Search results

Banks have worked hard to improve their bottom‐line performance by focusing relentlessly on cutting costs. The effort made banks leaner, but essential as those efficiency gains have been, they did little to reduce costly customer defections. This article demonstrates that banks' long‐term growth and profitability hinge on their ability to attract and retain loyal customers and describes the key disciplines they need to master to become customer‐led organizations.

The article is based on the results of a global benchmarking survey of senior executives and customers at 30 major retail banks serving 170 million clients in 15 countries to ascertain what factors they saw to be most important to the success of strategies to promote organic revenue and profit growth.

The study revealed that the best‐performing banks garner the highest marks across the entire spectrum of managing the customer relationship. On average, banks that excel across all dimensions of acquiring and retaining loyal customers outgrow their peers and boost their return on equity.

Putting customer loyalty at the heart of their growth efforts requires banks to nurture the faithful core of their customer base and hone their skills for spotting and attracting the right new customers. The article describes how banks can design the right propositions by identifying target segments and crafting experiences to delight them, deliver on these promises by focusing the entire company on them, and use customer metrics to refine their products and services and develop organizational capabilities to delight customers again and again.

In conditions where a product is subjected to extreme mechanical loading in a very short time, a strain rate has a significant influence on the behaviour of the product’s material. To accurately simulate the behaviour of the material during these loading conditions, the strain rate parameters of the selected material model should be appropriately used. This paper aims to present a fast method with which the proper strain-rate-dependent parameter values of the selected material model can be easily determined.

In the paper, an experiment was designed to study the behaviour of thin, flat, metal sheets during an impact. The results from this experiment were the basis for the determination of the strain-rate-dependent parameter values of the Cowper–Symonds material model. Optimisation processes with different numbers of required parameters of the selected material model were performed. The optimisation process consists of the method for design of experiment, modelling a response surface and a genetic algorithm.

The paper provides comparison of two optimisation processes with different methods for design of experiment. The performances of the presented method are compared and the engineering applicability of the results is discussed.

This paper presents a new fast approach for the identification of the parameter values of the Cowper–Symonds material model, if these cannot be easily determined directly from experimental data.

This chapter offers a brief overview of the ways in which death has been addressed in children’s picture books in a playful or light-hearted manner. The books here are a small purposive sample showing the ‘ordinary’ way, in which death can be dealt with in picture books rather than looking at books with a specific therapeutic intent. The concepts of ‘playfulness’ and also ‘carnival’ are explored before four books are analysed.

The purpose of this study is to systematically analyze how homeworkers perceive, interpret and make sense of their situations in relation to work and leisure participation. Thus, this study examines the dynamics by which homeworkers struggle to manage leisure and work in their everyday lives, with a special emphasis on how they interpret and make sense of their leisure–work dilemmas.

Using the framework of a dynamic intersection of identity orientation and border-setting approach, this study analyzes qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 13 young, home-based teleworkers in Shanghai.

Unlike the purpose of family-friendly employment policies, homeworkers who had striven for a better leisure life ended up with frustration and disappointment, regardless of their attempts at separate leisure–work borders or not. In contrast, the overwhelming work in a homeworking context paradoxically led to a more fulfilling and satisfying life for most who prioritized work over all else in life.

In the cases of home-based work or other flexible work policies that aim to make a better balance of work and life, public attention has been directed merely toward a debate of whether these policies lead to an enhanced quality of leisure life or an intensification of work intrusion. However, understanding the complexity of such emerging phenomenon requires a richer, more nuanced explanation. In this light, this qualitative study of homeworkers’ lived experiences is sociologically relevant for deciphering the relationship between leisure and work in the late-modern society that entails an evolving process of negotiating identities and situational variability.

Originally written in the 1990s but unpublished, the paper is now revised; the purpose of this paper is to examine the context of the formation of the Educational Workers League of NSW in 1931 with particular emphasis on the NSW Crown Employees (Teachers) Conciliation Committee and the enactment of its agreement in the worsening economic conditions of the Depression. The aims, reception and possible influence of the League on Federation policy and practice are addressed.

Primary source material consulted includes the minutes of the Conciliation Committee’s sittings from September 1927 to July 1929; papers relating to the Educational Workers League held in the Teachers Federation Library; and the Teachers Federation journal, Education.

The Conciliation Committee’s proceedings and outcomes had far reaching implications. The resultant salary agreement received a hostile reception from assistant teachers and fuelled distrust between assistants and headmasters. As economic depression deepened, dissatisfaction with the conservative leadership and tactics of the Federation increased. One outcome was the formation of the radical, leftist Educational Workers League by teachers, including Sam Lewis, who would later play key roles within the Federation itself.

While acknowledging the extensive earlier work of Bruce Mitchell, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of teacher unionism and teacher activism in the 1920s and 1930s. Apart from brief attention by Federation historians in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been no history of the formation, reception and significance of the Educational Workers League.

In an article relating particularly to Meat Inspection, the Pall Mall Gazette observes that “before the war we were not entirely neglectful of public hygiene. We had, for instance, a fairly efficient system of food inspection which, by ceaseless vigilance and prompt and relentless prosecution of offenders, was steadily eliminating adulteration and preventing the public sale of bad food. Then came the war and the food shortage and a relaxing of safeguards. But the war is over, not technically perhaps, but none the less over, and it is time that the old vigilance of inspection was restored. It is the duty of the Ministry of Health to see that this is done, and the local authorities, despite the control exercised over them by the local tradespeople, should be compelled to return to the pre‐war method of food inspection. That unclean and bad food is being sold with comparative impunity is notorious and the protest of the veterinary surgeons against the inadequacy of meat inspection but called expert attention to an evil of which everyone is aware. The natural affection of the Board of Agriculture for the British farmer, and the equally natural desire of the Food Ministry to save its financial face, are it may be supposed, factors which make for neglect. But the Food Ministry has a duty to the public which must override all Departmental consideration, and we hope that Dr. ADDISON will issue orders at once compelling the local authorities to engage efficient inspectors, and to order prosecutions wherever and whenever bad meat is offered for sale.”

The purpose of this study is to understand the meaning of the term well-being as conceptualised by parents, grandparents, principals and teachers in the Irish primary education system.

A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was adopted to understand the nature and meaning of the phenomenon of well-being. Interviews were carried out with 54 principals, teachers, parents and grandparents from a representative sample of primary schools in Ireland. Each participant was asked the same, open, question: “What does well-being mean to you?” Responses were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a combination of the principles of the hermeneutic circle and Braun and Clarke’s framework for thematic analysis.

Three conceptualisations of well-being were identified (1) well-being is about being happy, (2) well-being is about being healthy and safe and (3) well-being is something you “do”.

To the best of our knowledge this paper is the first of its kind to describe how well-being is conceptualised by adults in Irish primary school contexts. In particular it highlights how neoliberal conceptualisations of well-being as a “thing”, a commodity exchanged on assumptions of individualism, moralism and bio-economism, have crept into the education of our youngest citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the editorial content of monthly women's magazines and consider their role in facilitating the Christmas food rituals. Of particular interest is the extent to which the special food features have adapted to support the changes in women's lifestyles over the last 20 years.

The authors conducted a longitudinal social semiotic analysis of Christmas food features in women's magazines in Australia and the UK over the period 1991‐2011.

The analysis reveals a recurring conflict between the magazine content and the lifestyles of their readers. For families to participate in and maintain the Christmas ritual still means devotion, typically by a woman. The message has not changed, even though the work/home balance for many women has. The responsibility for putting the “magic” in Christmas lies firmly at the woman's feet. The magazines' text convey a contradictory message by offering readers budget and timesaving tips, while their visuals imply that such “shortcuts” stand in the way of the sought‐after magical Christmas, the rituals must be followed in full.

Adopting a longitudinal social semiotic analysis enabled the authors to conduct a detailed comparison of both text and imagery across the magazines and across the years. The authors were also able to report on how the sign complexes such as colour and text worked in combination to create a social message.

Whilst women's magazines remain an important vehicle for the transmission of social values, the paper's findings demonstrate that they are not necessarily adapting to social change.