Deconstructing Weight Management Interventions for Young Adults: Looking Inside the Black Box of the EARLY Consortium Trials.

ObjectiveThe goal of the present study was to deconstruct the 17 treatment arms used in the Early Adult Reduction of weight through LifestYle (EARLY) weight management trials.MethodsIntervention materials were coded to reflect behavioral domains and behavior change techniques (BCTs) within those domains planned for each treatment arm. The analytical hierarchy process was employed to determine an emphasis profile of domains in each intervention.ResultsThe intervention arms used BCTs from all of the 16 domains, with an average of 29.3 BCTs per intervention arm. All 12 of the interventions included BCTs from the six domains of Goals and Planning, Feedback and Monitoring, Social Support, Shaping Knowledge, Natural Consequences, and Comparison of Outcomes; 11 of the 12 interventions shared 15 BCTs in common across those six domains.ConclusionsWeight management interventions are complex. The shared set of BCTs used in the EARLY trials may represent a core intervention that could be studied to determine the required emphases of BCTs and whether additional BCTs add to or detract from efficacy. Deconstructing interventions will aid in reproducibility and understanding of active ingredients

Transformers: African American Women Leaders in the Pharmaceutical Industry

This qualitative study documents the experiences of African American women leaders in the pharmaceutical industry in the context of the transformative leadership model. Transformative leadership is a theory that recognizes that the success of individuals and organizations (including pharmaceutical companies) may be impacted by material realities and disparities that exist in a larger societal context. Consequently, transformative leaders seek to promote change (Shields, 2011). Eight African American leaders were interviewed regarding their leadership experiences in the pharmaceutical industry. The interview text was then coded based on the seven tenets of transformative leadership. The results indicated that, collectively, all participants exhibited all tenets, with each participant illustrating at least four of the seven tenets. Three tenets were common to all participants. They included tenet one (acknowledging power and privilege), tenet three (deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge frames), and tenet seven (demonstrating moral courage and activism). While African American women leaders in the pharmaceutical industry represent a small percentage of industry leadership, they are impactful leaders and contributors to its transformation. The findings have relevance to both scholars and practitioners in management leadership generally, as well as to leaders within the pharmaceutical industry

Deconstructing and reconstructing professionalism: the 'professional' demands of the PCET teacher education programme in the UK

Professionalism has assumed the level of obligation in both the training and practice of teachers in the Lifelong Sector (LLS) in the UK. Responding to the demands of professionalism has been seen both by teachers and trainees as a source of tension and distress. In effect, many practitioners and trainees in the field have become less enthusiastic and less attracted to work in the field because of the culture of performativity that some elements of professional demand attract and in some cases, fail to see themselves as professionals. This paper responds to this situation in two ways. First, it offers a new construct of understanding the multiple demands of ‘professionalism’ which categorises elements of professionalism into three categories of subject knowledge, pedagogical and procedural professionalism. Second, it reports the findings of a small pilot research on the disposition of trainee teachers towards the professionalism module of their training programmes. Though only a pilot study, the research found a paradoxical relationship between trainees and professionalism as trainees felt less like professionals because of the demands and imposition of conditions of procedural professionalism. Also, the pilot study established that among the group investigated, the major source of tension and distress is the demand of procedural professionalism. Finally, the study suggests that trainees are better able to accommodate the demands through appropriate classification that is offered by the new construct

A Perspective on Transformative Leadership and African American Women in History

The work of African American women as leaders historically has gone unnoticed or its impact has been underrepresented. This essay presents a discussion of transformative leadership and examples of three notable African American women who, through their work, provide illustrations of the transformative leadership framework

Deconstructing Section 11: Public Offering Liability in a Continuous Disclosure Environment

There can be no successful reform of the system of capital-raising regulation in the US without rethinking the liability regime. Reform is long overdue and can readily be accomplished in a way that does not unnecessarily compromise investor protection

Consumer Power to Change the Food System? A Critical Reading of Food Labels as Governance Spaces: The Case of Acai Berry Superfoods

This article argues that the marketing claims on food labels are a governance space worthy of critical examination. We use a case study of superfood açaí berry products to illustrate how marketing claims on food labels encapsulate dominant neoliberal constructions of global food systems. These marketing claims implicitly promise that by making careful choices consumers can resist and redress the ravages of unbridled global capitalism. Food labels suggest that consumers can use market signals to simultaneously govern our own selves and the market to ensure sustainable, fair, and healthy consumption. In response, this article develops, justifies and applies a socio-legal approach to researching food chain governance which uses the food label as its unit of analysis and traces from the micro level of what the everyday consumer is exposed to on a food label to the broader governance processes that the food label both symbolizes and effects. We demonstrate our approach through a “label and chain governance analysis” of açaí berry marketing claims to deconstruct both the regulatory governance of the chain behind the food choices available to the consumer evident from the label and the way in which labels seek to govern consumer choices. Our analysis unpacks the nutritionist, primitivist undertones to the health claims made on these products, the neo-colonial and racist dimensions in their claims regarding fair trade and rural socio-economic development, and, the use of green-washing claims about biodiversity conservation and ecological sustainability. Through our application of this approach to the case study of açaí berry product labels, we show how food labels can legitimize the market-based governance of globalized food chains and misleadingly suggest that capitalist production can be adequately restrained by self-regulation, market-based governance and reflexive consumer choices alone. We conclude by suggesting the need for both greater deconstruction of the governance assumptions behind food labels and to possibilities for collective, public interest oriented regulatory governance of both labelling and the food system

Deconstructing Development

Whether it is being praised or excoriated, defended or condemned, the concept of development shapes and dominates our thinking about the Third World. Indeed development has evolved into an essentially incontestable paradigm with such a hold on our collective imaginations, that it is almost impossible to think around or beyond it. This article, however, interrogates development to its very core, demonstrating that although it is presented as something that is universal, natural and inevitable, in truth it is part of the Western political and cultural imagination. Moreover, the interlocking ideological assumptions that support this paradigm are inherently hierarchical and by definition privilege certain societies, cultures and institutions while disparaging others. This critique traces how development began, how it has evolved and expanded in theory and practice over the last fifty years, and the evolution and influence of the institutions that determine its content. It also considers the implicit ideology that underpins development, as well as how and why it has come to feel almost inevitable and natural despite its short and disappointing history. While no new meta-narrative is posed, we nonetheless turn to imagining a world that does not demand that people 'develop' into something other than what they are.

A critical evaluation of international development and poverty: the case of microfinance and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in Zambia

International development aid has been under increasing pressure and scrutiny for various reasons. Many scholars and policy makers have called into question its effectiveness to increase economic growth, alleviate poverty, or indeed promote social development in recipient countries (Crewe and Harrison, 1998; Easterly, 2002; Tsikata, 2008; Tuozzo (2009; Vetterlein, 2012; World Bank, 1998; Yusuf, 2008). Within an array of development aid, microfinance has risen to become one of the ‘most important policy and programme interventions in the international development community’ (Bateman, 2010: 1). The case in many parts of the developing world is that of microfinance being hyped and regarded as a best development strategy not only to help reduce poverty but also to empower women (Dichter, 2007; Geleta, 2013; Ito, 2003; Mayoux, 2001; Sharma and Nagarajan, 2011). Although microfinance is talked about so much, it hardly has one agreed meaning. However, it is believed in development literature that, it is aimed at helping the ‘active poor’ bring about own economic and social development-i.e ‘bottom-up’ and locally owned. It is promoted as a market based approach of giving the poor a ‘hand up’ and not a ‘hand-out’. It is also thought to make a significant contribution towards poverty reduction by enabling women become economically active through their participation in managing borrower groups and through exchange of information with each other (Dowla, 2006; Siwale and Ritchie, 2012). That microfinance gets around many of the political barriers that plagued government subsidised credit scheme and other forms of neo-liberal interventions into poverty reduction warrants critical attention. This paper examines the dominant economic discourse at different stages of global capitalism regarding poverty and ‘helping the poor help themselves’ and the narratives behind ‘making markets work for the poor’ as articulated by the World Bank and other international institutions like the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and Department for International development (DFID). It uses microfinance, viewed as an effective bottom-up development strategy to highlight the language of intervention and argue that much of international development has failed the poor, especially in Africa

Deconstructing Corporate Governance: Director Primacy Without Principle?

For almost eighty years now, corporate law scholarship has centered around two elementary analytical findings made in what has once been described as the “last major work of original scholarship”within the field