Accessing and affording sustainability: the experience of fashion consumption within young families

Despite the ever increasing levels of fashion consumption, neither retailers nor consumers have as yet implemented sustainability principles to a significant degree. This is despite the fact that sustainability principles are increasingly understood and will be applied by consumers, as long as affordable alternatives in mainstream fashions are available. In a highly competitive fashion retail sector, there exists an opportunity for UK high street fashion retailers to differentiate their brand image through aligning products with consumers' moral frameworks. Using phenomenological interviews, this research explores the fashion consumption experiences of professional women with young children and living in or near Edinburgh, with particular focus on their expression of their own sustainability concerns in their day‐to‐day practices. The findings reveal that in the absence of suitable products, information and labelling, consumers apply heuristics to their choices, especially price. They refer to the more familiar ethical food market which serves as a metaphor for fashion‐related practices. They talk about trustworthy retailers and about how they deal with and rationalize their own practices where they reveal an obvious attitude‐behaviour gap. The women's role of providing for the family adds further complexity in a sector which provides affordable alternative options.     

Rentenreformen — die internationale Perspektive

This article examines recent pension reforms in OECD countries. All countries are facing the challenge of designing both financially and socially sustainable pension policies in a context of weak economic growth, low financial returns and ageing populations. In some cases, countries have been accelerating the pace of pension reform, bringing forward changes in the rules and parameters of their pension systems. Common features include, for example, increases in retirement ages, closure of early retirement avenues, changes in benefit indexation, stronger links in the system to increasing life expectancy and greater incentives for working longer. At the same time, many countries have improved the adequacy of retirement income provision, in particular by targeting benefits more towards the most vulnerable elderly.     

EC agricultural reform policy—The beginning of a new form of protectionism?

The European Community regards its current agricultural policy “reforms” as an adjustment to the reality of the market and hence as a contribution to easing the strains in world agricultural trade and reducing worldwide distortions in resource allocation. A detailed analysis gives ground for scepticism.     

The new road to the top

By comparing the top executives of 1980's Fortune 100 companies with the top brass of firms in the 2001 list, the authors have quantified a transformation that until now has been largely anecdotal. A dramatic shift in executive careers, and in executives themselves, has occurred over the past two decades. Today's Fortune 100 executives are younger, more of them are female, and fewer were educated at elite institutions. They're also making their way to the top more quickly. They're taking fewer jobs along the way, and they increasingly move from one company to the next as their careers unfold. In their wide-ranging analysis,the authors offer a number of insights. For one thing, it has become clear that there are huge advantages to working in a growing firm. For another, the firms that have been big for a long time still provide the most extensive training and development. They also offer relatively long promotion ladders--hence the common wisdom that these "academy companies" are great to have been from. While women were disproportionately scarce among the most senior ranks of executives in 2001, those who arrived got there faster and at a younger age than their male colleagues. Perhaps the career hurdles that women face had blocked all but the most highly qualified female managers, who then proceeded to rise quickly. In the future, a record of good P&L performance may become even more critical to getting hired and advancing in the largest companies. As a result, we may see a reversal of the usual flow of talent, which has been from the academy companies to smaller firms. It may be increasingly common for executives to develop records of performance in small companies, or even as entrepreneurs, and then seek positions in large corporations.     

Knowledge transfer in an innovation simulation model

To understand the development of innovation processes in these knowledge-driven economies, one needs to focus on underlying processes of creating and sharing new knowledge. In this paper, an evolutionary simulation model is used to achieve some insights into these innovation processes. The model is based on the one hand on rules about market performance, investments and R&D strategies, and on the other hand on a model concerning knowledge creation (the ability of firms to create knowledge through intramural R&D efforts and the ability to discover and absorb new developments from basic academic research and competitors) and knowledge transfer based on an exponentionally expanding pool of (not necessarily new) knowledge of innovations in the own sector, but also from external sources. It is demonstrated that the imitative firm can be economically more successful but this strategy may prove to be superior only after a long time span.     

Reconstruction of previous failure times and records

For the sequences of independent identically distributed random variables with continuous distributions, we provide the optimal upper bounds for the increments of order and record statistics under condition that the values of future order statistics and records are known. The bounds are expressed in terms of quantiles and absolute moments centered about the quantiles of the parent distribution. We also describe the distributions which approach the bounds with arbitrary desired accuracy.The second author was supported by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) under Grant 5 P03A 012 20Received November 2003     

Usefulness of fair values for predicting banks’ future earnings: evidence from other comprehensive income and its components

This paper examines whether fair value adjustments included in other comprehensive income (OCI) predict future bank performance. It also examines whether the reliability of these estimates affects their predictive value. Using a sample of bank holding companies, we find that fair value adjustments included in OCI can predict earnings both 1 and 2 years ahead. However, not all fair value-related unrealized gains and losses included in OCI have similar implications. While net unrealized gains and losses on available-for-sale securities are positively associated with future earnings, net unrealized gains and losses on derivative contracts classified as cash flow hedges are negatively associated with future earnings. We also find that reliable measurement of fair values enhances predictive value. Finally, we show that fair value adjustments recorded in OCI during the 2007–2009 financial crisis predicted future profitability, contradicting criticism that fair value accounting forced banks to record excessive downward adjustments.     

Family satisfaction and social networking leisure

The purpose of this study was to explore the bidirectional relationship between the use of social networking sites (SNS) for leisure, and family and leisure satisfaction. The sociotechnological model served as a sensitising theoretical framework for this study. Seven families (22 individuals) took part in group and individual interviews. The data obtained from interviews were analysed using constant comparative method. The results showed that influences of SNS on satisfaction with family leisure and family satisfaction varied: the use of SNS helped families to build enjoyable family leisure, stay connected with family members and increase a sense of belonging. In some cases, however, it also decreased the amount of time spent with family, lowered attention during face-to-face interactions, provided opportunity for negative comparisons and caused concerns about the development of social skills among youth. In turn, family relationships and satisfaction with family life influenced the way family members used SNS for leisure. Some participants increased the use of SNS during times of family conflict in order to seek support and as a way to distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts. Others limited their use of SNS due to lack of interest in social pursuits and to avoid sharing information about family conflicts.