Responsibility,planning and risk management: moralizing everyday finance through financial education

The individualization, privatization and marketization of risk management represent a fundamental dimension of the financialization of everyday life. As individuals are required to engage with financial products and services as the main way of protecting themselves from risks and uncertainties, their economic welfare and security are construed as depending largely on their own financial decisions. Within this setting, the concept of financial literacy and accompanying practices of financial education have emerged as a prominent institutional field handling the formulation and communication of the attributes and dispositions that arguably constitute the proper financial actor. This article analyzes financial education programmes currently conducted by state agencies in Israel, examining the notions and principles they articulate when defining and explaining proper financial conduct. The study indicates that moral themes and categories occupy a salient place in the formulation of the character traits that constitute the desired literate financial actor. Notions of individual responsibility, planning ahead and rational risk management are presented not merely as instrumental resources, but as moral imperatives. Through these notions, the programmes moralize a broad array of everyday practices of personal finance such as saving, investing, borrowing and budget management, thereby connecting the sphere of financial matters to the domain of moral virtues. Offering a representation of particular modes of financial conduct as constitutive components of morally virtuous personhood, these practices imbue the financial field as a whole, especially its current generalized logic of individualized and marketized risk management, with moral meanings, hence contributing to the normalization and depoliticization of the financialization of everyday life.     

Toward total student health: A qualitative pilot study

Objective: Colleges should aim to cultivate healthy behaviors among students by addressing alterations in wellness students view as important. The purpose of this study was to determine the self-perceived wellness-related concerns and behaviors of college students. Participants: Thirty-seven undergraduate students participated in this study between January and March 2017. Methods: Focus groups served as a data collection method. Groups were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Directed and conventional approaches to data analyses were employed. Results: Participants expressed concern regarding four campus wellness topics: nutrition, economics, mental health, and campus safety. Participants offered solutions for improving campus wellness, representing a fifth theme. Conclusions: Health concerns for college students and realistic solutions to address concerns were identified across focus groups. Overall, students cared about their own health, as well as the well-being of other students. Future directions include conducting a Web-based survey among students to assess prevalence and impact of select health and wellness topics.     

Health insurance literacy: A mixed methods study of college students

Objective: This study examines the health insurance literacy, or the ability to use health insurance effectively, of college students. Participants: A total of 455 students from a large, public university completed an online questionnaire in November 2016. Methods: A questionnaire examined students’ knowledge of commonly encountered health insurance terms and ability to apply that knowledge to determine cost-sharing in a clinical setting. Results: The majority of students were able to correctly identify the most commonly encountered terms, but could not identify terms related to plan types and options. Eighty-eight percent of students could not determine their cost-sharing for two presented scenarios. Approximately half of the students indicated they had been confused about their health insurance plan, with one-quarter of students stopping or delaying medical care due to confusion. Conclusions: Outreach and education for students should target specific deficits in knowledge such as those identified in this study.     

Building a health communication brand for University of Texas System tobacco control

Objective: Despite declining cigarette smoking rates in the US, there is a continued need for tobacco prevention education campaigns to reach young adults. Recognizing the need for improved tobacco control messaging, the University of Texas (UT) System engaged The University of Texas at Austin Center for Health Communication to develop a brand and message that would strengthen tobacco control efforts at its 14 institutions. Methods: This article describes the iterative process involved in creating a brand for tobacco control, including an environmental scan, identifying potential message themes, and creating and refining logos. Results: This article highlights the process of developing a system-wide tobacco control brand. Specifically, the process included coordinating an interdisciplinary team with content and design experts, and presenting ideas to stakeholders for serial feedback and refinement, among others. Conclusions: Ultimately, this project offers a model for other systems of higher education interested in pursuing similar initiatives.     

Factors that influence elementary school teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion of visually impaired children in Turkey

There is a scarcity of research on inclusion of visually impaired children in Turkey. Specifically, a gap exists concerning the attitudes of elementary school teachers towards the inclusion of visually impaired children in mainstream schools. This article uses data from two questionnaires, leveraging the responses of 253 teachers from rural and urban areas. The results demonstrate that elementary school teachers commonly hold positive attitudes towards the inclusion of visually impaired children and that teachers’ initial and in-service training about inclusion positively influenced their attitudes. Our findings are in contrast with earlier research which argues that teachers do not hold positive attitudes to inclusion, and highlights that a key barrier to inclusion stems from elementary school teachers feeling unprepared to teach visually impaired children. We conclude that greater post-qualification training is required to enable teachers to operationalise different approaches that facilitate the inclusion of visually impaired children.     

Let the right one in: A Bourdieusian analysis of gender inequality in universities’ senior management

This article examines the lack of gender diversity in senior management positions in professional staff in universities. These results are analysed via a Bourdieusian analysis of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. Through a purposeful sample of senior professional staff working in universities in three countries: Australia, Canada and the UK, six career‐enhancing strategies needed for career success were determined. The article critiques the resource‐based view of career capital and argues that capitals accumulation for career success can be understood by considering the concepts of symbolic violence and habitus as a way of understanding intra‐cohort differences. It proposes that by considering both the subjective and objective cultural constructs via habitus, and by acknowledging the importance of symbolic capital and symbolic violence towards women, this may be one way of increasing female representation in senior management.     

Education and wage inequality in the informal sector: The case of Cameroon

This article analyses the effects of education on wage inequality in the informal sector in Cameroon. The author uses quantile regression on data from the Second survey on employment and the informal sector in Cameroon (EESI 2) of 2010. The results indicate that both wages and wage inequality increase with education in the informal sector, with tertiary education creating greatest inequality. These findings point to a number of policy recommendations for a transition to formality, such as the creation of more jobs for a skilled workforce, the development of sites adapted to informal sector activities and the creation of more vocational schools.     

Data falsification and question on academic integrity

In this commentary, we argue that plagiarism is not a new problem in academic publishing and data falsification in recent times has received a great attention globally. Due to lack of literature, the objective of this study is to evaluate data falsification and academic integrity. Accordingly, the study presents the academic misconduct (Falsification/Fabrication of data and Concerns/Issues About Data) case of Professor James E. Hunton, a former top ranked accounting professor from Bentley University. The study shows how research fraud/data falsification activity in the academic world lacks honesty and morality. The study offers some recommendations for the detection of plagiarism and academic misconduct. In the age of the Internet and digital era, Crossref, iThenticate, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) would help to detect plagiarism. However, the question remains on detecting data falsification in the academic world.     

National culture and organisational culture in lean organisations: a systematic review

Despite the extensive literature suggesting that culture plays a key role in lean implementations, no previous review has focused on the topic. This study is a systematic review of the literature that synthesises over two decades of publications according to the levels of national culture (NC) and organisational culture (OC) and maps which cultural dimensions foster or hinder lean implementation. In terms of NC, this study shows that Japanese cultural traits might hinder lean, such as masculinity and power distance, hence avoiding the over simplification that lean is a country-specific management approach. In terms of OC, the literature review unveils a lack of consensus and underlines two paradoxes, namely the co-existence of both process and result-focused orientations and both normative and pragmatic approaches. This review ultimately offers a relevant agenda for lean research as well as a guide for managers who face the challenge of implementing and sustaining lean in their organisations.