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Those who would become economists today have the choice of two ideologies, the one maintaining that the inner laws of the capitalist system are equilibrating and maximizing; the other, that they doom that system to self‐destruction. In the natural sciences, a theory is ‘a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts.’ (Third definition in the Shorter OED.) By contrast, in economics it is used, ‘In loose or general sense: A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something …’ (OED fifth definition).

The post‐war period has been one of unparallelled growth and stability in most western economies. One consequence of this performance has been increasing governmental concern with the dual problems of structural unemployment and skilled labour shortages. The concensus that both of these problems can be left to the workings of the market system has gradually been superseded by direct and indirect government involvement in the training and re‐training of the work force. Moreover, until recently this direct involvement in the United Kingdom appeared to be of small quantitative importance. The number completing government training schemes in 1971 was only 18,402. Recent plans suggest a target of 100,000 as soon as possible. A further indication of the expansion of government sponsored vocational training can be gauged from the expansion of the annual output of the Government Training Centres (now called Skillcentres) from 3,336 trained in 1962 to 12,623 in 1971 with a projected 30,000 output by 1978.

The purpose of this paper is to identify households' barriers to energy saving solutions. Six types of barriers are introduced. The question to be answered is: what is the strength and relevance of the various barriers for changing consumer energy behaviour?

The method is focus group interviews. Focus groups do not aim at giving a representative picture of the population at large, but aim at recording and documenting a wide range of typical responses and reactions. The focus groups were recruited among a group of people who were actively looking for new dwellings and a reference group of environmentally conscious participants.

Three barriers out of the six proposed were found to be relevant in this study: Cultural‐normative, economic and information.

Energy saving solutions are technically and socially complex matters, so it is important to advice and guide consumers to make changes that contribute substantially, rather than mere symbolic changes.

The finding that consumers not only need information on what and how to save energy, but also need help in identifying when they should do their investments is important for various actors involved in implementation of energy saving solutions.

Measures in the field of energy savings have had various successes. This article which concentrates on the barriers in this field can contribute to increased success rates.

The importance of corporate wellness programmes has been recognized by many countries. It is only in recent years that organizations in Singapore have begun to implement wellness programmes on an organization‐wide scale. This is also in line with the Singapore Government’s recent emphasis on healthy lifestyle and health campaigns for the public. Thus, there is a growing trend for organizations in Singapore to offer wellness programmes. Attempts to establish the benefits which may be reaped from such investment. Describes how findings from the study indicate that employees in organizations with wellness programmes generally have a more positive attitude towards their organizations, express higher job satisfaction and satisfaction with the fringe benefits provided for them. However, no significant differences were found between employees in organizations with and without wellness programmes in terms of level of work stress, self‐reported absenteeism rates, satisfaction with working conditions, co‐worker relations and accomplishment. As employees are becoming more health conscious, given the benefits of the wellness programmes, recommends that management should not hesitate to adopt health promotion activities in the workplace.

Competitive labour market theory predicts that within a local labour market there will be a tendency for labour of the same quality to obtain parity of earnings irrespective of the employment location. More strictly, the theory posits the equalisation of net advantages through time for homogeneous labour inputs. No plant may, according to the theory, set wages and other conditions of employment independent of the behaviour of its competitors. Wage levels within the market are, then, subject to the equalising forces of competition. Consequently, any differentials enjoyed by one plant over another for a well defined homogeneous labour input must either be transient or reflect efficiency unit (labour supply) differences. In the absence of labour quality differences, then, wage differentials would be a short run phenomenon to be explained by differences in final product demand and productivity variations against a background of short run inelasticity of labour supply. Such disequilibrating forces should, in the long run, tend to be counterbalanced by actual or potential mobility within the labour market which would restore wage equality.

This paper aims to explore young peoples’ authentic experiences of youth justice services (YJS) during the Covid-19 pandemic. By adopting the creative arts-based method of lyric writing, the research team sought to empower participants through collaboration and participation and to facilitate them leading the narrative (Deakin et al., 2020).

This research adopted a creative arts-based method in which participants worked alongside an artist to generate lyrics that captured their experiences within YJS. Such an approach demonstrated a commitment to participatory, child-first approaches.

Two main themes were identified: identity and relationships. The young people vocalised resistance to frequent labelling and their ambitions to move away from past criminal identity and behaviour. Relationships with practitioners could be a source of frustration within this but were also highlighted as valuable and supportive.

As data collection was remote, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, the opportunity to develop relationships with young people within the YJS prior to conducting the research was restricted. This approach may have also impacted recruitment of participants. The sessions presented short-term interventions and whilst follow-up sessions were offered, many did not take them up. Although the research sample is small and cannot be considered representative, it allows for a valuable insight into the experiences of young people at a particularly challenging time.

Upon receiving our findings and recommendations, the first YJS research site has sought to further embed a relationship-based practice model and greater creative/participatory socially prescribed psychosocial therapeutic interventions, including music groups and spoken word artists to work with children and young people.

This research adds to the growing literature base surrounding creative arts-based research with children and young people for their value towards communication, pro-social identity and development.

This article has four parts. First, we outline the main determinants of productivity and examine some evidence on the relative importance of the factors involved. Secondly, we outline the “conventional” wisdom on the influence of trade unions and generate several hypotheses on the possible effects of trade unions on a number of economic variables. Thirdly, by an appeal to a wide range of literature, we seek to test these hypotheses but with particular reference to the influence of trade unions on productivity. Fourthly, we indicate that in terms of policy on productivity‐raising measures the conventional wisdom is wanting and there is a need for an alternative theory upon which to base policies for the implementation of change.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the explanatory power of reactance theory and power dependence theory in predicting the moderating effect of job embeddedness on the organizational trust-workplace deviance relationship.

Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of nurses (n=353) via an online survey organization. The data were analyzed using hierarchical regression.

Job embeddedness significantly moderated the organizational trust-workplace deviance relationship such that participants who experienced low organizational trust and high job embeddedness engaged in more workplace deviance than those experiencing low organizational trust and low job embeddedness.

Organizations should attempt to build and maintain employees’ organizational trust since employees who lack organizational trust are more likely to act deviantly. Additionally, organizations should realize that job embeddedness is not always beneficial. Therefore, organizations should seek to reduce negative perceptions of job embeddedness by alerting employees (especially those who are the most distrusting) of other job opportunities and providing more generalizable skill training, to enhance employees’ perceptions of mobility.

This study demonstrates that job embeddedness can be applied to models (i.e., the organizational trust-workplace deviance relationship) beyond those that have previously included turnover as an outcome (i.e., Lee et al., 2014), and that such influences may be negative. More notably, the results provide evidence supporting the notion of the negative side of job embeddedness.