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The essential element at the start of any strategic forecasting exercise is the need to think strategically and creatively (if not philosophically). There should be no intellectual constraints. This involves clearing the mind of preconceptions and prejudices, of casting aside any specific knowledge of the market or the product that existing market research has given you. In other words, not worrying about the detail (at this initial stage) but concentrating instead on wider factors and issues which are likely to have a critical influence or overriding affect on the product, market or business in question. Of course, any market research relevant to the implementation of any strategic recommendations must be considered at the appropriate stage of the analytic process.

To apply a consumer‐based approach to the study of the underlying concepts involved in social enterprises.

The report aimed to examine social enterprises from the consumer’s point of view and address the question of how social enterprise can make its case for consumer support. Pays particular attention to market segmentation, including: the ethical marketplace; under‐served markets; companies; public sector; voluntary sector; and consumer agents.

It is suggested that there are three schools of thought on how social enterprises should be promoted: the first focusing on social enterprises as “ethical businesses”, with the term used as an umbrella term for a wide range of firms practising corporate social responsibility (CSR); the second emphasising the role of social enterprise in trading for a social purpose; and the third focusing on social ownership.

Future research may be directed towards further investigating the market analysis and testing of the concept, identifying the core brand and value proposition of a label, and identifying business plan models for viable growth, including its impact on social enterprise development and growth.

Provides a valuable contribution to the social enterprise literature which tends not to take a consumerist viewpoint.

Identifies five features which distinguish the millennial generation (or Generation Y), focusing on young people aged 18 to 24: intimacy, loyalty, awareness, balance, and risk. Examines each of these: intimacy refers to the reliance of millennials on mobile phones and the internet to initiate as well as maintain friendships; loyalty is to friends rather than to mainstream corporate culture; awareness is of the manipulation that much traditional advertising involves; balance is of “unsocial” hours into a 24 hour culture; and risk reflects the fact that millennials are not free agents but are subject to change such as the dotcom bubble burst. Relates these features to advertising concerns such as brand loyalty, advertising to brand aware and cynical millennials, “cause‐branding” (ie linking brands with worthy causes), and globalism.

The importance of ties between older people and their children has been widely documented as a fundamental component in the provision and receipt of support. While the reference to such support is usually made in a benign manner, it is overly simplistic to assume that support provided by family members will always and necessarily lead to positive outcomes for older people. A person's perception of the adequacy or quality of support is inevitably influenced by his or her expectation of the type, frequency and source of support preferred or required. Most existing British research on the family support of older people has concentrated on those from the white‐British majority with little cross‐group comparisons. This article reports on in‐depth qualitative research with 17 and 21 older people from white‐British and Asian‐Indian backgrounds respectively. It demonstrates how gender, ethnicity, migration history and a range of other factors interweave in complex manners to affect individuals' expectations for support from their adult children. The findings reveal commonalities and differences within and between groups and demonstrate that the association between expectations of support and resultant sense of well‐being is complicated and is often conditional. Stereotypes within and across groups need to be examined given the observation that while familial norms may be played out differently in different cultural contexts, individuals make sense of and rationalise their expectations for support to take into account the dynamics of changing structures and attitudes.

Five years ago a conference on Children and Marriage would probably not have included a paper on marriages without children. Having children in marriage conforms to one of society's strongest expectations; conversely not having any is portrayed as both undesirable and deviant. Society's prescriptions relating to parenthood have given rise to a number of assumptions about childless marriages. Briefly, these maintain that the causes of childlessness are almost always involuntary, that marriages without children will be less satisfactory and more prone to divorce than parental marriages, and that childlessness is generally associated negatively with various measures of mental health. It is only recently that such assumptions have been questioned, and that voluntary childlessness has become a subject of research in its own right, rather than as an aberration from the “normal” pattern of behaviour. In Britain three chief reasons for an upsurge in interest in childless by choice marriages are apparent. Firstly, there have been indications that couples are delaying childbirth in marriage and this has led to speculation that in some cases, at least, this delay would lead to higher rates of childlessness when this cohort of women had completed childbearing. Figure 1 illustrates both this trend and the fact that in the past high rates of childlessness in early marriage were associated with high rates of final childlessness. Secondly, in 1976 a pressure group was formed by some voluntarily childless individuals; its aim was to campaign for a reduction in pronatalist pressure in society. This group attracted a good deal of interest from the popular press and in the late seventies and early eighties many articles looking at various aspects of voluntary childlessness have been published. Thirdly, and most significantly, voluntary childlessness represents an alternative family form and has come into the realm of sociological studies of the family along with other lifestyles (such as one‐parent families or homosexual couples) that were once considered deviant and therefore outside the mainstream of society. It is now recognised that such living arrangements are both valid as subjects for study in their own right and in terms of the understanding they may give of more traditional arrangements.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

This introductory essay attempts to illustrate the emancipatory intent of organizational learning (OL) by connecting its aims and aspirations to prominent themes of critical organization study, including the emancipatory understanding of “learning” by OL, how OL engages the “dialectic of enlightenment,” and its prioritizing of “communicative action” as the means for reflection and transformation.