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In this article the everyday relationships of children in the context of the contemporary multicultural city will be discussed. It is based on ethnographic research into social relationships of city dwellers in Antwerp, a Flemish city in Belgium, within the framework of the reflection on community life, conflict and public space. In this research several city dwellers were interviewed about their social relationships, a small number of individual city dwellers were followed in their everyday life and participant observation was done in shops and on public transport. The fieldwork on public transport was carried out over a period of eight months. Observations were done on one specific tramline and its stops; drivers were informally interviewed and the researcher took part in the ticket control with inspectors of the public transport company. The fieldwork in the shops consisted of participant observations (not anonymous) for six months in a small shoe shop, a baby shop and a department store with a refreshment bar in it. Next to this in a specific city neighbourhood 30 interviews were done with different city inhabitants about their relationships and contacts and three of them were each followed for two months in their daily activities in and around the city. An elderly woman, a working man and a child were involved. The research unit was not formed by a specific ethnic, socio-economic or age group but by the relationships between different city dwellers. Special attention is given to crosscutting ties, those ties between individuals that run through delineated social groups and geographical boundaries. This article offers only descriptions of everyday relationships of children from the ethnographical research projects described above.

The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in patients' satisfaction after their doctor has participated in a brief educational intervention on medicolegal risk management.

Questionnaire completed by ambulatory patients, measuring satisfaction with their doctor's communication skills before and three months after the doctor participated in a three hour workshop on medicolegal risk management. 75 obstetrician/gynaecologists (O&Gs) and 99 general practitioners (GPs) were each rated by 60 of their patients following a consultation in their clinical rooms.

Patient satisfaction as evidenced by change to “complete satisfaction” with doctor's communication skills and overall satisfaction with the clinical encounter.

Participants had high initial patient satisfaction ratings and these were found to have improved across all parameters three months after the educational intervention.

The educational intervention was successful in improving doctors' communication skills as evidenced by enhanced patient satisfaction in all key areas, including those most frequently associated with patient complaint, litigation and adverse outcome.

Research models and practices change rapidly. While evidence of such changes includes cross-campus collaborations and multi-authored scholarship, faculty development opportunities also signal what is to come. In this case study, authors representing diverse disciplines examine what faculty development programs reveal about the future of academic research. The authors offer an analysis of faculty support programs across the country as a foundation, and then provide an examination of initiatives in place at their four-year regional comprehensive institution in the United States. The authors then report on the outcomes of these programs for research productivity, with a focus on opportunities that were available to all faculty across the university. Finally, the authors offer perspective on the future of academic research based on findings from examining these programs. The authors suggest that the future of research will focus on (1) collaborative design(s) of research-related support, (2) support structures and programs that encourage and facilitate cross-campus and interdisciplinary research collaborations and sharing, (3) incentive for integrating areas of research with teaching and service, and relatedly (4) programs that encourage faculty to span academic research with industry or community partnerships and collaborations, especially ones that can generate revenue or produce future research, development, or funding streams.

This study aims to explore Indian online shopping via the concept of shopping orientations.

Surveys were collected from 536 consumer panel members. Online shopping segments were identified by using a two‐step process that clustered respondents in terms of the similarity of their scores across four shopping orientations.

Three segments were identified: value singularity, quality at any price, and reputation/recreation. The quality at any price and reputation/recreation segments were the predominant online shoppers. Although their orientations toward shopping differed, their behaviour, web site attribute ratings, and demographics were very similar except for occupation (managerial versus clerical, respectively). The finding that the value singularity segment is not the pioneer online shopper in India contrasts with the early online shoppers in the USA, who were often motivated by price.

This is the first empirical study to use shopping orientation research in the Indian marketplace. It is also among the first to link shopping orientations with a wide complement of correlates. Research should continue to track the development of this emerging market.

Besides revealing that the orientations of Indian consumers are not price‐based, the relatively unfractionated factor analysis solutions for shopping orientations and web site dimensionality suggest that, in the emerging Indian economy, consumer conceptualizations of shopping have not yet undergone full elaboration. Thus, this cross‐sectional study could be extended with longitudinal research to reveal how Indian consumers' perceptions of the marketplace change with market development and growing consumer sophistication.

Although online shopping in India is on the verge of rapid growth, relatively little is known about most aspects of Indian consumer behaviour. This study begins to build a foundation of knowledge of Indian online shopping.

The UK city of culture (UKCoC) scheme developed out of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 and is synonymous with urban renewal. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges of bidding for this scheme.

The authors conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with bid team members from four out of the five short-listed cities for the 2021 award. Respondents were situated across the country and, at the time, finalising their Stage 2 bids. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the responses.

The UKCoC scheme is a top-down scheme which is delivered “in place”. The danger of the top-down vision is that local people cannot often conceptualise what it might mean within the context of their own locality. The findings here suggest that bid team members are attempting to do this despite obvious time pressures. The research presented here suggests that cities are reconciling the top-down, criteria-led nature of the scheme with a real reflection on how to make that work for their locality which is distinctive.

The UKCoC scheme has proved to galvanise communities to reflect on the nature of their places and think about what makes them unique in comparison to the other bidding cities. The bidding teams acknowledge the challenges of bidding but there is a sense that competing is worth the investment.

This paper offers a unique insight into a recent competitive placemaking scheme and reflects on how placemaking can potentially be reconciled as both top-down and place-based.

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of children’s participation in the relationship between children’s individual action and the social treatment and consequences of this action. For this purpose, the paper explores the integration of different theoretical approaches that can shape research on children’s participation, looking at interactions, complex social systems that include interactions, and narratives that are produced in these complex social systems. This integration allows the understanding of the ways in which children actively participate in communication processes, social structures condition children’s active participation, and children’s active participation can enhance structural change in social systems, through the implementation of promotional communication systems. The paper highlights the following paradox: the relevance of children’s action for social change depends on the relevance of adults’ action in promoting children’s actions. This theoretical perspective is exemplified in the case of promotion of children’s active participation in the education system through the empirical analysis of cases of videotaped and transcribed interactions, highlighting facilitation systems of classroom communication. The analyzed data are based on a field research in Italian classrooms regarding a specific methodology of facilitation of communication. The analysis of these data shows the ways in which the facilitation system creates the paradoxical relationship between structures that condition children’s active participation and children’s active participation that enhances structural change. The paper highlights a new way of dealing with children’s participation, based on a social constructionist, systemic, and interactionist approach.

Examines the determinants of International Joint Venture marketing performance in Thailand. Uses the results from a survey of 1047 Thai‐foreign IJVs in Thailand from firms that were mainly engaged in agriculture, metal working, electrical and chemical industries. Applies exploratory factor analysis and discriminant analysis to identify these critical determinants as market characteristics, conflict, commitment, marketing orientation and organisational control.