The Neglected Legacy of Lancashire Cotton: Industrial Clusters and the U.K. Outdoor Trade, 1960-1990

This article considers the neglected legacies of the Lancashirecotton industry and their impact on the U.K. outdoor trade.Studies of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry afterthe Second World War have concentrated on the collapse of coarsecotton spinning and weaving, largely ignoring the impact ofthe knowledge and skills related to the finishing trades. Theexamination of the evolution of rainwear, coatings, and high-performancefabrics in the nineteenth century provides a backdrop to a studyof the innovation process that emerged in the U.K. outdoor tradeafter 1960. It shows that there was a path dependency betweenthe skills that resided in Lancashire’s finishing tradesand coating and fabric innovation for outdoor products. Thisarticle explores both the legacy and the ways in which the networksof innovation functioned as the U.K. outdoor trade expanded.     

The face of the un‐consumer: An empirical examination of the practice of voluntary simplicity in the United States

The practice of voluntary simplicity is inextricably linked to consumer behavior and has attracted the attention of researchers in a number of disciplines, including psychology and marketing. Yet the daily practice of voluntary simplicity in the United States remains largely unexamined. The research presented here is the first to look at voluntary simplicity with the use of a nationwide sample of American consumers. A more refined application of Maslow's theory of human motivation to the understanding of this social phenomenon is proposed. The practices considered most important to this lifestyle are identified, as are key impediments to its consistent practice. Factor analysis is used to identify the underlying dimensions of U.S. voluntary simplicity: ecological and social responsibility; community; and maintaining a spiritual life. Findings indicate that people of moderate income are more likely to practice voluntary simplicity than was previously believed. This research also compares highly committed simplifiers to those who are less committed, finding that more committed practitioners are more likely to be consistent in practices requiring ongoing effort, such as composting. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Corporate Rights to Free Speech?

Although the courts have ruled that companies are legal persons, they have not yet made clear the extent to which political free speech for corporations is limited by the strictures legitimately placed upon corporate commercial speech. I explore the question of whether or not companies can properly be said to have the right to civil free speech or whether corporate speech is always de facto commercial speech not subject to the same sorts of legal protections as is the right to civil free speech. In the absence of clearly defined legal precedent, I emphasize moral reasons for determining the appropriate limits of corporate civil free speech. Appealing to arguments typically used to justify individual rights to civil free speech, I examine the extent to which this sort of justification may or may not be legitimately extended to corporations. I conclude that corporate rights to civil free speech must be restricted because granting rights of free speech to institutions may, in practice, undermine the moral rationale and practical feasibility of guaranteeing rights of civil free speech to individuals. Furthermore, I argue that granting corporations full rights to civil free speech will undercut attempts to develop good moral character in corporate institutions by undermining the efforts of watchdog organizations.     

Attribute Identities Matter: Subjective Perceptions of Attribute Characteristics

Recent research indicates that attributes vary along multiple dimensions with implications for how trade-offs are resolved during choice. We present an exploratory study of the dimensionality underlying naïve subjects ratings of attributes on the characteristics commonly discussed in the literature on tradeoff resolution and decision difficulty. Factor analysis of attribute characteristic assessments indicates that subjects view decision attributes in a multi-dimensional fashion, including an importance/loss aversion dimension, an emotional potential/protection from tradeoffs dimension, and a cognitive difficulty dimension. These results suggest that a one-dimensional measure of attribute characteristics, such as a standard attribute importance rating, may obscure some factors determining individual responses to attributes during decision processing. However, the results also suggest that developing a relatively succinct set of scales in order to characterize the dimensions along with subjects response to attributes is a viable goal for future research.     

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The safety attitudes of people who use multi-purpose recreation facilities as a physical activity setting

Multi-purpose recreation facilities (MPRFs) are a popular setting for physical activity and it is therefore important that they are safe for all patrons. However, the attitudes of MPRF users towards safety are a potential barrier to the success of injury prevention programmes implemented within MPRFs. This article reports a survey of the safety attitudes of over 700 users of four indoor MPRFs. Factor analysis of 12 five-point Likert scale statements showed that the attitudes clustered around three major dimensions - the importance of safety, the benefits of safety and the perceptions of injury risk. Together, these three dimensions accounted for 49% of the variability in the attitudes. More than 85% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that: safety was an important aspect of physical activity participation; being injured affected enjoyment of physical activity; people should adopt appropriate safety measures for all physical activity; and individuals were responsible for their own safety. The MPRF users, particularly women and older people, were generally safety conscious, believed in adopting safety measures, and were willing to take responsibility for their own safety. Facility managers can be confident that if they provide evidence-based injury prevention interventions in these settings, then users will respond appropriately and adopt the promoted behaviours.     

Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media

Traditionally, consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, consumers are utilizing platforms—such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact a firm's reputation, sales, and even survival. Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this form of media because they don’t understand what it is, the various forms it can take, and how to engage with it and learn. In response, we present a framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. As different social media activities are defined by the extent to which they focus on some or all of these blocks, we explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage with social media. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media activities.     

The Distributional Impact of Direct Payments on Irish Farm Incomes

The objective of this paper is to analyse the distributional effects of the different income components of Irish farm income with a Gini comparison method and by disaggregating the overall Gini coefficient of income inequality by income source. Using individual farm data for 1992 and 1996, the impact on farm income distribution of the MacSharry CAP reform is assessed. In addition, the change in the Gini coefficient between these years is decomposed into the changes in the within‐source distribution of each income stream and the share of each income stream. The favourable movement in the Gini coefficient is found to be due to the introduction of direct payments, which target less well‐off farmers. Market income remains the single largest influence on deciding the income ranking of a farm while contributing less to total income than before.     

How Central Is Too Central? Organizing Interorganizational Collaboration Networks for Breakthrough Innovation

Firms increasingly look to collaboration with alliance partners in their quest for breakthrough innovation. But how does the position of a firm in its alliance network weighted by the centrality of its partners—a concept which we term “partner‐weighted alliance centrality”—and the heterogeneities in the types of partners that it cooperates with—in terms of its private‐public collaboration—influence this quest? Using longitudinal data from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, we build alliance networks in the period 1985–2001 to investigate these questions. We show that, for breakthrough innovation, collaborating with more partners that are more central in alliance networks the better, but only to a point. Beyond that point, we find that the likelihood of achieving breakthrough innovation drops. Furthermore, and looking at the kinds of knowledge provided by the partners in each firm's alliances, we report that firms with a greater share of private partners, relative to public partners, suffer less from the diminishing benefits of collaboration with central partners when developing breakthrough innovation. Taken together, we make novel contributions about how to organize for breakthrough innovation, and provide actionable managerial advice in terms of selecting collaborative partners in alliance networks.     

Stock Price Reaction to Non-financial News in European Technology Companies

Drawing upon a series of interviews conducted with leading practitioners and opinion formulators in the social, ethical and environmental audit arena, together with an extensive review of recent literature in the area, this paper offers a critical appraisal of current developments in the newly revitalized social audit movement. We particularly question whether in their enthusiasm for bringing social audit into the mainstream of current business thinking its advocates risk compromising the democratic ideals of the founding fathers of the movement. A particular concern raised is that without real change in corporate governance structures, social audit could become monopolized by consultants and/or corporate management and hence amount to little more than a skilfully controlled public relations exercise.