Marketing and the church: Should god be sold or found?

Recent years have seen an expansion of marketing in social causes and not-for-profit activities; there continues to he considerable debate about the extent to which this simply reflects a pragmatic application of established marketing techniques or whether it truly reflects efforts to be genuinely market orientated. Indeed some may argue that the nature of social cause marketing is such that it is difficult, if not impossible, to be customer-driven. The marketing of the Church is one manifestation of social cause marketing where marketing programmes are calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas. The paper seeks to examine whether the marketing techniques and approaches used in relation to the Church are really marketing or just a form of selling. It is argued that the core product of the Church, salvation, is not really subject to modification in response to customer needs and thus that questions may arise about the possibility of genuinely marketing the Church. However, where there is a willingness to develop and modify the expected and augmented products in response to the changing needs and expectations of a ‘marketplace’, arguably there is evidence of marketing, not just selling.     

SECTORAL PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH AND PRICE-MARGINAL COST MARGINS IN THE INTERMEDIATE GOODS MARKET

Models of aggregate productivity growth linked to sectoral models of production typically assume that all intermediate goods markets are perfectly competitive. An econometric analysis reveals that many intermediate goods markets exhibit transactions at prices quite different than marginal cost. Measures of productivity growth that ignore these market imperfections are biased. A measure of the actual magnitude of the bias that emerges under the assumption of equating price to marginal cost is constructed.     

Crystallizing the nanotechnology debate

Much of the initial commentary on nanotechnology assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that nanotechnology represented a radical discontinuity from existing science and technology. The birth of the nanotechnology debate was marked by the differences of opinion as to whether the technology's outcomes would be positive or negative. The authors trace the journey from this polarized debate to the current discussion of nanotechnology, finding that the latter is still conducted in the parameters set by the initial utopian and dystopian extremes. Yet the discussion now focuses on defining the technology and identifying the social and ethical issues, which are often reduced to the potential risks of toxicity and the need for public engagement. The authors argue that nanotechnology is erroneously treated as homogeneous and is under-analysed; it is the very diversity and transdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology that makes it distinctive and interesting to social science enquiry. In this way, it may yet be prototypical of Gibbons et al. 's 'Mode 2' science. The focus of social science research should be less on the implications of nanotechnology, and more on its creation, the processes through which it develops and the alternative perspectives underlying this. The authors conclude by outlining core elements of a social science agenda for nanotechnology.     

A Sequential Choice Alternative to the Travel Cost Model

The travel cost model is the standard model used in the recreation demand area. This model assumes that the decision on the number of trips in a given time period (a season, for example) to a particular site is determined at the beginning of the time period. For certain types of recreation activity, it may be better to model the decision to take a trip to a given site as a function of the outcome of previous trips and the realization of random variables on previous trips (as well as travel and time costs). The spatial choice behavior itself may be sequential in nature rather than continuous. In this paper, a model is developed which specifies the choice of a discrete number of sequentially chosen trips to a given site as a function of site-specific variables and values realized on previous trips. This model improves upon the existing travel cost model by specifying discrete integer values for the number of trips, developing an explicit relationship between trips taken and the number of days spent on each trip, and allowing intra-seasonal effects to determine the probability of taking an additional trip. A comparison is made between the traditional travel cost model estimates of consumer's surplus and the estimates from this sequential discrete choice model.     

PARCHING THE LAND?: THE CHETTIARS IN BURMA

In the history of Burma's economy, few groups have been as vilified as the Chettiars. A community of Indian moneylenders, the Chettiars were crucial agents in transforming Burma into the rice bowl of Asia. Following the global depression of the 1930s, Burmese agriculture became severely distressed and wide-scale loan default saw the transfer of much of Burma's cultivatable land to the Chettiars, who were demonised and made scapegoats for the vices of colonialism. The paper draws on the 'information-theoretic revolution' in economics to reappraise the role of the Chettiars in Burma. We conclude the Chettiars merit history's better judgement.     

The effect of human resource management practices on the job retention of former welfare clients

Why should an employer hire a former welfare client?What human resource management practices can help employers retain former welfare clients? This study addresses these questions against the backdrop of changes in welfare legislation in the United States that have lessened support to welfare clients and their families and emphasized movement into the workplace. We conducted a large‐scale empirical study of the effectiveness of a wide range of HRM practices and found that higher wages, better financial and health benefits, and development opportunities were positively associated with job retention. Unexpectedly, supervisory training had no relationship to retention, and appraising supervisors on providing a supportive and inclusive work environment showed a negative relationship. We provide suggestions to employers for improving the job retention of former welfare recipients along with directions for additional research. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Blood Ties: Banking the Stem Cell Promise

This paper explores the banking of cord blood stem cells by new parents, a growing phenomenon that raises a number of questions for scholars interested in the role of expectations in innovation. In particular, we focus on the relationships between imagination and materiality, the way in which today's expectations of a future stem cell revolution have become embodied (materialised) in an ever-growing number of deposited cord blood samples. In addition, the case raises interesting questions about agency and authorship in the construction of the stem cell dream and the production of new 'blood ties'—new future-oriented parental duties and responsibilities. Here, parents are encouraged to think themselves into a future in which their newborns are 'at risk', but also a future populated by an innovative range of regenerative medical treatments.     

The Position of Women in UK Academic Economics

This paper reports the results of the Royal Economic Society Women's Committee 1998 survey on the gender balance in UK academic economics. In 1998, female representation was 4%fessors, 11% of senior lecturers or readers, 17% of permanent lecturers, 28% of fixed term lecturers, and 33% of PhD/research students. The main growth in female representation since 1996 has been in fixed term lectureships and in PhD/research students (a 5 percentage point increase for each). We suggest reasons for the low representation of women in academic economics, and also argue that it is a cause for concern.     

The strategic choice of operator skills in CNC installations

The authors test a strategic choice model to further define the factors managers respond to when making skill level decisions for plants using CNC equipment. The results indicate that managers respond to the level of uncertainty in both the internal and external environments as well as the level of perceived discretion management has in regards to the workforce.