Originates from a management development programme which was runfor a statutory water authority over a period of two‐and‐a‐half years,which sought to facilitate a change in…
Abstract
Originates from a management development programme which was run for a statutory water authority over a period of two‐and‐a‐half years, which sought to facilitate a change in management style away from a directing and controlling paradigm towards a supportive and trust‐based paradigm. A significant requirement of the programme, as specified by senior management, was the empowerment of middle management. However, the implications of this were not fully appreciated by senior management until late in the programme when issues of control came back into prominence. Eventually, the programme was curtailed and middle managers were consequently disillusioned rather than empowered. Offers insights into the nature of the dynamics of the change process and draws attention to the phenomenon of senior management resistance to change. Suggests, however, a more pervasive ambivalence in change management in general and “empowerment” in particular. This has significant implications for the regulation and limitation of learning.
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Brian Polkinghorn and Sean Byrne
This study examines the relationship between gender and religious affiliation to the preferred conflicts styles of 384 student participants living in and attending university in…
Abstract
This study examines the relationship between gender and religious affiliation to the preferred conflicts styles of 384 student participants living in and attending university in South Africa, Israel, Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. Participants report living in stressful social contexts that are often characterized by reports of terrorism perpetrated by paramilitaries, the state, violence that is brought on by long standing ethnic hatreds and years of division between major groups contending for control of political and social institutions, civilian uprisings, and in some cases low scale civil war. The results indicate that the independent variables—gender and religion—provide statistically significant observable differences in how people report they engage in conflict as seen in their choice of conflict styles. In particular, the findings on gender differences provide a surprising result that is partially attributed to the contextual factors of warfare and one's active participation in it. The results on religious affiliation provide a number of intriguing patterns among various religions including a desire to accommodate or collaborate with others and a strong dislike of avoidance. There are other more specific patterns that can be partially attributed to contextual factors as well. With so many contexts being present in the study a number of intriguing explanations and working hypotheses are brought forth to help explain why these patterns on gender and religious affiliation exist.
The world has just witnessed two of the greatest experiments in social reform ever attempted in history, viz., trying to make Russia free by Revolution, and trying to make America…
Abstract
The world has just witnessed two of the greatest experiments in social reform ever attempted in history, viz., trying to make Russia free by Revolution, and trying to make America sober by Prohibition; and it is doubtful which of the two is the greater failure! But the strangest part of it all is that while native evidence is coming over by every mail (some of it the tardy admission of the prophets themselves who had hoped to save the world by their reforms), we see in England, from time to time, cranks and fanatics without experience at all who would wish us to “ follow in failure's footsteps.” It would be a pity to miss the lessons of the paradox, chief among which, surely, is the fact that here in England we are always accomplishing more under the principles of toleration than other countries by persecution. Freedom is part of the genius of our constitution, part of the instinct born of long legislative experience, which the younger and more impulsive countries can hardly hope to acquire at once. The New World may dearly love to teach its grandmother to suck the eggs of sobriety, but the New World will have to clean up the awful mess of this first experiment before old Granny Europe can be won over to the new idea. Human nature is much the same in the mass as it is in the individual; the Puritans produced the debaucheries of the Restoration, but it has been reserved for America to show that “ Prohibition is the mother of drunkenness,” though the older nations who have faced the problem for thousands of years could have told her that you can no more make men sober than you can make them happy by Act of Parliament, simply because liberty forms part of the essential psychology of human nature; and it is here that America has done the cause of Temperance more harm than any publican could ever have done had he set out to do harm of set purpose. But the United States has done more than endanger the cause of Temperance, for by bringing the machinery of government into disrepute, and officers of the law into temptation, she has undermined the prestige of civil morality all along the line, just like some stupid parent will wreck his whole authority by some petty act of bigotry. As a matter of fact—strange as it may seem—it is the modern publican himself who is the greatest Temperance reformer to‐day in England, and this for the simple reason that intemperance does not pay, but bootlegging, apparently, does; and, to judge from the latest details, more seems to be made out of alcohol by Prohibition than ever was made by the saloons. The figure was truly appalling when one comes to compare Temperance England with Prohibition America, which spends twice as much upon liquor as we do—some 720 million pounds, for example, are spent on bootlegging in U.S.A., as compared with 315 million pounds on honest drinking here, two‐thirds of which sum, in our case, of course, goes back to revenue, whereas double that sum in U.S.A. goes towards demoralising their Government. Town for town, the statistics all bear the same witness. London, with a population of seven millions in 1925, saw some 30,000 arrests for drunkenness; Chicago, with two millions, over 90,000; Philadelphia, with nearly the same population, had over 58,000 arrests, whereas Liverpool, with about half Philadelphia's population, had exactly one‐tenth of its number, viz., about 5,000, and so the story of the figure goes on, proving, as I say, that there is far more drunkenness under Prohibition than under sane regulation, and similar statistics as to crime are available. No one, of course, would have dared to maintain that this would be the result before the experiment had been made, but the experiment once made, we can only judge by the facts, with the result that all sound temperance reformers may well look with dismay upon the efforts of those who would wreck Temperance by making it into a Prohibition movement, with the effects in England it has had in America. It would be too high a price to pay for the little amount of drunkenness that remains to‐day of that wave of vice which once made it possible to get drunk for a penny and dead drunk for two‐pence. Indeed, in the last ten years the amount of drunkenness punished by imprisonment has diminished by more than 75 per cent., i.e., in 1913–14 the number was 51,851, and in 1923–24 this number had sunk to 11,425. Yet, small as this number is, foreigners coming over from the wine‐drinking countries are often shocked at the amount of intoxication they see over here as compared with their own countries, just as English visitors to New York come back scandalised.
Josephine Vaughan and Michael J. Ostwald
Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house Fallingwater has been the subject of enduring scholarly debate centred on the allegedly clear parallels between its form and that of its…
Abstract
Purpose
Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house Fallingwater has been the subject of enduring scholarly debate centred on the allegedly clear parallels between its form and that of its surrounding natural setting. Despite these claims being repeated many times, no quantitative approach has ever been used to test this argument. In response, this paper uses a quantitative method, fractal analysis, to measure the relationship between the architecture of Fallingwater and of its natural surroundings.
Design/methodology/approach
Using fractal dimension analysis, a computational method that mathematically measures the characteristic visual complexity of an object, this paper mathematically measures and tests the similarity between the visual properties of Fallingwater and its natural setting. Twenty analogues of the natural surroundings of Fallingwater are measured and the results compared to those developed for the properties of eight views of the house.
Findings
Although individual results suggest various levels of visual similarity or difference, the complete set of results do not support the claim that the form of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater exhibits clear visual similarities to the surrounding landscape.
Originality/value
In addition to testing a prominent theory about Wright's building for the first time, the paper demonstrates a rare application of fractal analysis to interpreting relations between architecture and nature.
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Giang Trinh, John Dawes and Larry Lockshin
This study responds to the call of Fader and Hardie for more research on buyer behaviour toward stock keeping units (SKU). This paper aims to examine whether different SKU‐based…
Abstract
Purpose
This study responds to the call of Fader and Hardie for more research on buyer behaviour toward stock keeping units (SKU). This paper aims to examine whether different SKU‐based product variants appeal to buyers with different demographic characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examines the product variants (such as size, formulation, type) of a range of brands in six consumer goods categories. The authors calculate and compare the market share of each variant within each demographic group. If a variant has a higher market share within a specific demographic group than the overall average, this indicates segmentation at the product variant level.
Findings
The findings show that there are many differences in the market shares of product variants among different demographic groups of buyers. The largest differences are found extensively within the age and employment status variables.
Originality/value
Functionally different product variants tend to draw different demographic‐based segments of buyers, which has not been previously shown.
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The purpose of this paper is to consider why Richard Dawes (1793-1867) academic, college business manager and Church of England priest developed a curriculum in a nineteenth…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider why Richard Dawes (1793-1867) academic, college business manager and Church of England priest developed a curriculum in a nineteenth century English village school with which he sought to modify differences in social class and achieved outstanding results in student engagement and educational attainment.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is documentary. It uses books and internet scans of original documents. It locates Dawes's work in the social movements of early nineteenth century Britain and associates Dawes's activities with those of Kay-Shuttleworth who was administrator of the British government's first move to provide education for poor children.
Findings
Dawes emphasised tolerance and secular teaching within a school system devoted to instilling Church of England doctrine. He based classroom teaching on things familiar to children and integrated subject content. He used science to encourage parents of “that class immediately above that of labourers” to send their children to his school to overcome class differences. For his system to be widely adopted he needed science teachers trained in his practical teaching methods. Initial government support for science in elementary schools was eroded by Church of England opposition to state intervention in education.
Originality/value
Dawes's pedagogic achievements are well known in the history of science education; his secular teaching in a church school and his valiant attempt to use science as an instrument of social change, perhaps less so.
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Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students…
Abstract
Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students. They include Bertil Ohlin, Nicholas Kaldor, James Angell, Lauchlin Currie, Colin Clark, Howard Ellis, Frank Fetter, Earl Hamilton, and Melvin Knight (brother of Frank Knight who, with Edward Chamberlin, was perhaps Young’s most famous PhD student). There has recently been a revival of interest in Young’s influence on US monetary thought and in his theory of economic growth based on endogenous increasing returns. These recollections of his students (addressed to Young’s biographer, Charles Blitch) shed light on why Young has, at least until recently, been renowned more for his massive erudition than for his published writings.