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The main findings of a detailed qualitative study of the motivations, beliefs and attitudes of practising vegetarians and vegans are reported. It is concluded that vegetarianism, while remaining very much a minority option, is increasing steadily in the UK population, although the rate of increase appears to vary by such factors as age, gender and socio‐economic category. Those who opt for a non‐meat‐eating dietary pattern may well represent the vanguard of a form of ethical consumerism to which food producers, processors and retailers will need to be increasingly responsive in the near future.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the dominance of an ascetic discourse of veg*anism in social research literature, and to relate it to a dominant hierarchical ordering of Western diets (to refer collectively to veganism and vegetarianism).

A review of the extant social research literature on veg*anism was undertaken in order to discern whether a consistent type of descriptive language existed. This facilitated an understanding of the way in which that language is constitutive of research generated understandings of veg*anism.

An ascetic discourse of veg*anism is dominant in social research. This is reflected in the phraseology used by authors. Typical descriptive terms of a veg*an diet include “strict”, “restrictive”, or “avoidance”. This ascetic discourse reproduces the hierarchical ordering of Western diets such that veg*anism is denigrated and made to seem “difficult” and abnormal.

Veg*anism arguably promises multiple benefits for human, environmental, and nonhuman animal well‐being. The potential to realize those benefits is hampered by the perpetuation of an understanding of veg*anism as an ascetic practice.

This paper provides the first comprehensive examination of the language used to describe veg*anism within social research. It can enhance reflexivity on the part of social researchers interested in veg*anism, and help inform research design. In providing an alternative hedonic discourse of veg*anism, this paper also makes a contribution towards realizing the potential benefits of veg*anism through making it a more attractive dietary practice.

Examines the dimensions of stability and change in the foodways of contemporary Britain. The structural and cultural origins of change are outlined and various sociological explanations of these phenomena are discussed. Subsequently, both the positive and negative implications of the contemporary state of flux are investigated, particularly with reference to the argument that a state of gastro‐anomy pertains. This view is subjected to critical examination and the argument is put forward that a state of anomy may be a transitional one on the road to a more open and pluralistic nutritional order.

A series of studies over the last decade have indicated that considerable change has been taking place in the way in which organisations recruit their workers. In particular, several authors have pointed to the growing prominence of both internal labour market (ILM) recruitment and word‐of‐mouth recruitment. This conclusion is supported by studies that consider job seeking and job seekers, for example, studies by Granovetter, Leeand Martin and Roberts, as well as by studies of employers' recruitment practices. Although care must be exercised when comparing these studies, as has been discussed by Manwaring, together they provide a general view of the direction of change with regard to the management of labour recruitment. In particular, some of the studies indicate a growth in the use of the internal market and word‐of‐mouth recruitment, for example, Jenkins et al., while others, such as Wood and Manwaring, suggest that such channels are increasingly prominent, not as a result of increased usage, but because these channels have been maintained during the recession, while other forms of recruitment, such as the use of the job centre or press advertisements, have been ignored or minimised.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of strategic control and operational control on new venture performance in the China context.

This study tests the hypotheses in a sample of 83 new ventures that have equity investment by established firms and are founded between 1993 and 2007 that issued initial public offerings while not more than eight years old.

The results of this study show that: strategic control has a significantly negative relationship with new venture performance; operational control has a significantly positive relationship with new venture performance; industry relatedness between the corporate investor and the new venture and the new venture’s political ties moderate the relationships between the two types of control and new venture performance. The results are robust to alternative measurements of new venture performance.

The management control that the corporate investor exercises over the new venture is a significant determinant of the new venture success. Managers have to distinguish between strategic control and operational control and understand their impacts on new ventures.

This study highlights the issue of management of corporate venturing capital relationships from the new venture’s perspective. In addition, this study separates strategic and operational control within management control and examines how they influence new venture performance.

Using the family activity of hobby stock-keeping (“petstock”) as a context, this paper aims to extend singularization theory to model the negotiations, agencies and resistances of children, parents and petstock, as they work through how animals become food within the boundaries of the family home. In doing so, the authors present an articulation of this process, deciphering the cultural biographies of petstock and leading to an understanding of the emergent array of child animal food-product preferences.

Data were collected from petstock-keeping parents through a mixture of ethnographic, in-depth interviewing and netnographic engagements in this qualitative, interpretive study; with parents offering experiential insights into animal meat and food-product socialization behaviours played out within the family environments.

The findings discuss the range of parental behaviours, motivations and activities vis-à-vis petstock, and their children’s responses, ranging from transgression to full compliance, in terms of eating home-raised animal food-products. The discussion illustrates that in the context of petstock, a precocious child food preference agency towards animal meat and food products is reported to emerge.

This research has empirical and theoretical implications for the understanding of the development of child food preference agency vis-à-vis animal food products in the context of family petstock keeping.

The research has the potential to inform policy makers around child education and food in regard to how child food preferences emerge and can inform marketers developing food-based communications aimed at children and parents.

Two original contributions are presented: an analysis of the under-researched area of how children’s food preferences towards eating animal food products develop, taking a positive child food-choice agency perspective, and a novel extension of singularization theory, theorizing the radical transformation, from animal to food, encountered by children in the petstock context.

This article is based on a six‐year survey of first year undergraduates and their meat consumption. The main focus is vegetarianism and the declining consumption of red meat over the past two decades. The levels of meat consumption and avoidance were analysed by gender, father’s occupation, voting intention and the reasons given for reduction/avoidance. The results found that the majority of vegetarians were women, although they were also the majority of the sample. Age, political inclination and social class appear to have had little bearing on meat consumption. There is also the suggestion that vegetarianism has reached a plateau. A wide range of further studies is suggested.

The formation of alliances between organisations is increasingly common, allowing firms to discover and ensure competitive advantages. This research paper aims to make a critical analysis of studies to understand the role of communication between partners in the process of strategic alliances.

A systematic literature review was carried out, using the Web of Science database to obtain data, associating the terms “communication” and “strategic alliances”, which resulted in 240 scientific articles (published between 1993 and March 2021). After data treatment using VOSviewer software and reading of the contents, the final sample consisted of 179 articles on the subject in question.

The conceptual limits, exploratory descriptive analysis of the data and content analysis of research methods are presented, with five clusters being identified. The results show growing academic interest in studying communication associated with strategic alliances, and authors’ main interest lies in understanding the critical success factors and the relation between communication and knowledge.

This study corroborates understanding of the future of alliances, assuming that learning is the main objective; trust is the factor determining success or failure; technology is the aggregating tool; culture affects the relation; and communication is not an end but a means to construct consolidated, long-lasting and high-performing strategic alliances.

This study is innovative in strategic alliances area. The research confirms that the main factor in forming alliances, in both emerging and international markets, is the learning intention. This fact reinforces the relevance of the learning made possible by this transfer of know-how through communication. In addition, this study gives critical understanding of how the process of communication between partners in an alliance must be distinct; i.e. it must be flexible enough to adjust to the stage in the alliance’s life cycle.

The construction industries of many countries rely heavily on subcontracting. As a result, the quality of subcontractors is important as it has a direct bearing on the performance of the main contractor on projects. A large proportion of construction work in Singapore is subcontracted. Despite the well‐known and widely regretted deficiencies in the traditional subcontracting system, only recently have attempts been made to reform it. The most significant of these efforts is the Singapore List of Trade Subcontractors (SLOTS). This study sought to investigate whether or not the performance of subcontractors has been improved following the introduction of the SLOTS scheme. The research was based on a survey of project managers of main contractors. A major finding was that the SLOTS‐registered contractors were perceived to perform better than nonregistered ones. Suggestions for improving the SLOTS scheme are offered in this paper.

One increasingly popular financing option for entrepreneurial ventures is to attract corporate venture capital (CVC) investments. Prior research tends to take a CVC-centric perspective assessing the benefits and contingencies for incumbent firms or corporate investors to engage with entrepreneurial ventures. Few studies have taken the opposite perspective of investigating factors that entrepreneurial ventures need to take into account when engaging with CVC investments. As such, this study aims to investigate pre- and post-IPO entrepreneurial venture performance that partners with CVC providers or corporate investors, as well as to assess organizational and environmental contingencies.

This study draws on a sample of 631 entrepreneurial ventures from the CSMAR database ranging from 2009 to 2019, along with CVC financing data from the CVSource database and financial data in entrepreneurial ventures’ annual reports from the Juchao Network. This study applies multiple linear regression modelling and fixed effect panel data analyses to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that CVC investment contributes to entrepreneurial ventures’ financial performance, both pre- and post-IPO. However, while research and development (R&D) intensity and geographic proximity strengthen the positive relationship between CVC investment and entrepreneurial ventures’ performance pre-IPO, R&D intensity has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between CVC investment and entrepreneurial ventures’ performance post-IPO.

First, in emerging economies, adopting a CVC financing strategy is an important strategic choice for entrepreneurial ventures that have a great demand for external capital, resources and technology support. Second, leveraging the relationship between external financing and internal R&D investment is essential for them to maintain their core competitiveness and sustainable growth. Moreover, entrepreneurial ventures should deal with the coopetitive relationship with incumbent companies and manage their dependency on other market participants in the external environment.

This study focuses on the performance implications for entrepreneurial ventures engaging with CVC investments pre- and post-IPO. First, this study broadens and expands prior research on the mechanism of the relationship between CVC and entrepreneurial ventures’ financial performance. Second, the research conducts a comparative study of the moderating effects of different timings. Third, this study applies learning theory to the field of CVC in emerging economies.