How adult children in the UK and the US view the driving cessation of their parents: Is a policy window opening?

Both the UK and the US have rapidly ageing and increasingly diverse populations very dependent on driving. A comparative study commissioned by the UK Department for Transport found that in both the UK and the US adult children of older drivers, whilst often concerned about their parents’ continued driving, were also worried about the burden they would carry when their parents stopped driving, although there were differences by race and ethnicity. This study suggests that a policy window may be opening through which babyboomers can advocate for a range of driver training, roadway and vehicle improvements, expansion and enhancement of traditional public transportation and community transport options, improvements in accessibility and pedestrian infrastructure, and supportive land use and housing policies that would allow older people to drive safely longer, and, find meaningful mobility options when they can no longer drive. Policy responses must recognise and respond appropriately to differences by race and ethnicity.     

Motivating independent distribution channel members

'This article discusses a general program for motivating independent distributors (channel members) to do a more effective selling job for the manufacturer. The program consists of three basic facets: (1) finding out the needs and problems of channel members; (2) offering support to channel members that is consistent with their needs and problems; and (3) providing the necessary leadership to institute the motivation programs. Practical methods and case histories are presented to illustrate how this motivation program can help to foster a more highly motivated group of channel members.     

Is it all about awareness? The normalization of coastal risk

Coastal risk is already high in several parts of the world and is expected to be amplified by climate change, which makes it necessary to outline effective risk management strategies. Risk managers assume that increasing awareness of coastal risk is the key to public support and endorsement of risk management strategies – an assumption that underlies a common worldview on the public understanding of science, which has been named the deficit model. We argue that the effects of awareness are not as straightforward. In particular, awareness of coastal hazards might not lead to more technically accurate risk perceptions. Based on research on risk perception normalization, we explored the hypothesis that coastal risk awareness reduces coastal risk perception – in particular the perceived likelihood of occurrence of coastal hazards – through its effect on reliance on protective measures to prevent risk. Individuals can rely on protective measures, even when those are not effective, as a positive illusion to reduce risk perception. This effect might be stronger for higher probability hazards and for permanent residents of costal zones. Data from 410 individuals living in coastal zones corroborated most of our expectations. Global results demonstrated a risk normalization effect mediated by reliance on current measures. Additional analyses made clear that this effect occurred in 2 of the 5 high-probability hazards (flood and storm), and not in the low-probability hazard (tsunami). Normalization might be more likely among high-probability hazards which entail catastrophic and immediate impacts. This effect was also found among permanent residents, but not among temporary residents. Results imply that coastal risk management might benefit from (a) taking risk perception normalization effects into account, (b) tailoring strategies for permanent and temporary residents and (c) promoting a higher public engagement, which would facilitate a more adaptive and effective coping with coastal risk than the use of positive illusions.     

Transformational Leadership: Managing the Twenty‐First Century Sales Force

In today's more diverse sales organizations, sales managers face important interpersonal challenges to achieving high‐quality relationships, which result in better performance within their sales force. In this article, it is argued that cultural distance can negatively influence sales manager and sales subordinate relationships. The quality of these relationships ultimately influences the level of effort that sales subordinates exert toward achieving organizational sales goals. However, despite the potential obstacle of cultural distance, sales managers can utilize transformational leadership as a means to mitigate its adverse effects on one‐to‐one relationships with members of the sales force.     

Improving retail manpower planning with a quasi-subjective waiting line model

One of the most fruitful approaches for increasing marketing productivity is through more efficient manpower planning. This is particularly true in the labor intensive sectors of marketing such as retailing, particularly the retail department store. Waiting line models offer a high degree of potential for more effective manpower planning in the retail department store. The department store, however, presents a particular set of problems which make applications of waiting line models to manpower planning fairly complex. This complexity stems from two major sources: 1) consumer shopping behavior and 2) sales personnel management practices. This article discusses these problems and presents a model by which they can be handled for retail department stores. A detailed example illustrating the model's application is also provided.     

Agricultural labor productivity in the Lower South, 1720-1800

The primary factor determining the rate of economic growth in 18th-century British America was the pace of improvement in agricultural productivity. This paper examines agricultural productivity advance in the Lower South between 1720 and 1800. We extend and refine previous measures based on export performance, and offer new productivity measures based on the real value of slave labor, and total agricultural production in the region. Despite differences in their short-term behavior, all of the indices show that long-run productivity improvements were modest at best, and may have been negative. Surprisingly, taking account of production for domestic consumption yields the most favorable long-term performance.     

The sales manager: Tomorrow's super marketer

The old stereotype of a sales manager is dying; today, the position requires a wide variety of skills. But are managers really chosen according to these new criteria?