The power of incrementalism: environmental regulation and technological change in pulp and paper bleaching in the US

This article explores environmental regulation as a driver of technological change through a case study ofthe US pulp and paper industry. It analyses two sets of variables that influence the pace and direction of environmentally oriented technological change: industry structure and regulatory design. As would be expecded from a mature productive unit, when confronted with environmental challenges, the US pull, and paper industry demonstrates a strong preference for incremental technological change. The case suggests that the traditional approaches to standard-setting in the US have not challenged this preference. For the pulp and paper industry, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the strategic advantages of alternative technologies, due to uncertainly in further environmental regulation and the relatively small difference in cost between incremental and radical innovations for may mills. This case suggests that an alternative approach for promoting the diffusion of environmental enhancing radical innovations in mature productive units is to long-term goals for environmental improvement.     

Women, social skill and interactive service work in telephone call centres

This paper contributes to current debates about gender, work and skill in the service economy, focusing specifically on the case of women's employment in telephone call centres. The paper asks whether call centre employers are capitalising on women's 'feminine' social skills, and examines the degree to which these skills are being developed, acknowledged and recognised.     

Teaching the nature of technology: determining and supporting student learning of the philosophy of technology

This paper reports on findings related to the Nature of Technology from Stage Two of the Technological Knowledge and Nature of Technology: Implications for teaching and learning (TKNoT: Imps) research project undertaken in 2009. A key focus in Stage Two was the trialing of different teaching strategies to determine how learning related to the components Characteristics of Technology (CoT) and Characteristics of Technological Outcomes (COTO) could be supported. These components fall within the Nature of Technology (NoT) strand of technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) and as such, reflect a philosophical understanding of technology as a discipline. During this stage of the research further exploration was undertaken to determine how student understanding of these two components of technology education progressed from level 1 to level 8 of the NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). Common misconceptions and partial understandings related to these components are identified and explained and four case studies are presented to illustrate strategies employed by teachers and their impact on student learning related to these two components. The Stage Two outcomes resulted in the revision of the Indicators of Progression for CoT and CoTO in order to clarify the progression expected of students in each component and provide increased teacher guidance to support such progression.     

Complex home care: Part I--Utilization and costs to families for health care services each year

As many as 120 persons per million people in the United States are dependent on the lifelong, complex, technology-based care of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) infusions. However, data for costs paid by families for HPN-related health care services and for non-reimbursed expenditures are rarely tabulated and most often underestimated. The goals of this study were to describe health care services used by families to manage HPN, report the frequency of each service used annually, and estimate the average annual non-reimbursed costs to families for these health services. The numerous and varied types of services reported and the time required to coordinate and access HPN services illustrates the challenges faced by patients and their family caregivers. The lack of a coordinated and efficient system for delivering complex chronic care results in poorer outcomes for HPN patients and their families on-reimbursed costs and the extensive amount of time required to coordinate multi-professional services negatively impacts the clinical outcomes and quality of life of complex chronic home care.     

International perspectives on future land use

The different approaches that other countries take to land use reflect many national variables, including planning systems, institutional structures, socio-cultural characteristics, population pressures and environmental priorities. Literature reviews of relevant land-use issues in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden provided the background material for this paper. Other European countries appear to offer models of more pro-active and indicative land-use planning, in contrast to the adversarial system in the UK, and a much stronger regional focus. This seems to have made it easier to implement other policies, for example on renewable energy. Experience with liberalisation of agricultural markets, and the promotion of environmentally sustainable farming are both relevant to an increasingly polarised agricultural sector in the UK. Cutting across all these themes is a reflection on governance of land use. Of the countries considered, Sweden's focus on environmental sustainability, international responsibility and long-term consistency of direction appears to be most closely aligned to the coming land-use challenges. When drawing conclusions from this review it is important to bear in mind the effect of differences in bio-geographic factors, socio-economic conditions and political culture, both in other countries and within the UK.     

Are special items informative about future profit margins?

Most proponents of using profit margins in forecasting models suggest that unusual items be removed from income to create a core profit margin. We investigate the appropriateness of this assumption over short and long horizons. Specifically, we explore the association between profit margins and special items over windows of increasing length, from one to five years. We find that the association between past special items and future profit margins differs markedly between firms with low and high core profitability. For low profitability firms, past special items have no association with future profit margins, even over windows of five years. In sharp contrast, for high profitability firms, negative special items are associated with lower future profit margins. This suggests that some firms maintain high core profitability by becoming serial chargers and special items differ from core earnings only to the extent that the allocation process induces timing errors in reported earnings.     

Teaching Technological Knowledge: determining and supporting student learning of technological concepts

This paper reports on findings related to Technological Knowledge from Stage Two of the Technological Knowledge and Nature of Technology: Implications for teaching and learning (TKNoT: Imps) research project undertaken in 2009. A key focus in Stage Two was the trialing of different teaching strategies to determine how learning related to the components Technological Modelling (TM), Technological Products (TP) and Technological Systems (TS) could be supported. These components fall within the Technological Knowledge (TK) strand of technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) and as such, reflect the key generic concepts or ‘big ideas’ of technology. During this stage of the research further exploration was also undertaken to determine how student understanding of these three components of technology education progressed from level 1 to 8 of the NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). This resulted in a significant review of the Indicators of Progression for TM, TP and TS, providing clarification of the nature of the progression expected of students in each component as well as increased teacher guidance to support such progression. Common misconceptions, partial understandings and alternative concepts related to these components were confirmed and explained and five case studies were developed to illustrate strategies employed by teachers and their impact on student learning related to these three components.     

The negative effects of expecting to evaluate: Reexamination and extension in the context of service failure

Service managers implement customer satisfaction evaluation cards (CSECs) to help them better understand and serve their customers. Yet a robust finding from recent research is that consumers who expect to evaluate provide lower satisfaction ratings than customers who are asked to evaluate without prior notice. This article reports results of two experiments that examine the effects of expecting to evaluate (here, the CSEC effect) in the negative context of service failure. The experiments utilize thought‐listing protocols to differentiate between vigilant processing (VPT) and negativity bias (NBT) theories and reinforce the internal validity of the CSEC effect. The studies also extend prior research by separating CSEC effects on evaluations of the service employee from CSEC effects on the service firm overall. Study 2 examines consequences of the CSEC effect not previously studied (switching, complaining, and negative word‐of‐mouth intentions) and extends external validity through an international replication. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.