Search results for ""emerald publishing limited""

Most people have believed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) played a significant role in the 2008 global financial crisis. However, little research has been done to reflect on the underlying issues of CSR in connection to the financial crisis. This collection brings together leading scholarly thinking to understand why CSR failed to prevent the global financial crisis, how corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) contributed to the financial crisis, and how we may reframe CSR or improve CSR frameworks to help prevent or mitigate any future financial and economic crises. This volume concentrates on three key themes: A critical review of the role of CSR played in the financial crisis and its underlying theses; A unique understanding of the institutionalization of CSR in codified rules and the application of CSR into business and management; and; An in-depth exploration of the future direction of CSR as post-crisis agenda.

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For much of his business life, Peter Lorange has had three careers running in parallel - as a business academic leading some of the world's most important business schools, as the head of a shipping company and as a board member for several multinational companies. As a result, he has seen leadership from all angles, inside and out. In this book, Peter shares what he has learnt about leadership during turbulent times and, in particular, the key insights that emerged from some of the most challenging moments in his career. Drawing on his own experiences and those of other CEOs interviewed especially for this book, Peter identifies the four leadership characteristics essential in turbulent times, and the three leadership tasks that are critical to an organization under stress. He identifies the type of organization that leaders must create in order to meet the challenges they face today, and explores what it means to be the person sitting where the buck stops. Peter describes how he is bucking the trend and reinventing the business school model at a time when many organizations are keeping their heads down and hoping for the global situation to improve.

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"Political Power and Social Theory" is an annual review, committed to advancing our interdisciplinary, critical understanding of the linkages between social relations, political power, and historical development. Alongside peer-reviewed chapters dealing with a diversity of topics, this volume contains a special section on the politics of the 'new middle class' in the global south and post-socialist societies. Over the past few decades, globalization and urbanization have contributed to the development of a newly educated urban middle class around the world, but this new class has been rarely studied. Filling this void, the chapters in this section examine the middle classes in the developing world in areas as diverse as the Middle East, India, South Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Latin America. This is one of the only volumes examining the new urban middle classes in emerging economies. Exploring identity-formation, social change, urbanization and politics among the new middle class, the chapters together offer new insights on this understudied social group and raise provocative questions about politics and social change in the early 21st century around the globe.

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This volume explores capital mobility under globalization by studying some of its salient consequences in agriculture and food in North and South America. It probes the manner in which capital mobility alters the organization of the temporal and spatial dimensions that characterize the reproduction of capital. This is an important aspect of globalization because it reproduces the tension between the constant attempt of agents of capitalism to expand their scope of action and accelerate the time of the reproduction of capital, and the fixed nature of the institutions and measures that are employed to regulate capitalism. The analysis of this contradictory aspect of globalization is presented in seven cases that, while global in scope and social implications, are located in North and South America. Areas examined include the organization of labor in the exportation of grapes, fruit producing regions of Argentina and Brazil, the changing character of small town Ontario, migration and farmers in Mexico, and North Atlantic salmon. These original pieces of empirical research are contextualized by the introduction and common themes underscored in the concluding chapter.

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"Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations" is a refereed, academic research annual that aims to meet the needs of faculty members interested in ways to improve their classroom instruction. It includes both non-empirical and empirical articles dealing with accounting pedagogy at college and university level. Non-empirical papers are academically rigorous and specifically discuss the institutional context of a course or program, as well as any relevant trade offs or policy issues. Empirical reports exhibit sound research design and execution, and develop a thorough motivation and literature review. Thoughtful, well-developed articles describe how teaching methods or curricula/programs can be improved. "Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations" serves as a forum for sharing generalizable teaching approaches ranging from curricula development to content delivery techniques. Readable, relevant and reliable this volume is of interest to all instructors, researchers and administrators committed to improving accounting education at the college and university level. This volume presents relevant, readable articles dealing with accounting pedagogy at college/university level. It serves as a forum for sharing generalizable teaching approaches ranging from curricula development to content delivery techniques and is of interest to instructors, researchers and administrators committed to improving accounting education.

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This 15th volume of "Advances in Early Education and Day Care" focuses on the implementation of professional development for early childhood educators, describing a number of models for improving early childhood care. These models differ by setting, urban, rural, public, private, center and home based child care. These programs also differ by implementation model. Mentoring, workshops, online information and college courses are examples of how professional development was implemented. The systematic assessment of both the providers and the children described in these chapters will be of assistance for future research designers who are conducting large scale data collection and analysis. These chapters should serve as a way for policy makers to become informed about how best to expend scarce resources in the implementation of professional development. Increasing our knowledge of effective practices in professional development is an important factor in improving the outcomes for future generations of children. The collection of these chapters in one volume should provide future developers of professional development with a road map for what works and what might not be as effective.

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Leading scholars consider Austrian economics from several perspectives such as characteristic themes of entrepreneurship and uncertainty, scientific methods such as mathematical complexity theory and experimental economics, and historical contexts such as pre-war Vienna and post-war France. Placing "Austrian economics" in these multiple contexts helps to reveal the rich texture of the Austrian tradition in social thought and its multiple connections to current research in diverse fields. Applications to the theory of the trade cycle and to foreign intervention suggest that the Austrian tradition contains possibilities not yet full explored and exploited. The volume gathers together papers presented at the second biennial Wirth conference on Austrian economics, held in October 2008 when the crisis of Fall 2008 was still new and shocking. This coincidence of timing makes policy issues and crisis management a kind of leitmotif of the volume. If, as keynote speaker David Colander argues, Austrians have a comparative advantage in political economy, then its stock should rise in times of crisis and political uncertainty. The volume provides evidence in favor of this view. Contributors include David Colander, Richard Wagner, Jeffery McMullen, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., Steve Horwitz, Richard Ebeling, Chris Coyne, and Peter Boettke.

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Volume 16 of "Advances in Motivation and Achievement" is presented in two books. In both books, leading researchers in the field review the current state of the knowledge in their respective sub-disciplines and offer their prognostications about where the research is likely to proceed in the decade ahead. In this book, "Volume 16B", chapters examining the associations between motivation and other constructs, such as emotion and self-regulation, are presented. In addition, "Volume 16B" includes chapters examining sociocultural approaches to the study of motivation, the motivation of African American students and teachers' motivation, the application of motivation research in classrooms, and the policy implications of motivation research. In the first book, "Volume 16A", seven prominent theories of motivation are examined, including research on self-efficacy, achievement goal theory, expectancy-value theory, self-determination theory, self-concept research, implicit motives, and interest. By providing chapters that both summarize and look forward, the two books in this volume offer a useful roadmap for the future of motivation research in a variety of areas.

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Lagoons are characterized by an essential quality of uncertainty for use in resource management: these are physically vulnerable to various influences from not only the environment but also the adjacent marine and terrestrial areas. In the areas which are shallower and where less water is exchanges, therefore, fishers are required to develop their capacity of knowledge and skills for how to live with change and uncertainty. The wider realization of complex and dynamic lagoon ecosystem and its fisheries management requires multifaceted aspects to be addressed. Fisheries serve as a basis for people's livelihood and food protein especially in Asian countries. Total amounts of fish landing have maintained an upward trend, but existing fisheries management poses various challenges for ensuring wise use of fishery resources which are becoming fully exploited or over-exploited in the world. Out of variant geographical types of fishery domain, lagoon fisheries need to pay more attention to achieve fisheries management. With these recognitions, the book presents a wide variety of lessons learned from case studies from Asian countries (India, Japan and Thailand). Greater emphasis is placed on understanding the status of lagoon fisheries and its management, and assessing people's adaptive capacities to respond to changes in the ecological-social-economic system. Throughout all case study experience, the book will provide policy makers and practitioners with guidance to build enabling conditions for integrated lagoon fisheries management and related sustainable livelihood which involve a concern with issues of power, institutions, worldviews and values among relevant stakeholders.

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"Transportation Indicators and Business Cycles" recognises the important role the transportation sector plays in business cycle propagation and develops indicators for this sector to identify its current state, and predict its future. The reference cycle is defined, including business and growth cycles, for this sector over the period from 1979 using both the conventional National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) method and modern time series models. A one-to-one correspondence between cycles in the transportation sector and those in the aggregate economy is found. It also constructs an index of leading indicators for the transportation sector using rigorous statistical procedures, and performs well as a forecasting tool.

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Is the phenomenon of state failure better understood through a focus on the regional context? To what extent may studies of regional security benefit from a focus on the capacities and vulnerabilities of the states involved? These are the questions addressed in this volume of "Comparative Social Research". Substantially, this special issue operates at the intersection of the larger debates on state failure and on regional (in-) security, relating to various perspectives within each of these. State failure, manifesting itself in the inability of a state to maintain its monopoly of violence, has become a widespread phenomenon in several regions of the world. While the weakness of the institutions of the state in question is an obvious dimension of state failure, there is also an important international dimension. In many of these cases, conflicts are interwoven and violence spills across borders.

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In this text, "Research in Political Sociology", the imperative and current issues of democratic trends are presented by scholars from Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States. The volume addresses worldwide changes and developments of democratization from historical and contemporary perspectives. It presents discourses on the diffusion of democracy, paths of democratic transitions, worldwide trends towards democratization, as well as discussion about democracy in retreat. Cross-cultural, comparative studies sit alongside case studies of individual countries including democratic development in the United States, post-colonial and post-Soviet democratization trends, and most recent experiences of countries that have undergone democratization growth or democracy in retreat in the first decade of this century. This volume can be used by political sociologists to strengthen and develop the unique skills and interests they bring to sociology. It is pertinent to researchers from political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, and to policy makers from across the globe working on democratic transition and democratization/re-democratization issues.

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This important reference title focuses exclusively on the elite entrepreneurs of new China and contains more than 100 substantial profiles of top overseas returnees who have made noteworthy contributions to the Chinese economy since the reform era began in 1978. For the purpose of this book, a returnee is defined as a Chinese native who was born in China, left to study overseas as a student, visiting scholar or guest researcher for over one year, and has returned to China to work on a permanent basis. This edited book begins with an introduction outlining the brief history of the returnees, and their impacts on Chinese society in general and economic development in particular. The biographical work summarizes each individual's life and business career, with a central focus on his/her accomplishments and the key roles played in the new Chinese economy. Also included are: references; a list of common abbreviations; and English-Chinese cross references of individual names indexed in the book.

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"Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal, and Political Perspectives" brings together recent, cutting-edge research on economic factors affecting peace and war. This important area of continuing research was the focus of an international conference held at the University of Sydney in June 2009 and these chapters are partly drawn from among the best contributions to that meeting. The book weaves together threads from a number of themes in current research including new theoretical perspectives on the economic foundations of peace, violence and war within countries, connections between international trade and inter-state conflict, and the role of legal/institutional factors in international and internal conflict. Through a focused exploration of these related topics emerge areas of scholarly consensus as well as areas of continued debate. International in scope, it is the only book to explicitly bring together economic, legal and political scholarship to focus on the problem of conflict. It employs a range of modern social science analytical methods, including qualitative cases, econometrics, and game-theoretic models, to rigorously advance understanding of conflict within and between countries.

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The purpose of this special issue of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" is to examine the situation of law and literature. Once hailed as a promising new way to think about law and as opening a vital conversation about literature the question today is whether the law and literature enterprise has lived up to its initial promise. Has it succeeded in establishing a new interdiscipinarity or lost energy as law and literature courses become part of the mainstream both in legal and literary studies? Has the study of law and literature given way or been incorporated into boarder interdisciplinary configurations? What, if any, new paradigms of literary study of legal phenomena are on the horizon?This is a contemporary study of law and literature. It includes contributions by an international group of leading scholars.

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This book brings together some of the leading authors in sport and sociocultural diversity. Social and cultural diversity becomes a key conceptual framework and lens through which to examine and understand a wide range of cultural issues related to: nationalism, gender, race, ethnicity, indigenous culture, sexuality, (dis)ability and even religiosity. This volume explores the dimensions of cultural diversity that relate to many of the aforementioned dimensions as they are located within the broad context of sport. The chapters are grounded in a variety of concepts and theories, and deal with policy, inclusion, affirmative action legislations, identity, and equity in all aspects of sports organisations as well as related issues that have emerged within the context of social and cultural diversity.Topics covered include: Politics of Identity and Representation, Theorising Sport and Inclusion Practices, Accommodation and Resistance to Diversity/Equality, Symbolic Construction of Sports Communities, Ethnocentrism and Whiteness, Ethnic Identities and Corporate Managerialism, Exploration of Alternative Leadership Paradigms, and Affirmative Action. Themes considered include: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity, Sexuality, (Dis)Ability, and Religiosity. The volume provides accounts from authors throughout the world in examining current ideas about social and cultural diversity in sporting worlds.

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This volume brings together contributions from a diverse group of authors each of whom have worked extensively on privatization and related reforms, such as restructuring and bankruptcy, in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), sometimes referred to as the Former Soviet Union, and South East Europe (SEE). A chapter on Chinese state enterprise reforms and privatization has been included in this volume due to Chinas importance economically and politically, its successful reform program to-date and its unique approach to reforms. The volume is largely a retrospective of the ten or so years of reform from 1990 to 2000, focused on privatization in the transition countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the peaceful revolutions in Poland and in then Czechoslovakia (now the Czech and Slovak Republics), the break-up of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Russian Federation. Most of the contributors to this volume worked closely with the leading reformers in Government during this period to assist them in designing and implementing their privatization programs. One of the contributors was directly involved in the process as a leading reformer in his country, as a Deputy Minister of Economy and as Director of its Privatization Agency. For the most part, sufficient time has passed to allow the authors to now treat their subject objectively. Serbia and China are unique in comparison to the other countries discussed in this volume, as their state enterprise reform and privatization programs are still on going. China started earlier than the other transition economies, but continue to the present time, due to what some analysts have described as a more gradualist approach to reforms that the other transition economies. Serbia was a late reformer due to the break-up of Yugoslavia, the conflict in the region and its years of isolation. Also, Serbia had to deal with the legacy of socially owned enterprises, not state-owned enterprises as in the other transition economies. Serbia is now in the process of trying to determine how to wind-up its program. While the volume is primarily a retrospective, the overview chapter provides lessons learned on banking and infrastructure reforms and the concluding chapter on lessons learned is forward looking. There is still much to do in many of these countries, especially in the CIS and SEE, the Asian transition economies such as Viet Nam and eventually in North Korea and Cuba. The concluding chapter draws concrete lessons from the earlier experience that could be of value to these countries. As such, this volume is a unique contribution to the current academic literature on the transition economies and on privatization. It includes original articles by experts on their subjects. One of the contributors was directly involved in the process as a leading reformer in his country.

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This volume deals with the topic of health inequalities and health disparities. The volume is divided into five sections. The first section includes an introductory look at the issue of health care inequalities and disparities and also an introduction to the volume. One of the backdrops to this topic in the United States was The National Healthcare Disparities Report and its focus on the ability of Americans to access health care and variation in the quality of care. Disparities related to socioeconomic status were included, as were disparities linked to race and ethnicity and the report also tried to explore the relationship between race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position, as explained in more detail in the first article in the book.The second article discusses a newer overall approach to issues related to health inequalities and health disparities. The remaining four sections of the book address more specific topics relating to inequalities and disparities. The second section examines racial and ethnic inequalities and disparities. The third section includes articles that address the issue from the perspective of research about health care providers and health care facilities. The last two sections of the book focus on consumers and topics of health care disparities, with Section 4 focused on issues related to substance abuse, mental health and related concerns.Section 5 includes articles looking at issues of vulnerable women, women with breast cancer and people with colorectal cancer. "Inequalities and Disparities in Health Care and Health" is important reading for medical sociologists and people working in other social science disciplines studying health-related issues. The volume also provides vital information for health services researchers, policy analysts and public health researchers. It is a great resource for health services researchers, policy analysts and public health researchers. It offers an in-depth look at bioethics, focusing on health inequalities and disparities.

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Hospitals worldwide command the majority of any countries health care budget. Reasons for these higher costs include the aging of the population requiring more intensive health care treatments provided in hospitals, the relatively high costs of labor in this labor intensive industry and payment systems that may encourage inefficient behavior on the part of hospital managers and physicians. Governments are seeking to instruments to mitigate this cost rise. Liberalizing hospital markets, deregulation, changing budget systems and changing ownership are only a few examples of attempts to make hospitals more efficient. Hospital industry responds in various ways to changing market conditions and legislation. In most western hospital markets we observe hospital consolidation, acquisitions, mergers and the founding of several types of network and hospital associations. The question is whether this trend also contributes to more efficiency. In this volume a number of outstanding internationally known scholars in the field of productivity measurement and health economics provide the reader with an excellent insight in the complexity of the issue. They explain that there is no straightforward panacea or recipe for the issues addressed. It is shown that the composition of the demand for care, the economic context, environmental and geographical conditions affect the outcomes. Policymakers should therefore take these nuances into account. A policy of increasing productivity starts with knowledge and insights in the complexity of the issue. The book therefore advocates the development of a strategy of collecting relevant data and conducting academic research that meet the standard of the state of the art. The book provides two illustrative examples of such a strategy in Finland and Australia. The authors have avoided as much as possible the technical jargon and complex mathematics and statistics involved in this research area. Therefore the book is par excellence suitable for policymakers and hospital managers, as well as for graduate students of health economics and health administration. It avoids, as much as possible, technical jargon and complex mathematics and statistics. It has international in scope.

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This 26th volume in the "Research in Economic Anthropology" series differs in two main ways from all those that have come before. For one, it is the first "REA" volume to focus exclusively on the issue of health. In addition, it is not as concerned overall with economic or social theory, or with economic reasoning and action, as other volumes have been. Rather, it concentrates on the identification and analysis of important economic factors in the production of health and wellness. This volume consists of ten original anthropological papers that explore the general theme of the economics of health and wellness in a variety of ways. Some of these papers are more strongly ethnographic in nature, relying wholly on qualitative data derived from participant-observer methods at which ethnographers excel. Other papers successfully blend such information with quantitative data drawn from surveys, questionnaires, and even from biological samples.All papers, however, are grounded in empirical methods and based on data drawn from the personal investigations of the authors. Subjects and geographic areas represented in the volume are: Lakota residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA; rural people of Bangladesh; mental health care facilities and systems in Texas, USA; unsuccessful rural-urban migrants in Botswana, Southern Africa; loggers in British Columbia, Canada; municipal bus drivers in San Francisco, California; poor residents of Puebla, Mexico; slum dwellers of Lima, Peru; female victims of domestic abuse in Northern Vietnam; and, followers of Tibetan Buddhism in France. It features original articles written by experts in their fields. It is international in its scope.

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"Political Power and Social Theory" continues its longstanding run as a premier volume of comparative and historical social science. The volume focuses on a variety of questions relating to states, citizenship, and power, common themes examined with divergent analytical entry points and through deep knowledge of country cases as diverse as Russia, the United States, El Salvador, South Africa, and Israel. Whether examined with a focus on revolutions and political parties, or cities and their physical and social transformation, or through development of the concept of the 'familial state', which marries a preoccupation with lineage and micro-cultures to that of national-state institutions, these articles expand our theoretical and methodological imagination of how citizens become included or excluded in local and national structures of power.

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Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting" is devoted to publishing high-quality research and cases that focus on the professional responsibilities of accountants and how they deal with the ethical issues they face. The series features articles on a broad range of important and timely topics, including professionalism, social responsibility, ethical judgment, and accountability. The professional responsibilities of accountants are broad-based; they must serve clients and user groups whose needs, incentives, and goals may be in conflict. Further, accountants must interpret and apply codes of conduct, accounting and auditing principles, and securities regulations. Compliance with professional guidelines is judgment-based, and characteristics of the individual, the culture, and situations affect how these guidelines are interpreted and applied, as well as when they might be violated. Interactions between accountants, regulators, standard setters, and industries also have ethical components. Research into the nature of these interactions, resulting dilemmas, and how and why accountants resolve them, is the focus of this series. This title publishes annually.

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Since 1979 "Research in Law and Economics" has been presenting original research that explores the extent to which the constraints of law explain economic behavior and the role of economics in forming the law. Leading scholars, including Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Elzinga, Victor Goldberg, Jack Hirschliefer, Paul Joskow, and Vernon Smith, have chosen "Research in Law and Economics" as the right forum for presenting their research. Now published bi-annually, each issue of "Research in Law and Economics" focuses on a timely and relevant topic. Such topics have included economics of environmental policy, urban property rights, antitrust and evolutionary models in economics and law. This volume focuses on cost-benefit analysis and the law, whereas the next special issue will concentrate on corporate finance

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"Studies in Law, Politics and Society" continues the tradition of annually publishing interdisciplinary research on law with a critical focus that was begun in Research in Law and Sociology and carried forward in Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control. The new title describes an expanded focus and a broader audience of legal scholars who study: the intersection of legal thought and consciousness and the development of legal practices and institutions; and the development of legal thought and practices. The research spans a wide range of law related subjects including law and inequality, feminist jurisprudence, racial oppression and law, legal institutions and communities, and the ways law is used by political authorities or by ordinary citizens. Legal scholarship produced from an historical, comparative or ethnographic perspective is of special interest. This book series is available electronically online.

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This volume of "Studies in Law, Politics, and Society" presents a diverse array of articles by an interdisciplinary group of scholars. Their work covers political science, policy studies, and law. Some of the articles published in this issue focus on the sources of conflict and violence as well as law's response to both. Here, research illustrates the complex ways law can be said to be both opposed to violence and yet be violent itself. Other articles focus on the way judges and other legal actors use law as they interpret it. Taken together they exemplify the exciting and innovative work now being done in interdisciplinary legal scholarship. An interdisciplinary volume that discusses political science, policy science and law, this book is divided into two parts: conflict, violence, and legal processes; and deciding cases, charting progress. It uses case law examples to examine issues.

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This volume of "Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change" contains a strong collection of theoretically rich and data-driven papers, which address a series of interrelated questions that are at the forefront of todays social movement scholarship. For example, political opportunity theory has been justly criticized for privileging structure over agency, politics over culture, and for failing to adequately specify how political opportunities differ for social movements in democracies vs. in non-democracies. In this volume, political opportunity theory receives careful, empirically-informed correctives from a number of quarters. In addition, a synthesis is achieved between nonviolent action scholarship and the contentious politics school of research. Equally important, the roles of collective identities, ideologies, identity talk, art, biographies, social networks, police repression, and participation pathways are analyzed within the context of social movements in the United States, Mexico, the Netherlands, India, Brazil, Northern Ireland, and in various non-democracies. This is that too rare collection which when taken together builds bridges between scholarship on social movements and on social conflicts, and in the process makes theoretical advances in each area in much needed yet creative ways. In that way, this volume carries on the distinguished tradition of the Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change series.

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Humans live in social communities that are embedded ecologically within overlapping biophysical environments. This volume facilitates an ongoing dialogue between community sociologists and environmental sociologists about how humans interact with each other in social communities and with biophysical environments in an ecological community. The chapters in this volume contribute to three related areas of scholarship. First, chapters two through four deal with the ecological and social significance of place. The authors of these three chapters examine different theoretical and substantive dilemmas regarding place and ecology. Their scholarship investigates the significance of place across a range of natural, modified, and built environments. Second, chapters five through seven deal with the challenges of local sustainability. The authors of these three chapters perform scholarship on social, economic and ecological dimensions of local sustainability. Third, chapters eight through eleven deal with local environmental politics. The authors of these four chapters examine the various dynamics of local political processes in communities across three continents. These scholars explicitly examine how the structure of political opportunities in different localities affects the mobilization necessary to recognize and ameliorate environmental problems. We anticipate that this volume furthers the cross-pollination of ideas between community sociologists and environmental sociologists. Ultimately, the heightened and sustained communication between these two groups of scholars may lead to emergent theoretical, methodological, and substantive insights that may contribute to the discipline of sociology more generally. Different sections of the book address ecological and social significance of place, challenges of local sustainability, and local environmental politics. The book enhances the interplay of ideas between community sociologists and environmental sociologists, and stimulates thought that will contribute to the general field of sociology.

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Both traditional and progressive curricula are inadequate for the task of responding to the economic, political, social, and cultural changes that have occurred as a result of globalization. This book documents some of the ongoing work occurring in early childhood settings that is aimed at improving, and ultimately transforming, early childhood practice in these changed and changing times. The authors do not simply critique developmental approaches or the increasing standardization of the field. Instead, they describe how they are playing around with postmodern ideas in practice and developing unique approaches to the diverse educational circumstances that confront early childhood educators. Whether it is preparing teachers, using materials, or developing policies, each chapter provides readers with possibilities for enacting pedagogies that are responsive to the contemporary circumstances shaping the lives of young children.

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What counts as ethnography and what counts as good ethnography are both highly contested. This volume brings together chapters presenting a diversity of views on some of the current issues and practices in ethnographic methodology. It does not try to present a single coherent view but, through its heterogeneity, illustrates the strengths and impact of the debate. The collection includes chapters on the ethnographic research process; the use of photographic diaries; the idea of toleration in the research process; and the personal aspects of research. It has chapters that question generalisation; perceive ethnography as a potential form of surveillance; analyse the notion of display in ethnography; critique the way culture is commonly theorised; and examine the possibilities of comparative ethnographic work. It also includes and exchange of views between Martyn Hammersley and Barbara Korth on partisan research.

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Intangible forms of capital are being recognized in both research and practice as essential resources for fueling company growth. Forms of intangible capital include: intellectual, organizational, human, relationship, social, political, innovation, and collaborative. This volume consists of papers that focus on collaborative capital - broadly defined as the organizational assets that enable people to work together well. It is manifested in such outcomes as increased innovation and creativity, commitment and involvement, flexibility and adaptability, leveraging of knowledge, and enhanced learning. 'Collaborative capital' represents a core competency or strategic resource essential for building competitive advantage by enabling the creation of networks of conversations and relationships. However, it is seldom developed in a deliberate and systematic way, but rather as an incidental outcome of formal and informal organizational change. It may be deliberately increased by change in organizational systems, practices, design, learning, and culture. The term collaborative capital has seldom been used in research literature dealing with how people work together. Consequently, the meaning, measurement, and impact of collaborative capital in practice have not been explored to any significant extent. The papers in this volume launch that process with teaming contexts ranging from alliances and partnerships, to cross-national teams and cross-disciplinary teams.

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Enduring scholarly interest in the process of strategy making stems from an abiding assumption that some ways of strategizing are more efficacious than others, and thus lead to higher firm performance in the long run; higher than luck alone would bring. Expressions of interest in and endorsements of the strategy process are abundant in the academic literature. For senior managers and leaders, the question of how to make effective strategies stands usually at the top of their agenda. Not surprisingly then, the quest to uncover stable principles of good strategy making has attracted much support and interest over the years. Researchers who responded to the strategy process challenge have known many moments of exhilaration and disillusion. Scholarly insights took long to accumulate, perhaps too long to serve as the sole basis for helping the eager practitioner in search of simpler but applicable advice. As a result, a significant and often highly visible part of the field is characterized by a controversial normative orientation. But beneath this dramatic and unstable facade lies a gradual, patient, and seemingly more stable, hard-at-work, academic enterprise. Scholarly strategy process research apparently goes on, perhaps more than ever, suggesting that there is something fundamental and deeply interesting and profound about how strategies are made, where they originate in organizations, and how the process of strategy making impacts the performance of organizations. This volume is the culmination of our three year effort to explore and uncover this relatively hidden or at least less visible side of the strategy process field. Taken together, the sixteen chapters represent current scholarly strategy process research.

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This first volume of "Research in Competence-Based Management (RCBM)" signals the launch of a long-awaited outlet for peer-reviewed research papers contributing to advancement of competence-based management theory. Each volume in "RCBM" will be focused on a key aspect of competence theory. The focus in this volume on "The Marketing Process in Organizational Competence" reflects the fundamental market orientation in competence theory's foundational concepts and theoretical development. Papers in this volume explore key aspects of the common conceptual foundations of competence and marketing theories, and help to make clear the great relevance of marketing theory for competence-based management theory and practice, as well as the relevance of competence theory for marketing theory and practice. Papers by authors from both the marketing and competence fields elaborate the nature of the marketing process and clarify the ways in which the marketing process is integral to building and leveraging organizational competences.

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"Multi-Level Issues in Strategy and Methods" is Volume 4 of "Research in Multi-Level Issues", an annual series that provides an outlet for the discussion of multi-level problems and solutions across a variety of fields of study. Using a scientific debate format of a key scholarly essay followed by two commentaries and a rebuttal, we present in this series theoretical work, significant empirical studies, methodological developments, analytical techniques, and philosophical treatments to advance the field of multi-level studies, regardless of disciplinary perspective. Similar to Volumes 1 (Yammarino and Dansereau, 2002), 2 (Dansereau and Yammarino, 2003), and 3 (Yammarino and Dansereau), this volume, Volume 4, contains five major essays with commentaries and rebuttals that cover a range of topics, but in the realms of strategy and research methods.In particular, the five "critical essays" offer extensive literature reviews, new model developments, methodological advancements, and some empirical data for the study of innovation, strategic performance, upper echelons, latent growth modeling, and intra-class correlations. While each of the major essays, and associated commentaries and rebuttals, is unique in orientation, they show a common bond in raising and addressing multi-level issues or discussing problems and solutions that involve multiple levels of analysis.

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The competence-based perspective on strategy and management emerged in the 1990s as a new approach to developing strategy and management theory and practice. In the past decade, the focus on organizational competences - and the resources, capabilities, and processes that create competences - has provided a highly productive "broad church" for theory development, research, and practice in both strategic and general management. Authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners working within the competence perspective, the papers in this volume contribute to developing a better theoretical and practical understanding of interfirm interactions that significantly affect an organization's competences.The papers present both theoretical developments and empirical research based on a variety of case studies and other research in diverse industrial and geographical contexts. The papers in this volume develop three themes. Part I includes papers that address the key issues of managing activities in an organization's competence building and leveraging processes that span the boundaries of two organizations. The papers in Part II investigate the role of networks and strategic alliances in competence building and leveraging processes. Part III presents papers that investigate competitive interactions between firms in their competence leveraging activities.

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The contributors to this volume seriously engage issues in the crossroads where biology, psychology, and economics meet. The volume makes several important contributions to the area and provides an overview of the current state of knowledge. Biologist David Sloan Wilson, psychologists Robert Kurzban and C.A. Aktipis, economists Geoffrey Hodgson, Paul Rubin and Evelyn Gick, and jurist David Friedman consider altruism, selfishness, group selection, methodological individualism, dominance hierarchies, and other issues relating evolutionary psychology to economics. Several contributors, such as Viktor Vanberg and Brian Loasby, pay special attention to the role of F. A. Hayek and other "Austrian" thinkers in shaping evolutionary approaches to economic theory. Theoretical biologist Deby Cassill relates her revolutionary theory of "skew selection" in biology to perennial issues in political economy. The volume includes a symposium on group selection and methodological individualism. In an important paper, D. G. Whitman argues that group selection and methodological individualism are "compatible and complementary. Comments from Elliot Sober & David Sloan Wilson, Richard Langlois, Todd Zywicki, and Adam Gifford offer a heterogeneous set of responses to Whitman's argument. Roger Koppl's introduction constitutes a review essay and includes an argument that "Austrian" economists have a comparative advantage in bringing the Verstehen tradition of social thought into contact with recent work in biology and evolutionary psychology.

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Over the centuries work for persons with severe mental illness has ranged from virtual slave labor to institutional peonage to contemporary rehabilitative programs that seek to assist individuals in re-entering the workplace. How best to do this remains an open question however, and has captured the attention of researchers from a broad range of disciplines, from rehabilitation research to labor economics. This volume provides a sense of this diversity and an overview of research perspectives in this critically important area. Included are chapters discussing important new theoretical frameworks, issues in the evaluation of programmatic efforts to enhance employment opportunities, and discussions grounded in large scale social and economic perspectives.

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The accounting profession, especially in the US, has lost credibility and this has serious implications for environmental reporting. As a number of papers in this volume attest, the amount of environmental reporting has increased in the period from the 1980s-mid 1990s. However, the value of those disclosures is open to serious question. The research for most of the papers in this volume was completed prior to the Enron scandal, but the findings indicate a need to re-evaluate what is reported about the firm's relationship to the physical environment.

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Advances in Accounting Education is a refereed, academic research annual whose purpose is to meet the needs of faculty members interested in ways to improve their classroom instruction. It publishes thoughtful, well-developed articles that are readable, relevant and reliable. Articles are peer-reviewed and may be either empirical or non-empirical. They emphasize pedagogy, i.e., explaining how faculty members can improve their teaching methods, or how accounting units can improve their curricula/programs. The series examines diverse issues such as software use, cultural differences, perceptions of the profession, and more.

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This series publishes monograph-length conceptual papers designed to promote theory and research on important substantive and methodological topics in the field of human resources management. Volume 21 contains eight papers on critical issues in the field of human resources management, thus continuing the tradition of the series to develop a more informed understanding of the field.

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The contributions in this 22nd volume of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory" explore the arguments for and against a view of the world in which multiple, distinct and conflicting societies differ both over time and contemporaneously.

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Elsevier's "Research on Accounting Ethics" series is devoted exclusively to the advancement of ethics research and education in the profession and practice of accounting. Its threefold mission is to: advance innovative and applied ethics research in all accounting-related disciplines on a global basis; improve ethics education in and throughout the professional accounting and management curricula at undergraduate and graduate levels; and provide a source of information for the professional accounting and auditing community for integrating ethics and good business practices in public firms, business corporations and governmental organizations. The series features articles on a broad range of important and timely topics, including professionalism, social responsibility, individual morality, accountability, good business practices in public accounting and the litigation crisis. Papers are empirical or theoretical in nature, and draw upon paradigms in related disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, theology, economics and sociology. The eighth volume of "Research on Accounting Ethics" addresses a wide range of issues including faculty perceptions on the inclusion of business ethics in the curriculum and the importance of context in investigating auditors' moral abilities.

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This text documents the various ways in which knowledge and technology transfer happen in practice. In reporting on the travel of thoughts and things, the authors in the volume undermine commonly held ideas about technology transfer. Their story shows how the process of transfer transforms and reshapes the object that travels. More importantly, they show how the travel of knowledge and technology results in new socio-technical arrangements, as well as in new socio-technical objects. These stories also relate how the authors themselves take part in achieving such processes of transfer and transformation. As anthropologists, consultants, and science studies researchers they do not stand outside the transfers that they describe. The volume is, therefore, a commentary not only on the practice of knowledge and technology transfer, but also on the practice of observation and intervention.

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This work brings together empirical research and thematic commentaries which chart out research directions for politically-inflected studies of organizational and institutional change. The chapters give practical voice to the theoretical questions and research designs of an emerging agenda for organization theory that engages questions about broader social structure and organizations with theory in cultural analysis, stratification, and entrepreneurship. Cases include historical studies of the evolution of the fire insurance industry in the 19th century, studies of the organizational vitality of contemporary evangelical Protestantism, the emergence of gay and lesbian identity organizations, challenges in the institutional structuring of the mutual fund industry the post-Soviet Russia, stratification and status organizing processes in entrepreneurial organizations, studies of social movements and organizations, both external to and inside of organizations.

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Financial Risk Measurement and Management is an area of endeavor that has had its profile raised every time a significant monetary loss occurs as a result of the utilization (or abuse) of derivative instruments. However, the subject has transcended being only a subject of topical interest. An understanding of Financial Risk Measurement and Management has become essential to survival in all business activity. Financial Risk relates to the volatility of unexpected outcome or movements in financial variables. Financial risk variables arise generically in the form of interest rate risk, foreign exchange risk, equity risk and commodity risk. This volume provides empirical or theoretical insight on those risk variables. The goal of "Financial Risk and Financial Risk Management" is to provide both laymen and professionals with current analysis, theoretical risk measurement models and empirical findings that will extend their understanding of the financial risk environment. This volume contains findings of many leading academic, professional and regulatory figures in the Financial Risk Arena. The Financial Risk coverage in the volume is eclectic and not encyclopedic. It is impossible to be all-inclusive in one volume and as such the editors included what they felt were an excellent array of current research efforts pertinent to Financial Risk.

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This volume contributes to the comparative study of military conscription. Issues discussed include: a conceptual clarification of conscription as distinguished from volunteerism and militia service; the emergence of the citizen soldier model; patterns of anti-militarism before World War I; conscription in third world armies; gender-issues in relation to military service; the present phenomenon of child soldiers in Africa; the decline of conscript armies in Western Europe. A review section discusses the contribution of rational choice theory to the analysis of conscription into military forces.

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Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to both practitioners and academicians. As a respected professional journal, AIMA is well poised to meet their information needs. Featured in volume 10 is an article reporting on the findings of an in-depth field study at Bell Atlantic, now Verizon. The impact of teaming on productivity, quality, and employee satisfaction was measured using research design methods not commonly found in field study research. Another article reports field research describing how two firms used accounting in new product development and proposes a conceptual framework hypothesizing how management accountants' participation can enhance the firm's performance. The remaining nine articles deal with a variety of topics such as the frequency and perceived usefulness of strategic management accounting, the relationship between a product's revenue and cost functions and much more. The eleven articles represent relevant, theoretically sound, and practical studies the discipline can greatly benefit from, providing a high level of contributions to management accounting research and practice. Accountants at all levels who work in corporations and not-for-profit organizations will be interested. Contents

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This text discusses research on learning potential assessment and cognitive training. Moreover, several contributions discuss the relationship between individual learning and social interaction during learning potential assessment. It has five themes, covering research on learning potential assessment and cognitive training. These themes are: theoretical base of LPA, reciprocity in LPA, LPA and cognitive training, cross cultural perspectives, LPA related research and cognitive education.

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This volume provides a collection of cross-country analysis of innovation, showing that the effects of innovation upon firms vary from one country to another. Incumbents perish in one country, while they thrive in the same industry in another country. Startups thrive in response to new technological breakthroughs in one country and struggle in another country. Drawing upon studies of semiconductors, disk drives and biotechnology, and examining institutions such as patent systems and venture capital, this volume takes issue with predictions of convergence, and convincingly demonstrates the multiple paths that technologies and innovations can follow.

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