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The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

To show how consumer researchers can learn from novels and analogous works of fiction.

Close reading of two recent novels, The Savage Girl by Alex Shakar and Jennifer Government by Max Barry.

The paper shows how works of fiction can be used as a intellectual resource by the consumer research community. It argues that fiction refreshed the parts that other research methods cannot reach.

Much depends on the caliber of the novels. Not every work of art is a work of genius. The article contends that consumer researchers need to move beyond singing the praises of fiction and, in pursuit of new paths to thick description, seek instead to novelise our findings. Or narrate them better at least.

Marketing practitioners might learn more from reading novels than the academic marketing literature.

There is nothing particularly original in the paper. It reiterates what several scholars have said already. The message is sufficiently important to warrant constant repetition, however.

The number of years a person has lived is a poor indicator of their self‐perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. For these reasons, gerontologists have looked to alternative measures of age, including self‐perceived or subjective age. While American researchers have built up a body of knowledge pertaining to self‐perceived age for more than half a century, little is known about the concept in the UK. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study into the self‐perceived age of a group of UK citizens (n = 356) aged 50‐79 (mean age 60.2 years). Using the cognitive age scale, respondents were asked how old they perceived themselves to be on the dimensions of feel, look, act and interests. Overall, respondents indicated a self‐perceived age of more than 10 years younger than their chronological age. These results suggest that the phenomenon is at least as extensive as in the US, where it is frequently argued that youth is valued over age. Policy and practice implications are discussed.

Purpose: This project examines both the media practice of covering perp walks and the discourse of perp walks as performative rituals, with the goal of understanding how grounded practice shapes meaning.

Methodology/approach: This project combines ethnographic observation and interview research to explore the grounded experience of perp walk participants, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants.

Findings: The analysis suggests that perp walks are constructions that serve the interests of the state and that their resulting images are not neutral documents. Visual journalists are managed by law enforcement through embodied gatekeeping in practice and experience pressure from newsrooms to capture a particular moment. Defendants report feeling violated because they are unable to control the discourse of their recontextualized image.

Research limitations: As a qualitative-research project using a non-representative sample, the study results cannot be generalized, but they instead offer a rich understanding of embodied practice.

Originality/value: Because this study offers the subjective perspectives of three sets of stakeholders, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants, it offers a unique and in-depth analysis of perp walks as media ritual.

Enterprise diversification is a self‐insuring strategy used by farmers to protect against risk. This study examines the impact of various farm, operator, and household characteristics on the level of onfarm enterprise diversification. Evidence exists that larger farms are more specialized. Also, farmers who participate in off‐farm work, farms located near urban areas, or farms with higher debt‐to‐asset ratios are less likely to be diversified. In contrast, evidence suggests there is a significant positive relationship between diversification and whether the farm business has crop insurance, is organized as a sole proprietorship, or receives any direct payments from current farm commodity programs.

Recent research into the nature and impact of racial discrimination directed at Aboriginal Australian children and youth has revealed how such a stressor can negatively impact upon varying physical health, emotional well-being and education outcomes. Despite the strength of these findings for identifying need for action, such research has been largely limited by either a lack of consideration as to the potentially complex nature of racism targeting Aboriginal Australians or alternatively offering little in identifying sources of resiliency for Aboriginal Australian students. It is the purpose of this investigation to identify the voices of high-achieving Aboriginal Australian post-graduate students with regard to their experiences of racism, how they may have coped with racism and their advice to future generations of Aboriginal youth.

A series of in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with seven Aboriginal Australian PhD students within an Australian University. The interviews were designed to capture the perceptions, experiences and coping strategies used when faced with racism. The data was carefully and repeatedly scrutinized for emerging themes that were shared by the majority of participants.

Numerous themes emerged with issues pertaining to the veracity of racism and conceptualizations of racism across historical/cross-generational, contemporary, verbal, physical, institutional, cultural, political, electronic, personal, reverse/internalized and collective/group dimensions. In addition, the negative impact of racism was identified, but more importantly, a series of interrelated positive coping responses (e.g. externalization of racism, social support) were voiced.

The implications of these results attest to the need to understand the many faces of racism that may still be experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders today. In addition, the coping strategies identified may be seen as valuable agents of resiliency for future generations of Aboriginal youth.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which forum theatre interventions can support non-hierarchical approaches to learning, development and change management initiatives in organisations.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with theatre consultancies, actors/facilitators, commissioners and participants in two forum theatre events. The data were analysed through thematic coding using template analysis.

The findings show that the impact of forum theatre interventions was constrained by the need for practitioners to meet the requirements of their organizational clients. There was a lack of clarity by the facilitators about how they can carry out the role effectively and meet the expectations of their own managers, organizational clients and participants. The paper concludes that without explicit acknowledgement of these competing expectations or the facilitators ' beliefs and attitudes, the impact of such interventions may be reduced or diminished.

The study is relatively small-scale and there is a need for research across a wider range of theatre-based interventions to develop understanding of the ways in which such events can enable the development of non-hierarchical learning spaces.

The paper highlights the need for consultancies offering forum theatre interventions to understand the dilemmas of facilitators and provide a more pro-active approach to their learning and development needs.

There has been limited exploration of the facilitator ' s role in managing learning and development events in general and forum theatre in particular. This paper highlights the challenges to consultancies and HRD practitioners in implementing more democratic approaches to learning, development and change management initiatives.

To outline paradoxes found in literature on management consulting and present a novel way of re‐conceptualizing paradox using a performative or action‐oriented approach to discourse.

The approach is based on a theoretical reinterpretation of existing research findings on management consulting. Limited ethnographic data are also used to support the argument.

The paper argues that paradoxes are an outcome of the many, often conflicting, interpretive repertoires (IR) used to understand management consulting. This suggests that paradoxes may never be resolved but instead may constitute a key resource for agents in affecting change. This idea is illustrated with reference to ethnographic data from a study of management consultants.

The paper suggests that a performative theory of discourse enables researchers to appreciate how and why paradoxes are reproduced in the context of organizational change.

Practitioners are seen to work within paradoxes, using conflicting IR as a toolkit for negotiating change.

Proposes a novel way of viewing paradoxes by shifting the focus away from what paradoxical accounts reflect towards what they achieve in the context of interaction.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight theoretical and clinical similarities between therapeutic communities (TCs) and group analysis (GA).

Literature review shows comparison of TC and group-analytic concepts with illustrative case material.

Findings reveal many similarities between TCs and GA, but also significant divergences, particularly in practice.

This paper provides theoretical basis for TC practice, and highlights the need for greater theorising of TC practice.

This paper highlights the importance of group-based treatment approaches in mental health.

This is the first paper to review the relevant literature and compare theory and practice in TCs and GA, highlighting their common roots in the Northfields Experiments in the Second World War.