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The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which the small firm's external relationships influence its approach to formal training and training providers.

A qualitative approach was adopted, involving semi‐structured interviews with senior managers, in 25 small firms in South Wales. These interviews were informed by prior workplace observation and analysis of organisational documentation. Further interviews were conducted with employees in nine of the firms.

The findings indicate that the small firm's informal relationships with trusted, familiar and credible contacts – referred to as insiders, following Gibb – are central to the way in which it perceives both training and training providers. Government agencies, training providers and other traditional stakeholders generally sit outside these informal insider networks, and tend to be viewed as culturally remote by the small firm.

The findings emphasise the need for training providers and government agencies to obtain the support and co‐operation of insider networks if they wish to promote training within the small business sector. The main limitations include the relatively narrow geographical focus and the absence of retail firms from the sample.

While the importance of informal networks within the small business community is now well established, the constitution of such networks and their effects on attitudes towards training providers are less well understood. The paper helps to address these gaps by starting the process of mapping insider networks and illuminating their impact on small firms' perceptions of training providers.

During the 2020 election cycle, 2,276 super PACs spent over $2.1 billion in federal elections. This chapter argues that changes made to the US campaign finance system brought about by the Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010) cases have destabilized the American political system by fueling tensions between right-wing and left-wing populist factions and by contributing to congressional corruption. By moving away from the political corruption standard and toward the free speech standard in Citizens United, polarizing wealthy mega-donors and dark money sources have come to play a dominant role in congressional elections. These cases also helped to contribute to a two-tiered campaign finance regulatory structure that distinguishes between campaign contributions given directly to federal candidates and political money contributed to super PACs to support or oppose federal candidates. In the 2020 congressional elections, PACs and super PACS outspent both major party candidates combined in 35 House and Senate races. Super PACs are serving as “shadow parties” by targeting competitive races for the purpose of swaying partisan control of Congress. This study also shows that an exceedingly high percentage of super PAC money is spent on negative advertising that further divides rather than unifies the nation. This chapter also highlights the corrupting influence of congressional leadership PACs and examines how super PACs have enabled foreign and dark money sources to illegally influence congressional campaigns.

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence outlining the ways in which small businesses orientate themselves towards the training market. The primary aim is to illuminate the factors influencing small firms' (non‐) participation in formal, externally‐provided training.

Data were collected via semi‐structured interviews with senior managers, observation and documentary analysis in 25 small firms in South Wales. Follow‐up interviews with employees were conducted in nine of these firms.

The findings suggest that the small firm's behaviour in relation to the training market is embedded in a complex web of social relations and subjective orientations.

The research focuses upon one specific regional area. In addition, retail organisations were not represented in the sample.

The findings have implications for policy and also for providers of training in terms of the way in which formal training is presented and marketed to small businesses. In particular, the importance of accessing “insider networks” is emphasised.

In highlighting the importance of social and subjective factors in constructing the small firm's behaviour in the training market, the paper goes beyond the narrower, more conventional focus on financial costs and returns.

Customer education is considered as an appropriate communication strategy for promoting green products. This paper aims to elaborate on the characteristics of customer education that are suitable for green products by identifying what messages must be delivered, sources and channels that must be used to achieve the greatest effect. Moreover, this study uses a repeated cross-sectional approach by using the same research model in 2008 and 2019.

A questionnaire was arranged based on the research model. In 2008, the data were collected at 12 shopping malls in Jakarta. The 2019 data were collected online, using Google forms, from citizens of Jakarta and five nearby cities. Then, the data were processed using structural equation modeling.

Data analysis of both years shows that education containing messages that are both informational and transformational can increase customers’ perceptions of the benefits and economic accessibility of green products, as well as environmental concerns. This study’s results also indicate that customers’ intentions to buy green products are influenced by their attitudes toward buying. However, the impact of customers’ perceptions of benefit and economic accessibility on their attitudes toward green purchasing varied between 2008 and 2019.

Sustainable consumption can be pursued through customer education once a community’s economic conditions have reached a certain level. This study shows how changes have unfolded in Indonesia in several areas, therefore it should also be necessary to pursue green behavior via policies that are tailored to changes in the community.

This study shows how changes have unfolded in Indonesia in several areas, therefore it should also be necessary to pursue green behavior via policies that are tailored to changes in the community.

Investigation of the role of customer education in green products using a repeated cross-sectional study.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Research on Economic Inequality Volume 12 is the outgrowth of University of Alabama Poverty and Inequality Conference, May 22–25, 2003. The motivation for the conference was to honor John P. Formby upon his retirement. The conference, funded by the University, was designed to bring together three groups of people; first, some of the most recognized scholars in the field, second, current and former colleagues of John Formby’s working in this field, and third, Dr. Formby’s former Ph.D. and post-doctoral students. Seventeen papers were presented, 11 of which are authored or co-authored by Dr. Formby’s former students. Peter Lambert and Yoram Amiel also participated in the conference. Dan Slottje, John Creedy, Shlomo Yitzhaki and Quentin Wodon did not attend but contributed papers.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

By “political economy” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to human economising behaviour. The body of knowledge includes both theory — theorems, laws, empirical generalisations, etc., and “facts” — history, description of institution, statistical data, etc. By “Christian theology” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to the human religious understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. “Religious” here implies awareness of, or belief in, God. The body of knowledge may include pre‐Christian religion (such as that reported in the Old Testament), and the results of independent inquiry (such as natural theology) in so far as these are interpreted by, or “refracted” through what theologians call the “Christ event”.

^∗ Indicates books which are especially recommended.