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Caroline Millman, Dan Rigby, Davey Jones and Gareth Edwards-Jones
Food poisoning attributable to the home generates a large disease burden, yet is an unregulated and largely unobserved domain. Investigating food safety awareness and routine…
Abstract
Purpose
Food poisoning attributable to the home generates a large disease burden, yet is an unregulated and largely unobserved domain. Investigating food safety awareness and routine practices is fraught with difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to develop and apply a new survey tool to elicit awareness of food hazards. Data generated by the approach are analysed to investigate the impact of oberservable heterogeneity on food safety awareness.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop a novel Watch-and-Click survey tool to assess the level of awareness of a set of hazardous food safety behaviours in the domestic kitchen. Participants respond to video footage stimulus, in which food hazards occur, via mouse clicks/screen taps. This real-time response data is analysed via estimation of count and logit models to investigate how hazard identification patterns vary over observable characteristics.
Findings
User feedback regarding the Watch-and-Click tool approach is extremely positive. Substantive results include significantly higher hazard awareness among the under 60s. People who thought they knew more than the average person did indeed score higher but people with food safety training/experience did not. Vegetarians were less likely to identify four of the five cross-contamination hazards they observed.
Originality/value
A new and engaging survey tool to elicit hazard awareness with real-time scores and feedback is developed, with high levels of user engagement and stakeholder interest. The approach may be applied to elicit hazard awareness in a wide range of contexts including education, training and research.
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This study aims to explore the biodiversity reporting by the largest dairy company in China (the Yili Group). The authors use signalling theory, legitimacy theory, institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the biodiversity reporting by the largest dairy company in China (the Yili Group). The authors use signalling theory, legitimacy theory, institutional theory and stakeholder theory to understand the Yili Group’s motivations to report biodiversity disclosures.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses content analysis, guided by a biodiversity disclosure index, to explore and investigate the disclosure themes and tone for the stand-alone Yili Group biodiversity reports for the period 2017–2019. The content analysis is supplemented by a selection of interviews used to obtain additional insights into the Yili Group’s biodiversity reporting.
Findings
A gradual improvement is noted in the Yili Group’s biodiversity reporting over time, while the need for improvement remains as the Yili Group matures in its reporting. The company tends to report symbolic disclosures rather than substantive ones and is motivated more by external pressures and/or incentives than by morality and/or stakeholder accountability: this pushes the company towards more dominant symbolic biodiversity disclosure practices.
Practical implications
Findings are particularly relevant to the management of Chinese companies planning to publish biodiversity reports or enhance biodiversity disclosure practices as they draw attention to specific aspects of biodiversity reporting which require improvement. Improvements in biodiversity reporting provide a signal that such reporting is maturing and that organizations are recognizing the need for managing their biodiversity impact.
Social implications
Given that the Yili Group is a pioneer among Chinese firms in publishing biodiversity reports, this paper suggests other companies’ imitation of the Yili Group and helps promote the diffusion of biodiversity reporting in China. In addition, this paper provides a basis for a call for Chinese companies to strengthen their awareness and accountability regarding biodiversity and the conservation thereof.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to explore biodiversity reporting and disclosure in a China-based organization. While the study deals with one company, the findings are broadly applicable for other organizations seeking to undertake biodiversity accounting and reporting. Considering that biodiversity accounting is a research area which is still under-investigated, this paper aims to respond to the call of Jones and Solomon (2013) for pushing the boundaries in biodiversity accounting.
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At a recent meeting of the Manchester section of the Society of Chemical Industry, Professor F. Gowland Hopkins, in an interesting paper entitled “Some Chemical Qualities of the…
Abstract
At a recent meeting of the Manchester section of the Society of Chemical Industry, Professor F. Gowland Hopkins, in an interesting paper entitled “Some Chemical Qualities of the Living Cell,” referred to the important part which vitamins play in foods, and to the dangers arising from the continual ingestion of chemical preservatives in foods. Professor Gowland Hopkins observed that the conception of a vitamin had certain encrustations about it which prevented everybody accepting what were really said to be very important scientific facts. He had not attempted to define a vitamin. In an adult community, under good economic conditions, the need for something other than a supply of energy did not seem to assert itself, because the vitamins were always present in all natural foods. Special circumstances were required to make their importance obvious, or they would have been discovered many years ago instead of in the past ten years or so. Being connected with the subject of diet they naturally attracted the attention of quacks, and therefore a good deal of nonsense had been written about them; while, on the other hand, it was equally true what was written about vitamins gave a great opportunity for trade stunts. Vitamins had not yet been isolated, so that their chemical composition was unknown. What he wished to urge was that the facts known about vitamins were important. You may feed an animal upon a diet consisting of the most excellent protein and really superior fat and best carbohydrate in the market, and supply it with the necessary salts in the right ratio. So long as those materials were pure and not mixed with traces of any other ingredients the dietary would be eaten, enjoyed, fully digested, thoroughly broken down in the body and its energy extracted, and yet any animal continuing to eat it would inevitably die. In order to convert that dietary into a perfect one for the maintenance of life materials must be added which acted in almost infinitesimal concentration within the cellular structure of the living organism. The only present definition of a vitamin of a definite constitution was that it was a substance of extreme nutritive importance which acted in infinitesimal concentration. In the case of Fat Soluble Vitamin A. 0·004 mgms added to a synthetic dietary made just the dilference between certain death and excellent life in the case of a rat weighing 100 grms. They must not despise the rat; it was, in all essentials, of the same physical constitution as human beings. In the case of a 70 kgm man 2½ mgs would be required to bridge the difference between health and death. Only under exceptional circumstances, such as a state of war, did the lack of vitamins intrude itself in respect of adults, but the feeding of infants must be placed in a different category.
A system which depends on a sequence of slow extensions and developments instead of on the sudden application of a thought‐out and comprehensive code is liable to present…
Abstract
A system which depends on a sequence of slow extensions and developments instead of on the sudden application of a thought‐out and comprehensive code is liable to present surprising lacunæ. Such a system we see in our laws and enactments relating to public health, and one of the most obvious of the lacunæ is in regard to the protection of certain of our food supplies from bacterial pollution. In some directions the safeguards are very efficient, in others they are inadequate or non‐existent. Dr. C. E. Goddard has recently drawn attention to the dangers of bacterial contamination from the sale of bread delivered without wrappers, of fruit—grapes, dates, and others—without any protection, while the numerous articles in grocers' shops which attract flies and which are not protected from them form other risks, the same being said of the fingering of meat in butchers shops. As Medical Officer of Health for the Wembley area, which includes the British Empire Exhibition, 1924, Dr. Goddard will be brought in contact with food problems of great importance. While many such sources of food pollution might be cited, it is perhaps easy to exaggerate their significance in respect of public health. They form serious defects in our methods of food distribution, but of considerably greater importance is the absence of adequate control over the preparation and of subsequent care in respect of what may be called “prepared meat foods” and the lack of supervision over those who handle foods destined for consumption by the public.
Diana J. Wong-MingJi, Eric H. Kessler, Shaista E. Khilji and Shanthi Gopalakrishnan
The purpose of this paper is to explore leadership styles and patterns in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the USA in order to contribute to a greater understanding of global…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore leadership styles and patterns in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the USA in order to contribute to a greater understanding of global leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses cultural mythologies as a lens (Kessler and Wong-MingJi, 2009a) to extract the most favored leadership traits within selected countries. In doing so, the paper explores historical trajectories and core values of each country to identify their distinctive characteristics. Additionally, leadership styles of well-known business leaders in each culture are examined to develop a comparative discussion of global leadership patterns and styles.
Findings
The paper finds that leaders may share same characteristics across countries, however, their behavioral expressions tend to unfold differently within each context. The paper argues that without context, meanings embedded in cultural mythologies and behaviors often become lost. The paper concludes that a comparative analysis of selected countries reveals a more complex and rich array of cultural meanings, thus offering support to a contextual view of leadership.
Research limitations/implications
Examination of cultural mythologies on leadership makes important theoretical contributions by illustrating that cultural mythologies indeed shape the values, behaviors, and attitudes of global leaders, and provide three important functions that are identified as: cultural bridging, meaning making, and contextual nuancing.
Practical implications
Understanding comparative leadership patterns is critical in international business. The paper offers cultural mythologies as a tool for leaders who seek to cross-cultural boundaries in developing long term and high-quality productive international business relationships.
Originality/value
The value of the study lies in developing a comparative analysis of leadership patterns in three Southeast Asian countries and the USA with the help of cultural mythologies. The paper urges that scholars to move beyond quantification of cultural dimensions to a more contextualized understanding of leadership.
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Graham Barnett, Joseph D Hendry, Alan Duckworth, Gerry M Smith and Peter Jackaman
BEFORE THE French Revolution a number of libraries were open to the public, often the result of public‐spirited donations on the part of local men of letters or wealthy bourgeois…
Abstract
BEFORE THE French Revolution a number of libraries were open to the public, often the result of public‐spirited donations on the part of local men of letters or wealthy bourgeois. Books were generally scholarly and of little interest to the majority of the population, who for the most part were in any case illiterate.