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Article
Publication date: 24 July 2009

Brian A. Altman

The aim of this paper is to review two accounts of the history of workplace learning and training in the USA that emphasize issues of power and control in the determination of…

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to review two accounts of the history of workplace learning and training in the USA that emphasize issues of power and control in the determination of what training occurs, and place these issues at the center of their analyses.

Design/methodology/approach

The two texts are reviewed and a constructivist paradigm is considered to address issues raised in the texts.

Findings

It is suggested that a constructivist view by managers and workers can foster a positive approach to determining what training workers receive, allowing for worker training that meets the needs of managers as well as workers.

Research limitations/implications

While these two works were the only ones identified through a literature search that focuses on the history of who determined worker training in the USA, and they prove insightful on this topic, this paper is limited in that these works are now respectively approximately one and three decades old.

Practical implications

Implementation of a constructivist view of determining training for workers can meet the needs of managers as well as workers, avoiding a zero‐sum game view.

Originality/value

By reviewing these two texts, and considering a constructivist paradigm in addressing issues raised by the authors, a vision of a constructivist approach to determining training is presented, with advantages to workers and managers.

Details

Journal of European Industrial Training, vol. 33 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0590

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 February 2022

Wayne Fu and Brian W. Jacobs

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between changes in water efficiency, profit and risk for firms in the global Consumer Packaged Goods industry. This study…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between changes in water efficiency, profit and risk for firms in the global Consumer Packaged Goods industry. This study also aims to consider the moderating effect of operational efficiency on those relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a sample of 155 firms with annual corporate social performance and financial performance data from Bloomberg for the years 2010–2019, this study employs first-differencing panel regression models to obtain our results.

Findings

This study finds strong evidence that operational efficiency moderates the relationships between water efficiency, profit and risk. For operationally efficient firms, increasing water efficiency increases profit and reduces risk. But for firms that are not operationally efficient, this study finds the opposite effects. These findings suggest a threshold level of operational efficiency that firms should achieve before they can reap financial benefits from increases in water efficiency.

Originality/value

Despite the increasing importance of water efficiency as a measure of corporate social performance, its effects on financial performance are not well studied. The relationship between operational efficiency and water efficiency has also not been examined. This work provides empirical evidence to better understand these important relationships. The major implication for managers is that operational efficiency is a foundational capability that should be developed before focusing on efforts to improve water efficiency. For operationally efficient firms, improvements in water efficiency can be an important mechanism to increase profitability and reduce risk.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 42 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Advances in Librarianship
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-876-6

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2004

Rebecca Gasior Altman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her focus is on medical sociology, environmental sociology, organizational theory…

Abstract

Rebecca Gasior Altman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her focus is on medical sociology, environmental sociology, organizational theory, and social movement theory. Her current research projects analyze narratives about community toxics activism, environmental advocacy support organizations, and medical waste.Phil Brown is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Brown University. He is currently examining disputes over environmental factors in asthma, breast cancer, and Gulf War-related illnesses, as well as toxics reduction and precautionary principle approaches that can help avoid toxic exposures. He is the author of No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action (Phil Brown & Edwin Mikkelsen), co-editor of a collection, Illness and the Environment: A Reader in Contested Medicine, and editor of Perspectives in Medical Sociology.Daniel M. Cress is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Western State College of Colorado. His research and teaching interests include social movements – particularly among poor and marginalized groups, environmental sociology, and globalization. His published work has focused on protest activity by homeless people.Jennifer Earl is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research areas include social movements and the sociology of law, with research emphases on the social control of protest, social movement outcomes, Internet contention, and legal change. Her published work has appeared in a number of journals, including the American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.Myra Marx Ferree is professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work on social movements has focused on women’s mobilizations and organizations in Germany, the U.S., and transnationally, most recently looking at interactions between American and Russian feminists (Signs, 2001), German and American abortion discourses and the definition of radicalism (AJS, 2003), and the European Women’s Lobby in relation to transnational women’s organizations on the web (Social Politics, 2004).Joshua Gamson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. He is author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998), Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (California, 1994), and numerous articles on social movements, gay and lesbian politics, popular culture and media. He is currently working on a biography of the disco star Sylvester.Teresa Ghilarducci is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Higgins Labor Research Center at the University of Notre Dame. She is author of Labor’s Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions (MIT Press) and Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets: Lessons from the Operating Engineers Central Pension Fund (with Garth Mangum, Jeffrey S. Petersen & Peter Philips). She is a former Board of Trustees member of the Indiana Public Employees Retirement Fund, a former advisory board member for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance.Brian Mayer is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at Brown University. His interests include environmental and medical sociology, as well as science and technology studies. His recent projects include an investigation of the growth of the precautionary principle as a new paradigm among environmental organizations and a study of social movements addressing environmental health issues.Sabrina McCormick is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. She is a Henry Luce Foundation Fellow through the Watson Institute of International Studies. Her main interests are environmental sociology, medical sociology, and the politics of development. As a Luce Fellow, she is engaged in comparing environmentally-based movements in the U.S. and Brazil. Additional special interests include the social contestation of environmental illness, the insertion of lay knowledge into expert systems, and the role of social movements in these struggles. She has recent publications by Ms. Magazine and The National Women’s Health Network related to these areas.Rachel Morello-Frosch is an assistant professor at the Center for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community Health, School of Medicine at Brown University. As an environmental health scientist and epidemiologist, her research examines race and class determinants of the distribution of health risks associated with air pollution among diverse communities in the United States. Her current work focuses on: comparative risk assessment and environmental justice, developing models for community-based environmental health research, children’s environmental health, and the intersection between economic restructuring and environmental health. Her work has appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, Risk Analysis, International Journal of Health Services, Urban Affairs Review, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and Environment and Planning C. She also sits on the scientific advisory board of Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco.Daniel J. Myers is Associate Professor, Chair of Sociology, and Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published work on collective violence, racial conflict, formal models of collective action, urban poverty, and the diffusion of social behavior in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Mobilization. He is also author of Toward a More Perfect Union: The Governance of Metropolitan America and The Future of Urban Poverty (both with Ralph Conant), and Social Psychology (5th edition) with Andy Michener and John Delamater. He is currently conducting a National Science Foundation-funded project examining the structural conditions, diffusion patterns, and media coverage related to U.S. racial rioting in the 1960s.Sharon Erickson Nepstad is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duquesne University and the author of Convictions of the Soul: Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement (Oxford University Press, 2004).Francesca Polletta is Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (University of Chicago, 2002) and editor, with Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, of Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (University of Chicago, 2001). She has published articles on culture, collective identity, emotions, law, and narrative in social movements, and on the civil rights, women’s liberation, new left, and contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements.Nicole C. Raeburn is Assistant Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of the book, Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Her new research project compares the adoption of gay-inclusive workplace policies in the corporate, educational, and government sectors.Leila J. Rupp is Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A historian by training, her teaching and research focus on sexuality and women’s movements. She is coauthor with Verta Taylor of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (2003) and Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987) and author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Sexuality in America (1999), Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997), and Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 (1978). She is also editor of the Journal of Women’s History.David A. Snow is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. He taught previously at the universities of Arizona and Texas. He has authored numerous articles and chapters on homelessness, collective action and social movements, religious conversion, self and identity, framing processes, symbolic interactionism, and qualitative field methods; and has authored a number of books as well, including Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People (with Leon Anderson), Shakubuku: A Study of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Movement in America, 1960–1975, and The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (edited with Sarah Soule & Hanspeter Kriesi). His most current research project involves an NSF-funded interdisciplinary, comparative study of homelessness in four global cities (Los Angeles, Paris, São Paulo, and Tokyo).Sarah A. Soule is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona. Her research examines U.S. state policy change and diffusion and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include the NSF-funded “Dynamics and Diffusion of Collective Protest in the U.S.” from which data for this paper come; an analysis of state-level contraception and abortion laws; an analysis of state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; and an analysis of state-level same-sex marriage bans. She has recently completed an edited volume, The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, with David Snow and Hanspeter Kreisi.Verta A. Taylor is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is coauthor with Leila J. Rupp of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (University of Chicago Press) and Survival in the Doldrums : The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (Oxford University Press); co-editor with Laurel Richardson and Nancy Whittier of Feminist Frontiers VI (McGraw-Hill); and author of Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression (Routledge). Her articles on the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian movement, and social movement theory have appeared in journals, such as The American Sociological Review, Signs, Social Problems, Mobilization, Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Women’s History, and Journal of Homosexuality.Nella Van Dyke is currently an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Washington State University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of student protest, social movement coalitions, hate crimes, and the factors influencing right-wing mobilization. Her recent publications include articles in Social Problems and Research in Political Sociology. She is currently conducting research on the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer student internship program and its influence on student protest, how the tactics of protest change over time, and how movement opponents influence the collective identity of gay and lesbian movement organizations.Stephen Zavestoski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. His current research examines the role of science in disputes over the environmental causes of unexplained illnesses, the use of the Internet as a tool for enhancing public participation in federal environmental rulemaking, and citizen responses to community contamination. His work appears in journals such as Science, Technology & Human Values, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sociology of Health and Illness, and in the book Sustainable Consumption: Conceptual Issues and Policy Problems.

Details

Authority in Contention
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-037-1

Article
Publication date: 14 October 2011

Alan Barcan

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish the main features of the outburst of student radicalism at Sydney University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish the main features of the outburst of student radicalism at Sydney University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper traces developments in student politics at Sydney University from the 1950s onwards, in both the Australian and international context.

Findings

The rise of the New Left was a moderate process in 1967 but became more energetic in 1969. This was aligned with a similar trajectory with the marches by radical opponents of the Vietnam war. The New Left: provided challenges to the university curriculum (in Arts and Economics) and challenged middle‐class values. Many components of the New Left claimed to be Marxist, but many such components rejected the Marxist commitment to the working class and communist parties.

Research limitations/implications

The investigation is limited to Sydney University.

Originality/value

Although the endnotes list numerous references, these are largely specific. Very few general surveys of the New Left at Sydney University have been published.

Details

History of Education Review, vol. 40 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0819-8691

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 16 September 2017

Abstract

Details

Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Platforms
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-080-8

Abstract

Details

Advances in Librarianship
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-12024-618-2

Article
Publication date: 12 April 2008

Brian Bumbarger and Daniel Perkins

Demonstrating the efficacy and effectiveness of prevention programmes in rigorous randomised trials is only the beginning of a process that may lead to better public health…

Abstract

Demonstrating the efficacy and effectiveness of prevention programmes in rigorous randomised trials is only the beginning of a process that may lead to better public health outcomes. Although a growing number of programmes have been shown to be effective at reducing drug use and delinquency among young people under carefully controlled conditions, we are now faced with a new set of obstacles. First, these evidence‐based programmes are still under‐utilised compared to prevention strategies with no empirical support. Second, when effective programmes are used the evidence suggests they are not being implemented with quality and fidelity. Third, effective programmes are often initiated with short‐term grant funding, creating a challenge for sustainability beyond seed funding. We discuss each of these challenges, and present lessons learned from a large‐scale dissemination effort involving over 140 evidence‐based programme replications in one state in the US.

Details

Journal of Children's Services, vol. 3 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-6660

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 September 2023

Ines Gharbi, Mounira Hamed-Sidhom and Khaled Hussainey

Prior research shows that religiosity affects the degree of managers' risk aversion. As a result, religious firms are less likely to invest in R&D activities. Moreover, US GAAP…

Abstract

Purpose

Prior research shows that religiosity affects the degree of managers' risk aversion. As a result, religious firms are less likely to invest in R&D activities. Moreover, US GAAP treats these investments as expenses. For this reason, religious firms have fewer expenses in their earnings and are less likely to be in financial distress.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are collected from Worldscope and the Churches and Church Membership files of the American Religion Data Archive website from 1985 to 2018. With 18,199 observations in US context, the authors used the marginal effect to test the mediating effect of R&D accounting treatment.

Findings

The authors find that the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with US GAAP is higher than the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with capitalization of R&D costs, which means that accounting treatment can explain the relation between religiosity and financial distress in the US context.

Research limitations/implications

The authors used linear interpolation and linear extrapolation data to be able to conduct this research over a period of 1985–2018. For future researches, the authors propose to test other factors which can explain the relationship between religiosity and financial distress based on the ethics element.

Practical implications

These results should be of interest to regulators because treating R&D activities as expenses can destroy the accounting performance of firms that prefer investing in risky projects. This favoritism prevents the comparison between two firms in the same industry with different risk-taking behaviors. This problem is more prevalent if the authors have two firms with different ratios of religiosity. This paper suffers from a major limitation related to data availability.

Originality/value

This may be the first study that investigates why religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress. This paper notes that religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress because their conservative behavior towards R&D activities coincides with the conservative R&D accounting treatment. In fact, the mismatch between expenses and revenues from R&D activities can cause financial distress.

Details

Journal of Applied Accounting Research, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0967-5426

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2019

Abstract

Details

New Narratives of Disability
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-144-5

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