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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the basic factors of age and gender in homophobic bullying behaviour, in order that recommendations for the design of anti-bullying programmes specific to homophobic bullying could be made.

In total, 475 fifth year students (ca. 16-17 years old) and 561-second year students (ca. 13-14 years old) at six secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland completed an English-language translation of a questionnaire previously used in a Norwegian study of sexual orientation and bullying behaviour (Roland and Auestad, 2009).

No evidence of “age-related declines” were found in reports of either bullying or homophobic bullying. Males were significantly more likely than females to report involvement (as both perpetrators and targets) in both bullying and homophobic bullying.

It was concluded that senior secondary school students, as well as their younger counterparts, should be involved in anti-bullying interventions; that males should be especially focused upon; and that programmes specific to anti-homophobic bullying, potentially targeting pre-adolescent students, should be supported.

This paper suggests evidence-based priorities for intervention programmes specific to homophobic bullying, accounts of which have been, to date, absent in the research literature.

“Alterophobia”, which refers to prejudice directed towards members of “alternative” sub‐cultures, has been manifest in criminal cases such as the murder of Sophie Lancaster in 2007 (UK). The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether alterophobia is also evident in patterns of school bullying behaviour.

A total of 820 fifth‐year students (16‐17 years old; 339 male (41.3 per cent), 481 female (58.7 per cent), at nine secondary schools in Ireland, were asked to respond to a short, specifically constructed questionnaire, concerning membership of groups and sub‐cultures, and bullying behaviour.

Self‐identified membership of sub‐cultures was infrequent; reports of perceiving that one was identified by others as a member of a sub‐culture were more frequent. Self‐identified members of sub‐cultures reported both having been bullied and having bullied others more frequently than did members of the general sample. Participants expressed that members of “alternative” sub‐cultures (“moshers/rockers”, “goths”, and “emos”) were more likely to be bullied, and that members of “non‐alternative” sub‐cultures (“chavs” and “D4s”) were more likely to bully others. It was concluded that “alterophobic bullying” was a reality, and that members of “alternative” sub‐cultures may be considered to be “at risk” of being bullied.

This study is based on a simple and original questionnaire, and therefore provides indicative/exploratory findings; if a subsequent survey method were attempted, equivalent definitions of sub‐cultures would have to be ensured. It is possible to see how alternative research methods (e.g. focus groups) would permit for advances in understanding in this area.

It is suggested that specific mention of alterophobia in school anti‐bullying policies should be made, and that closer attention to the psychology of prejudice and “pro‐conformist aggression” could inform future anti‐bullying efforts.

The paper is the first to focus explicitly on “alterophobia”, and provides the first empirical evidence on “alterophobic bullying”.

In the century from 1868 to 1969, over 105,000 children were detained in industrial schools in Ireland, having been committed by the courts. The purpose of this paper is to examine, and offer suggestions regarding the contexts of the peer physical and sexual abuse and bullying that went on in the industrial schools.

This paper draws on the accounts of survivors, the results of research conducted by academics and journalists and recent reports compiled by legislative enquiries into industrial schools in Ireland, with particular reference being made to the the six industrial schools run by the Christian Brothers.

The specific parameters of how the industrial school system developed in Ireland rendered detainees powerless and voiceless, and these factors also facilitated the physical and sexual abuse of child and adolescent detainees by adults in this institutions. Serious instances of peer physical and sexual abuse also went on in these schools. It is argued that such patterns of peer abuse are best understood as occurring within the psychosocial contexts of primary adjustment, collaboration and re-enactment.

It is suggested that the context of peer abuse in institutions is important for researchers and practitioners to attend to.

The realities of life in industrial schools in Ireland has been slow to emerge, due to the secrecy with which those institutions have been surrounded. Most accounts have focused on abuse at the hands of adults; this examines peer abuse in those institutions in context.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Charitable Choice Policy, the heart of President Bush’s Faith‐Based Initiative, is the direct government funding of religious organizations for the purpose of carrying out government programs. The Bush presidential administration has called for the application of Charitable Choice Policy to all kinds of social services. Advocates for child‐abuse victims contend that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy would further dismantle essential social services provided to abused children. Others have argued Charitable Choice Policy is unconstitutional because it crosses the boundary separating church and state. Rather than drastically altering the US social‐policy landscape, this paper demonstrates that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy already is in place for childabuse services across many of the fifty states. One reason this phenomenon is ignored is due to the reliance on the public‐private dichotomy for studying social policies and services. This paper contends that relying on the public‐private dichotomy leads researchers to overlook important configurations of actors and institutions that provide services to abused children. It offers an alternate framework to the public‐private dichotomy useful for the analysis of social policy in general and, in particular, Charitable Choice Policy affecting services to abused children. Employing a new methodological approach, fuzzy‐sets analysis, demonstrates the degree to which social services for abused children match ideal types. It suggests relationships between religious organizations and governments are essential to the provision of services to abused children in the United States. Given the direction in which the Bush Charitable Choice Policy will push social‐policy programs, scholars should ask whether abused children will be placed in circumstances that other social groups will not and why.

Organizational climate has been shown to predict job satisfaction and other employee attitudes. Using the concept of organizational climate, strength has shown mixed success. However, diversity in psychological climate at the individual level has not been explored. The paper aims to introduce a new individual‐level concept: relative psychological climate paper.

Using the example of supportive leadership climate, the significance of this concept for predicting job satisfaction is assessed. Data from a large national British survey (the Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004) of 19,993 employees within 1,593 workplaces are used.

Workplace supportive leadership climate quality, climate strength and individual relative leadership climate position are shown to be significantly associated with job satisfaction. So is the interaction of climate quality and climate strength. When all three variables are assessed simultaneously, only the individual relative position and the climate quality are substantially related to job satisfaction.

Individual relative climate is introduced and the shows that this new concept is related to job satisfaction, thereby demonstrating its usefulness in climate research.

Research into job design and employee outcomes has tended to examine job design in isolation of the wider organizational context, leading to calls to attend to the context in which work is embedded. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the interaction between job design and psychological climate on job satisfaction.

Cognitive dissonance theory was used to explore the nature of this relationship and its effect on job satisfaction. The authors hypothesized that psychological climate (autonomy, competence, relatedness dimensions) augments favorable perceptions of job demands and control when there is consistency between them (augmentation effect) and compensates for unfavorable perceptions when they are inconsistent (compensation effect).

Analysis of data from 3,587 individuals partially supported the hypotheses. Compensation effects were observed for job demands under a high autonomy and competence climate and for job control under a low competence climate. Augmentation effects were observed for job demands under a high relatedness climate.

When designing jobs managers should take into account the effects of psychological climate on employee outcomes.

This study has offered a way to bridge the job design and psychological climate fields and demonstrated that the call for more attention to the context in which jobs are embedded is worth heeding.

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