Marketing in moderation— The marketing concept and the organization's structure

This paper discusses the marketing concept and its impact on the strategy and structure of the business organization. The popular dictum that every firm should implement the marketing concept in its extreme form is challenged. Considerations of the overall structure of the firm, the time period in question, the amount of resources available are included in the determination of the degree of implementation which should be made. Finally, the conclusion indicates that the popular view that a change in environment necessitates a change in the organizational structure should be modified. The cost may be too great for the benefits derived.     

The Utility of Allport's Conditions of Intergroup Contact for Predicting Perceptions of Improved Racial Attitudes and Beliefs

We test the predictive power of perception as it relates to Allport's (1954/1979) classic articulation of the conditions of contact conducive to reducing intergroup prejudice and increasing tolerance. After summarizing theories of prejudice and models of prejudice reduction, as well as recently published reviews of evidence relating to the Contact Hypothesis, we present results of an evaluation of a prejudice reduction program that trains and places college student facilitators in middle and high school classrooms to lead discussions about race. We show that a composite of five classroom climate conditions that the Contact Hypothesis suggests are conducive to prejudice reduction predicts teachers' and college student facilitators' perceptions of change in three aspects of middle and high school student racial attitudes. Students' perceptions of the school interracial climate are modestly predictive of their changes in these three aspects of racial attitudes. However, teacher and facilitator estimates of student outcomes are uncorrelated with actual student outcomes. Implications of these results for prejudice reduction theory and practice are discussed.     

The North American Career Development Partnership: Experiment in International Collaboration

This article describes how career development programs became the focus of an international partnership between the United States and Canada. Beginning in 1976 in the United States, the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC) and its State Occupational Information Coordinating Committees (SOICCs) developed training and materials that promote the use of occupational and labor market information. Similarly, in the early 1970s, Canada began to explore the feasibility of creating a computer‐based career information delivery system. What follows is the story of an unusual and significant international collaboration. It concludes with identification of lessons learned.     

Impact of Empowerment Training on the Professional Work of Family Peer Advocates

A pilot study using a prospective design examined the impact of a collaboratively developed training model, called the Parent Empowerment Program (PEP), for professionally-employed family peer advocates who work with caregivers of children with mental health needs. This training used a combination of didactic, practice exercises, and group discussion. It targeted specific mental health knowledge content and collaborative skills to facilitate the work of family peer advocates in empowering caregivers. Co-delivered by a family peer advocate and clinician, the training consisted of a 40-hour face-to-face training, followed by six monthly face-to-face booster sessions. A total of 15 advocates participated in assessments conducted at baseline and post-training. This group of experienced family peer advocates showed no significant increase in knowledge about mental health content, but post-training assessments indicated increased collaborative skills and mental health services self-efficacy. This initial evaluation has implications for expanding training and support for the emergent workforce of professionally-employed family peer advocates in children's mental health.     

The Rate of Return on Investment in Wine

Is wine an investment alternative to stocks and bonds? First, we review prior studies regarding the pecuniary rate of return to wine and other alternatives to financial assets. Next, we calculate the rate of return to holding red Bordeaux wine from 1986 to 1996 using a repeat‐sale regression. Finally, we contrast the financial performance of wine, both on an aggregate basis and for various portfolios, to that of other asset classes. We conclude that wine does not yield greater returns than financial assets, especially when the volatility of returns and transaction costs are taken into account.     

Diversity in Midwifery Care: Working toward Social Justice

La pratique de la sage‐femme opérant dans la communauté a apporté avec elle, lorsque devenu une profession régie et financée par l’état vers la fin du vingtième siècle, les objectifs et aspirations de son mouvement social. Parmi ces objectifs, elles désiraient à faire attention à l’équité et la diversité sociale lors de la provision de soins pendant la naissance. Dans cet article, nous utilisons des interviews avec des sage‐femmes qui pratiquent en ce moment en Ontario, afin de nous concentrer sur les conceptualisations de la diversité des sage‐femmes. Nous explorons leurs efforts, dans le travail quotidien, visant à supporter et fortifier la diversité sociale des clientes et des sage‐femmes elles‐mêmes. Nous proposons que la transition de la pratique de la sage‐femme vers le système de soins santé gouvernemental ne signale pas l'abandon des projets et engagements de changement social. Les réponses à la diversité sociale en soins de santé varie des efforts à améliorer l'accès aux soins de santé jusqu'à l’étude du rôle de la justice sociale en reconnaissant les besoins des populations diverses. L'aspiration de ‘créer un monde meilleur’ continue à animer le travail des sage‐femmes nonobstant la réglementation de leur pratique. Cet article explore le patrimoine de pratique des sage‐femmes en tant que mouvement social et décrit les rapports entre la diversité, la justice sociale et la pratique actuelle des sage‐femmes. As midwifery moved from lay practice to a regulated health‐care profession in Ontario toward the end of the twentieth century, it brought with it many of its social movement goals and aspirations. Among these was the desire to attend to diversity and equity in the provision of birthing care. Drawing on interviews with currently practicing Ontario midwives, this paper focuses on midwives’ conceptualizations of diversity and explores their everyday work to support and strengthen diversity among those using and those providing midwifery care. We argue that midwifery's recent relocation within state structured health care means neither that the social change projects of midwifery are complete nor that midwifery has abandoned its movement‐based commitment to social change. Responses to social diversity in health care range from efforts to simply improve access to care to analyses of the role of social justice in recognizing the needs of diverse populations. The social justice aspiration to “create a better world” continues to animate the work of midwives postregulation. This paper explores the legacy of midwifery as a social movement, addressing the connections between diversity, social justice and midwifery care.     

Analysis of the image repair discourse in the Michael Phelps controversy

The following study reviews the image repair strategies used by Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, his sponsors and the organizations that govern him as an amateur swimmer after a picture of Phelps allegedly smoking from a marijuana pipe appeared in a British tabloid. Additionally, the study reviews media coverage of the controversy to determine whether Phelps was successful in repairing his image. The study concludes that Phelps’ image repair campaign was a success. Implications for public relations practitioners and suggestions for future research also are discussed.     

The Ghosts of Knowing Commentary on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt

In Pillar of Salt, Janice Haaken makes an ambitious attempt to examine what has become a passionate, contentious debate about recovered memories of childhood abuse. Haaken examines several—sometimes conflicting—perspectives on recovered memory syndrome, which themselves yield diverse interpretations of the status of knowledge and the implications of multiple, even oppositional positionalities. The least ambiguous aspect of Haaken's argument is that women have found their voices and identities in the cultural Zeitgeist of sex abuse discourse. Although Haaken's social constructionist view is broad, I am concerned about the ways in which the therapeutic structure of retrieval misrepresents and flattens the epistemological complexities that shape these discussions, while remaining largely unacknowledged.