John Tzilivakis, Andrew Green, Doug Warner, Kate McGeevor and Kathy Lewis
The pressure on the food industry and society as a whole to evolve towards more sustainable production and consumption has increased in recent years. There are a number of drivers…
Abstract
Purpose
The pressure on the food industry and society as a whole to evolve towards more sustainable production and consumption has increased in recent years. There are a number of drivers that can help reduce environmental impacts including legislative instruments, retail marketing and consumer choices and demand. One driver that has received attention recently is the use of product labels, either on a single issue or on multiple issues (using omni‐labelling). The purpose of this paper is to report on a framework that emerged from a wider study exploring effective approaches to environmental labelling of food products.
Design/methodology/approach
Techniques for assessing the environmental impacts of food production were reviewed and a consultation was undertaken with industry and consumer experts to ascertain their views (using multi‐criteria mapping) on the practicality and efficacy of environmental labels.
Findings
The wider study found that although the science is not sufficiently robust to develop an outcome‐based, environmentally broad, omni‐label at this time, there is a role for environmental labelling in conjunction with other initiatives to improve the sustainability of food production and consumption. The framework presented aims to support this role and help improve the practicality and efficacy of environmental labels. It provides a series of interrelated guidelines which provide a basis for developing more effective, robust, credible and practical environmental labels for food.
Practical implications
The framework can be used to design new, or evaluate existing labelling schemes and to identify opportunities for improvements. The process is illustrated with an application to four existing schemes.
Originality/value
Eco‐labelling of food products is gaining interest globally, but there are numerous issues that need to be fully understood in order to develop credible and robust labelling systems.
Details
Keywords
Douglas Warner, John Tzilivakis, Andrew Green and Kathleen Lewis
This paper aims to assess agri-environment (AE) scheme options on cultivated agricultural land in England for their impact on agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to assess agri-environment (AE) scheme options on cultivated agricultural land in England for their impact on agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It considers both absolute emissions reduction and reduction incorporating yield decrease and potential production displacement. Similarities with Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) introduced in 2015 as part of the post-2014 Common Agricultural Policy reform, and their potential impact, are considered.
Design/methodology/approach
A life-cycle analysis approach derives GHG emissions for 18 key representative options. Meta-modelling is used to account for spatial environmental variables (annual precipitation, soil type and erosion risk), supplementing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodology.
Findings
Most options achieve an absolute reduction in GHG emissions compared to an existing arable crop baseline but at the expense of removing land from production, risking production displacement. Soil and water protection options designed to reduce soil erosion and nitrate leaching decrease GHG emissions without loss of crop yield. Undersown spring cereals support decreased inputs and emissions per unit of crop yield. The most valuable AE options identified are included in the proposed EFAs, although lower priority is afforded to some.
Practical implications
Recommendations are made where applicable to modify option management prescriptions and to further reduce GHG emissions.
Originality/value
This research is relevant and of value to land managers and policy makers. A dichotomous key summarises AE option prioritisation and supports GHG mitigation on cultivated land in England. The results are also applicable to other European countries.
Details
Keywords
In this chapter, I address the issues in doing a feminist ethnography based on the archives of a lesbian feminist community structured around music. In doing so, I grapple with…
Abstract
In this chapter, I address the issues in doing a feminist ethnography based on the archives of a lesbian feminist community structured around music. In doing so, I grapple with questions central to archival research with marginalized social movement communities. I pose these questions as moments of interrogation where I draw on personal experience as well as literature on archival research to create a framework aimed at social movement researchers who are considering or doing archival work. These interrogations cover three broad areas and apply to different moments in the research process. First, what are the origin stories of social movement archives? Second, how can researchers construct the stories of marginalized and vulnerable communities? Third, how can we access the voices of community members found in the archives? To answer these questions, I identify how conceptual tools such as identifying community boundaries and documenting types of interaction can aid a scholar in the research process.
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Details
Keywords
David Worker and Brian H. Kleiner
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was the first bill signed into law by President Clinton after taking office in 1993. The law, which took effect on August 5, 1993…
Abstract
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was the first bill signed into law by President Clinton after taking office in 1993. The law, which took effect on August 5, 1993, requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employees for childbirth, adoption, or family or personal illness. Employees are guaranteed their jobs or an equivalent position upon their return from leave. Prior to the FMLA's passage, the US was the last industrialised country in the world to require employers to provide family leave.
The purpose of this article is to give an overview of scholarly monographs on rock music from 1980 to the present. It aims to provide an overview to the literature for practical…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to give an overview of scholarly monographs on rock music from 1980 to the present. It aims to provide an overview to the literature for practical purposes of collection development as well as giving the reader insight into key issues and trends related to a interdisciplinary topic that attracts scholars from many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
Design/methodology/approach
This bibliographic essay, focusing on works related to American culture and of a general nature, includes an overview and historical background; a discussion of how music and ethnomusiciological scholars approach the topic; geographic approaches; literature on four key icons (Elvis, Dylan, Springsteen, and Madonna); American studies; subcultures and genres; other methodologies; and concludes by discussing notable recent works.
Findings
The scholarly literature on rock incorporates a wide variety of approaches and methodologies. Many music‐related scholars appropriate methodology from other disciplines and some non‐music‐related scholars use the formalistic analysis of music scholars. Authenticity is a major theme in the literature on rock.
Originality/value
This essay covers the widest range of monographs on the topic, providing insight into not only the key scholars but also the diversity of approaches to the topic. The historical approach to the literature gives the reader a sense of how the academic discourse on rock has evolved. This essay is of interest to librarians, scholars of rock music, and others concerned with how American scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences has grown since the advent of cultural studies.
Details
Keywords
Kathy Charmaz, who survived against all odds and eventually to become an internationally acclaimed qualitative researcher, demonstrated extraordinary resilience and intellect. In…
Abstract
Kathy Charmaz, who survived against all odds and eventually to become an internationally acclaimed qualitative researcher, demonstrated extraordinary resilience and intellect. In this chapter, I describe the ways she lived through her early life, her beginning research as a student, and how she managed the trials of academic life while making an international contribution to understanding the experiences of the chronically ill. In the process she developed Constructivist Grounded Theory, refining her qualitative methods, making them accessible to all, and producing findings that changed the course of qualitive health research.
Details
Keywords
Rebecca Bednarek, Marianne W. Lewis and Jonathan Schad
Early paradox research in organization theory contained a remarkable breadth of inspirations from outside disciplines. We wanted to know more about where early scholarship found…
Abstract
Early paradox research in organization theory contained a remarkable breadth of inspirations from outside disciplines. We wanted to know more about where early scholarship found inspiration to create what has since become paradox theory. To shed light on this, we engaged seminal paradox scholars in conversations: asking about their past experiences drawing from outside disciplines and their views on the future of paradox theory. These conversations surfaced several themes of past and future inspirations: (1) understanding complex phenomena; (2) drawing from related disciplines; (3) combining interdisciplinary insights; and (4) bridging discourses in organization theory. We end the piece with suggestions for future paradox research inspired by these conversations.
Details
Keywords
Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield and Dennis C. Dickerson
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend…
Abstract
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend sociological knowledge about how movements (sometimes) diffuse and amplify insurgent actions, that is, how movements move. We extend movement diffusion theory by drawing a conceptual analogue with military theory and practice applied to the case of the organized and highly disciplined nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We emphasize emplacement in a base-mission extension model whereby a movement base is built in a community establishing a social movement school for inculcating discipline and performative training in cadre who engage in insurgent operations extended from that base to outlying events and campaigns. Our data are drawn from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of the Nashville civil rights movement. The analytic strategy employs a variant of the “extended case method,” where extension is constituted by movement agents following paths from base to outlying campaigns or events. Evidence shows that the Nashville movement established an exemplary local movement base that led to important changes in that city but also spawned traveling movement cadre who moved movement actions in an extensive series of pathways linking the Nashville base to events and campaigns across the southern theater of the civil rights movement. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.
Details
Keywords
Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior…
Abstract
Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.
Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.
TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.
The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.