What Women Managers Want: Customising Human Resource Management Practices

Amanda Sinclair and Jill Ewing report on a detailed study of women managers in a large retailing organisation to discuss why women are a poorly utilised and misunderstood reserve of managerial talent. They identify three main groups- ‘family first job occupants’, ‘mature career traditionalists’ and ‘career-family committeds’- and show how each has different aspirations and correspondingly different attitudes to organisational incentives. the message to policy-makers is that they need to ‘customise’ their practices in order to relaise benefits both for their women managers and their organisations. Amanda Sinclair is Associate Professor in Organisational Studies at the Graduate School of Management of the University of Melbourne. Jill Ewing is a postgraduate student in the same university and a Senior Research Assistant at the Key Centre for Women's Health in Society.     

Consumer perceptions of online shopping environments: A gestalt approach

Although Web pages and sites consist of a multitude of individual cues, this paper argues that marketers need a gestalt approach to understand how consumers perceive online shopping environments. Following a systematic review of the literature on categorizations of online shopping environments, this paper develops and tests a gestalt model of consumer perceptions of online shopping environments. The model shows that consumers perceive online shopping environments in terms of their sense‐making and exploratory potential. It encompasses perceptions at the level of both individual pages and the experience consisting of the navigation through a succession of pages accessed during one visit. It also accounts for the informational needs all shoppers possess, reflected in the central role of information in online shopping environments. The model confirms the importance of the three main categories investigated in the literature (ease of understanding, informativeness, and involving qualities), but provides a theoretically grounded explanation of how consumers perceive online shopping environments holistically. It can form a basis from which to envisage organismic and behavioral responses. ©2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The evolution of foreign wine demand in China

We estimate source‐differentiated wine demand in China using the absolute price version of the Rotterdam demand system. Within the last decade, China has gone from obscurity to an important participant in global wine trade. The continual growth of Chinese wine imports suggests that a one‐time structural shift approach may not fully capture how consumption patterns or demand preferences have changed over time. Thus, a rolling or moving regression procedure is used to account for continual adjustments in import demand patterns and to evaluate overall parameter instability. Our results confirm that Chinese consumers hold French wine in high regard and that French wine demand has consistently increased over the last decade, more than any other exporting source. Consumers in China have gone from allocating about 1/3 to over 1/2 of every dollar to French wine and the expenditure elasticity for French wine mostly increased while the market was expanding. Although Australian wine has a very solid standing in the Chinese market, results suggest that its market share will likely remain unchanged. Marginal budget share and expenditure elasticity estimates indicate that Australia will continue to account for about 20 per cent of the foreign wine market in China.     

Perception of authenticity of tourist art among Native American artists in Santa Fe,New Mexico

This study investigated the authenticity of tourist art from the perspectives of Native American artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In‐depth interviews with nine artists revealed that authenticity of art for the artists strongly relates to the traditional manufacturing process. Indeed, the artists alter their art piece's exterior to appeal to tourists while also adhering to the traditional process of manufacture. Rather than connoting a loss of authenticity, they identify the process as an “enlargement” of the culture. The challenge for the artists is to improve understanding of the significance of the manufacturing process among tourists and younger generations of artists. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Height, fun and safety in the design of children's playground equipment

The study reported in this paper adopted a holistic design approach to investigate issues associated with height related playground injuries from a users' perspective. The main objective was to gain an understanding of the relationship between height and fun so as to establish practical guidelines for addressing the causes of height related injuries whilst maintaining the attributes of playground equipment that children find fun and challenging. Results show that, on the one hand, the risk of injury increases when height is coupled with the use of upper body strength and, on the other hand, that coordination is a greater source of fun and challenge than height for children. Accordingly, it is suggested that the level of risk of injury attached to children's playground equipment can be reduced when the use of lower body strength and coordination are combined with lower free fall heights.     

The Evolution of Fiscal Policy in Australia

This paper examines the evolution of Australian fiscal policyand the fiscal policy framework over the past quartercentury.Following the early 1980s recession, a sustained fiscal consolidationsaw the general government budget balance (for all levels ofgovernment) move from a deficit of 3 per cent of GDP in 1983/4to a surplus of 1 per cent 5 years later in 1988/9. A severerecession in the early 1990s interrupted this process, and thebudget returned to sizeable deficits which peaked at 4 per centof GDP in 1992/3. The second half of the 1990s saw a repeatof the experience a decade earlier, with the budget returningto surplus in 1997/8. In contrast to the 1980s experience, however,the general government sector (for all levels of government)has recorded surpluses for the subsequent 8 years to the present.The paper outlines Australia's macroeconomic experience overthis time and argues that there have been two significant medium-termfactors motivating the extended periods of fiscal consolidation.The first factor, relevant since the mid-1980s, has been thelarge Australian current-account deficits since that time, andthe associated build-up of net foreign liabilities. The secondfactor, which entered the public debate more recently, is adesire to provide fiscal policy flexibility to respond to theageing of the population and the projected rising public costof health services—both influences that are likely tobe of increasing importance over the next generation or so.The paper discusses the introduction and evolution of Australia'smedium-term fiscal framework which has been put in place torespond to these challenges. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: dgruen{at}treasury.gov.au; asayegh{at}treasury.gov.au     

Size of employment unit and injury rates in British manufacturing: a secondary analysis of WIRS 1990 data

This article uses unique information provided by the WIRS 1990 dataset in order to explore the relation between size and industrial injury in British manufacturing industry. Results are reported for both independent establishments and for those which form part of larger organisations. The examination of the relation between the injury rate and other variables is permitted by use of a regression model.