Ethnic identity,socialization factors,and culture‐specific consumption behavior

This study is designed to discover the degree to which ethnic identity and socialization factors influence the culture‐specific consumption behaviors of Asian American young adults, in general as well as in specific situational settings. Findings indicated that perceived parental cultural identification tended to strengthen the ethnic identity, which in turn influenced Asian American young adults' culture‐specific consumption behaviors. However, although their perceived parental acculturation level had no effect on their ethnic identity, it directly weakened the subject group's culture‐specific consumption behaviors. The ethnic‐friendship orientation was found not only to influence ethnic identity but also to influence directly the group's culture‐specific consumption behavior. Further analysis revealed that a situational factor (i.e., the presence or absence of ethnic friends) influenced culture‐specific consumption behavior, regardless of the strength of ethnic identity. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Note on the Public Interest and Ethical Behaviour

The Joint Code of Professional Conduct of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia has made the protection of the public interest the primary responsibility of chartered accountants. We argue that the traditional accounting practices to safeguard the interests of clients and employers are likely to be contrary to the public interest and represent unethical behaviour in terms of the code. We also argue that although there may be breaches of the code they are unlikely to result in disciplinary action as there is a low probability of complaints against members of the Institute.     

Organizationally-relevant configurations: the value of modeling local dependence

Configurations are important across all levels of organizations. Despite the interest in and importance of configurations in research for organizations, the empirical methods for assessing and classifying configurations has not kept pace with the theoretical advancements. Theory suggests that configurations must include aligned elements that have local dependence. Local dependence is defined as the interrelationships among variables necessary to form an internally consistent configuration. We explain how latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) enables modeling for local dependence and provides theoretical and methodological value for configurations researchers. Using primary data from two samples, we demonstrate that LCCA with local dependence outperforms traditional cluster analysis-based approaches. Our method can be used for detecting configurations at a variety of organizational levels (e.g. nation, industry, firm, and group).     

Changing the marketplace one behavior at a time: Perceived marketplace influence and sustainable consumption

This study introduces the construct of Perceived Marketplace Influence (PMI) and investigates its role in mediating the relationship between environmental concern and sustainable consumption behavior. A nationwide survey shows that Perceived Marketplace Influence plays an important role in mediating the relationship between concern and behavior, providing an explanation for prior inconsistencies in this relationship. Accordingly, Perceived Marketplace Influence plays a purposeful role in transforming environmental concern into behavior. This project extends previous research on the relationship between values, beliefs, and behavior by showing that one's perception of influence on the marketplace behavior of others significantly influences one's own marketplace behavior. Improved understanding of this relationship provides updated guidance to firms and policymakers for projecting and encouraging sustainable consumption behavior.     

Welfare distribution of collective in-kind transfers in education: an application to the extended schools programme

In this study, we employ the distributional characteristics approach to analyse the welfare distribution of the Extended Schools Programme, a social programme that fights inequality in Northern Ireland’s public schools. Our main result is that increasing funding to schools as their size increases penalizes the most deprived students. This is because the school size, although related to the educational supply, does not reflect the distribution of deprivation within schools. Thus, although in the Northern Irish context the largest welfare gains are possible if funds are redistributed among middle-size schools, our general result indicates an excessive support of small-size schools at the expenses of large-size schools.     

Responding to public and private politics: corporate disclosure of climate change strategies

The challenges associated with climate change will require governments, citizens, and firms to work collaboratively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a task that requires information on companies' carbon risks, opportunities, strategies, and emission levels. This paper explores the conditions under which firms participate in this endeavor. Building on theories of how social activists inspire changes in organizational norms, beliefs, and practices, we hypothesize that shareholder actions and regulatory threats are likely to prime firms to adopt practices consistent with the aims of a broader social movement. We find empirical evidence of direct and spillover effects. In the domain of private politics, shareholder resolutions filed against a firm and others in its industry increase a firm's propensity to engage in practices consistent with the aims of the related social movement. Similarly, in the realm of public politics, threats of state regulations targeted at a firm's industry as well as regulations targeted at other industries increase the likelihood that the firm will engage in such practices. These findings extend existing theory by showing that both activist groups and government actors can spur changes in organizational practices, and that challenges mounted against a single firm or a single industry can inspire both firm and field‐level changes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Community gardening and health-related benefits for a rural Victorian town

Community gardens are growing in popularity as a strategy to effectively deal with population health at a local level. There is a need to gather information about the health-related benefits of community gardens for people living in a rural locale. This paper discusses the health-related benefits of rural community gardens. We adopted a qualitative approach to examine these issues. Ten participants, eight females and two males, aged between 50 and 82, who have participated in a community garden located in South Gippsland, Victoria, for a minimum of 12 months, took part in this study. Semi-structured interviews that lasted between 30 and 60 min were conducted to explore the perspectives and lived experiences of the participants. Thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the data. We situate our discussion in this paper within the therapeutic landscape theory. Findings indicate that there is a range of health-related benefits associated with participation in rural community gardens, including physical, nutritional, social and psychological. Despite these benefits, the participants wished to see some improvements that could attract more people in rural areas to participate in community gardens. Given the paucity of research available regarding rural community gardens, future research should continue to develop an understanding of these rural sites, especially given the ever-growing popularity of community gardens Australia-wide.     

An exploratory study of managerial compensation in the restaurant industry

ABSTRACT

Set within the human capital framework, the focus of this exploratory study is to investigate how individual and industry attributes affect the earnings of salaried restaurant managers in the United States. Previous compensation studies in the restaurant industry have almost exclusively focused on executive compensation and its relationship to a firm's financial variables. Given the size of the industry, it is important to investigate compensation practices at various levels of its leadership. The findings show that relevant work experience, gender, education, race, and property size are significant attributes effecting restaurant managers’ compensation. Practical implications are provided.     

Trade-offs and disappearing acts: shifting societal discourses of diversity in Canada over three decades

In the past few decades, research on minority and disadvantaged groups in the workplace has focused on the discourse of diversity management; however, most of this research has emphasized individual and organizational discourse rather than broader, societal contexts. Our critical analysis of societal/macro level discourse explores the discursive constructions of equity and diversity in Canada, and provides original findings on how these discourses have been produced in the public sphere. We apply quantitative and qualitative textual analysis to articles published from 1986 to 2014 in The Globe and Mail, a nationally distributed newspaper, and the Canadian Employment Equity Act Annual Reports from 1988 to 2013. This paper describes a range of discursive patterns including those focusing on compliance-based equity oriented toward social justice as well as voluntary ‘diversity management’ grounded in corporate self-interest. It demonstrates important trade-offs in who is protected and promoted through the contrasting discourses, and in the types of actors legitimizing these discourses. We provide detailed evidence of these patterns by applying Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, and conclude with a discussion of implications for practice and for theory that are suggested in our analysis.