Sustainable Agriculture and Conservation Tillage: Managing the Contradictions*

L'auteur examine dans cet article l'élaboration d'un discours sur l'agriculture, qui encourage l'adoption d'un travail de conservation du sol comme agriculture écologiquement durable. L'analyse débute par l'argument selon lequel ce discours est né dans les années 1980, en réponse aux conséquences sur l'environnement de l'agriculture classique. On soutient ensuite que l'attention portée au travail du sol plutôt qu'à d'autres solutions de rechange quant à ces impacts, attention qui doit être comprise dans le cadre d'une analyse plus large des développements politico-économiques dans le domaine de l'agriculture au Canada. On a déterminé que les intérêsts contradic-toires des divers secteurs de l'industrie agroalimentaire, en ce qui concerne le maintien de l'utilisation de produits chimiques coûteux et le contrôle des prix payés aux agriculteurs dans le contexte de la crise économique de l'agriculture, jouaient un rôle essentiel dans l'attention portée au travail du sol. On soutient que le travail de conservation du sol permet de régler ces contradictions de deux façons. Tout d'abord, le travail de conservation du sol a fourni une base pour affirmer que les problèmes de pollution chimique et d'épuisement du sol étaient en train d'être résolus sans que soient nécessaires des changements plus substantiels dans le système de production à base chimique. Enfin, il offrait aux agriculteurs un moyen et une raison de réduire les coûts de production devant les crises constantes relatives aux prix et a la rentabilité des fermes. This paper examines the development of a discourse within agriculture which promotes the adoption of conservation tillage as environmentally sustainable farming. The analysis begins with the argument that the discourse emerged during the 1980s as a response to the environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. It is then argued that the focus on tillage practices over other alternative solutions to these impacts must be understood within a broader analysis of the political-economic developments in Canadian agriculture. The contradictory interests of the various sectors of agribusiness capital, both in sustaining the use of expensive chemical inputs and in controlling the prices paid to farmers within the context of the farm economic crisis, are identified as playing a vital role in shaping the focus on tillage practices. It is contended that conservation tillage offered a means of mediating these contradictions in two ways. First, conservation tillage provided a basis for the claim that chemical pollution and soil depletion problems were being resolved without the need for more substantial changes in the chemically-based production system and, second, it gave farmers a means and a rationale for cutting production costs in the face of continuing crises in prices and profitability at the farm gate level.     

Marketing/Finance Executives Personal and Business Value Perspectives: Implications for Market-Focused Management

The concept of Market-Focused Management posits that the ultimate goal of the organization is the satisfaction of custumers' needs. In doing so other objectives of the firm, including financial objectives such as increasing shareholder wealth and long term profitability, will be achieved. The chief marketing and financial officers of the Fortune 1000 firms were surveyed regarding their personal values and a variety of organizational values relating to company stakeholders, organizational goals, appropriate strategies and tactics, competitive strengths and advantages. While both groups exhibited some differences, there was a startling amount of consensus in all areas surveyed. Both groups ranked shareholders and customers as the two most important stakeholders. While the overall goal of customer satisfaction was ranked by both groups as the most important organizational goal, the means to achieving that end differ somewhat. While a large number of organizational values were related to personal value strength, there was little overlap in the relationships between the two groups, although both groups are overwhelmingly driven by other-focused values such as warm relationships with others, sense of belonging and being well respected. Thus, it was concluded that similar personal values lead marketing and financial managers to substantially different attitudinal schema in their approach to managing their responsibilites. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Analysing intangible resources and managing knowledge in a supply chain context

This paper reports the initial empirical work (and related findings) which has been carried out in a UK Government funded project titled `The Development of Partnership Strategies and the Management of Knowledge which Underpins Capabilities'. The companies collaborating in the research were Cellnet plc, Flymo Ltd and four of their strategic suppliers. This paper describes the validation of a technique for analysing the role of intangible resources in the development of partnership strategies. The technique codifies the tacit knowledge which a company's managers have of their company's strengths thereby enabling this understanding to be communicated to partners and used as a basis for joint strategic development. The paper goes on to outline a technique which is currently being tested for managing the knowledge associated with inter-organisational innovation.     

Relative Work and Family Role Centralities: Beliefs and Behaviors Related to the Transition to Adulthood

The current study of 434 young adults investigated the relative centralities of anticipated adult roles. Based on assigned percentages to career, marriage, and parenthood roles, five distinct relative centrality profiles were created: Child Centered, Marriage Centered, Marriage and Child, Career Centered, and Family and Career. The Career Centered and Marriage Centered groups tended to differ the most, with the former being less enthusiastic toward marriage and reporting less cautious beliefs and behavior related to sexuality and risk taking. Other nuanced differences were also explored. It is argued that the centrality profiles have implications for the decisions that young adults currently make that could lead them along various trajectories toward adulthood that influence if and how adult roles are realized.     

Geographic Hotspots of Critical National Infrastructure

Failure of critical national infrastructures can result in major disruptions to society and the economy. Understanding the criticality of individual assets and the geographic areas in which they are located is essential for targeting investments to reduce risks and enhance system resilience. Within this study we provide new insights into the criticality of real‐life critical infrastructure networks by integrating high‐resolution data on infrastructure location, connectivity, interdependence, and usage. We propose a metric of infrastructure criticality in terms of the number of users who may be directly or indirectly disrupted by the failure of physically interdependent infrastructures. Kernel density estimation is used to integrate spatially discrete criticality values associated with individual infrastructure assets, producing a continuous surface from which statistically significant infrastructure criticality hotspots are identified. We develop a comprehensive and unique national‐scale demonstration for England and Wales that utilizes previously unavailable data from the energy, transport, water, waste, and digital communications sectors. The testing of 200,000 failure scenarios identifies that hotspots are typically located around the periphery of urban areas where there are large facilities upon which many users depend or where several critical infrastructures are concentrated in one location.     

From Policy to Practice: The Implementation and Negotiation of Technologies in Everyday Child Welfare

A central element of the Every Child Matters reforms in England are measures which aim at improving information sharing. Amongst these are the children’s database and the Common Assessment Framework, both representing technological solutions to long‐standing concerns about information sharing in child welfare. This article reports some findings from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)‐funded study which examined their introduction and use in everyday professional practice. Substantial differences in policy implementation, access to and use of the technologies, draw attention to the importance of the localised and situated contexts into which these technologies are being introduced, raising serious questions about their future development as national standard systems.     

Stuck in a Loop: Individual and System Barriers for Job Seekers With Disabilities

Research conducted within Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) and Workforce Investment Act of 1998 systems indicates pervasive issues hindering program effectiveness for job seekers with disabilities. This population frequently experiences employment barriers beyond those of able‐bodied job seekers, including significantly lower self‐esteem. Service providers need and want information about disability but do not know how to obtain it. Program staff and job seekers with disabilities get stuck in a loop wherein each questions their ability and neither feels empowered to make meaningful changes to improve outcomes. Career counselors may need to expand their role to be more culturally relevant for these clients.