Do consumers really care about corporate responsibility? Highlighting the attitude-behaviour gap

According to the press at the turn of the year 1999—2000, a good corporate reputation for responsible marketing is a key element in business success. One justification for this is the assumption that consumers are interested in how companies behave and this has an influence upon their consumption behaviour. There is also the suggestion that a financial pay-off is to be gained from good behaviour. Conflicting reports in previous research cast doubt upon the reliability of these assumptions, and there are few studies which unequivocally support positive consumer purchasing in return for responsible marketing. This paper reviews current opinion and evidence in relation to the growing interest in corporate reputation, and reports findings from focus group research which casts doubt upon the efficacy of corporate reputation in influencing positive consumer purchase behaviour

Creative Requirement: A Neglected Construct in the Study of Employee Creativity?

We identify the creative requirement of a job as a neglected predictor of employee creativity and propose that it may account for relationships between traditional work factors and creativity. As such, it may represent a more effective means of increasing creativity than changes in job design. Using structural equation modeling, we tested this model against four competing models, using a sample of 1083 health service employees. Creative requirement was found to account for much of the variance by fully mediating the effects of supportive leadership and role requirements and partially mediating those of empowerment and time demands. We conclude that creative requirement is an important proximal determinant of employee creativity and a potentially significant intervention

Studies for the development of a virtual permeameter

A systematic analysis on the use of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for predicting the permeability of packed beds is presented. A filtration rig is used to obtain permeability measurements of beds of glass beads, sand and crushed minerals. Subsequently, X-ray micro-tomography is employed to image bed samples for use as input to LBM calculations. Uncertainties in accuracy and reliability of predictions arising from pixel resolution, sample size and digitisation errors in the simulations are evaluated through sensitivity studies and assessments of the representativeness of the bed samples. For beds of spherical and near-spherical particles, any bed sample is capable of providing reproducible and reliable simulation results provided that the particles are adequately resolved within an LBM simulation. For more complex beds of polymorphous, polydisperse particles estimation of the permeability of representative samples of the entire bed is required before average results comparable with data are obtained