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Teacher education for social justice aims to enable teachers to work toward equity and justice in society and humanizing the educational experience of their students. Conceptualizing teaching as a political and ethical endeavor, social justice teacher education must engage seriously with the local and lived experiences of both teacher educators and student teachers. How then does teacher education for social justice move across communities and identities, and through cultural, social, geographic and temporal spaces? This chapter presents an autobiographical narrative inquiry into social justice teacher education across sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, across time, and within different educational communities. Bakhtin's dialogic theory (1981) helps to trace the narrative threads wherein “each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life” (p. 293). The study examines my ideological becoming (Bakhtin, 1981) as a critical teacher educator in the context of a youth mentoring service-learning course for undergraduate teacher candidates. I examine the complexities and tensions in exploring experiences and co-constructing understandings of oppression, privilege and social justice with my student teachers on the youth mentoring course in dialogic struggles with my experiences of justice and education in the USA and Hong Kong as an English-speaking Chinese American. Providing an in-depth examination of the convergence of identity, social relations, place, and time in my knowledge formation, I critically reflect upon the notion of social justice to suggest that social justice teacher education is multi-voiced and lived both locally and globally.

The very contextual nature of most mitigating evidence runs counter to America’s individualistic culture. Prior research has found that capital jurors are unreceptive to most mitigating circumstances, but no research has examined the capital sentencing decisions of trial judges. This study fills that gap through a content analysis of eight judicial sentencing opinions from Delaware. The findings indicate that judges typically dismiss contextualizing evidence in their sentencing opinions and instead focus predominately on the defendant’s culpability. This finding calls into question the ability of guided discretion statutes to ensure the consideration of mitigation and limit arbitrariness in the death penalty.

Most entrepreneurs from North America and western Europe assume that opening up business relationships and contracts in eastern Europe will be a simple process. There is strong consumer demand, willing governments and a sense of desperation in a few cases. Entrepreneurs also assume that the same principle of business and management will apply equally well in Eastern Europe as in the West – after all, do not the Eastern Europeans want to learn our superior and advanced ways? The experience of consultants and academics who have studied these countries clearly indicates that business practice, business culture, business values, management styles, processes and institutions are dramatically different. This has resulted in some very disappointing experiences for Westerners. There is, however, a series of basic principles to follow based on years of experience, evaluation and study; following these will greatly enhance the probability of entrepreneurial success in business in eastern Europe.

The following ethnographic study was conducted to better understand the site-specific, qualitative impact of organizational, taken-for-granted assumptions and practices regarding gender and family life in the reproduction of on-the-ground gender inequality. More specifically, this case study considers the consequences of organizational assumptions consistent with Bem’s (1993) three “lenses of gender” – androcentrism, essentialism, and polarization – on direct service provision for homeless clients in a small, faith-based, social service provider.

Interview and participant-observation data were gathered during time spent volunteering with Integrity Intervention (pseudonym): a small liberal Methodist outreach ministry for the homeless. Data collection was guided by the following question: How do Integrity Intervention’s cultural models (or “schemas”) for gender and family life shape the ways the organization becomes a gendered social space?

I find that expectations for client behavior were deeply gendered, in a manner consistent with the “lenses of gender.” Additionally, normative expectations for subordinate masculinities were also informed and crosscut by race and class marginalization. Ultimately, my findings suggest that the “lenses of gender” may be imbued with class and race-specific interpretive meaning. I delineate forms of site-specific gendered, racialized, and classed cultural schemata for understanding poverty and homelessness, and explain how they ultimately work together to preclude inclusive and gender-equitable service provision.

This study is limited to providers and participants in one particular nonprofit organization.

The conclusions of the study bear implications for understanding the various forms through which gender inequality is reproduced – particularly in settings of faith-based social service provision.

Research is reported into 435 Canadian business corporations, and investigates their awareness and use of a range of banking services — in particular cash management services — discovering characteristics for differentiating the cash management services needs of different market segments.

The first six months or so of a new senior executive′s appointment are crucial to his or her success. Two contrasting case studies are presented, one of an executive who acted too hastily, and one who deferred action for too long. There is no right or wrong way for a new executive to act, it is argued, so success will be based on a thorough understanding of the brief, and the culture in the organisation to which the executive has been appointed. The author draws attention to the crucial “expectation window”, during which time the executive must demonstrate results.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

When we speak of the culture of an organisation, we refer to the behaviour patterns and standards that bind it together. Some organisational cultures encourage productivity; many do not. Culture should not be confused with climate. Climate is the short‐term mood of an organisation. Unlike culture, it is fragile and subject to change. But culture — the sum of behaviour patterns and standards — is built up over many years. Culture is a unifying philosophy ethic and spirit; a set of superordinate goals. There is no such thing as “instant culture”. It is possible that a positive climate will erode a strong counter‐productive culture, but it will take generations. Other than changing virtually all management staff, there is no quick fix. It is almost always more productive to use the standards of the current culture, however alien to the organisation's goal, rather than to force‐feed new standards.

In the case of small business, the owner‐manager is most likely to be the individual who establishes corporate objectives as well as carrying out a thorough evaluation of product lines, markets, and future competitive positions. Planning helps in the identification of present areas which have potential for future strengthening. This is sometimes not realised, with some business people believing that planning identifies new areas of product opportunity only. The necessary analysis of the sales history, margins and profits on a product basis reveals patterns of performance which may easily be overlooked in day to day management. The author argues the case for strategic planning in a small business.

Productivity The Problem Situation Many western manufactured products such as automobiles and electronics have lost their market shares to those manufactured in Japan. One can no longer blame this solely on cheap Japanese labour, as the income of the Japanese worker has increasingly caught up with the level found in the western world. The rude reality is that the Japanese industries are more productive than their western counterparts. Furthermore, their product quality is often superior.