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This article examines the framework of the Agreement for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and assesses its impacts on domestic autonomy and authority in matters of food and environmental safety. The direct impact of the SPS Agreement appears quite limited, as only a few cases have arisen. The Agreement has not proven to be a pervasive tool for the purpose of overturning domestic policies on food or environmental safety, despite the fact that the WTO Panel or Appellate Body decisions have found that domestic measures violate the terms of the SPS Agreement. Limited enforcement mechanisms provide protection for domestic policies, though perhaps at the price of trade sanctions. Moreover, theoretical literature suggests that the SPS Agreement may indeed enhance democratic values by discounting the influence of special interests and retaining ultimate authority for enforcement within the discretion of domestic government. Important issues nevertheless remain, including the role of the precautionary principle in policymaking and the means to address normative values, such as developing moral consensus on animal welfare, in trade matters. Trade has proven to be a catalyst for change and cooperative development in this context.

Despite years of research into consumer socialization, little research examines men’s roles in consumer socialization processes. The purpose of this paper is to attend to this gap and to investigate consumer socialization processes in single-father households.

To study consumer socialization processes, this paper develops its insights using grounded theory, deploying qualitative data to develop theory. The data include long interviews with both fathers and their children used to understand the processes of consumer socialization.

This paper finds six socialization processes: entrustment, entrainment, education, emprise, estrangement and elevation. These processes emerge based on different types of household resource gaps or aspects of men’s gender identity.

The main implications are to study the roles played by cultural context and family type in socialization processes. Studies could examine whether the processes uncovered here occur in other family settings, as well as whether they vary based on children’s age and gender.

Household brands, products and services could target resource-scarce households using appeals that portray offerings as a means to develop children’s responsibilities, independence and involvement in household management. Marketers could also use advertising appeals that depict playful product usage and learning situations or more broadly position brands as identity brands making them more appealing to men who are striving to be better fathers.

This paper uniquely identifies a number of previously uncovered consumer socialization processes, as well as factors that influence them.

In a multicase qualitative study, inclusive school leaders attempted to move their schools from the excessive use of suspension; they employed positive behavioral intervention and support (PBIS) as an alternative they thought would be therapeutic rather than punitive. However, the PBIS system traded a disciplinary system of control for a medicalized system of restoring order. Unwanted behavior came to be defined as evidence of possible behavioral disability. Hence, the PBIS system exchanged one deficit identity of “disorderly” student for another of “disordered” student, subsuming other considerations of race, class, and gender identity. Following the study’s findings, this chapter proposes more liberatory practices for PBIS that interrupt dominant culture discourses of normal behavior and power, and hold promise for establishing justice, rather than simply reinstating order.

Negative attitudes towards “personality disorder” are common among mental health professionals. This study aims to design a psychoeducational training targeting attitudes to “personality disorder” for staff working in a London psychiatric hospital. Its impact on staff attitudes was evaluated.

Mental health clinicians were recruited from five acute psychiatric wards. Feasibility of implementing the training was measured. A free-association exercise explored baseline attitudes to “personality disorder” and visual analogue scales assessed staff attitudes pre- and post-training. Content analysis of staff feedback was carried out.

Psychoeducational training was found to be feasible, well-attended and highly valued by ward staff (N = 47). Baseline results revealed negative perceptions of “personality disorder”. Post-training, significant improvements in understanding, levels of compassion and attitudes to working with service users with a diagnosis of a “personality disorder” were observed. Staff feedback highlighted desire for further training and support.

The sample size was relatively small and there was no control group, so findings should be interpreted with caution.

The findings highlight the need for support for staff working with service users with diagnoses of “personality disorder” on acute psychiatric wards. Providing regular training with interactive components may promote training as a resource for staff well-being. Planning to ensure service users’ and carers’ views are incorporated into the design of future training will be important.

This study is innovative in that it investigates the impact of a brief psychoeducational training on “personality disorder” designed for mental health staff on acute psychiatric wards.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

This study aims to explore surprising gifts received and given by close relations to identify the variables involved in creating surprising gifts. The analysis of the viewpoints of the giver and the recipient, reflecting their profiles, leads to recommendations for retailers.

An exploratory, small-scale, open-ended questionnaire (48 respondents) produces 43 (38) accounts of surprising gifts given (received), informed further by in-depth interviews (eight informants, both givers and recipients of surprising gifts).

This study identifies and elaborates on the variables (why, when, what, where, who and how, and their combinations) that define surprising gift giving, from both giver and recipient perspectives. The findings indicate a paradox: even if givers or recipients prefer a surprising gift, they might give or wish for an unsurprising gift to avoid disappointment.

Further research should confirm the findings using representative samples. Moreover, gender differences in surprising gift giving should be investigated further. Finally, the exact characteristics and properties that make common objects potential candidates for successful surprising gifts should be studied further.

The discussion has relevant implications for manufacturers and retailers. For example, if recipients are surprised, happy and satisfied, they likely exhibit higher brand recall. The recipient’s (happy versus not happy) emotions also have spillover effects on the giver’s. Thus, retailers should provide assistance in the store and advertise their salespeople as experts who can offer advice about selecting appropriate gifts. The exact characteristics and properties that make common objects potential candidates for successful surprising gifts should be studied further.

The systematic account of all six variables, not previously analyzed in the literature, provides rich insights into surprising gift giving. The discussion of the study of givers and recipients supplements these insights.

This chapter describes sociological research on the material and spatial dimensions of everyday family life in the United States, with a specific emphasis on how children’s agency is manifest in the display and use of childhood and parenthood objects in home spaces. Children’s agency is framed as a juxtaposition of individual control and cultural and structural constraint, but also as it positions children in relation to adults, home spaces in relation to not-home spaces, and families in relation to other social realms such as the marketplace, schools, and the digital world. Three research topics are featured, all of which stem from the author’s projects spanning the last decade. These include parenting roles as shown in the taking and managing of digital and physical family photographs, children’s use of technology as a way to tell the story of parent–child connectedness in families separated into two homes, and young adults’ use of objects and spaces to signify role transition into adulthood. The central themes emerging from this research are supported by a theoretical foundation that combines Corsaro’s (2012) interpretive reproduction of childhood alongside Anderson, Moore, and Suski’s (2016) call for material mindfulness in sociological investigations of the home.

This study aims to examine empirically the existence of four classical and four emerging buyer–supplier relationship (BSR) types and how they differ in terms of behavioral dynamics and performance measures.

This study uses an online survey to collect data from 371 purchasing managers in the USA.

A cluster analysis statistically supports the existence of five of these eight BSR types, including strategic/bilateral partnership, market/discrete, supplier-led collaboration, captive supplier/buyer dominant and captive buyer/supplier dominant BSRs. Further, ANOVA tests show that these five BSRs differ in terms of behavioral outcomes and performance measures.

This study is based on a cross-sectional survey so it cannot examine how these BSR types may evolve over time, and it is not suitable to examine some rare types of BSRs. In addition, this study does not consider contextual factors that may moderate the influence of BSR types on the behavioral dynamics and performance measures.

Managers should consider the potential to be able to develop and enhance a strategic/bilateral relationship with their supply chain partners, which in at least some circumstances can lead to superior performance results. Similar observations can be made with respect to supplier-led and, to a lesser degree, buyer-led collaboration.

Most existing research of the BSR types is largely a product of theoretical classifications, and there is also a lack of research of their performance implications. This study fills these gaps in the literature.