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Examines an innovative first step which one organization took on the road to employee empowerment. States that although this first step was a small one, it resulted in large benefits to the organization. Reveals that this field study was conducted during the information system conversion phase of a larger organizational change, at 52 recently‐acquired branches of a $40‐billion interstate bank. Discovers that the payoffs were surprisingly large when employees are given a small empowering opportunity just before their training. Indicates that empowered employees are more able to adapt to change and less likely to resist it, and their need for control is being met through their empowerment, rather than by their resistance. Finds that even in small quantities, empowerment can be a large contributor to success. Also believes that small, low‐cost empowerments with large payoffs can almost always be found.

Provides an introduction to EDI for those managers who are new to the field and wish to know more about it. Covers what EDI is, how it works and the technology involved, and provides a comprehensive account of the development, implementation and use of EDI. Gives guidelines for the successful adoption of EDI, from planning, analysis and design to construction, installation and operations, and lists critical success factors for EDI projects.

Conducting research with children and youth has become increasingly challenging in recent years. At times these difficulties come in the form of restrictions by Institutional Review Boards, funding agencies, and parents. Additionally, changes in youth culture and behavior, specifically regarding online activities and digitally mediated communications, impact the access that researchers have to children and youth communities in significant ways. In this chapter, I propose that the use of an emerging methodological technique, digital ethnography, may provide researchers with new data sources on children and youth culture. Digital ethnography combines ethnographic techniques of observation, participation, and interview with content analysis to collect rich data about online behavior, norms, expectations, and interactions. This technique not only provides researchers with sources of data that allow insight into youth culture by acknowledging the increasing importance of online and digital interactions in youth culture but may also address some of the concerns raised by IRBs and other interested parties about conducting research with children and teens. This chapter provides practical and ethical considerations of this method, as well as a discussion of limitations of data collection and access as it highlights new ways of studying youth culture, using emerging data collection techniques in innovative research projects.

This article contributes to emerging discussions of child participation in general, and in research with migrant and displaced children specifically, by examining the involvement of children as research advisors in two projects: a study of foster care for separated children in Rwanda, and an analysis of the conditions of children outside parental care living in institutions and communities in Bangladesh. The comparison highlights the importance of conceiving participation as a research strategy, and advocates a ‘methodology of participation’ that considers varieties of participation and varieties of social change. Teaching research methods to children acting as advisors enabled them to understand what research is and to learn about the lives of other children, while contributing to decision‐making processes in selecting questions, participants, interpreting findings and making recommendations. Children's input into research contributes to overcoming essentialist conceptualisations of children in difficult circumstances, and moving to viewing these children as social actors embedded in complex relational processes. At the same time, involving children in an advisory capacity considers them as active participants in the research process, as they are in social life.

A hundred years ago the adulteration of food for fraudulent purposes was rife and public opinion demanded protection. The series of statutes which followed, including the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875—a landmark in food legislation for upwards of half a century—virtually stamped out these practices. Today, there is as great an anxiety about the quality and purity of food used for human consumption. In 1951, Sir Edward Mellanby, speaking of the rising incidence of certain diseases in recent years, said he found it “difficult to avoid the conclusion that some at least of these increases in disease are due to errors in living recently introduced or greatly expanded in modern times”, and that “it may be that one of these errors is the ingestion of food treated by unnatural chemical substances”.

The firewall is normally an intermediate system between the secure internal networks and the less secure external networks. It is intended to keep corporate systems safe from intruders, hackers, and accidental entry into the corporate system. The primary types of firewalls are screening routers, proxy servers, and stateful inspectors. Before choosing a firewall architecture, a company must have the right mind set regarding the threat. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to firewall concepts and help develop this mind set.

In his paper presented at last month's annual conference of the Institute of Weights and Measures Administration Mr. J. D. Derbyshire, B.Sc. (Econ.), makes some far‐reaching suggestions for improving the machinery now in use to protect the purchasing public. Under the title “Caveat Venditor” he discusses the present position and outlines possible lines of development for the future. He defines “consumer protection” as “that area of service which aims at guaranteeing the consumer certain recognised or defined standards of quantity or quality in his commercial transactions which he may then use as a basis on which to exercise his personal preferences as a consumer. The machinery which affords this protection is at present variegated in the extreme: some of it national, some of it local, some of it public, some of it private; a confused collection of agencies, as yet showing few signs of co‐ordination and order. Included in this broad category will be found, in addition to the weights and measures service, the sampling and analytical service; the former safeguarding standards of quantity, the latter standards of quality. Within the sampling and analytical service will be found the public analysts, the food and drugs sampling officers, the fertilisers and feeding stuffs inspectors and samplers, and that other, as yet small but growing, band of men and women which, privately or with public backing, seeks to protect and raise quality standards of merchandise at present lying beyond the reach of specific legislative control.”

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of children in an emergent Irish consumer culture and advertising from 1848-1921. In particular, the significance of children's gender and reading materials in the process of consumption will be evaluated.

An analysis of primary sources, literature and secondary sources substantiates this research.

By evaluating advertisements, magazines, school textbooks and children's literature from the 1848-1921 period, this article argues that Irish children were encouraged to engage with an emergent consumer culture through reading. This article also evaluates the importance of gender in considering children as consumers and it focuses upon a number of critically neglected Victorian, Irish, female authors who discussed the interface between advertising, consumption and the Irish child.

This article is an original contribution to new areas of research about Irish consumerism and advertising history. Substantial archival research has been carried out which appraises the historical significance of advertisements, ephemera and critically neglected children's fiction.

The rapid growth of the Internet and the number of online consumers have resulted in increased fears from privacy advocates, legislators and consumer groups regarding the guarantees of privacy when using e‐commerce and the Internet. Some companies collect marketing information on consumers’ Internet habits without their knowledge or consent. This study looks at stated policies appearing on the Web sites of a number of major e‐commerce companies regarding Internet privacy. This was accomplished by the examination of information related to current Internet policies posted on these firms’ Web sites. Also examined was whether these policies have been changed over a three‐year time period. Five policy categories were examined over this three‐year period using a consistent rating scale. These categories were privacy, returns, shipping, warranty, and security.

So far as the law is concerned, the Medical Officer of Health has only the slenderest connection with the execution of the Adulteration Acts. He is simply a person who may, in common with the Sanitary Inspector and the police constable, purchase samples under the Acts and submit them to the Public Analyst. Having done this, he is entitled to receive a certificate of analysis just like any other purchaser who may submit a sample under the provisions of the Acts, and there the matter ends.