Gene Banks, Seed Libraries, and Vegetable Sanctuaries: The Cultivation and Conservation of Heritage Vegetables in Britain, 1970–1985

Individual seed saving and exchange are considered important components of contemporary efforts to conserve crop genetic diversity, which ramify at local, regional, and global scales. Yet the very fact that the contributions of these activities to conservation need to be made explicit by seed savers and those who study them indicates that the practices of seed saving and exchange may not immediately be recognized as conservation-oriented activities. This article investigates why and how individual seed saving came to be aligned with a broader conservation agenda in Britain through an historical examination of the promotion of seed saving by the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) in the 1970s and 1980s. It demonstrates how several HDRA initiatives that aimed to preserve vegetable diversity also re-inscribed British gardeners' ordinary labor as conservation work. This historical study complements sociological and ethnographic studies, highlighting the role of a prominent organization in creating pathways for individuals to engage in local, national, and international conservation through seed saving. It also serves as a reminder that the connections between these activities had to be made explicit—that is, that there was (and is) work involved in connecting individual acts of seed saving to conservation outcomes at different scales

Am empirical comparison of the performance of classical power indices

Power indices are general measures of the relative voting power of individual members of a voting body. They are useful in helping understand and design voting bodies particularly those which employ weighted voting, in which different members having different numbers of votes. It is well known that in such bodies a member's voting power, in the sense of their capacity to affect the outcomes of votes called, rarely corresponds to the actual number of votes allocated to him. Many voting bodies for which this is an important consideration exist: examples include international organisations (notably the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union), the US presidential Electoral College and corporations in which votes are proportionate to stockholdings. Two classical power indices dominate the literature: the Shapley-Shubik index and the Banzhaf index (also known by other names). Both are based on the idea that a member's power depends on the relative number of times they can change a coalition from losing to winning by joining it and adding their vote. They may be defined in probabilistic terms as the probability of being able to swing the result of a vote, where all possible outcomes are taken as equiprobable. The indices differ however in the way they count voting coalitions. In probabilistic terms they use different coalition models and therefore differ in precisely what is meant by equiprobable outcomes. The indices have been used in a number of empirical applications but their relative performance has remained an open question for many years, a factor, which has hindered the wider acceptance of the approach. Where both the indices have been used for the same case, they have often given different results, sometimes substantially so, and theoretical studies of their properties have not been conclusive. There is therefore a need for comparative testing of their relative performance in practical contexts. Very little work of this type has been done however for a number of reasons: lack of independent indicators of power in actual voting bodies with which to compare them, difficulties in obtaining consistent data on a voting body over time with sufficient variation in the disposition of votes among members of actual legislatures and the lack of independent criteria against which the results of the indices may be judged. It has also been hampered to some extent by lack of easily available algorithms for computing the indices in large games. This paper assesses the indices against a set of reasonable criteria in terms of shareholder voting power and the control of the corporation in a large cross section of British companies. Each company is a separate voting body and there is much variation in the distribution of voting shares among them. Moreover reasonable criteria exist against which to judge the indices. New algorithms for the Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf indices are applied to detailed data on beneficial ownership of 444 large UK companies without majority control. Because some of the data is missing, both finite and oceanic games of shareholder voting are studied to overcome this problem. The results, judged against these criteria, are unfavorable to the Shapley-Shubik index and suggest that the Banzhaf index much better reflects the variations in the power of shareholders between companies as the weights of shareholder blocks vary

Accounting for information: Information and knowledge in the annual reports of FTSE 100 companies

The purpose of this study was to assess the ways in which a sample group of companies discuss information and knowledge. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses were used to survey the way that companies present and value information and knowledge, based on the annual reports of the FTSE 100, the United Kingdom's largest publicly-listed companies. A novel content analysis approach is used, based on a set of categories proposed by Oppenheim, Stenson and Wilson. Many of the companies analysed made explicit the importance of information and knowledge, through either discussion in the text of the annual report or through an attempt to assign a monetary value to information assets. Where the importance of information and knowledge was not made explicit, the study revealed links between successful performance and effective use of information assets. Different categories of information assets were identified within the annual reports. Conclusions drawn from the analysis include that information and knowledge are demonstrably important to FTSE 100 companies, although the specific term “knowledge” does not appear to have a special significance in the companies’ lexicon; and that certain sectors, such as General Financial, General Retail, Travel & Leisure, Mining, Aerospace & Defence and Software & Computer Services, mention information and knowledge more than others

Digital Media Use: Differences and Inequalities in Relation to Class and Age

This paper takes a national perspective on issues of digital media use. The paper draws upon the OfCom Media Literacy 2013 survey to explore how digital media use varies in regard to two major social variables – class and age. Both class and age feature predominantly in UK policy on digital access and use. Class and age are invoked as either things that create barriers to access or as issues to be addressed and managed through using digital media. Despite the large body of work on the 'digital divide' there is a more limited literature that explicitly addresses class. The paper seeks to act as an empirical reference point for the development of further debate around the links between class and digital media use. The paper presents a factor analysis of the OfCom data that identifies five main areas of digital media use. These five factors are then subjected to a multiple analysis of variance to explore the effects across, between and within age and class categories. A cluster analysis based on the factors identifies seven main 'User Types' that are again compared across class and age. The paper finds that class and age act relatively independently as predicators of digital media use and neither compound nor mitigate each other's effects. Importantly the paper notes that the greatest levels and breadth of Internet use can be found in NRS social class groups AB and to an extent C1. In contrast the greatest levels of non-use and limited use can be found in NRS social class groups DE. In conclusion the paper notes that age still acts as the major explanatory variable for overall use and some specific types of use, but that class also independently acts to explain patterns of digital media use. As a result any simplistic policy expectations that digital access and use issues will become less relevant as age demographics change have to be questioned

A critical insight into practitioners’ lived experience of payment by results in the alcohol and drug treatment sector

Since former Chancellor George Osborne described reducing public spending as ‘the great national challenge of our generation’ (Her Majesty’s Treasury, 2010: 12) the UK Government have demonstrated a profound interest in Payment by Results (PbR) as a mechanism to improve service quality, value for money and innovation (Audit Commission, 2012). Although PbR is not a new initiative, it has been rebranded and sold as a vehicle that can steer ongoing strategies for reform, particularly in the field of criminal justice and drug/alcohol treatment (Her Majesty’s Government, 2010; Ministry of Justice 2013). Despite such assertions, the initiative has become synonymous with budget cuts (Community Links, 2015), the privatisation of public services (Policy Exchange, 2013) and controversy. Drawing upon the findings of a focus group with staff who work in a Therapeutic Community, this article highlights the lived experience of practitioners as PbR takes hold of the alcohol and drug treatment sector. The findings suggest that outcome-orientated incentives, such as PbR, hold the potential to transform welfare-orientated sectors into a financial, market-focused milieu

Reading from nowhere: assessed literary response, Practical Criticism and situated cultural literacy

School examinations of student responses to literature often present poetry blind or “unseen”, inviting decontextualised close reading consistent with the orientation-to-text associated with Practical Criticism (originating in the UK) and New Criticism (originating in the USA). The approach survives in the UK after curricular reforms and government have promulgated cultural literacy as foundational for learning. How is cultural literacy manifest in student responses to literature? To what extent can it be reconciled with Practical Criticism where the place of background knowledge in literary reading is negligible? This article explores their uneasy relationship in pedagogy, curricula and assessment for literary study, discussing classroom interactions in England and Northern Ireland where senior students (aged 16–17) of English Literature consider Yeats’ “culture-making” poem “Easter, 1916”. Using methods where teachers withhold contextual information as they elicit students’ responses, the divergent responses of each class appear to arise from differing access to background knowledge according to local though superficially congruent British cultures. The author proposes “situated cultural literacy” to advance the limited application of Practical Criticism in unseen tasks, acknowledge Richards’ original intent, and support the coherence of assessment with curricular arrangements invoking cultural literacy as a unifying principle

Firm performance, corporate governance and executive compensation in Pakistan

yesThis study examines the effects of firm performance and corporate governance on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation in an emerging market, Pakistan. Using a more robust Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation approach for a sample of non-financial firms listed at Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) over the period 2005 to 2012, we find that both current and previous year accounting performance has positive influence on CEO compensation. However, stock market performance does not appear to have a positive impact on executive compensation. We further find that ownership concentration is positively related with CEO compensation, indicating some kind of collusion between management and largest shareholder to get personal benefits. Inconsistent with agency theory, CEO duality appears to have a negative influence, while board size and board independence have no convincing relationship with CEO compensation, indicating board ineffectiveness in reducing CEO entrenchment. The results of dynamic GMM model suggest that CEO pay is highly persistent and takes time to adjust to long-run equilibrium