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The United States has attempted to remove the comparative disadvantage of people over 40 in the labour market by legislation against any age discrimination in the employment of people aged between 40 and 70, including the prohibition of age qualifications in job advertisements. This paper discusses the main provisions of the American Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967 and 1973) and then goes on to consider the extent of age discrimination in Britain by analysing a sample of age qualified vacancies notified to the British public employment service.

The use of accounting to help apply the principles of scientific management to business affairs is associated with the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control. This first British industry‐based study of the implementation of these calculative techniques makes use of the case study research tool to interrogate archival data relating to leading iron and steel companies. We demonstrate the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control early on (during the inter‐war period) by a single economic unit, United Steel Companies Ltd, where innovation is attributed to the engineering and scientific background and US experiences of key personnel. Elsewhere, significant management accounting change occurred only with the collapse in iron and steel corporate profitability that began to become apparent in the late 1950s. The process of accounting change is addressed and the significance for our study of the notions of evolution and historical discontinuity is examined. The paper is contextualised through an assessment of initiatives from industry‐based regulatory bodies and consideration of the economic circumstances and business conditions within which management accounting practices were the subject of radical revision.

Examines the history of branded characters in children’s marketing; these go back to the Michelin Man in 1898, and include the Robinson Golly and the Jolly Green Giant. Shows how reliance on these characters diminished with television advertising, which allowed animated stories to carry the brand, rather than mere static poster and press characters; some of the characters have now been pensioned off. Outlines three stages of child development related to brand characters, followed by the different form of commercial character usage: licensed product (the character is the brand), brand spokespeople like Tony the Tiger, characters associated with the brand over time (like the Dulux dog), borrowed equity using entertainment characters, and pack design with character visuals. Warns that increased sophistication of children with respect to brands and advertising means that character brands can alienate older children if they are perceived as too childlike.

By filching a few words once used by Thackeray in another connection, a bibliographic name dropper may be neatly defined as a novelist who embellishes his romance with “a personal allusion foreign to the question”. The best example of a gratuitous personal allusion that comes to mind is the one found in Henry James's brilliant story, The Liar. As the story opens, Oliver Lyon, a noted painter, has just arrived at a country estate for a weekend party among celebrities. While dressing for dinner, Lyon glances over the books in the guest room hopeful of gaining insight into the cerebral allergies and prejudices of his hosts. The setting permitted James to insert the extraneous allusion: There was the customary novel of Mr. Le Fanu jor the bedside, the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight. James never wrote truer words, but why he chose to single out Le Fanu for recognition is indeterminable. Perhaps he sincerely liked Le Fanu. Certainly, no flattery could have been intended since Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu had died many years before The Liar was written. James may simply have desired to inform his readers that he, too, was not above mystery stories and popular novels of the day. Whatever his reason, pedagogues may be grateful. Imagine the wonderful diversion afforded a hard pressed lecturer by James's amiable digression. The writings of Henry James may be hard to elucidate, but any dilettante can expatiate for hours on the writings and doings of the versatile and talented Le Fanu who “did in his allotted hours … in this enormous world of ours, his halfpenny worth of work”.

Employing the “Job demands-resources (JD-R)” framework, this study examines the impact of co-occurring social supports (supervisor, coworker, and family support) on the telework environment and employee engagement.

The study uses a multimethod approach. Data from 294 employees belonging to Indian technology organizations were collected and analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS)-based structure equation modeling software SmartPLS4. Following this, necessary condition analysis (NCA) was carried out using the NCA package for R.

Telework environment was found to mediate the relationship between social support and work engagement. Supervisor support and instrumental family support were identified as predictors as well as necessary conditions for telework environment. Coworker support was identified both as a predictor and necessary condition for telework environment. Although emotional family support was found to be a predictor of telework environment, it was not identified as a necessary condition.

The findings indicate that coworker support and family instrumental support are as important for telework success as supervisor support. Moreover, our findings suggest that varying levels of telework environments (low, moderate, and high) may necessitate distinct social support configurations. Consequently, organizations should match their social support configuration to match their overall teleworking strategy.

A basic premise of the JD-R framework is that resources exist in caravans (bundles). However, previous research (in telework) has concentrated on only one or two kinds of social support, that too in varying situational contexts, limiting generalizability of the findings. This has also produced inconsistent conclusions concerning the role of support providers such as coworkers and family. Recent developments in JD-R also suggest that the role of resources may vary in terms of their importance (necessity) for work engagement. By augmenting standard regression-based techniques with NCA, the authors explore these issues to provide a more thorough understanding of the influence of social supports on work engagement in telework situations.

This paper argues that it is possible to make a scientific analysis of the process of persuasion as a function of the language used in any social interaction rather than merely the context in which that interaction takes place. In other words, persuasion is a rhetorical as much as a sociolinguistic phenomenon and persuasive language in itself constitutes a distinct register or style of speech.

This research examines the effects of obesity, gender, and specialty on the social influence of physicians. Recent research in other areas of social science indicates that the effects of gender are declining, but the effects of the obesity physical appearance dimension linger. For physicians, just the opposite seems to be the case. More significant gender effects than obesity effects were found. Some specialties also interact with gender and obesity. Moreover, the research describes an innovative use of morphing to manipulate and isolate the obesity stimulus.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether soft skill requirements found in employer job postings (advertisements) within different roles of business are similar to the soft skills practically needed in the workplace and the perception of faculties at schools of business in Bangladesh.

A two-phased study was administered. Phase 1 involved reviewing the latest relevant literature and hundreds of job advertisements; and in phase 2, questionnaires were administered to elicit responses from executives and faculty members from different universities in Bangladesh. Judgment sampling and the snowball technique were used to develop the sample of 84 respondents with a response rate of 56 percent. In total, 15 soft skills were used to develop the instrument. Descriptive statistics and a Kruskal–Wallis test were performed to analyze the collected data, where factors that retained α at or below 0.05, a family-wise Bonferroni adjustment (Mann–Whitney U test) was applied.

All the mentioned soft skills are found to be desirable by the recruiters and faculties also agreed with them. However, there exist disparities on the perceived importance of four soft skills among faculties and recruiters, and a gap was found between the business curriculum and industry expectations from fresh-out business graduates.

This study could be a basis for future studies and would help business education institutions guide their students to master the skills, and to develop and prepare them for real life battle in the job market. Moreover, the study indicates the gap between executives’ expectations from the graduates and the institutional teaching provided by higher education institutions (for business majors), which would help practitioners reform their business curriculum to better ensure employability for their business graduates. Moreover, the study opens an avenue for further research in this field for implementing training programs for attaining the most desired soft skills among higher education institutions.

Primary-care referral to community-based exercise specialists (exercise referral) is common in the UK despite limited evidence of effectiveness. A recent pragmatic randomised trial of the Welsh National Exercise Referral Scheme (NERS), demonstrated promising impacts upon physical activity and mental health. This paper presents a mixed-method process evaluation exploring how outcomes were achieved.

Structured observation, implementer interviews and routine data assessed the extent to which NERS was implemented as intended. Baseline trial data were combined with routine monitoring data for the purposes of profiling uptake and adherence. Semi-structured patient interviews explored processes of change and the emergence of social patterning in responses to the scheme.

NERS offered patients a programme of supervised, group-based discounted exercise. However, motivational interviewing, goal-setting and patient follow-up protocols were delivered poorly. The high degree of professional support was perceived as helping patients to build confidence and assimilate into exercise environments. Patient-only classes provided social contacts, a supportive context and realistic models. Patterning in uptake emerged from access issues, with uptake lower among non-car owners. Adherence was poorer among mental health patients, younger patients and those who were least active prior to referral to NERS.

In practice, although the NERS RCT demonstrated positive impacts on physical activity and mental health, process evaluation data indicate that the intervention was not entirely delivered as intended. Mixed-method process evaluation served crucial functions in understanding implementation and functioning, offering insights into the roles of professional support and exercise classes in promoting activity and mental health, and the emergence of social patterning in responses to an ERS.

OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was specially notable for the absence of those bickerings and differences which must inevitably come to the surface at times. There may be something in the suggestion of one of our writers that the weather was a main factor. However that may be, there was uniform good temper, and we came away with the belief that a good week's work for librarianship had been done.