Pleasure and arousal in the marketplace: Interpersonal differences in approach-avoidance responses

A theory of individual response to environments is discussed. This theory is extended to apply to consumer responses in the marketplace. An empirical study that tests this theory is described. This study examines individual differences in patronage behaviors and attitudes based on emotional responses to an outdoor retail market. In this study, it was found that a consumer's emotional response to an environment is instrumental in resultant patronage behaviors and attitudes.     

Applying Stories of the Environment to Business: What Business People Can Learn From the Virtues in Environmental Narratives

The use of narrative to communicate and convey particular points of view in society has increasingly become the focus of academic attention in recent years. In particular, MacIntyre. (1985, 1988, 1990, 1999) has paid attention to the role of narrative in the conflict between different traditions when developing his virtue approach to ethics. Whilst there has been continued debate about the application of virtue approaches, some arguing that it is incompatible with business, I disagree and have already argued for a form of virtue that will focus business on society’s needs rather than better business itself. Here I continue to develop the argument in two ways. First, I will explore the predominant business narrative and offer some comment on the ‘virtues’ that it promotes. However, rather than accepting this narrative, I want to challenge it with a narrative from the environmental tradition. I consider how adopting the virtues promoted by an environmental narrative it would shape business practices and challenge current business conventions. As a second step, I will focus on how we can change managers’ perceptions of business to reflect these environmentally based virtues.     

An Evaluation of Services Provided by the Market Research Industry

The stature of the market research industry appears threatened by uccusations including invasion of respondent privacy, excessive interviewing and disguised sales appeals. The much publicised lawsuit involving Beecham vs. Yankelovich questions the very foundation of the industry; the validity and reliability of the information generated by marketing researchers. Just how well is the industry performing? This article reports the results of an assessment of the quality of services provided by the research industry by measuring both suppliers' and buyers' perceptions of a number of service performance dimensions. Reactions to industry threats and attitudes toward certification are also examined.     

Controls over the Development of Large Stores in Japan

This paper shows how public policy in Japan has reacted to the location and development of new large stores, and the pressures for large stores. The current policy, introduced in 1979, is attempting to limit the expansion of hypermarkets, large super-markets, discount stores, etc., and provides a mechanism and procedure for the co-ordination of future growth. The structural changes occurring in Europe are also appearing in Japan. Pre-1979 policy controls are examined, as is the 1979 legislation, together with the growth strategies of large stores in the 1980s. The paper concludes by suggesting that it will be interesting to analyse in the coming years whether Japanese policy aimed at controlling large store development is any more successful than the various, largely unsuccessful, attempts at large store control introduced by European governments.     

Fertiliser availability in a resource-limited world: Production and recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus

Without the input of fertiliser nitrogen it is estimated that only about half of the current global population can be supplied with sufficient food energy and protein. The anticipated increase in the population to 2050 will increase the dependency on fertiliser inputs. The paper examines the different potential sources of energy and hydrogen required for this essential fixation of atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available nitrogenous fertiliser and concludes that methane from natural gas is clearly the most suitable source. In the absence of a cost-effective alternative source of hydrogen it is recommended that an on-going requirement for methane is acknowledged and that consideration be given to strategic reserves for the production of food. Phosphorus is also an essential and unsubstitutable nutrient for plants and animals, but while the global reserves of atmospheric nitrogen are effectively unlimited, the reserves of phosphate rock are finite. Recent estimates of the reserve suggest that at the current rate of use this resource will become exhausted within some hundreds of years. The annual increment of phosphorus contained in the human population is estimated to be in the order of 1 Mt/yr, which is a small proportion of the quantity mined. There is a clear requirement to ensure that phosphorus is recycled to a large extent, so that the rate of exhaustion of the reserves of phosphate rock is significantly reduced. Legislation relating to the management of phosphorus appears entirely associated with its potential to upset natural ecosystems, with apparently no regulations yet requiring the efficient use and reuse of a scarce resource.     

The link between the management of employees and patient mortality in acute hospitals

The relationship between human resource management practices and organizational performance (including quality of care in health-care organizations) is an important topic in the organizational sciences but little research has been conducted examining this relationship in hospital settings. Human resource (HR) directors from sixty-one acute hospitals in England (Hospital Trusts) completed questionnaires or interviews exploring HR practices and procedures. The interviews probed for information about the extensiveness and sophistication of appraisal for employees, the extent and sophistication of training for employees and the percentage of staff working in teams. Data on patient mortality were also gathered. The findings revealed strong associations between HR practices and patient mortality generally. The extent and sophistication of appraisal in the hospitals was particularly strongly related, but there were links too with the sophistication of training for staff, and also with the percentages of staff working in teams.     

Sociomateriality — Taking the wrong turning?

The claims for sociomateriality are reviewed and two key problems are isolated: a failure to be specific about technology and a neglect of broader social structures. These problems are located in the formulations of Barad. Her notion of agential realism is contrasted to an alternative perspective constructed using the resources of critical realism. The potential of the latter to contribute to the refreshing of the socio-technical tradition is outlined. This tradition offers more resources for the consideration of the important role of the material in contemporary organizing than sociomateriality, which is argued to be a wrong turning.     

Technology,Work Restructuring and the Orchestration of a Rational Narrative in the Pursuit of 'Management Objectives': The Political Process of Plant-level Change

In this article a narrative approach is used in the construction of a story about the political aspects of plant-level change. It is shown how different individuals may recount and reconstruct stories which reflect their own interests and how the maintenance of common organizational stories often reflects the influence and political action of certain powerful actors and groups. These dominant narrators are often actively involved in a political process by which a rational narrative is constructed, revised and modified over time and sustained within the context of other competing voices and views. In examining the uptake of cellular manufacturing, technology is not conceptualized as a determinant of outcomes but as a substance of the workplace initiative which is continually open to influence (the mutual shaping of the 'social' and 'technical') during the political process of change. Finally, a broad conceptualization of political process is adopted in order to enable the reader to critically reflect on the data in pursuing their own analysis and conclusions.