Chronic consumer debtors: the need for specific intervention

Many studies of consumer debtors have identified risk factors associated with chronic consumer debt. Chronic consumer debtors exist in an environment of ongoing efforts to survive financially and meet their debt commitments. Despite otherwise favourable economic conditions for the community at large such as low interest rates and low levels of unemployment, the chronic consumer debtor remains continuously at peril of overcommitment. An analysis of financial counselling interviews in New South Wales (the largest state in Australia) has been used to identify the group that the authors believe to be most at risk of chronic consumer debt in Australia. Other independent studies are provided to support the choice of the identified group. The situation for chronic consumer debtors is contrasted to the situation for acute cases. While financial literacy and support programmes can be provided to the community, the ability to target programmes towards a specifically identifiable group concentrates activities on measures aimed to alleviate the distress caused by ongoing financial hardship for one particular consumer group. The challenge of reducing chronic consumer debt has the potential to raise awareness and understanding of risk factors for consumer debtors generally. Thus, concentrated efforts towards alleviating chronic consumer debt may lead to a reduction in consumer financial overcommitment.     

Managerial Technologies, Ethics and Managing

ABSTRACT   This paper engages with a key element of Legge's work: the relationship between the technical and the moral in the application of managerial technologies, and how managers manage these different layers of meaning. Taking business planning and performance measurement as an example of managerial technologies, these are analysed for the extent to which they allow for an engagement with an ethical position, using Legge's (1978 ) characterization of the role of managerial technologies originally identified in Power, Innovation and Problem Solving in Personnel Management . The inter-related elements of the technical, the ethical and the practical are then used to explore how managers construct the meaning of management and their implications for Legge's more recent deontological and teleological ethical framework.     

Practical Reason and Performance Appraisal

This paper examines responses of chairs of university departments to the news that they would be required to conduct a formal performance appraisal system. It is suggested that in order to understand resistance to appraisal we need to reject explanations invoking polarized antinomies – formal/informal, rational/political – and interrogate the concept of rationality. Drawing on MacIntyre's work, the paper examines the concept of practical reason to make sense of the chairs' responses and considers its relevance for understanding management and change in universities.     

Managing the Risks of Corporate Political Donations: A Utilitarian Perspective

This paper applies a utilitarian analysis to corporate political donations. Unlike the more common rights-based analyses, it is argued that the optimal policy is the one that best satisfies society’s rational preferences concerning donor influence, adequate financing, donor pressure and the cost of maintaining and enforcing the democratic system. This analysis suggests that a ban is best if it would be generally observed and sufficient financing from other sources is available, otherwise a donation cap is a better option. Further, lobbyists should be banned from donating small gifts and drafting bills for candidates. The impact of disclosure and other risk management mechanisms are also considered.     

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND THE EMERGENCE OF MANAGEMENT*

This article addresses the debate concerning the study of management. Arguing that definitions of management have suffered from conceptual obscurity, it advocates that an understanding of management must address relational, constitutive and political dimensions of its operation. the work of Michel Foucault, particularly the concept of power/knowledge and his ascending analysis of power, offers such an approach. the relevance of Foucault for recasting the study of management is illustrated through an analysis of performance appraisal systems introduced into UK universities.     

The legal and practical prevention of ambush marketing in sports

Ambush marketing has emerged in recent years as an effective, if controversial, weapon in the arsenal of marketing departments seeking to associate themselves with sports events without the official authorization or endorsement of the event organizer. This article highlights the dangers posed by ambush marketing to owners of commercial rights in these events and examines the legal mechanisms available to prevent and minimize the likelihood of suffering damage to marketing campaigns by third-party ambush tactics. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Cult of Modernity

This article examines Strategic Performance Management Systems oftenintroduced as a key component of New Public Management. In doing so, it identifies some of the common and long-standing difficulties identified with the introduction and use of performance measures. The article then questions why such management systems are consistently advocated given some of the apparently serious dysfunctions that their introduction and use can engender. It concludes that these systems reflect a deeper attachment to what has been characterised as Enlightenment thinking, and that an archaeology of this style of thought is a necessary pre-requisite for understanding models of management that are promulgated.