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Birth order studies have an established history in the academic world just as demographics have an established history in marketing. Discusses how birth order may influence several socio‐economic mechanisms and thereby influence select consumption behaviors. As a likely influence of certain consumption behaviors, birth order may be useful in segmenting certain markets. Offers a corporate advertising example to demonstrate the practical significance of investigating links among birth order, consumption, and market segmentation. Analysis of responses from 156 subjects who were shown the advertisement revealed birth order relationships. Few, if any, empirical studies currently link birth order, consumption, and segmentation, perhaps because of a priori convictions that such links do not exist. The time is at hand, however, to refute or confirm the existence of such links empirically. Offers five hypotheses for initiating research. Postulates characteristics of first borns, only children, middle borns and last borns with regard to selling. Discusses managerial implications.

Much rhetoric around the construct of a work-ready graduate has focused on the technical abilities of students to fulfill the expectations of the future workplace. Efforts have been made to extend from the technical skills (e.g., skills in calculation for engineers) to include soft or behavioral skills (e.g., communication). However, within previous models of understanding of the work-ready graduate there has been little done to explore them as critical moral agents within the workplace. That is, whilst the focus has been on being work-ready, it is argued here that in current and future workplaces it is more important for university graduates to be profession-ready. Our understanding of the profession-ready graduate is characterized by the ability to demonstrate capacities in critical thinking and reflection, and to have an ability to navigate the ethical challenges and shape the organizational culture of the future workplace.

This chapter aims to explore a movement of thinking away from simply aspiring to develop work-ready graduates, expanding this understanding to argue for the development of profession-ready graduates. The chapter begins with an exploration of the debates around the characteristics of being work-ready, and through a consideration of two professional elements: professional identity and critical moral agency, argues for a reframing of work-readiness towards professional-readiness. The chapter then considers the role of work-integrated learning (WIL) in being able to support the development of the profession-ready graduate.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

Postmodernism has provided valuable insights into the cultural significance of shopping and shopping sites in advanced societies. Despite their important contribution, postmodern accounts of shopping behaviour have predominantly focused on shopping in public spaces of malls and high streets. In this paper it will be argued that postmodern accounts of consumer shopping behaviour need to be developed and applied within the home shopping and wider remote shopping context. Directions for future research are proposed.

In Australia as elsewhere, kindergarten or pre-school teachers’ work has almost escaped historians’ attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lives and work of approximately 60 women who graduated from the Adelaide Kindergarten Training College (KTC) between 1908 and 1917, which is during the leadership of its foundation principal, Lillian de Lissa.

The paper is a feminist analysis and uses conventional archival sources.

The KTC was a site of higher education that offered middle class women an intellectual as well as practical education, focusing on liberal arts, progressive pedagogies and social reform. More than half of the graduates initially worked as teachers, their destinations reflecting the fragmented field of early childhood education. Whether married or single, many remained connected with progressive education and social reform, exercising their pedagogical and administrative skills in their workplaces, homes and civic activities. In so doing, they were not only leaders of children but also makers of society.

The paper highlights the links between the kindergarten movement and reforms in girls’ secondary and higher education, and repositions the KTC as site of intellectual education for women. In turn, KTC graduates committed to progressive education and social reform in the interwar years.

For any improvement tool to be successfully integrated into an organizations’ quality improvement or risk management programme, it needs to be relatively easy-to-use and proven to provide benefits to the customer and organization. Many healthcare organizations are facing fiscal constraints and increasing complexity of tests, putting strains on resources, particularly for those on “the shop floor” who are “hands on” in the design, delivery and improvement of products or services. Within a laboratory setting, there is often limited time for formal extensive process reviews; with the pressure to meet “turn-around times” for often “clinically urgent” results. Preventative and corrective actions are often identified through audits or root-cause analysis in some cases after an event has occurred. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Failure modes effect analysis (FMEA) is a risk management tool, used to identify prospective failures within processes or products, before they occur. Within laboratory healthcare, risk management for prevention of failure (particularly an inaccurate result) is imperative, and underpins the design of all steps of sample handling. FMEA was used to review a laboratory process for a “gene mutation test” initially considered to have few opportunities for improvement. Despite this perception, a previous review of the process, and the time restrictions for review, new improvements were identified with implications to patient management.

This study shows that FMEA can yield benefits, for prospective risk management and general process improvement, within a laboratory setting where time and team input is restricted, and within a process that was considered to have few “problems”.

The study was undertaken in a large metropolitan public health system laboratory – one of the largest in the country. This laboratory is a significant contributor to the health outcomes of patients in the local region, and through its contribution to national laboratory testing and reporting. This was the first use of FMEA in this laboratory setting.

Working from the expanded model of adaptive selling behavior offered by Eckert and Plank (2004), this paper attempts to add greater depth and specificity to the adaptive output categories making them more useful for research advancement and for both the teaching and execution of an adaptive selling approach. Relevant literature is identified, organized, and offered as theory sources to support and expand the adaptive selling model.

BASF is to erect plant in Ludwigshafen for the production of 90,000 tons of acrylic acid a year from propylene. The capital investment costs are estimated at about DM 100 million, including those for the necessary infrastructure measures.