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As a movement for alternative means of food production and consumption has grown, so, too, have civic efforts to make alternative food accessible to low-income persons (LIPs). This article examines the impact of alternative food institutions (AFIs) on low-income communities in the United States and Canada, focusing on research published since 2008.

Through a three-stage literature search, I created a database of 110 articles that make empirical or theoretical contributions to scholarly knowledge on the relationship of AFIs to low-income communities in North America. I used an in vivo coding scheme to categorize the impacts that AFIs have on LIPs and to identify predominant barriers to LIPs’ engagement with AFIs.

The impacts of AFIs span seven outcome categories: food consumption, food access and security, food skills, economic, other health, civic, and neighborhood. Economic, social and cultural barriers impede LIPs’ engagement with AFIs. AFIs can promote positive health outcomes for low-income persons when they meet criteria for affordability, convenience and inclusivity.

This review exposes productive avenues of dialogue between health scholars and medical sociology and geography/environmental sociology. Health scholarship offers empirical support for consumer-focused solutions. Conversely, by constructively critiquing the neoliberal underpinnings of AFIs’ discourse and structure, geographers and sociologists supply health scholars with a language that may enable more systemic interventions.

This article is the first to synthesize research on five categories of alternative food institutions (farmers’ markets, CSAs, community gardens, urban farms, and food cooperatives) across disciplinary boundaries.

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study is to examine the association between Internet use, skills, and health-related Internet activities, on the one hand, and perceived health outcomes of health-related Internet use, use of healthcare services, and self-rated health (SRH), on the other hand, the latter conceptualized as gains constituting the “third digital divide.” Secondarily, we seek to examine whether the above associations are maintained after accounting for demographic characteristics.

Methodology: A nationally representative random-digital-dial (RDD) telephone household survey of Israeli adult population (aged 21 and older, N = 819). The survey measured different dimensions of Internet use – frequency, experience, Web 1.0 general consumption and health-related activities, Web 2.0 production activities (general and health-related), and content evaluation. Potential health benefits included perceived outcomes of Internet use for health purposes, use of healthcare services and SRH.

Findings: In a multiple hierarchical regression model, adjusting for demographic variables, Internet use was associated with increased use of healthcare services and better perceived outcomes of Internet use for health purposes, but not with SRH.

Research Implications and Limitations: Health-related Internet use is associated with a sense of empowerment and enhanced use of healthcare services, but – after accounting for background variables – is not associated with SRH. Limitations include self-reports and a cross-sectional design, the latter precluding inference on causality.

Practical Implications: Internet use, specifically Web 1.0 consumption activities, is associated with increased use of healthcare services and is positively associated with perceived health outcomes. No such relationships were found for Web 2.0 activities. Future technological developments in services should take the digital divide into account and design products that will benefit disadvantaged groups.

Originality/Value: While rigorously assessing various dimensions of Internet use, the study distinguishes between various benefits of Internet use in the health domain, clarifying which benefits are associated with Internet use for health purposes.

Policy makers are applying market-inspired competition and financial incentives to drive efficiency in healthcare. However, a lack of knowledge exists about the process whereby incentives are filtered through organizations to influence staff motivation, and the key role of managers is often overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to explore the strategies managers use as intermediaries between financial incentives and the individual motivation of staff. The authors use empirical data from a local case in Swedish specialized care.

The authors conducted an exploratory qualitative case study of a patient-choice reform, including financial incentives, in specialized orthopedics in Sweden. In total, 17 interviews were conducted with professionals in managerial positions, representing six healthcare providers. A hypo-deductive, thematic approach was used to analyze the data.

The results show that managers applied alignment strategies to make the incentive model motivating for staff. The managers’ strategies are characterized by attempts to align external rewards with professional values based on their contextual and practical knowledge. Managers occasionally overruled the financial logic of the model to safeguard patient needs and expressed an interest in having a closer dialogue with policy makers about improvements.

Externally imposed incentives do not automatically motivate healthcare staff. Managers in healthcare play key roles as intermediaries by aligning external rewards with professional values. Managers’ multiple perspectives on healthcare practices and professional culture can also be utilized to improve policy and as a source of knowledge in partnership with policy makers.

Introduction Hastily, I beat the editor to it by writing “These are the personal views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the editor of this journal.” Indeed, I take it further. The article does not necessarily, in general manner or particular phrase, represent the views of the National Committee of National Library Week. It's a great disappointment to me that to date neither the National Committee nor myself has had to disown the other. Our opinions, to date, coincide on all salient points. No blows have been exchanged between Committee and Organiser. Since concord should often be more rightly spelt “c‐o‐m‐p‐l‐a‐c‐e‐n‐c‐y”, I regret this. All, however, may yet be well. My full views as Organiser of NLW 1969 follow: I shall state them with the most forthright candour and the most furious conviction; and the fisticuffs may well follow, as sure as Library fines. If the editor considers this preamble, too … well, too ambling … I proffer one excuse. As organiser, I'm as over‐worked and time‐pressed as any librarian, and my defence is therefore borrowed from Flaubert: “Forgive a long letter—I had no time to write a short one.” (Reference librarians, please check this quotation. I'm too busy.) Finally, there are those who write very lightly when they wish to state their most serious belief. Into this maladjusted and misjudged fraternity, I was myself born.

The aim of this paper is to promote the concept of organizational voluntarism, borrowed from political philosophy and to stimulate feedback and debate as to its efficacy in furthering the discourse on corporate responsibility.

The paper examines a range of current theories that address the issue of balancing organizational plurality and coherence. It identifies both shortfalls in current research and provides criteria for developing new theory in this area. The concept of organizational voluntarism is developed and these criteria used to test the robustness of the model and to explore future areas of research.

The criteria used to assess the voluntarism model are: the centrality of organizational plurality, the embeddedness of social relations and power in organization working, accounting for the motivations of managers to work this way; and the need for clear organizational benefits. Four potential cognitions are proposed that define a voluntaristic mindset.

The aim is only to develop the concept of voluntarism and promote debate about its value as an organizing principle in multi stakeholder settings.

The paper offers a research proposition that managers who pursue voluntaristic behaviour will be influenced by cognitions that reflect plurality of interests, the value of personal interest, the need to “take” authority and who value political models of working in the reconciliation of competing interests.

The paper provides an additional perspective that can further the development of corporate responsibility by mediating the demands for corporate control and efficiency and the calls for greater inclusion.

Can one describe the ‘natural’ process of pregnancy as ‘harm’, even when negligently brought about? What does that harm consist of? Offering a contextual analysis of the English judiciary's characterisation of wrongful pregnancy, this paper demonstrates from a feminist perspective that the current construction of pregnancy as a ‘personal injury’ is deeply problematic. Forwarding an alternative account, this paper argues for law to embrace a richer notion of autonomy that will better resonate with women's diverse experiences of reproduction, and articulate the importance of autonomy in the reproductive domain: notably, women gaining control over their moral, relational and social lives.