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Health policies often require individuals to limit behaviours deemed enjoyable or suffer other burdens. This leads to considerable and contested discourse often played out in the popular media. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of such contested media discourse on viewers' perceived attitude change towards the target behaviour.

Combining concepts from discourse analysis and marketing-psychology elaboration models, the authors undertook an online survey in which a large sample of the public (N = 855) watched parts of a real daytime news debate on the UK Sugar Tax. The authors then evaluated the effects of this discourse on the perceived understanding of the tax and perceived attitude change to the consumption of sugary drinks.

Participants differentiated between parts of the discourse related to facts and arguments (termed argument-related discourse devices) and parts related to the format and tone of the debate (termed debate-/speaker-related discourse devices). Contrary to what might be expected, debate-/speaker-related discourse devices, which might be thought of as subjective, appeared to effect positive perceived attitude change through a cognitive processing route that involved perceived improved understanding. The argument-related discourse devices, which may appear objective or rational, were not associated with perceived improved understanding but were directly associated with positive perceived attitude change.

Given the authors' interest in the relationship between discourse and perceived attitude change, the authors take the novel step of linking concepts from discourse analysis with models of attitude change taken from the marketing-psychology domain. Furthermore, the authors' large-scale survey “democratises” discourse analysis, allowing non-expert participants to reflect upon discourse.

It appears that the role of money as a motivator in work tasks has increased substantially during the past decade. This applies particularly to managerial and executive grades. First, why this might be the case is discussed. Second, the literature on the early research into the pay of the chief executive is reviewed, since a major point of consideration was the relationship between CEOs′ pay and firms′ performance. Third, the evidence on profit sharing and company performance is examined, as it appears that this form of linkage has increased in the last decade, particularly for managerial and executive grades. Fourth, a model for testing the relationship between managerial remuneration and the performance of the firm is presented. This model is then applied to internal and external measures of performance for a sample of 147 firms in the UK electrical and office equipment industry for the year 1987, and conclusions are drawn.

Research into how the wage fix/employment flex phenomenon operates in a recession.

A key to raising productivity may be to stimulate product market competition, and this will need a complementary policy of relatively low unit labour costs — best achieved through managers developing their social skills, abilities, knowledge and understanding of how the labour market works. Change could be assessed by a small internal project team, whose task is to outline both technical implementation, and industrial relations and managerial consequences of the new methods. Any “inertia” preventing productivity being raised must be identified and defeated. Initial responsibility lies with management, this method being perhaps the best to secure workforce co‐operation to raise Britain from being a low income, low productivity nation.

Since 1970 the British industrial relations system has been injected with an unprecedented volume of law relating to employment. We have had the Equal Pay Act, 1970 and Sex Discrimination Act, 1975 which have spawned an Equal Opportunities Commission; the Industrial Relations Act, 1971 was passed and subsequently repealed by the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, 1974 (TULRA); the provisions of this latter act have been further buttressed by the Employment Protection Act, 1975 (EPA); dealing with a very much neglected area of industrial relations we have had the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974; finally the Bullock Commission which was set up to inquire into the way worker directors could increase employee participation in industrial affairs reported to the Minister in February, 1977. The government have promised legislation on ‘industrial democracy’ sometime in 1977 or 1978.

This history of the politics of moves towards school‐based management in Queensland education is located within a broader historical and political analysis of such moves across Australia since the Karmel Report. This paper specifically focuses in on developments in Queensland. The Queensland analysis traces the moves from Labor’s Focus on Schools through the Coalition’s Leading Schools and the most recent Labor rearticulation in the document Future Directions for School‐based Management in Queensland State Schools. The analysis demonstrates that the concept of school‐based management has no stipulative meaning, but rather is a contested concept. More generally, the paper provides an account and analysis of new forms of governance in educational systems and the tension between centralising and decentralising tendencies as school‐based management is adopted in order to address a number of competing policy objectives.

This article draws from “institutional” labour economics and mainstream industrial relations, but differs from the more usual uses of their ideas in a number of ways. For example, the observation we make, that wages and prices are “sticky” downwards and that labour markets respond to falls in demand by employment and quantity adjustments, is not new. Similarly, the idea that labour markets are different from “normal” commodity markets is not of recent origin Hence, while Clay and Hicks were making such observations and speculating on the labour relations consequences of them, Keynes was using the concept of wage rigidity (stickiness) as a central building block in his General Theory which dealt with the conditions for macro‐economic equilibrium.

Industrial relations can be said to be concerned with who makes the rules relating to employment matters, what rules will exist and how any adjustments to such rules will be made. In a large number of industrial relations systems the process of adjustment is by collective bargaining, and most industrial relations commentators and practitioners would accept that the scope for adjustment is constrained by economic, social and political forces. However, the practicalities and dynamics of this adjustment process are such that decisions can only be in terms of what Williamson calls ‘bounded rationality’. This is a situation where at the moment of decision, given the quantity and quality of information that is held, that decision seems rational and acceptable. However, innate imperfections in information and its flow eventually show the decision to be something less than satisfactory. Further, many writers believe that collective bargaining is characterised by management and labour having, at the very least, potentially conflicting objectives so that for each ‘bounded rationality’ is different. The practical results are often some ‘compromise’ or ‘optimal’ outcome that temporarily satisfies the welfare of the parties but can rarely maximise it. However, we should note that while the parties may reach a jointly satisfactory outcome, that outcome could be less than optimal for society as a whole; an inflationary wage settlement is the most obvious example.

The purpose of this paper is to show that performance data use could be promoted with a better understanding of the type of indicators that are important to different stakeholders. This study explored patient, nurse, physician and manager preferences for cancer care quality indicators.

Interviews were held with 30 stakeholders between March and June 2004. They were asked to describe how they would use a cancer “report card”, and which indicators they would want reported. Transcripts were reviewed using qualitative analysis.

Role (patient, nurse, physician, manager) influenced preferences and perceived use of performance data. Patients and physicians were more skeptical than nurses and managers; patients and managers expressed some preferences distinct from nurses and physicians; and patients and nurses interpreted indicators more broadly than physicians and managers. All groups preferred technical process over outcome or interpersonal process indicators.

Expressed views are not directly applicable beyond this setting, or to the general public but findings are congruent with attitudes to performance data for other conditions, and serve as a conceptual basis for further study.

Strategies for maximizing the relevance of performance reports might include technical process indicators, selection by multi‐stakeholder deliberation, information that facilitates information application and customizable report interfaces.

Performance data preferences have not been thoroughly examined, particularly in the context of cancer care. Factors were identified that influence stakeholder views of performance data, and this framework could be used to confirm findings among larger and different populations.

To question the models of childhood implied within contemporary UK debate about advertising to children. The paper identifies a role for qualitative market research in establishing a more fully‐articulated account of childhood, with implications for both policy makers and marketers.

A brief literature review of contemporary sociological perspectives on childhood informs an account of controversy in the UK about the legitimacy of advertising to children. Adult versions of childhood from this debate are contrasted with children's own accounts of their experience of advertising, drawing on a pilot study using informal qualitative methods.

Illuminates the assumptions about childhood which divide industry advocates from their critics, and suggests that qualitative understanding of children's experience of advertising should have a greater role in complementing the predominantly positivist research on which the debate draws.

Limited to recent UK discourse on children and advertising (which may restrict its extendability to non‐European cultures), and draws on a very small pilot study. This does, however, point the way to future research using informal methods.

Intended to enrich understanding of debate and policy on advertising and children, and to encourage the informed use of qualitative research in this area.

This paper fills a gap in the predominantly empirical or polemical literature in this area by setting competing arguments in an ontological framework.