Outsourcing child care,home cleaning and meal preparation

In this paper, the outsourcing of child care, home cleaning and meal preparation is analysed by means of a socio‐economic model that incorporates household‐economic, life cycle, lifestyle and health variables. The data (n = 700) were collected during a telephone survey in the Netherlands. About 10% of the households did not use any of the three outsourcing types. About 70 to 90% of households outsourced meal preparation at least once per month. In each household life cycle stage, the average monthly expenditures on outsourcing meal preparation were the highest of the three outsourcing categories. Factors affecting expenditures were generally the same for each type of outsourcing studied. In general, household economic variables including wage and working hours were unimportant in explaining the incidence and expenditures of outsourcing. The same holds for self‐reported health. All expenditure types were affected by life cycle variables. There was an indication that a traditional lifestyle and traditional family type affected outsourcing expenditures negatively. Education appeared as an important factor: regardless of gender, both medium‐ and higher‐educated people were more inclined to spend money on outsourcing than the lower educated. Especially, people younger than 44 years outsourced meal preparation. Outsourcing was neither restricted to nor especially practised by couples.     

The Role of Market Orientation and Entrepreneurial Orientation for New Product Development Performance in Manufacturing Firms

The overall purpose of this article is to examine the relationships between two strategic orientations and performance in new product development. The first orientation considered is market orientation; the second one considered is entrepreneurial orientation, which reflects a firm’s propensity to innovate, to be proactive, as well as its willingness to take risks. Drawing upon a sample of 224 mid-sized manufacturing firms, multiple regressions with and without interaction terms were used for testing seven hypotheses. The results show that a market orientation and innovativeness were positively related to performance in new product development, while proactiveness and risk taking show no such relationship. The results also show that neither product characteristics nor environmental characteristics moderate these relationships. In terms of implications, our results suggest that contradictory and to some extent paradoxical capabilities are needed to increase performance in new product development, and that the different components of an entrepreneurial orientation do not impact new product development performance equally.     

Framing risks in a safety‐critical and hazardous job: risk‐taking as responsibility in railway maintenance

In risk management research, risk‐taking is mostly treated as deviation that calls for improved risk communication. I argue, however, that risk‐taking should be seen as expressing a rationale of its own; thus, improving safety requires that this rationale be adequately understood and that the conditions that reproduce risk‐taking be changed. This argument is supported by an ethnography of railway maintenance in Sweden. Railway technicians are charged with maintaining the railway infrastructure to support safe and punctual trains, an assignment that exposes them to occupational hazards. The technicians' claim of occupational responsibility for transportation safety risks is framed by two notions in occupational discourse: first, the safety‐critical nature of their tasks, and second, the notion of service to the general public. Technician interdependence in achieving occupational safety requires mutual responsibility in the team. Technicians justify occupational risk‐taking, claiming it is sometimes needed to achieve production goals given the available time and resources and the manageability of the risks taken. Finally, I stress the need for technicians to change their frames of reference and for employers to assume responsibility for reducing the need for risk‐taking.     

Theme: Whole of government accounting— international trends

This article reconstructs the literature on corporate turnaround in terms of its recurring features. It then tests these against the experience of four very different cases of the turnaround or attempted turnaround of public and non-profit organizations. It concludes that while some concepts from the corporate literature usefully highlight important aspects, other critical complicating features of what is needed to achieve a turnaround in public and non-profit contexts would be overlooked or poorly treated if the situation were considered simply in these terms. These complicating features deserve the attention both of practitioners and researchers.     

Improving food security in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal province,South Africa: Too little,too slow

Food insecurity is still remarkably high in the poorest areas of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Many rural households struggle to have sufficient access to the food they need or prefer. This article explores the extent of food access insecurity and assesses the perceived impact on food security of an Empowerment for Food Security Programme that was launched in the Province in 2007. One of the programme aims was to improve agricultural practices in community gardens, home gardens and broiler production. Data were collected among 390 beneficiary households involved in these agricultural projects in 2010. Findings confirmed that experience-based food insecurity levels were still high, despite the agricultural support programme and the government income transfers. Nevertheless, respondents attribute an improved dietary diversity and better access to resources to the programme.     

Organising Corporate Responsibility Communication Through Filtration: A Study of Web Communication Patterns in Swedish Retail

Corporate responsibility (CR) communication has risen dramatically in recent years, following increased demands for transparency. One tendency noted in the literature is that CR communication is organised and structured. Corporations tend to professionalise CR communication in the sense that they provide information that corresponds to demands for transparency that are voiced by certain stakeholders. This also means that experts within the firm tend to communicate with professional stakeholders outside the firm. In this article, a particular aspect of the organisation of CR communication is examined, a phenomenon that we refer to as the ‘filtration effect’. By comparing CR communication in parent companies and their subsidiaries, we show empirically that there is considerably less CR communication on the subsidiary level compared to the parent level. We see filtration as a sign of conscious organising of CR communication that implies particular attention to certain stakeholder groups with clearly defined demands and expectations on companies. The strong filtration effect noted in the study suggests that CR communication does not seem to be very much adapted to customers, which may be problematic both from a communicative and ethical perspective. The study covers Sweden’s 206 largest retail firms.     

Lying in business: insights from Hannah Arendt's ‘Lying in Politics’

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt develops several arguments regarding why truthfulness cannot be counted among the political virtues. This article shows that similar arguments apply to lying in business. Based on Hannah Arendt's theory, we distinguish five reasons why lying is a structural temptation to businessmen: business is about action to change the world and therefore businessmen need the capacity to deny current reality; commerce requires successful image‐making and liars have the advantage to come up with plausible stories; business communication is more often about opinions than about facts, giving leeway to ignore uncomfortable signals; business increasingly makes use of plans and models, but these techniques foster inflexibility in acknowledging the real facts; and businessmen easily fall prey to self‐deception, because one needs to act as if the vision already materializes. The theory is illustrated by a case study of Landis, which grew from a relatively insignificant organization into a large one within a short period of time, but ended with outright lies and bankruptcy.     

Consumption dynamics and demographics of Canadian wine consumers: Retailing insights from the tasting room channel

This study facilitates a better understanding of the socio-demographics and consumption dynamics of wine consumers using the retailing ‘platform’ of the winery tasting room with them as visitors to it in a wine region environment. The overall aim was to gain some insights on gender and age generation-related consumer behaviour, wine type preferences, and their link to retail channel behaviour. Systematic random sampling yielded a total of 659 useable surveys collected at various tasting rooms in the Niagara Peninsula Wine Region in Ontario, Canada. Specific differences exist in the wine consumption behaviour and wine type preferences of males and females and between generational cohorts, specifically Millennial and older consumers. Whereas females and males do not differ much in quantity consumed and spend on wine, they do differ greatly in wine type consumption with females drinking significantly more white and males more red wine. Wine type consumption was shown to be moderated by not only classical demographic variables, but also by the retail outlets preferred for wine purchase. Females buy more of their wine from foodservice on-trade retail outlets such as restaurants, while Millennials frequent the tasting room channel much less than older consumers. There are strong indications that the higher the wine tourism activity level, the higher the wine consumption (usage) level of the consumers. It is possible to direct marketing strategies at wine consumers in accordance with their gender and lifecycle stage as far as certain behavioural and sensory aspects of the product is concerned. The winery tasting room is the most obvious retail channel vehicle to reach people with high tourism activity factor levels who also happen to be the high usage consumers in the wine market.