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The purpose of this paper is to determine and assess generational differences in Chinese women's perception of appearance and appearance products that can be explained by the political, economic, and social policies of China over the past 40 years.

This is an exploratory research using focus groups and a survey. Three age cohorts of Chinese women, those who came of age during the Cultural Revolution, those who came of age during the early and mid years of China's economic reforms, and those born after the implementation of China's one‐child policy and the market economy, are assessed as to their perception of appearance and use of appearance‐related products. Six cohort differences that could be attributable to these socio‐economic‐political events are found.

Significant differences between the age cohorts are found on four of six appearance‐related factors – sources of fashion information, happiness in purchasing new apparel, confidence in appearance, and preference for purchasing luxury goods.

Although the study identifies cultural and generational constructs of Chinese women's perception of appearance and use of appearance products, due to its exploratory nature the findings are not generalizable to the larger Chinese community. In addition, to provide a more complete understanding of the generational differences, future research needs to take into account additional demographic information such as education and income.

No previous study has attempted to determine the impact of China's economic, social, and political policies on generational cohorts of Chinese women as to their perception of appearance and use of appearance products. Fashion marketers will benefit, as understanding these powerful determinants of purchasing behaviour are paramount to successfully planning, developing and marketing of apparel products.

Function libraries, and indeed the majority of organisations, especially those operating on a commercial basis or utilising public funds, consist of material and human structures. The leaders of the human structure utilise personnel and materials in the pursuit of certain goals. Brech itemises four main elements in this process of planning and regulating enterprise activities. They comprise:

CANADA, until the last generation or two, has been basically a pioneer country but two world wars have changed all this and the economy has moved from an agricultural to a manufacturing community able to provide a standard of living second to that of the United States. (At the present time only 10.8 per cent of Canadians live on farms according to the 1961 census.) Natural resources, such as timber, wheat and mining, continue to play, however, an important role in the life of the nation. As in most developing and pioneer countries, learning has had to assume a secondary role compared with other enterprises and activities. This is gradually beginning to change as more people continue in school and the percentage of individuals attending university increases. Established organizations, like the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, catering to mass culture, have been strengthened and enlarged and new establishments, like the Canada Council and the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, of narrower function and appeal, have been set up. The Library movement, not the least of learning agencies, is gaining strength every day. In this paper some of the interesting new developments of the last ten years in the latter field will be discussed. Of necessity, much is abbreviated; a lot is ignored. Data selected has been based on the most recent sources; hence the variety in dates.

The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of urban Chinese women’s fashion consumption practices in light of major recent socio-historical events and to demonstrate that changes in fashion are not necessarily continuous, but rather can be discontinuous in the wake of radical disturbances.

A phenomenological study was conducted that included group interviews with Chinese women belonging to three age cohorts who experienced different radical changes in recent Chinese history.

This study provides insights into how fashion develops when radical economic and social shifts result in a discontinuous rather than continuous fashion evolution. In China, it can be seen that these radical ideological shifts had discontinuous effects on notions of beauty and how identity is expressed through fashion. The changes seen in the past 60 years or so – from the advent of communism in 1949 until now – cannot be explained by theories of imitation and distinction alone. The changes are also anchored to key socio-historic events, and were not necessarily an outgrowth of the period before, or class-based practices, but rather a response to social upheavals.

This study provides a nuanced understanding of how tumultuous socio-cultural events affect how fashion is experienced in China, which allows us to contribute to the growing understanding of Chinese consumer culture, and demonstrate that the understanding of how fashion evolves needs to accommodate the upheavals in society over the past sixty years.

AFTER some unsuccessful negotiations during the period when the first full‐time schools of librarianship were being established, the Birmingham School was founded in the autumn of 1950. Circumstances were not entirely favourable—the immediate post‐war generation of enthusiastic ex‐service students had already passed through other schools; the accommodation available was indifferent; the administrative support was bad; resources were weak, both in books and in equipment. There was, more importantly, a strong local tradition of part‐time classes in librarianship and little or no conviction that full‐time study was necessary or desirable.

In this chapter, we present a critical assessment of contemporary organization theory variously described as either multiperspectival or fragmented. We argue that analytic philosophy as one of the major tools used for theorizing about organizations has had a major influence on the development of organization theory and largely explains the current state of affairs. At its core, we argue, is a fundamental methodological fissure in analytic philosophy itself: the distinction between descriptive and revisionary methods. The principal focus of descriptive analysis in organization theory is how agents use everyday language in organizational contexts, often by invoking language games. In contrast, revisionary approaches, concerned about the privileging of theories embedded in everyday language, as well as the complexity and ambiguity of ordinary-language use, aim for explicit theory evaluation and greater clarity by recasting ordinary language in formal systems, such as scientific, especially empiricist, theories, characteristic of the mainstream of theorizing about organizations from the 1940s onward. For a number of theoretical and epistemological reasons logical empiricism or positivism is no longer a widely held view either in the philosophy of science or in the organization theory. We examine some critical issues regarding logical empiricist epistemological foundations and propose a methodological naturalistic framework that supports the ongoing growth of knowledge in organization theory, naturalistic coherentism. In developing this new conception of science we thus opt for a revisionary methodology, but one that is beholden to neither the traditional logical empiricist/positivist conception of (organization) science nor the relativism and conservatism of postmodernist theory, widely considered to be the successor of positivist organization theory.