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Hazel Kyrk’s recognised contributions include a shift in analytic focus from production to consumption, pioneering work to measure household production as part of family income, empirical studies of family behaviour, and contributions to policy. But her account of ‘wise’ consumption and its intersection with ‘high’ living standards is not well understood. The three aims of this chapter are to explain ‘wise’ consumption across Kyrk’s three major books, to consider its role in Kyrk’s empirical studies, and to explain why it fell into oblivion. Tackling what Wesley Mitchell described as the ‘most baffling of difficulties’, Kyrk explained what constitutes a family’s ‘good’ in a manner that was critical of mere emulation. Her 1923 book required that wise consumption include new and personal elements. Her 1929/1933 book detailed five qualitative criteria (balance between interests, full and varied experiences, originality, rational sources of satisfaction, and the use of scientific information). But her 1953 book weakened this normative language, reflecting Margaret Reid’s view that Kyrk’s account was too demanding. Although Kyrk felt wise consumption avoided paternalism, her peers disagreed (Hoyt, 1938/1945; Reid, 1938/1945). We close with some problems with Kyrk’s account and a brief consideration of its continuing relevance.

In the years following the publication of A Theory of Consumption (1923), Hazel Kyrk’s book became the flagship of the field that would later be known as the economics of consumption. It stimulated theoretical and empirical work on consumption. Some of the existing literature on Kyrk (e.g., Kiss & Beller, 2000; Le Tollec, 2020; Tadajewski, 2013) depicted her theory as the starting point of the economics of consumption. Nevertheless, how and why it emerged the way it did remain largely unexplored. This chapter examines Kyrk’s intellectual background, which, we argue, can be traced back to two main movements in the United States: the home economics and the institutionalist. Both movements conveyed specific endeavors as responses to the US material and social transformations that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, notably the perceived changing role of consumption and that of women in US society. On the one hand, Kyrk pursued first-generation home economists’ efforts to make sense of and put into action the shifting of women’s role from domestic producer to consumer. On the other hand, she reinterpreted Veblen’s (1899) account of consumption in order to reveal its operational value for a normative agenda focused on “wise” and “rational” consumption. This chapter studies how Kyrk carried on first-generation home economists’ progressive agenda and how she adapted Veblen’s fin-de-siècle critical account of consumption to the context of the household goods developed in 1900–1920. Our account of Kyrk’s intellectual roots offers a novel narrative to better understand the role of gender and epistemological questions in her theory.

The paper is a proof of concept (PoC) intervention study aimed for developing performance management (PM) practices in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the longer-term aim enabling the SMEs to improve their productivity. The intervention was designed and deployed by a collaborative quartet of academics, management consultants, accountancy firm and a commercial bank manager.

The paper firstly musters a set of initialising PM practices aligned to productivity improvement. These are utilised to design a knowledge transfer intervention for deployment with a set of manufacturing SMEs incorporating some associated productivity tools. The evaluation of the intervention utilised a case study approach founded on a logic model of the intervention to assess the development of the PM practices.

The intervention contributed to a partial development of the mustered practices and the productivity diagnostic based on the multi-factor productivity (MFP) abstraction and a data extraction protocol had the strongest impact. The study revealed the importance of the three interlaced factors: Depth of engagement, feedback opportunities and the intervention gradient (the increase of independent action from the participating SME's and the diminishment of the external intervention effort).

The case study is based on a limited number of individual SME's, and within just the manufacturing sector.

SME businesses will require a more sustained programme of interventions than this pilot to develop PM capability, and depth of engagement within the SME is critical. Professional stakeholders can be utilised in recruitment of firms for intervention programmes. Business can start developing PM capability prior to PMS implementation using the tools from this programme.

The productivity diagnostic tool, based on a synthesis of MFP and the performance pyramid, an array of potential initialising practices for PM capability and discovery of potential mechanisms for PM practice development.

The Scottish Enlightenment, which gave birth to classical liberal thought and political economy, developed out of a strong theological tradition and was marked by significant theological conflict. Most people understand the Scottish Enlightenment through the works of David Hume, Adam Smith, and their intellectual circle of Moderate clergy and literati. Though this group represents the dominant strain of thinking in the Scottish Enlightenment, one should not neglect other important contributions made by more orthodox clergy and literati. Comparing the ideas of less well-known, but leading figures of the Moderate and the orthodox literati, Hugh Blair and John Witherspoon, reveals different views on doctrines related to salvation, human nature, and God’s providence, as well as on the nature of moral judgment and education. These differences provide important context for understanding the ideas and arguments of more influential philosophers like Smith and Hume.

Many psychological, cultural, and social barriers exist that impact Black male participation in the workforce. In this chapter, authors discuss the impact that mentorship, racism, society, culture, economics, and other pertinent factors have on the career development of Black men. This chapter examines programs and strategies that effectively address the career development needs of Black men. A review of counseling interventions and their applicability to career counseling with Black men are presented. Emerging trends in career development for Black men are also discussed. In addition, provided in this chapter are personal narratives given by the authors who contextualize their career development experiences through culturally-specific career development theoretical frameworks. Lastly, implications for research, counseling, counselor education, and policy, as well as recommendations for professional development are offered.

This chapter explores the parallels between the recruitment and retention of students from marginalized backgrounds, and efforts with similarly identifying faculty and student affairs administrators. Higher education institutions target specific student populations to increase access, thus leading to an increase of students of color, low-income students, and first-generation students on college campuses (Chen & Nunnery, 2019). This welcome development proves inadequate on its own, as the critical support structures necessary for student success are not in place. Students' lived experiences are not attended to in a manner that fosters thriving (Jack, 2019; Nunn, 2021).

Research underscores the significant positive impact on marginalized students of having faculty and student-facing administrators from similar backgrounds on their campus (Braxton et al., 2014; Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, & Hayek, 2007). The intentional recruiting of these college personnel provides a vital means of attending to the needs of underrepresented students. Yet, the student experience is not instructive for the work with underrepresented college employees. The lived experiences of the faculty and administrators from marginalized identities are not being addressed either, similar to that of underrepresented students (Orelus, 2020). When these college personnel leave institutions unexpectedly or stay but are not thriving, this impacts students, colleagues and the college as a whole. In many respects, institutions are replicating inequities they commit to substantively dismantle, limiting the racial justice work they promised, and effectively thwarting their own Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Using an autoethnographic approach, this chapter will explore these parallel issues, and propose recommendations for future research and institutional policy and practice for retention of underrepresented faculty and student-facing administrators.

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered daily life for Gen Z. The purpose of this study was to examine parental perceptions of the pandemic’s effects on their children’s peer relationships. As children sought peer connection during the pandemic, technology usage soared. The second purpose of the current study was to assess how greater time on social media affected adjustment among Gen Z and whether this effect was mediated by experiences of cyber victimization.

In total, 250 U.S. parent-child dyads participated in the study. Parents reported on their children’s social media use and described how they believed the pandemic affected their children’s peer relationships. Child participants were transitioning to middle school and reported on cyber victimization and adjustment.

Thematic analysis of parental reflections revealed three themes: children spent more time online since the onset of the pandemic, there were negative implications of increased time online and there were positive and protective implications of being online. Analysis also indicated significant indirect effects of social media use on internalizing and externalizing problems through victimization.

Parents reported Gen Z continues to use electronic forms of communication and social media at high rates even after pandemic-related restrictions eased with some suggesting that their children prefer digital over face-to-face communication because they have become accustomed to this way of connecting and may find it easier than in-person interaction. Current findings highlight concerns about this increased time online as social media use negatively affected adjustment via cyber victimization.