Corporate Reputation and Women on the Board

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of corporate reputation, derived from the assessments of managers and market analysts, of a sample of large UK firms. Along with the influences of a variety of firm attributes, we find a reputational effect associated with a female presence at board level. This effect varies across sectors and demonstrates the influence of a firm's stakeholder environment in determining whether a female presence on the board enhances or harms the reputation of the firm. The pattern that emerges indicates that the presence of women on the board is favourably viewed in only those sectors that operate close to final consumers. We argue that the nature of this effect reflects an imperative for equality of representation that highlights the need to reflect gender diversity among customers.     

Large scale communication networks—Design and analysis

The paper discusses the problem of design and analysis of large scale communication systems. An iterative process, composed of a minimum cost network design algorithm and a network performance algorithm, is presented for the solution of these problems. Computational considerations, using these algorithms, are discussed.     

Super Intentions: Golf Course Management and the Evolution of Environmental Responsibility

This article examines the golf industry's evolving responses to environment‐related problems since the mid‐1960s. Drawing from an analysis of golf superintendent trade publications, the article shows how golf industry members initially denied that their work could have negative impacts, but eventually acknowledged potential golf‐related environmental problems—and ultimately positioned themselves as environmental leaders through various forms of professionalization. The analysis also reveals contradictions in superintendents' messaging about their environmental expertise and about the safety of turfgrass chemicals. The article concludes with reflections on why these contradictions should inspire concerns about golf's nascent environmental leadership, and on corporate environmentalism generally.     

Assessing the effectiveness of strategic planning

This paper describes a method for assessing the effectiveness of strategic planning systems in terms of the results actually observed subsequent to planning activity. The paper explains in particular how, in making the assessment, one might cope with the fact of environmental change subsequent to the setting of planned goals. This ends oriented approach to measuring effectiveness is shown to be complementary to process oriented approaches and is illustrated by an example from the coal industry.     

Improving homeless persons' utilisation of primary care: lessons to be learned from an outreach programme in The Netherlands

Elissen AMJ, Van Raak AJA, Derckx EWCC, Vrijhoef HJM. Improving homeless persons' utilisation of primary care: lessons to be learned from an outreach programme in The Netherlands Faced with rising homelessness, countries around the world are in need of innovative approaches to caring for those without shelter, who, more often than not, suffer from severe health problems. We conducted a case study of an innovative Dutch Primary Care for the Homeless (PCH) programme to gain insight into clients' demographic characteristics, health problems and service use, and to develop an explanation for its success in increasing the latter. Our analyses are based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. The results of the study suggest that the success of the PCH programme can be explained by the providers' pragmatism and will to adapt their mode of care provision to the behavioural patterns and needs of their homeless clients.     

Sub/Urban Histories Against The Grain: Myth And Embourgeoisement In Essex Noir

This paper considers how literary and cinematic constructions of Essex noir expose the darker, chaotic sides to working‐class embourgeoisement: initially via post‐War suburbanisation and later, via Margaret Thatcher's attempt to encourage competitive individualism and entrepreneurship. Noir angles a “dark mirror” to suburban Essex and develops a distinctive aesthetics of social and cultural change, while also puncturing myths of social mobility and suburban security. The paper points to both affinities and breaks between noir's bleak pessimism and Walter Benjamin's understanding of history as overcoming the concept of progress.     

Renovating ethnic identity on Restaurant Makeover

Food can be a novel way of understanding and explaining some of the pointed paradoxes of multiculturalism and the ‘management’ of ethnicity. Many studies of culinary culture are attentive to the exoticization of ethnicity in and through food media, which now includes a vertiginous array of cookbooks, travel literature, magazines and, most important for our purposes here, television series. Among various programs is Restaurant Makeover, a popular Canadian reality series broadcast on Home and Garden Television (HGTV) as well as the Food Network Canada. In each episode, dining experts are hired by struggling restaurateurs (often ethnic) to ‘spice up’ the existing menu, ‘modernize’ the décor and, by extension, ensure the welfare of the (immigrant's) family. While the series is not explicitly directed at ethnic restaurants, it seems to be increasingly interested in ‘non-white’ establishments (i.e., Mexican, Chinese, Thai, etc.). This participation in culinary multiculturalism may be symptomatic of wider political changes in immigration and ‘diversity’ in Canada. Based on the authors analyses of specific episodes this paper argues, firstly, the growing interest in ethnic cuisine on Restaurant Makeover can be read as a (neo)liberal response to an emerging conservative ‘multicultural’ agenda that recognizes migrants predominantly as laborers (as opposed to citizens) and, secondly, that behind its rehearsal of liberal benevolence is a skewed set of power relations that authorize the experts’ (re)construction, cultivation and containment of ethnicity.     

The cosmopolitan contradictions of planetary urbanization

This paper explores the empirical, conceptual and theoretical gains that can be made using cosmopolitan social theory to think through the urban transformations that scholars have in recent years termed planetary urbanization. Recognizing the global spread of urbanization makes the need for a cosmopolitan urban sociology more pressing than ever. Here, it is suggested that critical urban sociology can be invigorated by focusing upon the disconnect that Henri Lefebvre posits between the planetarization of the urban – which he views as economically and technologically driven – and his dis‐alienated notion of a global urban society. The first aim of this paper is to highlight the benefits of using ‘cosmopolitan’ social theory to understand Lefebvre's urban problematic (and to establish why this is also a cosmopolitan problematic); the second is to identify the core cosmopolitan contradictions of planetary urbanization, tensions that are both actually existing and reproduced in scholarly accounts. The article begins by examining the challenges presented to urban sociology by planetary urbanization, before considering how cosmopolitan sociological theory helps provide an analytical ‘grip’ on the deep lying social realities of contemporary urbanization, especially in relation to questions about difference, culture and history. These insights are used to identify three cosmopolitan contradictions that exist within urbanized (and urbanizing) space; tensions that provide a basis for a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan investigation of planetary urbanization.     

Transnational marketing joint ventures: a viable market penetration strategy in the EU?

This article investigates the performance of EU-based transnational marketing joint ventures (MJVs) through a set of case studies. The results emphasise the instability inherent in MJVs, and in most cases instability reflected poor performance rather than the evolution of a successful venture in the foreign market. Companies were found to undertake MJVs in order to protect and control existing market positions in the foreign country rather than gain access. Little attempt was made to transfer knowledge and expertise between the partners. Under these conditions instability resulted in the failure of the parent company to achieve its primary objective: the protection of marketing assets in the foreign market. Exporters should consider mechanisms through which local expertise can be transferred within the MJV.     

Vocational aspects of life care planning for people with spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a catastrophic event with profound, long-term consequences in all aspects of an individual's life, including employment. The life care plan (LCP) is a methodology that is used to document the continuum of care needs that an individual with SCI will have across his or her life span. The LCP also highlights the critical stages of development necessary to maximize the person's functional potential and productivity. This article provides a brief overview, with a case study example, of how the LCP can be used in addressing an individual's post-injury employability needs.