Debate: More adult training in Britain; Tax‐farming and BAA; NHS pay review bodies

Strategic planning is often associated with radical organizational shifts. Sometimes, these are in response to rapid changes in the environment. Frequently, however, they are a result of changes in management values and style. There may, however, be circumstances when going for a series of small wins is a more appropriate strategy than going for one big win.     

Is increasing airline denied boarding compensation limits the answer? Factors that contribute to denied boardings

There has been an increase in the number of involuntary denied airline passenger boardings in the US. A denied boarding is influenced by multiple factors other than compensation amounts, including the accuracy, magnitude, and variability associated with no-show forecasts, load factors, and carriers’ day of departure operating policies. We describe how these and other factors influence denied boardings, why they differ across US carriers, and why carriers have strong internal incentives to reduce denied boardings.     

Covered interest rate parity: the Australian case

In differentiating between long-run and instantaneous covered interest parity and in introducing domestic influences (proxied by unanticipated growth in the monetary base) as short-run determinants of domestic interest rates, this study sheds new light on the interest parity relationship in the Australian context. Indeed the results of the empirical tests indicate that previous studies have misspecified the dynamics of the relationship, omitted significant domestic influences, and consequently produced biased estimates.     

Explaining the short stature of the poor: chronic childhood disease and growth in nineteenth‐century England1

This article examines the relationship between human growth, final height, and the environment in early nineteenth‐century England. While the reasons for stuntedness are multifactoral and involve lack of nourishment and in utero conditions, we should also give emphasis to respiratory, gastro‐enteric, and bone disease along with the inadequate and sometimes harmful arrangements for convalescence, involving opiates and inadequate rest. Hard work and prevailing social attitudes slowed recovery and affected limb and organ development. While survival chances may have improved, and indeed were enhanced by measures such as targeted poor relief, quality of life for infants and children remained low and had an influence on their height as adults. The bodies of surviving working‐class children showed the burden of hard times.     

The underdog trap: The moderating role of transgression type in forgiving underdog brands

This study aims to investigate the interactive effects of brand biography and brand transgression type on consumers’ forgiveness intention. Brand transgression is categorized as relational or nonrelational, with the former (compared to the latter) seriously undermining consumers’ high identification with underdog brands. Across four experimental studies in which transgression type is manipulated in three different ways, it is confirmed that when facing nonrelational transgressions, participants show greater forgiveness intention for underdog than for top‐dog brands. However, when facing relational transgressions, they do not show increased forgiveness intention for underdog brands compared to top‐dog brands. Moreover, perceived anger mediates the interaction effect between brand biography and brand transgression type on forgiveness intention. The theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.     

The social value of risk-free government debt

Can eliminating the stock of government bonds reduce welfare? When the government must raise revenue to pay interest on its bonds, the social value of government debt hinges on whether the benefits from greater portfolio diversification outweigh the costs of the revenue-raising efforts. A positive stock of debt is optimal only if interest payments are financed by an inflation tax, agents are not too risk averse, there is a government budget deficit, and the economy is on the bad side of the Laffer curve. Welfare is higher on the good side of the Laffer curve without bonds.     

Managed Costs and the Capture of Information

As a result of a pilot study, it was concluded that valuable insight into the industrial application of management accounting principles would be gained by an in depth development of case studies. These would assist in understanding the compilation of knowledge within industrial practice; in return they might condition the future presentation of this knowledge and serve as a pointer to further research and its dissemination. Strong support for the development of case studies has been expressed recently by a number of prominent researchers who emphasise that, for certain purposes, suitably designed studies of this nature are a major means of making progress. The authors have compiled a set of thirteen studies principally dealing with industrial practice relating to cost behaviour analysis and transfer pricing, but covering a number of related issues. The paper outlines the methodology adopted and concentrates on three key areas of analysis: capture and creation of information, managed costs, and information monopolies. Results are illustrated through excerpts taken directly from the studies.     

Standby Letters of Credit and Bank Default Risk

This paper examines the relationship between Australian banks' use of standby letters of credit, an off-balance sheet direct credit sub stitute, and default risk on bank liabilities. We find strong support for the sub-optimal investment (or under-investment) hypothesis. Riskier banks, defined as those with higher CD premiums, and those with higher proportions of long-maturity liabilities make greater use of SLCs than less risky banks. However, there is little evidence of a feed-back effect from SLCs to bank default risk     

Beyond irrationality and the ultras: some notes on female English rugby union fans and the ‘feminised’ sports crowd

In the Academy, female fandom is often conceived of in ways which consciously exclude sport, and women are often marginalised by research on sports fandom. There is also little convincing qualitative research on the experience of mainstream female sports spectators, despite competing claims about the meaning and nature of today’s alleged ‘feminised’ sports crowds. Much of the qualitative work which does exist in this field focuses on younger male soccer fans and pathologises, the experience of female spectators. Instead, in this paper we explore the experiences of mainstream female fans from a sport which is much under‐researched, English rugby union. Drawing on qualitative data from semi‐structured interviews with female rugby union fans from Leicester, we explore these women’s fan experiences in the context of claims about the recent ‘feminisation’ of the late‐modern sports crowd. We focus empirically on three key issues: the early sports encounters of female spectators and their possible links with fandom; changes in women’s access to leisure time and to spectator sport; and women’s shifting experiences of watching rugby union in the new ‘professional’ era of the game. We end with a call for more qualitative work on the changing experience of female sports fans and for more theoretical and empirical work on the supposed ‘feminised’ sporting cultures of late‐modernity.