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The purpose of this paper is to explore critically the potentially harmful business of professional wrestling in the USA as state-corporate crime.

This paper comprises desk-based research of secondary sources. The lack of official data on the harms experienced by professional wrestlers means that much of the data regarding this is derived from quantitative and qualitative accounts from internet sites dedicated to this issue.

A major finding is that with regard to the work-related harms experienced by professional wrestlers, the business may not be wholly to be blamed, but nor is it entirely blame free. It proposes that one way the work-related harms can be understood is via an examination of the political economic context of neo-liberalism from the 1980s onwards and subsequent state-corporate actions and inactions.

The paper raises questions about the regulation of the professional wrestling industry together with the misclassification of wrestlers’ worker status (also known as wage theft and tax fraud) and the potential role they play in the harms incurred in this industry.

The potential wider social implications of the misclassification of workers are raised.

The originality and value of this paper is the examination of work-related harms within the professional wrestling industry through the lens of state-corporate crime.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the historical and political broadcasting conditions that hindered the success of British professional wrestling and allowed the rise to dominance of the American World Wrestling Federation.

Because of the nature of professional wrestling, the paper utilises a range of secondary sources (audience research conducted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and interviews with retired wrestlers) and primary research (government papers, magazines, newspapers).

The paper finds that the World Wrestling Federation benefited from neo‐liberal television policies, but also created a product that attracted a new generation of fans.

The paper examines an under‐researched area of study (British professional wrestling) to explore and complicate existing debates about sports marketing and British media institutions in the 1980s and 1990s.

Professional wrestling is a multi‐million pound industry. Loyal fans watch events and buy merchandising. However, even the participants admit that the results are pre‐arranged, with writers producing the stories and the characters for those involved. In other words, the whole phenomena is manufactured. The spectators are aware of this, and still continue to offer their support. This study looks at the ways in which the industry seeks to entertain these fans and offer them the product that will maintain their interest and their attention and ensure that they will continue to pay regularly so as to maintain the industry’s profitability.

This paper demonstrates the impact of recognition and valuation of youth interest on potential career trajectory and future pathway choices.

This paper presents data from two ethnographies. The first ethnography is of an online professional wrestling fan community, which took place between October 2012 and May 2013. The second ethnography is of the online Scratch community, Scratch is a free online coding program. Observations of the community took place between October 2014 and October 2015, with interviews ongoing as of the writing of this paper.

This paper details the importance of valuing youth learning and the impact that receiving recognition and valuation can have on youths’ future choices.

This research focuses on two online communities and presents four examples of the phenomena of valuation and recognition described in the paper. To draw broad conclusions, a wider sample would be required.

This paper can offer examples to practitioners and researcher alike as to what the impacts of valuing youth learning in interest-driven contexts can be for youth long-term learning and career trajectory and forms that the valuation of interest to support growth and interest can take.

The paper demonstrates the importance of valuing learning in all parts of youths’ lives and the impact that the valuation can have on the future pathways and career trajectory of youth.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the effect of superstar gig workers, defined as independent contractors who are the most successful in their field, on shareholder value. Gig workers comprise as much as 33% of the workforce and are projected to exceed 50% by 2028. Thus, understanding their impact on shareholder value is important.

This paper uses OLS regression analysis. To establish causality regarding wealth effects, the sudden deaths of superstar gig workers are used. To facilitate the uncontaminated measurement of wealth effects, sudden deaths that coincide with a significant event on a [−3, 3] window about the death event are not used.

The sudden death of a superstar gig worker causes shareholder wealth to increase significantly by 0.35% or almost $1.5m. Rational and behavioral explanations are offered for this result.

Generalizability is limited because data on superstar gig workers in traditional corporations are unavailable. For this reason, this paper uses the only available data, namely, data on superstar wrestlers, who are contracted to perform in matches (i.e. “gigs”) in a lucrative promotion (e.g. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)). Future research could examine the effect of corporate gig workers on shareholder value if the data become available at some point.

This paper is the first to document the effects of any type of gig worker, whether superstar or regular, on shareholder value.

This paper aims to offer a cultural understanding of investor faith in stock picking despite overwhelming evidence questioning its efficacy. Why, in the face of very widely communicated findings calling into question the advice and assistance offered by financial professionals to help them pick stocks or manage their mutual funds, do so many people persist in these practices? The authors believe that the best way to understand investor faith in the efficacy of stock picking is through teleinvestmentevangelists such as Jim Cramer, whose fusion of celebrity and religion taps into the ritualistic elements of investment that usually lie hidden. Drawing from media, religious and cultural studies theory, the authors flesh out the dynamics of the teleinvestmentevangelist as a powerful character, the understanding of which provides insights on the pre-modern meanings that inhere in mediated global capital.

This conceptual work draws on theoretical perspectives and qualitative experiences of everyday investors to explain why the entire field of stock picking remains so robust and captivating in the face of ample evidence that calls into question the validity of the entire phenomenon.

This paper derives and introduces the hypothetical figure of the “Teleinvestmentevangelist” in an attempt to weave dimensions of celebrity, ritual and religion together to explain investors undeterred faith in the ability to pick individual stocks and “beat the market”.

The primary research implication of this paper is that it exhibits the continued value of integrating interdisciplinary perspectives for understanding investing experience beyond more limited views undergirded by neoclassical economics. One challenge of the paper is that it attempts to merge three disparate perspectives that have not typically been integrated and applied to financial phenomena.

One practical implication of this paper is that it provides a perspective and vocabulary that enables us to understand financial experiences more fully and reflect on these understandings more critically.

Armed with a richer understanding of financial and investing experience, individual investors can better appreciate fundamental cultural misrecognitions that potentially culminate in symbolic violence whereby certain groups of investors are systematically disadvantaged.

The originality of this paper lies in its synthesis of disparate literature bases and application of this synthesis to the financial and investing world. Not only are the individual theoretical perspectives rarely consulted vis-à-vis investing experience but also is their synthesis particularly unique and original in the context of financial and investing phenomena.

This study seeks to identify some of the factors that explain biomedical research scientists' career commitment and that prompt them to consider leaving science. It also aims to examine whether these factors differ between men and women, and between those with different family responsibilities.

A longitudinal questionnaire survey was used to identify the demographic and work‐related variables that predicted three dimensions of career commitment and intention to leave science one year later.

The factors explaining career commitment and intention to remain in the profession were similar for men and women, for those with various types of family responsibilities, and for those on permanent and temporary contracts. Career planning was predicted by continuance organizational commitment and the opportunity for autonomy in the workplace, and career resilience by equitable treatment at work. Career identity, career resilience and salary were predictors of intention to leave science.

Limitations of the study include the lack of a random sample, and the fact that some instruments differ slightly from the original versions. A substantial proportion of the variance in intention to leave science was unexplained and further research should therefore explore the impact of career entrenchment, professional socialisation and aspects of personal disposition on intention to leave a profession.

Those who manage scientists' careers should attend particularly to pay, providing opportunities for working autonomously, and fair treatment.

A longitudinal design was used and some key workplace variables were studied. Unlike most previous studies, the moderating effects of gender, relationship status and parenthood were examined.