Consumption conundrums unravelled

While consumption has moved to centre stage in accounts of Britain's industrialization, evidence on the mass transformation of homes and expenditure on novelty is hard to reconcile with the poor living standards experienced by many working people. Part of the conundrum arises from the limitations of available probate evidence, but the motivational drivers behind raised consumption can also be questioned. Was it changed tastes or falling prices because of improved technology which prompted the purchase of new goods? Utilizing evidence from an alternative source, property stolen through housebreaking and burglary as reported in the Old Bailey Papers and Proceedings for 1750–1821, we identify those goods that were commonly stolen as the fashion icons of their day, trace such goods back to their original owners, thus linking ownership and status, and through analysis over time show how consumption evolved. This analysis incorporates the influence of price and real incomes on ownership, allowing the influence of price and fashion on consumption patterns to be identified separately. The findings show that, in addition to price and income effects, fashion had a strong influence, but this was not just emulation; differentiation too was evident. The evidence points to a complex interplay between desires and differentiation, aspiration and affordability, in determining the goods that people possessed.     

Context,values and moral dilemmas: Comparing the choices of business and law school students

Much has been written about the ethics and values of today's business student, but this research has generally been characterized by a variety of methodological shortcomings — the use of convenience samples, a failure to establish the relevance of comparison groups employed, attempts to understand behavior in terms of unidimensional values preselected by the researcher, and the lack of well-designed longitudinal studies. The research reported here addresses many of these concerns by comparing the values and ethical decision making behavior of a large cohort of students entering an M. B. A. program to students entering law school. Using the Rokeach value survey and several ethical decision making vignettes, significant differences were found between the two groups which have important implications for both the business and legal professions and the education of their future leaders.     

Youth Self Employment: Its Nature and Consequences

This paper examines the extent of self-employment, characteristics of the self-employed, and the returns to self-employment experiences for a sample of teenagers and young adults in the United States. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that the self-employment experience of youth is quite different from that of adults. Consequences of youth self-employment, measured at age 27, suggest both positive and negative effects.     

Shared decision-making in tourism land use planning

A Canadian government commission dealing with environmental resources attempted to incorporate several innovative approaches for shared decision-making into its strategic land use planning process for central British Columbia. This paper describes a framework of design and evaluative criteria for guiding such shared decision-making processes. It uses these criteria to assess the efficacy of the process from the perspective of those tourism stakeholders who participated in this planning exercise. The article offers recommendations to government as well as tourism sector organizations concerning the management of future public land use planning strategies designed to fully incorporate stakeholders into such processes.

Résumé

Les décisions partagées au sujet de la politique foncière du tourisme. Une commission du gouvernement canadien s'occupant des ressources environnementales a essayé d'incorporer plusieurs nouvelles méthodes de décisions partagées dans la planification des stratégies d'utilisation foncière pour la Colombie britannique centrale. Cet article décrit un cadre de critères pour la conception et l'évaluation des processus de décisions partagées. L'article utilise ces critères pour mesurer l'efficacité du processus du point de vue des planificateurs. Il fait des recommandations au gouvernement et aux organisations touristiques au sujet de la planification et de la future gestion de l'utilisation de la propriété publique pour que tous les intéressés soient compris dans ces processus.     

Trade Union Approaches towards the ICE Regulations: Defensive Realism or Missed Opportunity?

Reflecting debates about whether statutory workforce‐wide consultation arrangements are likely to undermine or underpin trade union representation, unions' approaches towards the UK's Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 have been ambivalent and their engagement with the legislation limited. Evidence from longitudinal case studies in 25 organizations suggests that the introduction of information and consultation bodies did not have the effect of marginalizing trade union representation and collective bargaining, and in some cases reinforced unions' standing within the organization. The article highlights the implications for union strategies and legislative reform, and suggests a research agenda.     

Fostering deep and elaborative learning and generic (soft) skill development: the strategic use of case studies in accounting education

It is vital that accounting educators take responsibility for the development of students' generic (soft) skills in conjunction with, discipline-specific skills. Research indicates that the typical learning styles of accounting students are not suited to the acquisition of generic skills. In this paper learning theory is used to provide a framework to support the use of case studies as a tool to promote appropriate learning styles and thereby enhance generic skill development. The paper details a number of strategies that may be implemented with case studies to achieve these goals. The implications for accounting educators, which are significant, are discussed.     

Export-led growth: a survey of the empirical literature and some non-causality results. Part 2

This paper continues the investigation of Giles and Williams (2000) on export-led growth (ELG). In the first part, we surveyed the empirical export-led growth literature; it was evident that Granger non-causality tests are commonly applied as a test for ELG. In this paper, we explore the sensitivity of the test for exclusions restrictions often used as the Granger non-causality test for ELG by reconsidering two applications: Oxley's (1993) study for Portugal and Henriques and Sadorsky's (1996) analysis for Canada. We focus on the robustness of the method adopted to deal with non-stationarity, including the choice of deterministic trend degree. We show that different noncausality outcomes are easy to obtain, and consequently we recommend that readers interpret the empirical ELG literature with care. Our analysis also highlights the importance of examining the robustness of Granger non-causality test results to avoid spurious outcomes in applications.     

Beyond Employment: An Examination of Modes of Service Provision in a Deprived Neighbourhood

The aim of this article is to show that despite the growth in service employment, the formalisation of services is neither as all-pervasive as such growth .suggests nor is it a natural and inevitable process. Through case study of a deprived neighbourhood, this article finds that the vast majority of service remain informally provided, that it is not the poorest households who acquire the largest proportion o f their services informally and that informal services are not used purely out of economic necessity. Therefore, the predominace of informality is unlikely to be confined to deprived neighbourhoods. The problem, however; given that those who purchase fewest fornal services also acquire fewest informal services, is that iformal modes of provision seem to reinforce rerther than reduce the socio-economic inequalities produrced by employment.