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Among leaders of the French Socialist Movement, Albert Thomas (1878‐1932) was one of the few steady supporters of scientific management. The purpose of this paper is to describe how Thomas developed his ideas about advanced management thought and practice during and after World War I.

The paper makes extensive use of published and unpublished primary sources preserved at the Archives nationales, Paris, at the Bureau International du Travail (BIT), Geneva, and at Smith College, Northampton, MA.

Thomas's reformist ideology first stood the test during World War I when he served as minister for munitions for France. After the International Labour Organization had entrusted him with the directorship of the BIT, Thomas helped to create the International Management Institute (IMI) as a center for the collection and dissemination of advanced management thought and practice. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the rationalization movement fell into disrepute. Like some progressive members of the Taylor Society, Thomas identified scientific management increasingly with concepts of socioeconomic planning and international cooperation. Nonetheless, the intellectual tide turned against his reformist creed. Having lost the support of its American sponsors, IMI closed its doors in January 1934, only about two years after Thomas's unexpected death.

The paper tries to show how one of the most brilliant French politicians of the last century developed and applied his theories‐in‐use about scientific management under changing historical circumstances.

In this part it is proposed to discuss five aspects of the contract of employment and matters relating to it. The nature of the contract of employment will be considered first and the discussion will then go on to treat statutory intervention as a factor which regulates the underlying structure of the law of employment. In the second instance the characteristics of the contract of employment will be considered. There will then follow a brief excursus on how a contract of employment is formed. Here only offer, acceptance, consideration capacity, intention to enter into legal obligations and form will feature. Discussions on legality of object and restrictive covenants will be left until later. Following on from this third aspect, the fourth will consist of a detailed examination of the statutory written particulars of employment, i.e. (written statement); the discussion will then go on to examine in what circumstances complaints connected with the written statement may be made to an industrial tribunal. The reader will finally be invited to look at a sample written statement by way of practical exercise.

Advances in technology and the popularity of social media influencers have sparked a rise of “virtual influencers (VIs).” This study examines consumer attitudes toward VIs in social networking services and explores factors that enhance or dampen these attitudes. In three experiments, it was explored how contextual factors (background and companion) interact with human (HIs) and VIs, influencing attitudes through trustworthiness.

Three experiments were conducted using an online panel (N = 894). All experiments were based on the comparison between HIs and VI with mediating role of trustworthiness. In Studies 2 and 3, moderated mediation analyses were conducted to test hypotheses.

The results revealed that human-like VI was less trusted than animi-like VI or HIs. However, the perceived trustworthiness toward VI was enhanced when the VI was in a virtual (vs. real) environment (Study 2) or accompanied by a virtual (vs. human) companion (Study 3), leading to positive attitudes.

This research not only enriches relevant literature (avatars and SMIs) but also provides actionable insight for practitioners who design and utilize VIs. This paper proposes novel and handy tactics to enhance consumers' trustworthiness in and attitudes toward VIs.

The inverse problem in the eddy current (EC) imaging of metallic parts is an ill‐posed problem. The purpose of the paper is to compare the performances of regularized algorithms to estimate the 3D geometry of a surface breaking defect.

The forward problem is solved using a mesh‐free semi‐analytical model, the distributed point source method, which allows EC data to be simulated according to the shape of the considered defect. The inverse problem is solved using two regularization methods, namely the Tikhonov (l2) and the 3D total variation (tv) methods, implemented with first‐ and second‐order algorithms. The inversion performances were evaluated in terms of both mean square error (MSE) and computation time, while considering additive white and colored noise, respectively, standing for acquisition errors and model errors.

In presence of colored noise, the authors found out that first‐ and second‐order methods provide approximately the same result according to the SEs obtained while estimating the defect voxels. Nevertheless, in comparison with (l2), the (tv) regularization was proved to decrease the MSE by 10 voxels, at the cost of less than twice the computational effort.

In this paper, an easy to implement mesh‐free model, based on virtual defect current sources, was used to generated EC data relative to a defect positioned at the surface of a metallic part. A 3D total variation regularization approach was used in combination with the proposed model, which appears to be well suited to the reconstruction of volumic defects.

After decades of successful expansion, The Reader's Digest Association's products were mature. With an average readership age for the flagship Reader's Digest magazine of 50.3 in 2004, efforts to develop new products had so far failed to entice a significant number of younger customers. Following a financial downturn in 1996, positive financial results remained illusive. Several major changes instituted by Thomas O. Ryder, CEO since 1998, including acquisitions, re-capitalization, restructuring and systematic re-engineering of the corporate culture, had proven mildly successful, but RDA, as well as the entire publishing industry, faced a persistent decline in profitability. Could RDA fulfill its stated mission to create “products that inform, enrich, entertain and inspire people of all ages and cultures around the world”, and could it do this by continuing to rely on the 80-year old Reader's Digest magazine?

Purpose: To explore how families respond to the death and dying of their loved ones in a hospital setting, archival research was conducted using eight qualitative articles describing next-of-kins’ perceptions of end-of-life care in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs). The articles were based on the qualitative arm of the VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) study entitled, “Best Practices for End-of-life Care and Comfort Care Order Sets for our Nation’s Veterans” (BEACON).

Design: The archival research consisted of an interactive methodological process of data immersion, analysis, and interpretation which resulted in the emergence of two overarching thematic frameworks called “losing control” and “holding on.”

Findings: “Losing control” is the process that occurs when the patient experiences a cascading sequence of deleterious biological events and situations rendering the caregiver no longer able to direct the timing or setting of the dying trajectory. The notion of “holding on” captures family member’s responses to the need to maintain control after relinquishing the patient’s care to the institutional setting. During the patient’s hospitalization, the dual dynamics of “losing control” and “holding on” unfolded in the spatial, temporal, and life narrative domains.

Originality: The findings not only contribute to better overall understanding of family members’ responses to death in the pre-COVID-19 hospital setting but also heighten the awareness of the complex spatial, temporal, and narrative issues faced by family members who lost a hospitalized loved one during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Language is a social and engaging process (Bloom & Lahey, 1978), which is not fully formed until a child is six or seven (Roseberry-McKibben, 2007). Language is developed through social experiences, modeling, observing, and experimenting. Yet our educational system operates on the premise that typically developing children enter kindergarten, at age five with a firm foundation in speaking and listening, and equivalent exposures to pre-literacy skills (Roseberry-McKibben, 2007). For many children who speak a first language other than English, this is not the case. Typically, their first language is not supported in school, and the expectation is that they will learn to speak, communicate, and use English in order to understand grade level core content. Thus, they begin their education at a disadvantage. For many children this expectation creates an initial learning knowledge gap that appears to widen annually. This chapter will examine the literature related to language development and second language learning and the laws and mandates that drive our classroom practice.

Anna Julia Cooper and Septima Poinsette Clark were two prominent late 19th- and early 20th-century educators. Cooper and Clark taught African American students in federally sanctioned, segregated schools in the South. Drawing on womanist thought as a theoretical lens, this chapter argues that Cooper and Clark’s intellectual thoughts on race, racism, education, and pedagogy informed their teaching practices. Influenced by their socio-cultural, historical, familial, and education, they implemented antioppressionist pedagogical practices as a way to empower their students and address the educational inequalities their students were subjected to in a highly racialized, violent, and repressive social order. Historical African American women educators’ social critiques on race and racism are rarely examined, particularly as they pertain to how their critiques influence their teaching practices. Cooper and Clark’s critiques about race and racism are pertinent to the story of education and racial empowerment during the Jim Crow era.

An accelerometer is a device that measures force due to gravity or a change in speed or direction of travel. This paper describes accelerometers and their application in other disciplines and, by way of an example, explores the utility of accelerometers for studying aggression. We end with a discussion of additional ways accelerometers might be used in group processes research.

We first review the use of accelerometers in other disciplines. We then present the results of four studies that demonstrate the use of accelerometers to measure aggression. Study 1 establishes the measure’s concurrent validity. Study 2 concerns its stability and representative reliability. Study 3 seeks to establish the measure’s predictive validity by associating it with an existing measure. Study 4 demonstrates the ability of accelerometers to address a sociological research question.

In Studies 1 and 2, we find that accelerometers can be used to differentiate between distinct levels of aggression. In Study 3, we find that men’s average peak acceleration correlates with a previously validated measure of aggression. Study 4 uses accelerometers to reproduce a well-established finding in the aggression literature.

We conclude that accelerometers are a flexible tool for group processes’ researchers and social scientists more broadly. Our findings should prove useful to social scientists interested in measuring aggression or in employing accelerometers in their work.