association recently shifted away from the dramatic decentralisation of bargaining it had pioneered. Behind this shift were employer desires for better guarantees of industrial peace. The authors conclude by stressing the importance of the relationships between employer strategy, historical contingency and debates on bargaining structure.     

Modern Strategies for Time Series Regression

This paper discusses several modern approaches to regression analysis involving time series data where some of the predictor variables are also indexed by time. We discuss classical statistical approaches as well as methods that have been proposed recently in the machine learning literature. The approaches are compared and contrasted, and it will be seen that there are advantages and disadvantages to most currently available approaches. There is ample room for methodological developments in this area. The work is motivated by an application involving the prediction of water levels as a function of rainfall and other climate variables in an aquifer in eastern Australia.     

Constructing an entrepreneurial life: liminality and emotional reflexivity in identity work

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the identity work of a budding entrepreneur through a longitudinal case study based on his ongoing personal reflections as he tries to construct an entrepreneurial life. In particular, we investigate the role of emotional reflexivity and liminality, concepts that give us analytical purchase in exploring the complex dynamics of this identity work. The liminal condition of multiple identity positions enables our informant to experiment with and integrate several parallel identity narratives as he tries on socio-political constructions of ‘the entrepreneur’ for size; and it is the permanence of the liminal condition that makes emotional reflexivity necessary so he can handle the constant lack he experiences. The contribution of our work lies in exploring how the operation of the discourse of enterprise never closes on the centre of subjectivity that is imputed in that discourse, and how our subject, through emotional reflexivity, deals with this fundamental lack.     

An exploration of student failure on an undergraduate accounting programme of study

Academic failure creates financial and emotional issues for students, with associated resource and performance implications for higher education institutions. The literature reveals that much of the work on student performance is quantitative, restricting understanding of the deeper feelings and perceptions of students towards their studies. This paper explores undergraduate student performance from an experiential perspective, recognising the complexity and subjectivity of academic performance. Findings appear to highlight: the negative focus of reasoning underlying the choice of study; the impact of affect; the importance of the role of the tutor; the tutor expectations gap; levels of control and personal responsibility for learning; and patterns of participation as possible significant and important factors in understanding academic performance. Finally, the implications of the findings are discussed and further research outlined in terms of developing a predictive model that could offer early identification of students who are susceptible to academic failure and establishing appropriate, proactive support strategies for such students.