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To demonstrate that the current weaknesses in women's ready‐to‐wear size standardization charts originate not only in the obsolescence of the base data but also in the non‐adherence of order initiators to the suggested standard sizes.

Trouser manufacturers were selected in such a way as to cover the full price‐range spectrum. They provided their waist standard measurements and confirmed that they use the same measurements for all product lines. In‐store measurements were done. Garments were chosen at random from the selection offered in store and measured systematically. The specifications provided by the order initiators, the standard measurements prescribed, and the garment measures were all measured.

Results clearly indicate that order initiators do not adhere to the standard sizes charts and garment manufacturers are incapable or unwilling to produce garments that meet the order initiators’ specifications.

Product selection and limited sample do not allow generalization yet clearly confirm this hypothesis.

Questions the pertinence of investing heavily in the modernization of standard sizes charts if the industry and the governments are not ready to impose adherence by order initiators.

Fills an important void in the existing literature as, although a number of authors have stated that garment manufacturers do not respect the standard sizes proposed by different national organizations or governmental agencies, the authors could not identify one research demonstrating this fact.

Haitian immigrants have settled primarily in several metropolitan areas of the Northeast region (New York and Boston, followed perhaps by Philadelphia), Southern Florida, and some areas of the Midwest (mainly Chicago). As indicated in a previous work (Zéphir, 2004, p. 90), New York City has the largest concentration of Haitians in the country as well as the oldest and most diverse established Haitian communities. Estimates of the New York population and its surrounding counties (Nassau, Rockland, and others) range from 200,000 to close to 500,000. This variation depends on whether one only takes into account figures given by the Census Bureau and the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), or whether one also factors in the undocumented entrants and accepts estimates provided by Haitian community leaders themselves as being closer to reality. In more recent times, from the mid-1980s to the present, Southern Florida has been receiving the largest numbers of the new arrivals, particularly the cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach, as well as their vicinities. The US Census Bureau (2000), places the legal Haitian population in the state of Florida at about 270,000; but when one considers the clandestine population that number obviously increases. Let us not forget that Florida is the destination of the most desperate Haitians, those who risk their lives navigating the Florida straits in rickety boats to reach “the promised land” that the United States symbolizes for them. In fact, as recently as March 28, 2007, a boatload of about 100 Haitians reached Hallandale Beach, Florida. These Haitians have been put in detention centers, pending reviews of their cases. The state of Massachusetts follows with a conservative estimate of 75,000 Haitians, of which the majority are Boston residents. The state of New Jersey is home to approximately 40,000 Haitian immigrants, concentrated mostly in the city of Newark. In addition, two other Northeast states, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, in particular) and Connecticut have sizeable Haitians communities. In the Midwest, another very conservative estimate of 30,000 Haitians have settled in Illinois, over half of them in the city of Chicago. Although the aforementioned states and cities have the most significant numbers of the total Haitian immigrant population, it is important to mention that Haitians have migrated all over the country, from Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, to California. For example, in the city of St. Louis, there are several well-established families who have been in residence there since the 1960s. Indeed, several years ago, I met a couple of physicians who explained that, when they came to the United States to do their medical residencies, few hospitals in the country at the time would accept Black residents. One exception was Omer Philip Hospital, which has long since closed. These first Haitians brought their families with them, who in turn sent for relatives. In time, a solid Haitian community developed and prospered in St. Louis. Moreover, as this chapter was being written in June of 2007, I received a phone call from a Haitian in Kansas City who was telling me about the emergence of a Haitian community there as well, which he estimated at about 2,000 people. This particular individual is the director of a community center that, he said, is called Glory House, affiliated with the Baptist Church. This center has been recently established to help working-class Haitians, by offering them English classes and other social services. Those examples attest to the fact that Haitians are mobile and moving to other areas of the country where they have not traditionally settled, in search of better economic, professional, vocational, and educational opportunities.

This research profiles consumers of pirated products, specifically pirated brands of clothing. Utilising a structured questionnaire and counter‐biasing statements, results from face‐to‐face street‐intercept interviews showed that low spenders on pirated brands of clothing are mainly people aged 19 to 24 with a blue‐collar occupation, relatively low monthly income, secondary education level, and no children. High spenders on pirated brands are in the age bracket 25‐34 with white‐collar jobs, a monthly income of HK$10,000‐HK$19,999, tertiary or university education, and children. Consumers identify pirated brands of clothing usually by lower price and buying location, but price was not the sole determinant for purchase. Finally, they bought the pirated brands mainly for private use. Based on these results, the paper makes recommendations to original brand manufacturers and policy makers for combating pirated products.

Offers a fresh outlook for managing the delicate interaction between the customer and the contact employee in the service environment. Emphasizes that the quality of the customer‐employee interfacehas a great effect on customers′ perceptions of the quality and value of the service, as well as on their satisfaction. Suggests a model of how companies can improve this interface by treating employees ascustomers and customers as employees, thus developing lower cost and higher quality services and also higher levels of satisfaction on the part of both customers and employees. Recommends various steps for management to take.

When the 13 colonies in North America, the slave colony of Saint-Domingue, and the colonial territories of the Portuguese and Spanish Americas all rose against their imperial rulers, a new postcolonial order seemingly emerged in the Western Hemisphere. The reality of this situation forced political theorists and practitioners of the early 19th century to rethink the way in which they envisioned the nature and dynamics of international order. But a careful analysis of this shift reveals that it was not the radical break with prior notions of sovereignty and territoriality, often described in the literature. This was not the emergence of a new postimperial system of independent, nationally anchored states. Rather, it reflected a creative rethinking of existing notions of divided sovereignty and composite polities, rife with political experiments – from the formation of a new multi-centered empire in North America to the quasi-states and federations of Latin America. This moment of political experimentation and postcolonial order-making presented a distinctly new world repertoire of empire and state-building, parts of which were at least as violent and authoritarian as those of the old world empires it had replaced. The most radical ideas of freedom and liberty, championed by the black republic of Haiti, remained marginalized and sidelined by more conservative powers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of audit failure on Big 4 audit firm monitoring activities. The paper analyzes changes in discretionary accruals (DAs) among clients of firms implicated in audit failure events and examines whether these DAs decline in the period following the event.

The paper uses archival data and regression analyses to test whether DAs for clients of implicated audit firms decline in the period following the audit failure as compared to clients of other Big 4 firms. Audit failures are identified during the years 1996‐2004 based on significant lawsuit settlements. The paper focuses on an office‐level analysis to control for audit quality differences which may vary across firm geographic locations as suggested by recent research.

Empirical results indicate that auditor response to audit failure has changed over time. Auditors implicated in audit failure events occurring in the post‐Enron and Sarbanes‐Oxley period enforce more conservative accounting choices in the year following the event. Specifically, clients of the implicated firm's office report a significant decline in discretionary accounting accruals relative to clients of other auditors in the same city location. However, a significant change in client discretionary accounting accruals is not found following audit failures that occurred prior to 2001, the year of the Enron bankruptcy.

The results of this paper extend the knowledge of the effects of litigation pressure on audit quality. Additionally, this paper helps address the question of how large‐scale audit failures witnessed at the beginning of the century have impacted audit firm conservatism.

This chapter assesses the power focus in contemporary interactionist theory, and advances several premises about power based on recent research and theory. I first examine the main assumptions of the view of power that emerged in the wake of the astructural bias debate, which became an implicit standard for assessments of power in the tradition. Next, I explore the criticisms of the astructural bias thesis and related conceptualization. My argument is that while the debate correctly spotlighted the power deficit of interactionism, it had theoretical implications that distracted us from the task of fully conceptualizing power. In the second part of this chapter, I examine recent interactionist work in order to build general premises that can advance interactionist theory of power. Based on this analysis, I elaborate four premises that interactionists can use, regardless of theoretical orientation. Drawing on examples from my ethnographic research, I illustrate how researchers can benefit from the use of these premises.

The purpose of this study is to identify the significant demographic and socio-economic characteristics of individuals who are likely to invest in a fraudulent investment scheme. It also quantifies the extent to which financial literacy helps in reducing the odds of investments in such schemes. Based on these findings, it provides policy recommendations to regulators and governments.

This study uses nationally representative data from the “India Assessment of Financial Capability 2018” survey. It further uses logistic regression with a binary outcome variable to assess the individual-level odds of investments in fraudulent investment schemes.

This study concludes that males between 40 and 59 years of age, who are well-educated (are at least graduates), score low in financial literacy, belong to the middle-income group, and SEC A3 households are most vulnerable to victimization by financial fraudulent investment schemes. It finds that financial literacy significantly reduces the odds of investment into fraudulent schemes to the extent of 39.118%.

This study quantifies the extent to which financial literacy helps in reducing the odds of individual investments in a fraudulent investment scheme. As financial literacy has a significant and negative relationship with the likelihood of investment in such schemes, this study provides policy interventions and recommendations to regulators and governments to safeguard the interest of individual investors.