How Co-operative is Co-operative Purchasing in Smaller Firms?: Evidence from UK Engineering SMEs

Most SMEs do not try to engage in co-operative purchasing arrangements, and even those that do don’t handle them very well. Examining a sample of SME engineering firms from the UK Midlands for signs of more advanced practice, the authors identify three types of behaviour: firms with deliberate strategies (where co-operative purchasing is a consciously-designed and long-term part of management policy); firms with close ties with their suppliers but which still operate fundamentally adversarial policies (where, despite some development of practice, defensive, short-term and ‘low-trust’ attitudes still predominate) and those whose strategies, maybe of long standing, ‘just happened’ and are described as still emergent. The article analyses these positions to yield lessons for managers, recognising that, as firms grow, emergent strategies will need replacing with something more codified.     

Participation or practice innovation: tensions in inter‐agency working to address disciplinary exclusion from school

This paper explores dilemmas and tensions between two models of school based inter‐agency meetings to prevent disciplinary exclusion from school. The first model is characterised by innovative practice developed through long established professional relationships and addresses both individual and strategic issues in supporting young people who are at risk of disciplinary exclusion from school. The second model strongly emphasises the right to participation of young people and their families in school based inter‐agency meetings. Research participants in three Scottish councils (parents, pupils, teachers and other professionals 1 ) had identified school based inter‐agency meetings as key to the process of inter‐agency working to prevent school exclusion.     

Feedback Loops in Clinical Practice: An Integrative Framework

Practical concepts and interventions for counsellors and their clients are presented based on Maruyama's concept of feedback. Elements of psychodynamic theory, Weinberg's theory and Moreno's role theory are reformulated in terms of feedback. The concept of feedback also links network theory and chaos theory; cognitive challenges and psychodynamic interpretation. This forms an integrative framework for understanding human functioning. Human functioning emerges from the interaction of innumerable intrapersonal and interpersonal feedback loops. The feedback loops organise a network of actions, ideas and feelings, and a network of roles. Some feedback loops tend to intensify life difficulties, while others tend to resolve these difficulties. The counselling interventions evolved from problem‐gambling counselling practice, and sample interventions are provided based on a composite problem gambler.     

Why does the new labor movement look so much like the old one? Putting the 1990s revitalization project in historical context

In the 1990s the labor movement underwent a major transformation in an attempt to confront the challenges facing organized labor, most notably a precipitous membership decline— in the private sector, membership is currently at a post-Great Depression low. Despite the enthusiastic response among unionists and scholars alike to this revitalization project, as Zald and Berger (1978) note, change within formal organizations is often a contentious process, as competing interests struggle for control. The current labor movement is no exception: Significant conflict surrounds the issue of new organizing activities. While this period is certainly interesting for the level of open debate occurring over the future of the movement, it is not unique as a time of heightened tensions among unionists. Herein I describe debates, both historical and present, over organizing goals and tactics. In order to draw parallels between the past and present, I offer a theoretical account of why organizing is such a controversial topic. Initial support for these explanations, drawn from quotes from unionists and observers of the movement alike, indicates that the current turmoil in the labor movement is similar to that which occurred in other important periods and that the consequences of the decisions made today regarding organizing can have significant ramifications for the movement’s future.     

Traditional vs. Modern Food Systems? Insights from Vegetable Supply Chains to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)

This article describes the development of vegetable marketing in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), where modern distribution outlets are competing fiercely with traditional traders for wholesale and retail customers. Data from interviews with supply chain stakeholders and a survey of vegetable wholesalers have been used to compare the performance of modern and traditional chains, and the findings reveal the chains as segmented in their product focus, the modern sector focusing exclusively on quality. Modern marketing channels are generally more efficient than traditional ones but still account for only around 2% of vegetable distribution. The article argues that policy‐makers should not promote the ‘modernisation’ of food systems at the expense of traditional channels which meet important consumer needs.     

Sex selection with biased technologies and its effect on the population sex ratio

Current biomedical research on sex selection techniques may soon offer couples the opportunity to choose the sex of their children with greater certainty. A technique planned for marketing by mid-1978 can increase the probability of bearing a son to as much as 0.90. However, couples who wish to improve their chances of bearing a daughter have no such opportunity. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, a decision-making model is provided which describes how couples should choose among alternative sex-selection methods so as to maximize the probability of bearing their desired number of sons and daughters. Second, the effect of the widespread use of sex-selection techniques on the population sex ratio is explored. It is shown that even if populations have unbiased sex preferences, or sex preferences biased towards daughters, the use of biased sex-selection technologies may result in very high population sex ratios.