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Independent French wine producers are faced with excessive costs and a declining image of quality compared with their New World competitors. A confusing offer and weak brand identities also make their often poorly marketed products less attractive at the point of sale. As production continues to surge, plummeting prices have left many of these producers economically unviable. Is it possible for these small independent producers to survive in an ever more competitive global market? This paper attempts to answer this question, by studying the challenges confronting this group, as well as their advantages, both in their home and on a global market.

Literature in French and English was reviewed in highlighting key issues impinging the industry. A small survey was conducted to ascertain the drinking habits of young adults market in France. Also SWOT, PESTLE, and Porter’s Five Forces were used in presenting a more strructured approach in discussing the nature of and challenges facing this industry.

It is evident that a lot of work needs to be done for French wines to regain their global competitiveness, and even more so for small producers who do not benefit from the massive promotional budgets of their larger competitors. However, by ensuring a superior level of quality, higher production costs can be justified, while still being carefully managed to ensure that all additional costs incurred add value to the end product. This quality needs to be guaranteed by a stronger and clearer AOC system that is regularly evaluated to maintain its credibility, and reinforced by a strong individual brand image, in order to gain consumer confidence. A cultural change is also necessary, away from defence and towards a more proactive approach. The innovation for which French winemakers were once famous must be reclaimed.

It would be interesting to further study the cultural metamorphosis that has taken place amongst French winemakers over the course of the last century. The comparative bargaining power of small producers against large supermarket chains is also a topic that could be further explored. Given that it will not be possible for all producers to become a key reference and guarantee shelf space amongst their highly marketed competitors, greater research into more innovative ways of getting products to market would be extremely useful.

Foreign markets should be highly studied and understood before entry. Integrating products into local culture is often more successful than imposing the product as part of the culture of the producing country. Most importantly, however, producers should be prepared to adapt to a changing market and to invest in order to secure future capital inflows. The rise of new global players, such as China, will only intensify competition, and today’s less sophisticated consumers are more likely to be swayed by low prices and strong brands than by an overpriced and poorly positioned product from “Old Europe”.

A fairly thorough account of the current state of affairs of the wine industry in France has been presented and both the French literature and relevant web sites in French have been reviewed in highlighting and evaluating issues impinging the wine industry.

This study aims to explore how managers exercise agency in strategic investment decisions (SIDs) by drawing on their knowledgeability of the strategic context. Specifically, the authors address the role of position–practice relations and irresistible causal forces in this conduct.

The authors examine SID-making (SIDM) practices in four case organisations operating in highly competitive markets, conducting interviews with managers at various levels and analysing company documents. Drawing on strong structuration theory, the authors show how managerial decision makers draw upon their knowledge of organisational context when exercising agency in SIDs.

The authors provide insights into how SIDM behaviour, specifically agents’ conduct, is shaped by a combination of position–practice relations and the agents’ comprehension of their organisation’s context.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice. Particularly, the authors contribute to this literature by identifying irresistible causal forces and illuminating why actors might not resist in SIDM processes, despite having the potential to do so.

Sport organizations hold substantial ideological power to showcase and reinforce dominant cultural ideas about gender. The organization and portrayal of sporting events and spaces continue to promote and reinforce a hierarchical gender binary where heroic forms of masculinity are both desired and privileged. Such publicly visible gender hierarchies contribute to the doing of gender beyond sport itself, extending to influence gender power relations within sport and non-sport organizations. Yet, there has been a relative absence of scholarship on sport organizations within the organizational sociology field. In this paper, we review findings of studies that look at how formal and informal organizational dimensions influence the doing and undoing of gender in sport organizations. Subsequently, we call for scholars to pay more attention to sport itself as a source of gendered organizational practices within both sport and non-sport organizations. We end with suggestions for research that empirically explores this linkage by focusing on innovative theoretical perspectives that could provide new insights on gender inclusion in organizations.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the deviant behaviour of individuals in organisations. Deviants are those who depart from organisational norms. A typology of perceived deviant behaviour is developed from the deviance literature, and subsequently tested.

Star Trek: Into Darkness text is qualitatively analysed as a data source. Three different character arcs are analysed in relation to organisational deviance. Starfleet is the specific, fictional, organisational context.

We found that the typology of deviance is conceptually robust, and facilitates categorisation of different types of deviant behaviour, over time.

Deviance is socially ascribed; so better categorisation of such behaviour improves our understanding of how specific behaviour might deviate from organisational norms, and how different behaviours can mean individuals can be viewed positively or negatively over time.

Further research might determine management responses to the different forms of deviance, and unpack the processes where individuals eschew ‘averageness’ and become deviants.

The typology advanced has descriptive validity to describe deviant behaviour.

Social institutions such as organisations ascribe individual deviants, both negatively and positively.

This chapter extends our understanding of positive and negative deviance in organisations by developing a new typology of deviant behaviour. This typology has descriptive validity in understanding deviant behaviour. Our understanding of both positive and negative deviance in organisational contexts is enhanced, as well as the utility of science fiction literature in ethical analysis.

The practice of management having control over auditor appointment and compensation is believed to be a fundamental cause for the lack of auditor independence. While researchers propose alternative auditor appointment procedures to improve auditor independence, there are a few settings that allow researchers to examine alternative auditor appointment procedures such as regulator designation of auditors. This research aims to investigate the effects of regulator designation of auditors and litigation risk on auditor independence in a Chinese setting

This study adopts a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design. A total of 110 surveys were sent out and 81 were collected from eastern China.

The results of an experiment with 81 Chinese auditors indicate that regulator designation of auditors improves auditor independence. In particular, auditors designated by the regulator feel less pressure from the audited company, perceive themselves to be more independent and are more willing to challenge the audited company’s aggressive financial reporting compared with those directly hired by the company. In addition, litigation risk moderates the effect of regulator designation of auditors on auditor independence such that regulator designation of auditors has a stronger impact on auditor independence when the litigation risk is low.

This study is also subject to limitations. First, regulator designation of auditors in China was examined. While regulator designation of auditors seems to improve auditor independence in the Chinese context, it is unclear if the same results will be observed in other economies, as China is a unique setting. For example, the majority of listed companies in China are under the control of government-related agencies. Consequently, the government has significant power in influencing auditor appointment policy. In contrast, the majority of other economies are more market-oriented with less government influence. Future studies in other markets will further enrich the understanding on regulator designation of auditors. Second, only regulator designation of auditors for state-owned enterprises was examined. It is unclear how regulator designation of auditors would affect non-state-owned enterprises. Moreover, future research could investigate the designation of auditors in other forms such as the designation of auditors by investors. Third, auditor appointment procedure may affect perceived risk of loss of client which in turn influences auditor independence. Future research could further investigate the mechanism through which regulator designation of auditors affect auditor independence.

Results of an experiment with 81 Chinese auditors show that regulator designation of auditors can improve auditor independence. In a decision context where auditors must provide judgments relating to a proposed audit adjustment that is quantitatively material and will affect the client’s ability to meet debt covenants, auditors designated by the State-Owned Assets Management Bureaus are more resistant to management pressure and are less willing to accept the management’s aggressive financial reporting practice than those directly hired by the company.

The first Wisconsin Ph.D.s who came to MSU with an institutional bent were agricultural economists and included Henry Larzalere (Ph.D. 1938) whose major professor was Asher Hobson. Larzalere recalls the influence of Commons who retired in 1933. Upon graduation, Larzalere worked a short time for Wisconsin Governor Phillip Fox LaFollette who won passage of the nation’s first unemployment compensation act. Commons had earlier helped LaFollette’s father, Robert, to a number of institutional innovations.⁴ Larzalere continued the Commons’ tradition of contributing to the development of new institutions rather than being content to provide an efficiency apologia for existing private governance structures. He helped Michigan farmers form cooperatives. He taught land economics prior to Barlowe’s arrival in 1948, but primarily taught agricultural marketing. One of his Master’s degree students was Glenn Johnson (see below). Larzalere retired in 1977.

This chapter approaches issues of ecospirituality through Gender and the Environment analytical lenses. We propose the need to actively queer human/Nature relations and understandings by exploring studies related to ecospirituality, Earth relations, and gender dynamics. The chapter considers ecospirituality as ritual practices, material cultures, codified ethics, and/or cosmological structures related to a category of “the sacred,” which influence how various gendered and sexed bodies interact with the non-human world. Here, we propose that ecospiritual categories can shape the ways that humans conceive of their humanness and their sexed and gendered bodies. Within the context of religion/Nature interactions white evangelical masculinist subcultures in the United States are considered as an example that demonstrates the paradoxical characteristics of the gender binary and human/Nature dualisms. The chapter proceeds to offer queered ecologies as alternative narratives that can assist the larger Gender and Environment discourse in better understanding ecospiritual practices and worldviews, and how the latter can contribute to prosustainable lifeways as a viable alternative to masculinist hegemonies that are continuing to predominate the ways that many humans – especially those in the Global North – understand and relate to the natural world at great cost to life on the planet.