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Distribution costs are rising faster than the general level of inflation. It is of course possible to reduce these costs and make savings — but should the retailer himself take on this function, or leave it to the experts? Tony Stanton, speaking at the CIES Biennial Conference on Warehousing in Berlin recently, asserts that the main point of attack must be in delivery consolidation, and in this paper gives three examples of retail companies who have initiated or influenced such schemes — Sainsbury, Asda and Tesco.

Based on the theoretical and scientific literature, academic and career decisions to pursue STEM fields are made at the high school level, and Black high school students are more likely to participate in career and technical education (CTE) programs but are less likely to participate in CTE programs related to STEM. Additionally, Black male students are less likely to have taken the necessary prerequisites to pursue STEM fields in postsecondary education. As a result, Black male high school students are underprepared to pursue STEM college majors and careers.

However, when students participate in STEM high school CTE programs (e.g., career academies), they eventually attain STEM occupations. In this chapter, we will examine the role that high school career academies play, from the perspectives of school stakeholders, in addressing the talent pipeline by broadening the participation of Black males in STEM majors and careers.

High-involvement work processes (HIWPs) are associated with high levels of employee influence over the work process, such as high levels of control over how to handle individual job tasks or a high level of involvement at team or workplace level in designing work procedures. When implementations of HIWPs are accompanied by companion investments in human capital – for example, in better information and training, higher pay and stronger employee voice – it is appropriate to talk not only of HIWPs but of “high-involvement work systems” (HIWSs). This chapter reviews the theory and practice of HIWPs and HIWSs. Across a range of academic perspectives and societies, it has regularly been argued that steps to enhance employee involvement in decision-making create better opportunities to perform, better utilization of skill and human potential, and better employee motivation, leading, in turn, to various improvements in organizational and employee outcomes.

However, there are also costs to increased employee involvement and the authors review the important economic and sociopolitical contingencies that help to explain the incidence or distribution of HIWPs and HIWSs. The authors also review the research on the outcomes of higher employee involvement for firms and workers, discuss the quality of the research methods used, and consider the tensions with which the model is associated. This chapter concludes with an outline of the research agenda, envisaging an ongoing role for both quantitative and qualitative studies. Without ignoring the difficulties involved, the authors argue, from the societal perspective, that the high-involvement pathway should be considered one of the most important vectors available to improve the quality of work and employee well-being.

Searching for a job is an important process that influences short- and long-term career outcomes as well as well-being and psychological health. As such, job search research has grown tremendously over the last two decades. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of prior research, discuss important trends in current research, and suggest areas for future research. The authors conceptualize the job search as an unfolding process (i.e., a process through which job seekers navigate through stages to achieve their goal of finding and accepting a job) in which job seekers engage in self-regulation behaviors. The authors contrast research that has taken a between-person, static approach with research that has taken a within-person, dynamic approach and highlight the importance of combining between- and within-person designs in order to have a more holistic understanding of the job search process. Finally, authors provide some recommendations for future research. Much remains to be learned about what influences job search self-regulation, and how job self-regulation influences job search and employment outcomes depending on individual, contextual, and environmental factors.

With the aim of shedding light on issues surrounding the development and evaluation of report, this paper offers a theory for facilitating and legitimizing an accountability‐based discourse and disclosure in the public health sector. The project adopts Laughlin’s (1995) vision of middle range theory and an accountability perspective to justify the form and normative perspective which shapes the skeletal model to follow. Formulated in part from an analysis of the health management and public sector accounting literatures, the model is now empirically supported from the preferences of health sector accountees in New Zealand. The result is a conceptual construct which is both considerate of and challenging to the standard financial accounting model. The skeletal model consists of five conceptual categories, their interrelationships and properties. The theoretical model considers and mandates illumination of political incentives, incorporates the assumption that accounting can be constitutive as well as reflective and is sympathetic to a wide range of interests and contextual distinctions.

This paper takes a broad introductory look at the notion of objectivity within the western philosophic tradition of liberal individualism and exposes how this is related to, or sets the stage for, the creation of learning objects as a concept. Objectivity is predicated on ideas such as the removal of context and the ability to transcend social, cultural and discursive position. Learning objects have often been conceptualised as outside of context as well. This paper presents some of the criticisms of this approach in transcending context and suggests that this conceptualisation may prove problematic in the successful execution, creation and distribution of learning objects.

Self-report questionnaires are the predominant method used in human resource management (HRM) research to assess employees’ work-related psychological constructs (e.g., processes, states, and attributes). However, this method is associated with significant shortcomings, including the introduction of self-serving bias and common method variance when used exclusively. In this chapter, the authors challenge the assumption that individuals themselves are the only accurate source of the self-focused information collected in HRM research. Instead, the authors propose that other-ratings – ratings of a target individual that are provided by a workplace observer, such as a coworker, supervisor, or subordinate – can accurately assess commonly measured work-related psychological constructs. The authors begin by explaining the advantages of other-ratings for HRM research and practice, reviewing the history of other-ratings and how they emerged in the personality and person-perception literature, and outlining how they have been used in HRM research to date. Then, the authors build upon Funder’s (1995) realistic accuracy model to develop a theoretical argument detailing why workplace others should be able to accurately judge how another employee thinks and feels about work. Next, the authors highlight existing evidence in the literature on the accuracy of other-ratings and present the results of a preliminary meta-analysis on the ability of other-ratings to predict self-ratings of work-related psychological constructs. Finally, the authors discuss potential moderators of other-rating accuracy and reflect on a number of practical considerations for researchers looking to use other-ratings in their own work. The authors intend for this chapter to meaningfully contribute to the larger conversation on HRM research methods. Other-ratings are a simple, yet powerful, addition to the methodological toolkit of HRM researchers that can increase flexibility in research design and improve the overall quality of research.

This book chapter intends to analyse a particular measurement basis, namely the ‘value in use’, regarding its definition and application in the public sector context. To this end, the current study assesses the development of a measurement practice in a particular jurisdiction, that is, Italy, compared with requirements in current International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs), in order to explore its suitability and practicability for a specific category of public sector assets, namely heritage assets.