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Discusses how equality audits of local authorities reveal identifiable gender cultures, such as the “gentleman′s club”, the “locker room”, the “barrack yard”, the “gender‐blind”, and the “smart macho”. Describes how women and men feel that they and their colleagues have been influenced by these cultures, and how they reinforce persistent stereotypes about “women and work”. Gender cultures affect both men and women′s decisions and behaviour at work. The prevailing gender culture in one department may be different from that in another department in the same authority but most authorities had pockets of all the cultures described. The women managers interviewed recognized the dilemmas and difficulties women face when breaking with traditional norms within a workplace with pre‐ordained gender cultures. Reinforces the view that exclusive work culture is powerful in its negative influence over women′s development and promotion prospects, but that preconceptions and sexual stereotypes about men and women′s roles are still determining many women′s behaviour, their lives and reducing their opportunities.

Equal pay for men and women was a principle en‐shrined in the Treaty of Rome and was the subject of a European Directive in 1975. This investigation of progress towards equal pay in three member‐states, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, reveals the importance of differences in employment structures and reward systems in determining relative pay for women. The author argues that differences in the structure and size of pay differentials among countries suggest that more attention needs to be paid to the general system of labour market regulation than to explicit equal‐pay policies. She concludes that women would be more likely to benefit from a strategy of establishing labour standards and regulation than from equal‐pay Directives which have little effect on the general practices and principles of pay determination.

The recent years have been marked by the increasing participation of women in the labour force internationally. Especially in the industrialised countries of Western Europe and North America, this labour force participation is now well over 40%. Globally, however, the estimate is around 33%. A large number of these women are still found in the agriculture sector and the informal sector of industry. For those working in the formal industrial sector, a significant portion work in the shopfloor of assembly line operations for products ranging from electronics to textiles. Women in management comprise less than 1% of all economically active women. For the purposes of this paper, a “manager” is defined as a person who has latitude in decision making as to the allocation and use of organisational resources, including physical, financial, and human resources.

Investigates the theory and practice of negotiation through studying British managers in a role playing situation; observations then formed the basis of this questionnaire survey, which was sent to 300 UK managers, and follow‐up interviews were carried out with 30 managers. Refers to earlier research conducted by the same authors and explains how this research builds on their previous findings. Explains the methodology of this study. Reports on the use of teams in negotiating behaviour, the size of the teams, team preparation and formation, team roles, team management, acquiring information, understanding agreements, demonstrating a united front, establishing facts, attempting to split the opposition, exaggerating divisions in an opposing team, tactics, and the use of adjournments. Concludes that smaller teams, consisting of people used to working together, are perceived to be more effective. Highlights the areas where teams new to negotiations or working together should focus their attention. Suggests areas for further research.

The paper investigates the closure mechanisms and strategies of exclusion concerning the establishment and subsequent functioning of the Collegio dei Rasonati, the professional body of accountants that was established in Venice in 1581 and operated until the end of the 18th century.

The research design offers a critical longitudinal explanation of the emergence of the Collegio dei Rasonati as a professional body in the context of Venetian society by relying on the social closure theory elaborated by Collins (1975); Parkin (1979) and Murphy (1988).

The Collegio dei Rasonati was established to overcome the prerogatives of a social class in accessing the accounting profession. However, the pre-existing professional elites enacted a set of social closure strategies able to transform this professional body into a stronghold of their privileges.

As virtually all of the evidence concerning the admission examinations has been lost over time, the investigation is restricted to the study of the few examples that have survived. The main implication of the study concerns the understanding of some dynamics leading to neutralize attempts to replace class privileges with a meritocratic system.

The research investigates the structure of the rules of social closure revealing the possibility of an antagonistic relationship between different co-existing forms of exclusion within the same structure. Moreover, it highlights that a form of exclusion can be made of different hierarchical levels.

This chapter explores theory and local context of socially constructed pandemic fears during COVID-19; how material and non-material fear objects are construed, interpreted and understood by communities, and how fears disrupt social norms and influence pandemic behavioural responses. We aimed to understand the lived experiences of pandemic-induced fears in socioculturally diverse communities in eastern Indonesia in the context of onto-epistemological disjunctures between biomedically derived public health interventions, local world views and causal-remedial explanations for the crisis. Ethnographic research conducted among several communities in East Nusa Tenggara province in Indonesia provided the data and analyses presented in this chapter, delineating the extent to which fear played a decisive role in both internal, felt experience and social relations. Results illustrate how fear emotions are constructed and acted upon during times of crisis, arising from misinformation, rumour, socioreligious influence, long-standing tradition and community understandings of modernity, power and biomedicine. The chapter outlines several sociological theories on fear and emotion and interrogates a post-pandemic future.

Much of the body of literature analysing the gig economy focuses on its exploitation of low-wage workers and its role in increasing precarious work. This chapter approaches the topic from a different angle, focussing on the contribution of the gig economy to the declining power of the medical profession. As well as facilitating and promulgating contingent work in healthcare, the gig economy disaggregates medical work into isolated on-demand micro-tasks on digital platforms. This has implications for the status and power of the medical profession, the doctor–patient relationship, and inter-professional boundaries in healthcare. The mechanisms through which these dynamics unfold, as well as the inter-related factors that support the transformations in the allocation and content of medical work, are discussed. These include the implications of heightened transparency of medical work resulting from unbundling of jobs, commodification of medical professionals, and platform-based vulnerabilities such as rating systems that impact doctor–patient relationships. Closure theory is drawn on to illuminate the dynamics of the transformation in professional boundaries and the arising conflict that it entails for the healthcare workforce at different levels. The conflict is theorised as an insidious exercise of closure by allied health professionals on the remit of the medical profession, which challenges remuneration, authority, and other exclusionary benefits traditionally accrued to the medical profession.

The concept of corporate social responsibility of the enterprise covers a vast territory! This paper proposes to limit the analysis and evaluation of this concept to three distinct aspects. The first will treat the comparatively new and evolving common law implied term in corporated into the contract of employment relating to the enterprise’s social responsibility of respect towards the employee. The second will analyse an other generically linked recent common law development in the field of the enterprise’s social responsibility of respect towards the employee, namely the implied over‐riding term. Thirdly, the novel and developing wider concept of corporate social responsibility will be addressed and assessed. Some concluding thoughts will follow.

The Protection of Consumers (Trade Descriptions) bill which, owing to the General Election, did not quite make the Statute Book in the last Parliament, is, at the moment of writing, passing through its readings, with every likelihood of becoming law in the near future. It has been criticised for the extent of the control to be exercised over general trading and that in “coddling the customer” it will place unreasonable responsibilities upon retailers. In fact, it is impossible to foresee just how far its provisions may extend, but there will be few who will disagree that new and more searching requirements are long overdue.

Corrosion which take place in steam boilers is usually localised, leading to pitting or corrosion cracking rather than attack of a general nature, although this may be encountered in boilers due to the presence of acid conditions. For this reason Dr. Parkins confines his remarks to localised corrosion and in the following extensive article, specially written for Corrosion Technology, he discusses in Part I types of pitting corrosion. Next month corrosion associated with high concentrations of caustic soda viz. caustic cracking, corrosion fatigue and deterioration due to local overheating will be discussed.