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The purpose of this paper is to address the challenges and opportunities in building trust in the UK’s remote work landscape, emphasising the importance of effective leadership and dispelling misconceptions about remote work.

The author draws upon a combination of research data, industry trends and expert opinions to present a comprehensive overview of the trust deficit in the remote work landscape. They also incorporate case studies and quotes from prominent figures in the field to support their arguments.

This paper highlights that trust in remote work is not solely determined by physical presence, but rather influenced by factors such as flexibility and technology. It underscores the productivity gains reported by both executives (69%) and employees (75%) in remote work settings. The paper also provides actionable strategies for managing a hybrid workforce and navigating the trust deficit.

This paper offers valuable insights and perspectives on trust-building in the context of remote work, challenging entrenched beliefs and providing evidence-backed recommendations. It brings together a range of data points and expert opinions to offer a fresh and comprehensive perspective on a critical aspect of modern work environments.

This paper examines the zero‐cost risk reversal as a tool for increasing returns to excess yen while limiting risk. With domestic interest rates near zero, firms holding Japanese yen face little opportunity to deposit cash for meaningful gain unless excess funds are invested in an other currency. The conversion strategy is profitable as long as the value of the yen appreciates less than the interest rate differential between the currencies, taking advantage of an apparent empirical regularity frequently referred to as ‘forward exchange bias.’ A problem arises, however, because dollar‐yen exchange rate fluctuation adds variability to returns stated in yen. This increased risk counters prudent cash management principles such as stability of returns and liquidity. We consider the possi bility that effective use of a zero‐cost currency options collar can substantially limit exchange‐rate risk and improve returns to yen holders. Data from July 1997 through June 2002 show that a one‐year strategy of reinvesting collared monthly Eurodollar returns produced a median annual yen return of 1.76 per cent, more than 8 times the median 0.21 per cent Euroyen return; risk also increases but approximately 98 per cent of returns resulting from this strategy fell between ‐6.05 per cent and +12.58 per cent.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

While the activities of the Ku Klux Klan are central to accounts of the Civil Rights Movement, and, by extension, closely tied to the development of social movement theory since the 1960's, no previous study has been able to construct an unbiased profile of Klan membership. This paper draws on a set of 94 FBI interviews with Alabama Klansmen in 1963 and 1964 to compile a representative sample of local Klan membership and evaluate the determinants of individual participation. Using this sample, I examine the extent to which Klan adherents differed from the surrounding population, as well as the structure of bias in previous attempts to profile Klan membership. I conclude by highlighting the importance of social networks in linking individuals to reactive social movement organizations, which adds an important relational dimension to existing research focused on grievances produced by macro-level processes.

Companies that leverage the Internet-of-things (IoT) will gain significant competitive advantages over the competition; however, few businesses have active IoT initiatives. This paper aims to provide principles to guide executives as they launch or scale-up IoT initiatives.

This paper draws upon data from original expert interviews and an extensive study of existing scholarly literature, management publications and white papers from leading strategy and technology firms.

Close cooperation among a company’s operations, business strategy and information technology units creates a trifecta of skills, vision and budgeting that can successfully bring major IoT initiatives to fruition. Unfortunately, many companies face a misalignment among these departments. The way to overcome this misalignment is to create a cross-functional team dedicated to IoT initiatives. Leaders should build these teams on the principles of autonomy, rational compensation, equality and diversity.

This paper provides strategic advice for business leaders as well as four guiding principles with which to execute their IoT strategies.

Much of the writing about IoT advocates initiatives by teaching about the many business benefits of IoT or provides a use case for a specific type of IoT technology. This paper focuses on removing a major obstacle faced by many business leaders who want to embrace the IoT but find themselves unable to do so.

Young adults are living and working in uncertain economic climates and increasingly exposed to precarious work. Are preferences for job security and actual job stability a result of proximal conditions, or do experiences in adolescence also play a role? The adolescent’s environment and experiences may help explain differences in preferences with regards to stable work, as well as work outcomes in early adulthood.

In this chapter, I use data from the Youth Development Study (YDS) to test three facets of the adolescent experience between ages 14 and 18 – parental work and educational characteristics, adolescents’ academic achievement, and youth employment – as factors shaping (1) respondents’ preferences for stable employment, (2) respondents’ perceived job insecurity, and (3) respondents’ likelihood of being in nonstandard work in early adulthood, age 31–32, approximately 15 years later.

Adolescent experiences and environments are related to young adults’ preferences for stable employment, likelihood of being in nonstandard work, and likelihood of reporting job insecurity in early adulthood, suggesting the significance of early life experiences as well as the importance of intergenerational transmission processes for the early adult years.

This study points to the important role of adolescent experiences in initiating a trajectory of work preferences and attainment.

This paper introduces the concept of ‘social quality’ as a measure of quality‐of‐life and it sets out a framework for identifying social indicators of the relationship between information and social quality. Social quality has four elements: socio ‐ economic security, social inclusion, social cohesion and empowerment. Illustrative indicators are identified at both national (Demos) and community (Ethnos) level for four different aspects of each social quality element: input, process, outcome and impact. Then the distribution of information and social quality between Demos and Ethnos levels is investigated. It is concluded that usable indicators of all aspects of each element of social quality can be identified and that analysis of informational social quality at Demos and Ethnos level can add to knowledge about information provision and policy, particularly with reference to minority and marginal communities.

This paper studies the profit efficiency of a sample of large U.S. commercial banks and explores how this performance varies with selected measures of bank risk reflecting aspects of credit risk, liquidity risk, and insolvency risk. We use a standard profit function and the stochastic frontier approach, and compare two standard functional forms – Cobb‐Douglas and translog – to assess the tradeoff between precision and parsimony. We find that profit efficiency is sensitive to credit risk and insolvency risk but not to liquidity risk or to the mix of loan products.

Undergraduate legal studies classrooms are ideal places in which to engage discourses on judging, and to invite students to analyze and understand contemporary cultural and political representations of the proper roles of judges and judging in democracies. This chapter examines undergraduate understandings of judicial independence and judicial activism, via class discussions surrounding the judicial retention election in Iowa in 2010. The election was occasioned by the groundbreaking state supreme court case Varnum et al. v. Brien (2009), legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. Drawing on participant–observation research as a professor in these courses, and examining student dialogue, class discussion, and web-board postings on the topic, I find that legal studies students are able to articulate a complex range of views regarding the judiciary, judicial activism, and same-sex marriage. Their ability to engage in (mostly) civil discourse on the topic of judging is of particular societal importance, given the limitations of contemporary public discourses about judging. These findings point, as well, to the potential role for engaged academics in expanding and contextualizing public conversations about judicial independence, judicial activism, and rights. The chapter also highlights, however, limits in that educational experience, in particular students' lionization of legal processes, simultaneous to their cynicism about, and lack of engagement in, electoral/political processes. This points to the development of interdisciplinary legal studies curricula as a means toward effective education for democracy.