The Development of Female Global Managers: The Role of Mentoring and Networking

This paper explores the role of mentoring and networking in the career development of global female managers. The paper is based on data collected from interviews with 50 senior female managers. The voices of the female managers illustrate some of the difficulties associated with informal organisational processes, in particular mentoring and networking, which hinder their career development. The findings confirm that female managers can miss out on global appointments because they lack mentors, role models, sponsorship, or access to appropriate networks – all of which are commonly available to their male counterparts. The interviewees suggest that men, as the dominant group, may want to maintain their dominance by excluding women from the informal interactions of mentoring and networking. The findings further suggest that if females had more access to networks and mentors they could be socialised in both the formal and informal norms of the organisation and gain career advantages from these. The managers reveal that they encounter additional barriers in ‹a man’s world’ and remind us that there is still much to be changed.     

Budgetary Stewardship,Innovation and Working Culture: Identifying the Missing Ingredient in English and Welsh Local Authorities’ Recipes for Austerity Management

Drawing on fieldwork with 70 local authorities in England and Wales, this paper builds on previous studies of austerity management by highlighting the importance of organisational cultures to achieving strategic objectives. It finds that, in line with their prevailing ‘belief system’ of budgetary stewardship, local authorities in both countries are holding down input costs to deal with austerity. However, the scale of funding cuts means that this strategy is unlikely to be successful over the longer term. Instead, they need greater freedom to generate revenue, in order to facilitate innovation and develop more sustainable business practices and service models.     

Equivalence of central place and economic base theories of urban growth

Economic base theory is discredited as a theory of urban growth; central place theory, although receiving some criticism, continues to enjoy some acclaim. In this paper I show that these two theories are equivalent so that previous criticisms of base theory also apply to central place theory. None-theless, the market expansion in both theories can lead to productivity increases because “the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.”     

Research notes on socioeconomic siting dynamics

The inclusion of socioeconomic considerations in the process of industrial location/siting analysis has received limited attention in recent years. More commonly the social and economic impacts associated with the construction and operation of a major project emerge only after a prime site has been selected. This result serves to characteristically delimit advance socioeconomic planning and prevents a full and complete examination of relative cost-benefit alternatives. Impacted communities and the mitigation problems they pose can be insurmountable when addressed after the fact.This article will discuss a strategy for socioeconomic inputs to project siting and outline a model that has been utilized for the purpose of instigating potential socioeconomic impacts at the earliest possible stage within the industrial location siting process.     

A multilevel modelling approach to triple-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation

The use of dichotomous choice (DC) questions in the elicitation of willingness to pay (WTP) in contingent valuation studies is common practice at the present time. Recent research has shown that double-bounded DC questions provide statistically superior results to single-bounded questions, given an appropriate sampling design. This paper uses a relatively new multilevel modelling technique to analyze a triple-bounded DC design, which in addition includes an initial non-monetary question on whether an individual accepts, in principle, a WTP some unspecified amount. The theoretical basis of the multilevel model used is described, and some of the possibilities of this potentially powerful and versatile technique are discussed. The practical operation of the multilevel model is demonstrated using data from a contingent valuation study conducted in the Norfolk Broads, England, an internationally important wetland resource.