Jography: Exploring Meanings,Experiences and Spatialities of Recreational Road-running

Jogging is a relatively under-researched mobile practice with much existing literature focusing on ‘serious’ and competitive running. In this paper, we provide an account of some of the movements, meanings and experiences that together help produce the practice of jogging in the south-western English city of Plymouth. Drawing upon participant diaries and interviews, we uncover rich detail about how joggers ascribe not one but a number of meanings to their practice. Some of these are positive, some are negative; some complement each other and some compete with each other. We also consider how the experiences of joggers can be shaped by their ongoing need to develop tactics capable of enabling them to negotiate space with non-joggers. This is in some contrast to more competitive running that occurs in the separated space of an athletics track. Our sense is that better awareness of the meanings and experiences of jogging will be of value if the advertised health and sustainability benefits of the practice are to be more effectively encouraged and promoted.     

Smuggled Sound: Bootleg Recording and the Pursuit of Popular Memory

This paper explores the meanings that bootleg recording holds in peoples’ lives. “Bootlegging” refers to the practice of making unauthorized recordings of live performances. Our paper is an interpretive analysis of interviews with bootleg producers and collectors. In their accounts, they suggest how their activities offer an extraordinary example of what it means to participate in contemporary popular culture. As bootleggers smuggle tape recorders into concerts, or trade tapes in underground networks, they pursue rare artifacts of popular culture. Their stories of bootleg taping, collecting and trading suggest an alternative to depictions of popular culture as merely a process of production and consumption. Instead, these accounts demonstrate how some people document their participation in mass cultural events on their own terms and for their own uses. Here, bootlegging is seen as an attempt by people to capture live performances, to collect them as a source of memory and authenticity, and to mediate the events of their lives through means of technological reproduction.     

Book Review: Civil Society: History and Possibilities,by Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (eds.). Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2001

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Categorical Regression Analysis of Acute Exposure to Tetrachloroethylene1

Exposure-response analysis of acute noncancer risks should consider both concentration (C) and duration (T) of exposure, as well as severity of response. Stratified categorical regression is a form of meta-analysis that addresses these needs by combining studies and analyzing response data expressed as ordinal severity categories. A generalized linear model for ordinal data was used to estimate the probability of response associated with exposure and severity category. Stratification of the regression model addresses systematic differences among studies by allowing one or more model parameters to vary across strata denned, for example, by species and sex. The ability to treat partial information addresses the difficulties in assigning consistent severity scores. Studies containing information on acute effects of tetrachloroethylene in rats, mice, and humans were analyzed. The mouse data were highly uncertain due to lack of data on effects of low concentrations and were excluded from the analysis. A model with species-specific concentration intercept terms for rat and human central nervous system data improved fit to the data compared with the base model (combined species). More complex models with strata denned by sex and species did not improve the fit. The stratified regression model allows human effect levels to be identified more confidently by basing the intercept on human data and the slope parameters on the combined data (on a C × T plot). This analysis provides an exposure–response function for acute exposures to tetrachloroethylene using categorical regression analysis.     

Masculinity and Class in the Context of Dirty Work

Through an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ (refuse collection and street cleaning), this article explores how masculinity and class intersect — how, in a mutually constitutive sense, they produce attitudes and practices, strengths and vulnerabilities, which are shaped by shifting relations of privilege and power. We find resistance to class subordination through adherence to traditional forms of masculinity and through esteem‐enhancing social comparison (e.g., with women; with migrant workers). Men also mobilized powerful nostalgic themes around the loss of traditional jobs as well as trade union power. We argue that displays of masculine resilience in the face of devaluation are less indicative of a culture of masculine dominance but more an expression of vulnerability and social dislocation, serving both as a source of resistance whilst simultaneously reinforcing anchors of social disadvantage that characterize forms of dirty work. We suggest that combining social comparison with intersectionality can potentially highlight how categories of difference are strategically deployed in response to varied and unequally valued social positionalities.     

Network knowledge and the use of power

Complementing recent work on the effects of power on network perceptions, we offer a theory specifying how knowledge of network structures and exchange processes differentially affect the use of power by advantaged and disadvantaged positions. We argue that under certain conditions, network knowledge is beneficial to occupants of low-power positions, but not to occupants of high-power positions. Any low-power actor can benefit from having superior information, but if all low-power actors have equally sound knowledge, then all are worse off—a type of social trap. We tested these arguments by manipulating power and the availability of information on network structure and exchange processes in an experimental exchange network setting. The results were supportive.     

Competitive Goals and Plant Investment in Environment and Safety Practices: Moderating Effect of National Culture

Operations managers clearly play a critical role in targeting plant‐level investments toward environment and safety practices. In principle, a “rational” response would be to align this investment with senior management's competitive goals for operational performance. However, operations managers also are influenced by contingent factors, such as their national culture, thus creating potential tension that might bias investment away from a simple rational response. Using data from 1,453 plants in 24 countries, we test the moderating influence of seven of the national cultural characteristics on investment at the plant level in environment and safety practices. Four of the seven national cultural characteristics from GLOBE (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, in‐group collectivism, future orientation and performance orientation) shifted investment away from an expected “rational” response. Positive bias was evident when the national culture favored consistency and formalized procedures and rewarded performance improvement. In contrast, managers exhibited negative bias when familial groups and local coalitions were powerful, or future outcomes—rather than current actions—were more important. Overall, this study highlights the critical importance of moving beyond a naïve expectation that plant‐level investment will naturally align with corporate competitive goals for environment and safety. Instead, the national culture where the plant is located will influence these investments, and must be taken into account by senior management.     

Prioritizing and Monitoring Concurrent Project Work: Effects on Switching Behavior

Project switching occurs when a multi‐project worker shifts his/her attention from one project to another before completing the first project. In this study, we study the effects of two areas of management policy on project switching behavior, project prioritization, and work monitoring. We conduct a controlled experiment to evaluate direct and combined effects of prioritization, scheduled progress checks, and managerial progress checks on project switching behavior in a distributed, multi‐project work environment. We use computerized tasks constituting multiple projects as a means of efficiently simulating a project work setting. Working professionals served as subjects for the experiment, thereby enabling us to control for experience and other individual differences that may vary across workers in real‐world projects. We find that clarifying priorities has little overall effect on the prevalence of switching in our multi‐project setting, while the presence of managerial progress checks has significant and distinct impacts, driving up switch tendencies. Interestingly, various attributes of the timing of these monitoring events also significantly impact the likelihood that workers will switch in response to these event triggers. We discuss the implications of these findings for managerial practice and for future research.     

Distributive justice revisited: A reconceptualization and an empirical test

Research on distributive justice has classified allocative standards into three distinct categories: equity, need, and equality. We empirically test the notion that equality should be further divided into two distinct constructs: absolute and bounded equality, thus leading to four distinct categories of distributive justice. Using a sample of 240 individuals (119 managers and 121 union activists), we further test for differences between managers and public and private sector unionists in their endorsement of these four standards. Results support all four of our specified hypotheses. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for distributive justice issues in the workplace, and future research directions are proposed. The authors thank John Delaney, Jean Phillips, and Linda Stroh for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.