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Threats of extreme events, such as terrorist attacks or infrastructure breakdown, are potentially highly disruptive events for all types of organizations. This paper seeks to take a political perspective to power in strategic decision making and how this influences planning for extreme events.

A sample of 160 informants drawn from 135 organizations, which are part of the critical national infrastructure in the UK, forms the empirical basis of the paper. Most of these organizations had publicly placed business continuity and preparedness as a strategic priority. The paper adopts a qualitative approach, coding data from focus groups.

In nearly all cases there is a pre‐existing dominant coalition which keeps business continuity decisions off the strategic agenda. The only exceptions to this are a handful of organizations which provide continuous production, such as some utilities, where disruption to business as usual can be readily quantified. The data reveal structural and decisional elements of the exercise of power. Structurally, the dominant coalition centralizes control by ensuring that only a few functional interests participate in decision making.

Decisional elements of power emphasize the dominance of calculative rationality where decisions are primarily made on information and arguments which can be quantified. Finally, the paper notes the recursive aspect of power relations whereby agency and structure are mutually constitutive over time. Organizational structures of control are maintained, despite the involvement of managers charged with organizational preparedness and resilience, who remain outside the dominant coalition.

The paper constitutes a first attempt to show how planning for emergencies fits within the strategy‐making process and how politically controlled this process is.

In this chapter we discuss the dynamics of convergence-divergence between organic and non-organic farming systems. We are specifically interested in how and in what ways organic systems emerge into a new system that synthesizes the diverse qualities of competing systems. Or, will these systems continue to diverge because of their path dependencies and contradictory, unresolvable logics? Alternatively, are we confronted with conversion? Following a discussion of the origin of organic agriculture and the IFOAM Principles, we explore differentiation of two agricultural paradigms that was developed more than 20 years ago before the rise of GMOs. This comparison identifies the key features of both systems and a first interpretation on the potential of convergence-divergence. Third, we take a macro-look at agro-food chain that offers insights on the convergence-divergence potential in the context of global, economic, market, political, and societal dynamics. Fourth, we discuss convergence-divergence at the production level comparing the four agricultural systems. Finally, we reflect and assess on the explanatory potential of our study for the future development of organic and non-organic agriculture/farming. We conclude that there is more evidence for conversion than for convergence.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the global activities, highlighting the UK, concerned with farm assurance schemes and associated food labelling seeking to identify their contribution towards improving primary production standards.

A desk study focusing on published literature and historical documentation.

The majority of primary production standards are based upon codes of good practice with only tenuous links between the standards and the required environmental outcomes. Owing to the difficulties of comparing like with like here is little conclusive evidence that such standards are producing environmental benefits.

If it depends on assurance schemes to improve farming practices then a European‐wide standard is required that is not compromised by variations in national laws and codes of practice.

This review is of academic value and of value to those working to improve primary production standards. It presents arguments for introducing environmental outcome based measures into the UK assurance schemes.

Researchers recommend a reorganization of the medical profession into larger groups with a multispecialty mix. We analyze whether there is evidence for the superiority of these models and if this organizational transformation is underway.

We summarize the evidence on scale and scope economies in physician group practice, and then review the trends in physician group size and specialty mix to conduct survivorship tests of the most efficient models.

The distribution of physician groups exhibits two interesting tails. In the lower tail, a large percentage of physicians continue to practice in small, physician-owned practices. In the upper tail, there is a small but rapidly growing percentage of large groups that have been organized primarily by non-physician owners.

While our analysis includes no original data, it does collate all known surveys of physician practice characteristics and group practice formation to provide a consistent picture of physician organization.

Our review suggests that scale and scope economies in physician practice are limited. This may explain why most physicians have retained their small practices.

Larger, multispecialty groups have been primarily organized by non-physician owners in vertically integrated arrangements. There is little evidence supporting the efficiencies of such models and some concern they may pose anticompetitive threats.

This is the first comprehensive review of the scale and scope economies of physician practice in nearly two decades. The research results do not appear to have changed much; nor has much changed in physician practice organization.

This article examines how contact with the police led to the death of Michael Brown (an unarmed 18-year-old Black teenager from Ferguson, Missouri, who was shot and killed during an altercation with a police officer). And, how Darren Wilson (the White police officer from the Ferguson Police Department who shot and killed Michael Brown) was portrayed in mainstream newspaper articles covering the story of Brown’s death.

Using both frame analysis and Hall’s framework of discursive domains for organizing and making sense of events in social life, we analyzed news coverage of Brown in three of the top circulating daily newspapers in the US: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. The Lexis Nexis database was used to retrieve a set of newspapers using the search term “Michael Brown.” Articles from the three leading newspapers were collected from the day the event occurred, August 9, 2014, through the end of the year, December 31, 2014.

The news articles used in this study were mostly written with an episodic frame. The articles presenting the socioeconomic background of Brown and Wilson were described as profiles on each individual and the neighborhood they came from, rather than a discussion about where they fell on the economic structure of this country and the larger, upstream forces that might influence those positions. The feelings and attitudes of the reader are also likely to be influenced by details included in the articles and how they were presented.

The findings contribute to the broader literature looking at the relationships between police and Black communities. Public health can play a role in advocating and facilitating programs that build better linkages between police and community. The public health field can take a leadership role in holding the news media accountable when they are engaging in frenetic inaction. Only by having difficult and challenging conversations that examines the upstream causes of violence and deaths like Brown’s, can we make progress in preventing them.

The purpose of this paper was to analyse the demographic, crop choice, institutional and environmental factors that will influence the vegetable growers in Bono and Ahafo regions of Ghana to produce organic vegetables. The study also assessed the knowledge level of vegetable growers on organic certification processes.

Primary data were collected with the help of a structured questionnaire from 120 vegetable growers via a multistage sampling technique. The Heckman selection model was used to analyse the factors that influence farmers' willingness to adopt organic production as well as the intensity of adoption.

In this study, pepper (Capsicum spp) production, residential status, knowledge of organic certification processes, perceived negative environmental effect of conventional farming on the soil, and climate change positively influenced willingness to produce organic vegetables. Likewise, pepper production perceived negative environmental effect of conventional farming on the soil positively influenced the intensity of adoption. Household headship status, garden egg (Solanum integrifolium) production, perceived knowledge on grading and standards of vegetables, as well as the perception that only pesticides can be used to control vegetable pests negatively influenced the willingness to produce organic vegetables however perceived expertise of the farmer on grades and standards influenced intensity of adoption negatively.

In Ghana, even though most vegetable farmers do not have the requisite knowledge in the safe handling of pesticides, usage is widespread. Subsequent to this, is a health risk to farmers, consumers and the environment. As a result, there is a growing awareness that organic agriculture has a role to play in addressing problems associated with agrochemical use and over usage. However, most studies are consumer oriented with limited empirical research on the willingness to produce organics by farmers.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2019-0723

Three types of industrial buyer-seller relational process models are available: joining theory, stage theory, and state theory. However, historically, these models have developed based on the knowledge and cultural context of the Western world. Several researchers note that national culture may have an impact on international industrial buyer-seller relationships. Including culture in the models is highly important, especially as the business environment is increasingly more global and different countries have different business cultures. The goal of this paper is to define the most suitable industrial buyer-seller relational process models for describing relationships in various contexts. The paper includes a through literature review and a single case study in order to reach this objective. A new state theory model evolved during the research. It consists of two beginning states: searching and starting; four purely middles states: constant/static, decline, growth, and troubled; and a purely end state: termination. The state of dormant/inert is both a middle state and an end state, that is, when the relational actors are not in contact does not mean that the relationship has ended, but instead, for example, new legislation may have been implemented, which requires the actors to evaluate their relationship and its future. A relationship goes through the two beginning states in the order mentioned above, but after that, any state may occur.

Drawing on Dewey’s accounts of learning the Alexander Technique (AT), this chapter explores why he found the process so powerful. As AT teachers, we explain how the technique enables practitioners to become aware of fixed, unconscious habits and to bring them under conscious control. With a new student, work begins with physical habits. However, because physical, cognitive, emotional and social functionings are interdependent, AT lessons typically enable flexibility in each of these spheres. Dewey’s writings show his strong theoretical commitment to the idea of learning as practical and experiential. His AT lessons were truly revelatory in providing him with both direct, embodied experience of the power of habit to drive human behaviour and a practical means of becoming aware of, and resisting, his own habits of thought and action.

Perceptions are shaped by habit in such a way that the senses can be unreliable in working out how to respond in a given situation. Dewey’s practice of the AT revealed to him the dissonance between his habitual self in activity and his conscious view of himself. Dewey was challenged by his AT lessons, which required an open, enquiring attitude and sense of humility. In the AT, Dewey found a means of pursuing an active, critical, self-directed process of discovery and adaptation akin to childhood learning. AT begins with the self, our ‘tool of tools’. Through fundamentally modifying the self, the AT supports the openness and flexible response to the physical and social world that characterize productive experiential learning.