Editorial

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Regulating the supermarket in 1960s Britain: exploring the changing relationship of food manufacturers and retailers through the Cadbury archive

types: ArticleAuthor's pre-print manuscript. Final version available online to subscribers of the Business Archives Council.A study of sales and marketing correspondence related to the Restricted Trade Practices Act 1956 and the subsequent Resale Prices Act 1964 in the Cadbury's archive

Engagement: where has all the 'power' gone?

This article examines power and engagement. Since Kahn first explained engagement as the way people invest themselves in their work roles based on influence and role status, the engagement movement has subsequently experienced particular momentum both in academic and practitioner circles. The extensive body of evidence on engagement suggests that it is linked to a range of organizational outcomes as well as work-related measures of individual wellbeing. However, this evidence draws mainly from concepts and theories grounded in psychology and therefore important issues of context are often neglected. Moreover, the way engagement has been conceptualized reflects a particular gap in relation to the concept of power and tends to gloss over the realities of organizational life. We consider this limitation of the evidence and its implications along with ways in which other approaches to researching engagement might help to create more accurate and authentic accounts of the lived reality of work engagement

What makes work meaningful - or meaningless?

Meaningful work is something we all want. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl famously described how the innate human quest for meaning is so strong that, even in the direst circumstances, people seek out their purpose in life. More recently, researchers have shown meaningfulness to be more important to employees than any other aspect of work, including pay and rewards, opportunities for promotion, or working conditions. Meaningful work can be highly motivational, leading to improved performance, commitment, and satisfaction. But, so far, surprisingly little research has explored where and how people find their work meaningful and the role that leaders can play in this process. We interviewed 135 people working in 10 very different occupations and asked them to tell us stories about incidents or times when they found their work to be meaningful and, conversely, times when they asked themselves, “What’s the point of doing this job?” We expected to find that meaningfulness would be similar to other work-related attitudes, such as engagement or commitment, in that it would arise purely in response to situations within the work environment. However, we found that, unlike these other attitudes, meaningfulness tended to be intensely personal and individual; it was often revealed to employees as they reflected on their work and its wider contribution to society in ways that mattered to them as individuals. People tended to speak of their work as meaningful in relation to thoughts or memories of significant family members such as parents or children, bridging the gap between work and the personal realm. We also expected meaningfulness to be a relatively enduring state of mind experienced by individuals toward their work; instead, our interviewees talked of unplanned or unexpected moments during which they found their work deeply meaningful. We were anticipating that our data would show that the meaningfulness experienced by employees in relation to their work was clearly associated with actions taken by managers, such that, for example, transformational leaders would have followers who found their work meaningful, whereas transactional leaders would not. Instead, our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness

Is metacognition a causal moderator of the relationship between catastrophic misinterpretation and health anxiety? A prospective study

Psychological theories have identified a range of variables contributing to health anxiety, including, dysfunctional illness beliefs, catastrophic misinterpretation, somatosensoryamplification and neuroticism. More recently, metacognitive beliefs have been proposed as important in health anxiety. This study aimed to test the potential causal role of metacognitive beliefs in health anxiety. A prospective design was employed and participants (n=105) completed a battery of questionnaire at two time points (6 months apart). Results demonstrated that cognitive, personality and metacognitive variables were bi-variate prospective correlates of health anxiety. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that only metacognitive beliefs emerged as independent and significant prospective predictors of health anxiety. Moderation analysis demonstrated that metacognitive beliefs prospectively moderated the relationship between catastrophic misinterpretation and health anxiety. Follow-up regression analysis incorporating the interaction term (metacognition x misinterpretation) showed that the term explained additional variance in health anxiety. The results confirm that metacognition is a predictor of health anxiety and it is more substantive than misinterpretations of symptoms, somatosensory amplification, neuroticism, and illness beliefs. These results may have major implications for current cognitive models and for the treatment of health anxiety

A Quaker Experiment in Town Planning: George Cadbury and the Construction of Bournville Model Village

In 1893, George Cadbury initiated the construction of Bournville Model Village, Birmingham (UK). This was the first model settlement to provide low-density housing not restricted to facto1y employees. This paper examines the relationship between Cadbury\u27s Quaker faith, the growth of his business and the development of a model community. The focus is on exploring the ways in which Cadbury departed from traditional Quaker practices, with respect to visual artistic display and religious intervention in social relations. The article, first, reviews the contribution of Quakerism to the building of George Cadbury\u27s business empire. Second, it examines the relationship between Cadbury\u27s religiously infom1ed brand of benign capitalism and the choice of a particular architectural aesthetic for Bournville. Third, the article shows how evangelical Quaker faith and practice were important in shaping the social development of the Bournville community

Postpartum Hemorrhage Detection Device

During a cesarean section, blood loss greater than 1000 mL is classified as a hemorrhage. Quantified blood loss methods are used to detect hemorrhage, however existing methods are inaccurate and time consuming. Our proposed device is inserted vaginally during a cesarean section to collect and quantify blood lost via the cervix during and after the procedure. The device also applies light suction to the uterus, which can aid in uterus collapse and decrease the risk of postpartum hemorrhage

Protecting critical infrastructure with games technology

It is widely recognised that there is a considerable gap in the protection of the national infrastructure. Trying to identify what is in fact ‘critical’ is proving to be very difficult as threats constantly evolve. An interactive prototyping tool is useful in playing out scenarios and simulating the effect of change, however existing simulators in the critical infrastructure area are typically limited in the visual representation and interactivity. To remedy this we propose the use of games technology. Through its use, critical infrastructure scenarios can be rapidly constructed, tested, and refined. In this paper, we highlight the features of games technology and associated tools to creating immersive simulations of critical infrastructure and present our implementation