Selling whiteness? – A critical review of the literature on marketing and racism

ABSTRACT

This article provides a critical review of the literature concerning marketing and racism, grounded in theoretical foundations drawn from critical race theory, whiteness theory and attendant models of privilege and oppression in society. The extant literature indicates a relationship between racism, marketing and social hierarchies which manifest with regard to marketing representations of people of colour and racialised groups; discriminatory practices in the marketplace and the roles of marketing professionals of colour. However, multiculturalism and anti-racism efforts attempt to counter racist practices; yet, the impacts of these efforts are unclear. Directions for future research are suggested.     

Nursing and technology: a love/hate relationship

The fundamental value of information technology in clinical settings is no longer in question, as clinicians enter and retrieve information in order to deliver care and the benefit of ubiquitous availability to clinical data using computers cannot be overplayed. The question now is how to increase adoption, improve productivity, and support transformational changes in health care delivery. It is important to get the interplay between people, process, and technology right for successful implementations which support care transformation. We must lead projects with the clinical practice changes being enabled by the technology, and then ensure the technology supports the practice change. Nurse leaders must consider letting the quality improvement process drive and define when and how technology is used, running our projects as practice changes and not IT implementations, with nursing sponsors owning the projects and leading the charge.     

Childcare Policy to Promote Child Wellbeing

This article reviews current evidence on the impact of childcare on child development and discusses the implications for current and future childcare policy in Australia.     

PREFERENCES FOR STATE TAX AND SPENDING POLICIES: EVIDENCE FROM SURVEY DATA ON THE ROLE OF INCOME

Employing a commonly-used method of creating a continuous income variable from categorical data, we obtain results from a fiscal survey that reveal a strong nonmonotonic effect of income on the willingness to pay additional taxes for state expenditures on education and public aid. The existence of income-demand schedules that are U- or inverted U-shaped casts doubt on the appropriateness of assuming that the median income voter is decisive. After investigating the sensitivity of our results to different income measures, we suggest that fiscal surveys should be designed to provide sufficiently detailed information about respondents'incomes, especially for high-income respondents.     

Privatization in Eastern Europe: Opportunities and pitfalls

More than 20 years of experience in Eastern Europe has proved that the only way to produce good organizational results is to put companies into the hands of real owners. That means privatization.     

Forest policy for sustainable commodity wood production: an examination drawing on the Australian experience

This paper presents a policy framework aimed at sustainability in Australia's wood-based industry. It commences with a historical overview to illuminate how culture and environment combined to fast-track Australia's plantation establishment. This maturing estate is now generating new choices about meeting wood needs and the future for native forests. The essence of the forest problem lies in the nature of commodity production where cost reduction, essential for the firm's survival, comes at the expense of native forest ecological integrity. The framework explicitly includes Australia's plantation wood resource that, by definition, is excluded from the ‘multiple use’ approach to managing native forests for wood production. Three systems are identified—native forests as self-regenerating ecosystems, wood production systems to meet human material needs and rural socio-economic systems—and a dual strategy developed to enhance their persistence capacity. This strategy combines shifting commodity wood production from native forests to plantations and adding value by domestic processing. The strategy works in a complementary way across the three systems, meaning that trade-off is avoided at this level. Native forest ecosystems cease to be threatened by the intensification pressures inherent in commodity production and relatively labour-intensive wood products manufacturers enhance their competitiveness by processing agriculturally grown wood. A highly integrated regional industry can enhance the economic viability of wood growing that helps buffer agricultural land against the price-cost squeeze of commodity production. The policy framework may not be economically efficient if, after removing government subsidies and props to the older and less competitive native forest based sector, further measures are required to stimulate investment in plantation processing. Under these conditions, a specific wood industry policy can be argued on environment grounds. Trade-off is between market interventionist industry policy and general economic efficiency—fundamentally different to the native forest conservation versus industry trade-off commonly understood.     

How e-WOM recommendations influence product consideration and quality of choice: A motivation to process information perspective

A laboratory experiment examines the effects of electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) on consumer consideration and choice of an experience product. Specifically, we manipulated the number of consumer recommendations and the optimality of the recommended product in a realistic online shopping environment. The results indicate that e-WOM is likely to result in more time considering the recommended product. For consumers more motivated to process information, e-WOM recommendations lead to more time spent on the choice task overall. Further, consumers with less motivation to process information make suboptimal decisions based on e-WOM recommendations. Consumers with a high motivation to process information are willing to accept recommendations and switch from declared attribute preferences, but choose only optimal products.     

Studies to Evaluate COBIT's Contribution to Organisations: Opportunities from the Literature, 2003–06

Information Technology control frameworks such as the Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) are designed to promote effective IT governance. This paper guides future scholarly evaluations of COBIT by identifying gaps in, and facilitating, research. It uses a framework to update a classification of the COBIT literature, by examining publications that report on how COBIT has been used in organisations. The findings from content analysis of extensive printed resources carried out on three occasions between 2003 and 2006 suggest that very few academically‐focused evaluations of COBIT implementations have been undertaken, despite COBIT's extensive use in organisations throughout the world. Analysis points to growing acceptance of COBIT by both academics and practitioners, as well as a maturation in practitioner discussion of the framework. However, considerable potential exists for academic research that evaluates COBIT's effectiveness, to determine COBIT's value for organisations.     

A Multi Dimensional Analysis of Warning Signal Words

Warning signal words (e.g. DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION) are often used on warning signs and labels to denote the level of hazard implied by the situation they indicate. This process of hazard matching assumes that warning signal words communicate primarily hazard and yet we know little about the alternative associations they may communicate. Here we take a broader perspective on warning signal words and consider whether they do lie on a single dimension of hazard or whether they are in fact multidimensional. Multidimensional analysis of similarity ratings of 17 signal words ratings revealed three dimensions ‐ the level of hazard implied by the signal words, the extent to which they explicitly implied a risk and the explicitness of the instruction given. A follow up study supported the interpretation of dimensions 1 and 2. The results support the practice of using signal words to achieve hazard matching, and further suggest that there might be utility in mapping signal words to the conditions that they indicate in terms of the extent to which the situation or product constitutes an explicit risk.     

A Hierarchy-of-Effects Approach to Designing a Social Marketing Game

While there is great enthusiasm and interest by social marketers for games as a social marketing intervention, there is little evidence of the impact of these games. This research seeks to fill this gap by testing a theoretical model based on the experiential hierarchy of effects. An online game about the physiological effects of drinking was designed for high-school students and implemented in an educational curriculum with 223 participants (96% response rate) completing an online survey. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and showed support for nine of the eleven hypotheses. The results show game characteristics of enjoyment (feel), knowledge (learn), and challenge (do) significantly related to attitudes and moderate-drinking behavioral intentions, ability to control drinking, and awareness of the physical consequences of drinking. There were no gender differences.