More than a feeling: using hotel room attendants to improve understanding of job quality

Recent research by Adler and Adler reveals contradictory claims about the job quality of hotel room attendants; suggesting that an objectively ‘bad’ job can be perceived as subjectively ‘good’ by workers. This contradiction resonates with wider issues about how job quality is conceived – objectively and/or subjectively. Drawing on empirical research of room attendant jobs in upper market hotels in three cities in the UK and Australia, this paper addresses the contradiction by examining both the objective and subjective dimensions of job quality for room attendants. In doing so it refines Adler and Adler's work, constructs a new typology of workers and a new categorisation of job quality informed by workers characteristics and preferences. This categorisation improves conceptual understanding of job quality by enjoining its objective and subjective dimensions.     

Is More Information Always Better? An Experimental Study of Charitable Giving and Hurricane Katrina

We report results of an experiment designed to assess the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the pattern and level of charitable contributions of donors. The study includes an experimental measure of charitable giving and targets three charities: the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and Oxfam International. In the experiment subjects make allocation decisions from three endowments ($10, $20, and $50) and with four different matching subsidies (0%, 25%, 50%, and 100%), with the matching amount provided by the experimenter. Two locations (Texas and Minnesota) and two information conditions are used. Survey measures of sympathy, risk perceptions, and perceptions of Katrina victims are also collected. The probability and amount of giving are responsive to the experimental design parameters—the endowment and match. We find evidence of “Katrina overload” as those closest to the disaster respond negatively to Katrina-related priming information. Perceptions of the psychological attitudes of the victims of the disaster have a significant effect on the amount given.     

Book reviews

Abstract

This article examines the cultural field of fitness as a network of producers, consumers, products and practices that has developed around the care of the body through physical exercise. Drawing on a thematic text analysis of US exercise manuals, the paper focuses on how the commercial fitness field naturalizes associations between physical exercise and leisure, and between leisure and self‐work. In particular, the analysis examines three themes and their relevance to our broader understanding of leisure in contemporary consumer society: the management of leisure time; the use of leisure for self‐investment strategies; and the promotion of consumption as the framework for leisure and an accompanying notion of pleasure. The fitness field casts light on how leisure more generally is constructed as a sphere of obligations to make productive use of one’s time, to improve one’s body and self, and to do so through the wares of the consumer marketplace. The cultural imaginary of leisure as a time of freedom from work and responsibility is thus recast, in an age of individualization, as a time of freedom to accomplish the work of self‐production.     

Passionate about designing

In the school based subject of design and technology (D&T) a fundamental element is designing and making functional products using critical and creative thinking whilst developing skills in the use of a variety of processes and materials. Teachers of the subject need to be more then just ‘enthusiastic’ about the processes involved if they are to develop enthusiasm in their pupils that will sustain them through the exciting but sometimes arduous and difficult processes required to achieve outcomes of which they and their teachers can be proud. The intention of this research project, using an initial sample of forty-nine students and a non-probability purposive sample of ten students studying to become D&T teachers was to tease out the factors which appear to enable some students to be passionate about creating a product to a given brief while others from similar backgrounds and expectations, given the same brief, and in the same learning situation, do not reach this level of enthusiasm. The data collection method used was an attitude scale and semi-structured interviews which were qualitatively analysed in order to identify factors involved, with the intention of informing and improving the way the authors teach their students, to design, and about design, with the additional aim of improving the students teaching of that activity once they become D&T teachers. Within the full paper results are discussed and tentative conclusions drawn.     

Earning Curves and Wage Curves

Using British county data for full-time male manual workers we extend earlier work to investigate wage and earning curves. We distinguish between total earnings and hourly wages for standard hours, uncontaminated by overtime premium. Using data from 1980–1995 we find that earnings behaviour is dominated by volatile hours in the short run, while wage growth is highly sensitive to the level of unemployment as in the classical Phillips curve with macro data. Macro evidence for sticky wages is thus confirmed at the local level, and the wage curve of rapid adjustment is rejected for normal hourly wages.     

Trade liberalization and institutional reforms1

The accession of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to the European Union (EU) is expected to lead to the new member countries becoming more like the older members, including in terms of trade. In this paper, we focus on two factors promoting CEE–EU trade integration: trade liberalization and institutional reforms. Measures of trade liberalization undertaken by both parties during the 1990s were very substantial, but did not always produce the expected upsurge of regional trade flows. Much less progress has been made in improving the functioning of CEE institutions (e.g., progress in the privatization process or in reducing corruption). Countries where most important changes at the institutional level occurred were also those that most increased their trade with the EU. Comparing the impact of these two factors, we find that improving institutions in CEE countries can generate as much trade as the removal of all tariff and non‐tariff barriers. The paper also addresses the issue of the presence of reversed causality between trade and institutions, and the pro‐trade effect of institutional similarity.     

2008出国展：搭建海外贸易平台（上）

随着全球贸易的日趋自由化,我国对外贸易呈现出高速增长的良好态势。如何找到一个合理、有效的渠道让企业走进国际市场?参加海外展无疑是一条捷径。很多企业在准备开拓一个新市场的时候,首先就是寻找在这个市场有没有适合自己的展览会;尤其是一些在国际领域或是在本行业中具有相当声誉的展会,如美国国际广告展(ISA)、迪拜广告展等等,都是许多企业竞相参加的热点展会。企业通过展览会这个平台,可以获得更多客户,进而寻找到自己在国外的代理商或是设立国外的分公司,逐步打进国际市场。为了鼓励中小企业以展览会的形式走向世界,中国上海广告设备器材供应商协会组织业内企业出国参加世界知名的十几个广告展,足迹将遍布迪拜、波兹南、奥兰多、日内瓦、新加坡、圣保罗、墨西哥、约翰内斯堡、马德里、阿布扎比、莫斯科、曼谷以及伊斯坦布尔。以下就将对这十几个展会及其地区广告市场状况一一作简要介绍。     

中国2010年上海世博会展示中心开幕

为积极做好世博会宣传工作,演绎"城市,让生活更美好"的世博会主题,为世博会增光添彩,上海世博局与卢湾区政府双方友好协商,定于卢湾区上海创意之窗内设立"中国2010年上海世博会展示中心"。展示中心处于申城繁华地段的淮海中路香港新世界大厦三楼,