The importance of time frames in Swedish Home and Consumer Studies

The aim of this study was to explore how time frames affect pupils and teachers in cooking activities during lessons of different durations for Home and Consumer Studies, with a specific focus on the pupils’ experiences. To investigate this, classroom observations were carried out in 2011 and 2012, with the help of audio and video recordings in three different schools in Sweden and included altogether 22 pupils (18 girls, 4 boys) in grade 9 (15–16 years). Each class was observed during two separate lessons, lasting between 1 h 50 min (110 minutes) and 2 h 20 min (140 min). The six lessons resulted in 12 h of video recorded time and 80 h of sound recordings. The study showed that the importance of finishing on time seemed to be ingrained in most pupils in all classes and the end result was perceived as more important than the process of cooking. The study also showed that knowledge of cooking skills and time management seemed important for success in grade‐related tasks. Pupils demonstrated different ways of handling the time frames, e.g. using various methods to speed up the cooking process. This study raises important questions about the relationship between national and local time frames and the curriculum aims in Home and Consumer Studies.     

The importance of integrating marketing planning with corporate planning

“Strategic marketing” implies that marketing has attained a corporate orientation. However, scant evidence is available to support this view. The primary focus of marketing remains at a micro, consumer-oriented level. Integration of marketing planning with corporate planning would suggest a higher perspective for marketers; recognizing that internal integration of planning is as important for effective marketing as external studies of customers and markets. Toward this end, four key dimensions of corporate planning are introduced. As corporate planning constrains marketing planning, it is this most “strategic” of outlooks that needs to be integrated into the process of marketing planning.     

Matching new manufacturing technologies to industrial markets and strategies

Major developments are occuring in the manufacturing technologies used in many industries—especially the metal manufacturing and fabricating industries and the electronic manufacturing industries. These developments provide a basis for developing a firm's distinctive competence but this can only be exploited to the full if Marketing personnel are aware of and take account of the new capabilities offered by these technological developments.     

Union steward locus of control,job, union involvement,and grievance behavior

Discretionary behaviors of union stewards are described. The use (or otherwise) of these behaviors may be a critical index of the number of grievances filed in an organization. Utilization of proactive grievance filing behaviors is systematically associated with steward job involvement, union involvement, and locus of control orientations. This hypothesis received empirical support in this research. Implications for organizational theorists and practitioners alike are discussed.     

Does intrahousehold bargaining power enhance women's marital satisfaction? A perspective from two competing forces in China

In the context of two competing forces (i.e., socioeconomic transformation vs. traditional cultural norms) influencing Chinese family and its members, the paper uses the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to empirically examine the causal relation between intrahousehold bargaining power and women's marital satisfaction. By employing an instrumental variable approach, the paper finds that intrahousehold bargaining power negatively affects women's marital satisfaction. This conclusion remains valid after performing various robustness checks. However, there are some heterogeneous effects found that the negative effect is particularly significant among those women of higher age and constrained by external traditional norms. These women are more conservative in their own thoughts and thus tend to support the traditional gender belief of “men being the masters of the family.”     

自评健康评价标准会随时间变化吗?

自评健康是大型问卷调查中的常用变量。有些研究者会依据自评健康的变化来判断受访者的健康变化情况,但这类分析的前提是健康评价标准在不同时间点保持稳定。本文利用具有全国代表性的"中国家庭追踪调查"中情境题面板数据的特殊设计,来分析人们的健康评价标准在两年间是否会发生变化。结果表明,对于健康状况较好的情境人物,大部分年龄组的评价标准在两年间没有明显变化;但对于健康状况较差的情境人物,所有年龄组评价标准呈现下降趋势。固定效应模型结果表明,在45岁-70岁的人群中,日常活动障碍的出现会导致健康评价标准下降。     

Human Resource Management and the ability,motivation and opportunity to continue working: A review of quantitative studies

Organisations are challenged to retain older workers, however knowledge on how this should be done is scattered. The aim of this paper is to integrate knowledge on the actions organisations can take to facilitate the extension of working lives by identifying and examining the effectiveness of Human Resource Management activities directed at the extension of working lives. To this end a systematic review was conducted, which identified 110 peer-reviewed and unpublished empirical articles concerning the influence of job demands, job resources and Human Resource practices on the ability, motivation and opportunity to work(ing). The results indicate that offering job resources has a positive effect on the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working. Furthermore, work ability was found to be most negatively related with job demands whereas employability was most positively related with developmental practices. The paper concludes by suggesting directions for future research and practical implications to encourage evidence-based practice.     

The Impact Of Computer Prices On International Comparisons Of Labour Productivity

This paper analyses the international comparability of methods used to convert the value added of the office and computing machinery sector (OCM) into constant prices for nine OECD countries. It concludes that the variations which exist in the price indexes are largely due to differences in the methods countries use to capture changes in the quality of an industry's output over time. The paper evaluates the impact of these different OCM price indexes on the growth rate of labour productivity during the 1980s by conducting a sensitivity test where the US OCM index is substituted for each of the individual country indexes. This experiment causes the OCM labour productivity growth rate to change by over a factor of ten for several countries. This result suggests that international comparisons of labour productivity should not be made for the OCM sector using the official data, and that labour productivity comparisons of sectors OCM belongs to—non-electrical machinery and fabricated metal products and machinery—should be conducted cautiously, if at all.     

Television’s Glocal Advertising in Veridical Product Narrative: A SE Asian Reception Study of Consumer Alignment/Alienation

Drawing on post‐Marxist screen reception studies in Malaysia, our article establishes a theoretical framework enabling analysis of consumer identification with/cultural distancing from television advertising and its aesthetics. We develop a hermeneutic model of audience response to audio‐visual text as ludic or play‐like in cognitively pursuing a meaning for veridical (mediated yet transparently accessible) marketing narrative sketches of everyday life transcended. Illustrating and illuminating this thesis, we report on a small SE Asian university research project whose participants articulate written reactions to two televised advertisements displaying transcultural product morphing (or glocal goods). Customer identification with consumers shown in television marketing is argued to be fundamentally hermeneutic. Brought into focus through analysis, that is, customer/consumer alignment is conceptual, conscious, and cultural where both project (expect and establish) a screen narrative shared epistemologically (as interpretative knowledge) and ontologically (as involving their activity). The reader’s propositional identification with a text’s perceived normative statement is enabled. On the other hand, discourses of consumer alienation emerge in response to advertisements inappropriately addressing audience horizons of expectation.