From restricted to complex exchange and beyond: social marketing’s change agenda

ABSTRACT

The forward thinking body of social marketing knowledge, rooted in commercial marketing tools, suffers from two potentially interlinked crisis of identity. First, there is the question of behavioural change to address difficult social problems. This embraces the development of co-ordinated multi-domain approaches for large scale social transformation. Second, there is the concept of exchange, the defining characteristic of social marketing yet problematic and the least researched of its benchmark criteria. Recognising the centrality of exchange, we address the broadening social marketing discourse, suggesting a focus beyond restricted to complex exchanges. This paper presents the insights from the application of Interactive Management, a system-based methodology, embracing a systemic change and a complex exchange agenda. Our case study finds the contexts for restricted and complex exchanges through barriers as well as structural and influence maps. Understanding complex exchanges closes the gap between the theoretical and practical debates surrounding contemporary social marketing and the role and function of exchange theory.     

Women Leaders in a Globalized World

This article will defend a very simple thesis. In a diverse globalized “flat” world with expanding economic opportunities and risks, we will need to revisit and revise our mindsets about free enterprise, corporate governance, and leadership. That we can change our mindsets and world view is illustrated by studies of primate behavior, and the kind of leadership necessary in a global economy is, interestingly, exemplified by women. This paper has benefited greatly from the earlier work of Nancy Adler at McGill University and from my colleagues, Lisa Gundry, Margaret Posig, Lili Powell, Laurel Ofstein and Jane Carlson. Patricia H. Werhane is the Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University with a joint appointment as the Peter and Adeline Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics and Senior Fellow at of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics in the Darden School at the University of Virginia. Professor Werhane has published numerous articles and is the author or editor of twenty books including Persons, Rights and Corporations, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Managerial Decision-Making with Oxford University Press and Employment and Employee Rights (with Tara J. Radin and Norman Bowie) with Blackwell’s. She is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the journal of the Society for Business Ethics. Professor Werhane is a member of the academic advisory team for the newly created Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics housed at the University of Virginia.     

Relief and Redress for Targets of Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying is a particularly insidious form of counterproductive workplace behavior that results in significant costs to both targets and organizations. We explore existing and potential avenues of relief and redress available to targets. Relief refers to activities focused on eliminating the bullying as well as the mechanisms used to treat those who have been bullied. Redress refers to third-party remedies that involve the financial and/or non-financial compensation of targets. The optimal strategy for dealing with workplace bullying involves both effective organizational interventions to help prevent and address bullying incidents and strong legislative mechanisms to allow for restitution and compensation. This two-pronged strategy provides targets of bullying with multiple sources of relief and redress.

Effect of guideline implementation on costs of hand hygiene

Hands of health care personnel frequently serve as vectors for the transmission of organisms between patients and are also a major reservoir for pathogens with antimicrobial resistance. Hand hygiene is one effective strategy to reduce health care associated infections. The purposes of this study were to (a) compare the costs of hand hygiene in hospitals with high and low hand hygiene compliance as well as high and low frequency of alcohol hand rub use; and (b) examine associations between hospital characteristics and hand hygiene compliance as well as frequency of alcohol hand rub use. Nursing and health care policy leaders should look for ways to promote sustained adherence to hand hygiene recommendations.     

Australian Family Tax Reform and the Targeting Fallacy

Over recent decades, Australia's highly progressive, individual‐based taxation of families has been replaced by a system that tends towards joint taxation with an inverted U‐shaped rate scale. The reform has been implemented by introducing family‐income‐targeted child payments (now Family Tax Benefit Part A) and by lowering tax rates on higher incomes. The new system has shifted the burden of taxation to two‐earner families on low and average wages and, in particular, to working married mothers as second earners. For reasons of fairness and efficiency, we propose returning to more progressive individual taxation and universal family payments.     

Technologists talk: making the links between design, problem-solving and experiences with hard materials

Design and problem-solving is a key learning focus in technology education and remains a distinguishing factor that separates it from other subject areas. This research investigated how two expert designers considered experiences with hard materials contributed to their learning design and problem-solving with these materials. The research project used a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with two mechanical engineers. They identified their experiences under three key headings that provided them with much of the essential knowledge and understanding they employ today to design and problem-solve with hard materials. These included experience of seeing outcomes that provided feedback on their designs, experiences that informed about materials and material selection and accessing others’ experiences from communities of practice.     

Continuing Progress? Trends in Occupational Segregation in the United States over the 1970s and 1980s

This study uses comparable data on 470 detailed occupations from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Censuses to analyze trends in occupational segregation in the United States in the 1980s and compare them in detail to the 1970s experience of declining segregation. We find that the trend towards reduced segregation did indeed continue into the 1980s at only a slightly slower pace. In both decades, changes in sex composition within occupations accounted for the major share of the decline in segregation (compared to changes in the mix of occupations in the economy). We also find that the pattern of changes in the sex composition of occupations and in the employment distribution of workers that produced the observed reductions in segregation were remarkably similar in each of these two periods. This similarity potentially poses some problems for the future. As women continue to enter the same areas, resegregation, which we found to have relatively moderate effects in the 1970s and 1980s, becomes an increasing possibility. Continued progress towards reducing occupational segregation requires that women succeed in entering a broader range of traditionally male occupations and/or a greater flow of men into traditionally female occupations.     

In Sickness and in Health: Recent Judicial Developments in Americans with Disabilities Act Association Discrimination Cases

A little-known provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits covered employers from taking an adverse employment action against a qualified employee if a determinative factor in the adverse employment action is the disability of an associate or relative of the employee. A review of the reported court opinions indicates that plaintiff employees often encounter difficulty in these cases. Some plaintiffs are unable to prove that they are “qualified” employees at the time of the adverse employment action, and other plaintiffs find it difficult to prove that a determinative factor in the adverse employment action was the disability of the associate or relative. However, plaintiffs have achieved some success as evidenced in the 2008 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals holdings in Dewitt v. Proctor Hospital and Trujillo v. PacifiCorp. This paper describes reported U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinions about ADA association discrimination, its relationship to the Family and Medical Leave Act and Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and the implications for employers, employees, and lawmakers. It also offers practical guidance to both employees and employers for asserting and managing rights and potential liability in this area.