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Can mainstream business advice agencies on the high street help people with mental health problems set up their own enterprises? The Business Minds demonstration project in Newcastle aimed to find out. Chris Fitch, Stu Anderson, Vyvyan Kinross, Lionel Joyce and Drew Cormack report.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the evidence on the extent to which personal debt impacts on mental health, and mental health on personal debt.

The paper systematically reviews the English‐language, peer‐reviewed literature, 1980‐2009, drawing on 14 databases across the medical, business, legal, and social science fields.

From 39,333 potential papers identified, 39,283 were excluded, and 50 were reviewed using a narrative analysis approach. Among nine longitudinal studies, three controlled for psychiatric morbidity or psychological wellbeing at baseline, income/wealth, and other socio‐economic variables. From these, two reported indebtedness or an increase in debt levels associated with subsequently poorer mental health, while one study found no such relationship. While methodological limitations make it difficult to definitively demonstrate whether indebtedness causes poorer mental health, plausible data exist which indicate that indebtedness may contribute to the development of mental health problems, and mediate accepted relationships between poverty, low income, and mental disorder.

Existing research either uses definitions of “debt” which lack specificity, or definitions of “mental health” which are too broad‐brushed. A more sensitive set of core questions is needed. Further longitudinal research is also a key priority.

Those working with people with debt problems need to be aware of the potential risk of reduced mental wellbeing or mental disorder.

The mental health of individuals living with indebtedness has become a recent concern for the health and financial services sectors. However, no systematic reviews have so far been conducted.

This index covers all issues between February 2005 (Volume 9, Issue 1) and November 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 4). Numbers in bold refer to yolume, numbers in brackets refer to issue, with subsequent numbers to pages.

Aesthetic labour explains how employees are required to look and sound the part in many contemporary workplaces. That such corporeality affects workers' employment prospects, including career progression, is now well documented in research. As such, it can result in employment discrimination based on physical features, more commonly known as ‘lookism’. However, very few jurisdictions proscribe lookism, and little is known about the efficacy of those that do. Based on archival research, this chapter examines the procedures and operation of physical features inclusion in an Equal Opportunity Act in one jurisdiction that does proscribe ‘lookism – the state of Victoria in Australia. As the first analysis of such laws, the chapter provides an important opportunity to assess the efficacy of legal attempts to address employment discrimination based on employee appearance. In so doing, it draws out lessons about the legal challenge to lookism.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the quantitative determinants of individual ratings of commercial banks (as conducted by Fitch Ratings).

The ordered probit model is applied as an extension of the standard binary probit model. The model is estimated using a sample of 681 international banks.

Banks with a greater capitalisation, larger assets, and a higher return on assets have higher bank ratings. Further, the greater is a bank's liquidity, the larger is its net interest margin and the more is the ratio of its operating expenses to total operating income the lower is a bank's rating.

Modelling the determinants of international bank ratings spanning a sample of 90 countries. Applying a model with dynamics that considers whether the rating is determined by information up to four years prior to the rating date.

This paper investigates the extent to which country risk ratings influence the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI). Using International Monetary Fund (IMF) data from over 100 countries and Euromoney’s country risk ratings over a ten‐year period, this study finds that country risk ratings have a significant influence on FDI. This effect is stronger for US FDI. We also analyze the relative importance of the individual components of the country risk index.

The purpose of this study is to investigate narcissism in relation to consumer identity projects. Narcissism is rarely the focus of consumer culture studies, though it resonates with theories of individualistic, consumption-driven identities, and is argued to be a pervasive social trend within a hegemonic consumer culture that places the individual center stage. We explore these themes in the context of emerging adult identity projects given arguments about increasing narcissism in younger generations.

Identifying eight participants using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory – four with high and four with low scores – we conduct in-depth interviews to explore their identity projects, narcissistic traits, and brand relationships.

Through idiographic analysis, we find that those with lower narcissistic tendencies seem to have a communal orientation to both people and brands, whilst those with greater narcissistic tendencies tend to be individualistic and agentic. We relate the narcissistic consumer to Fromm’s “marketing character,” proposing four themes that emerge from the analysis: liquidity; an other-directed sense of self; conformity; and the commodification of self.

This paper discusses the societal implications of individualistic consumer identity projects, highlighting narcissism, a concept relatively neglected within consumer culture theory. Narcissism carries with it a host of societal implications, not least of which is a focus on the self and a lack of concern with the wellbeing of others.

Teleshopping is attracting increased interest because retailers see it as a way of improving customer services. In France, Minitel has done much to prove the demand and potential for teleshopping La Redoute, France's largest mail order company, started using the Minitel system for teleshopping in the mid‐1980s, and the percentage of orders has built up steadily. These were some of the topics dealt with at a two‐day conference, held in London in January, on the theme of “Electronic Marketing in Retailing.” the conference was organised by Spectra Services.

This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.