Restricted access : women's business ownership in profile

This report presents a profile of women-owned businesses in the United Kingdom. The data is drawn from a survey undertaken by the University of Strathclyde for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), published in May 2002. In total, 18,561 FSB members responded to the survey, of whom 1,750 (9%) stated that their business was wholly female-owned. In comparison, nearly 44% of respondents stated that their business was wholly male-owned and 42% that their business was owned jointly by men and women. Women-owned businesses are an important element of the SME sector and, as this profile shows, the characteristics of their businesses are rather different to the majority

Business begins at home

One of the most significant trends in the post-industrial era has been for the home to become an important focus for work. The boundaries between work and home are now increasingly blurred, reversing the forces of the industrial era in which places deemed suitable for each were clearly demarcated and physically separate. The most recent published figures available from the Labour Force Survey (2005)1 indicate that 3.1m people now work mainly from home, 11% of the workforce. This represents a rise from 2.3m in 1997 (9% of the workforce), a 35% increase. The majority of homeworkers (2.4m or 77% of the total) are 'teleworkers' – people who use computers and telecommunications to work at home. The number of teleworkers has increased by 1.5m between 1997 and 2005, a 166% increase. Clearly, it is the growth in the number of teleworkers which is driving the increase in homeworking

Social constructionism and personal constructivism : getting the business owner's view on the role of sex and gender

While the entrepreneurship and small business research literature has tended to portray women as lesser than men in identifying the differences between them, little research has looked at how gender is construed in business ownership. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new focus, examining how male and female business owners construe each other. The research employs George Kelly's personal construct theory and repertory grids to examine the constructs associated with male and female business owners. It is found that there are many constructs used to describe business owners and, counter to predictions from some of the literature review, few differences between the way in which male and female business owners are construed. The paper offers explanations as to why so few differences are found. The sample is limited to just one area of Britain and the businesses had all been established in the last three years. This will influence the generalizability of the findings. This paper is able to offer research evidence to demonstrate that male and female business owners do not construe male and female business owners differently

N-Methacryloyl-4-(piperidin-1-yl)-1,8-naphthalimide

In the title compound, C21H20N2O3, the naphthalimide unit is almost planar (r.m.s. deviation for the 15 non-H atoms = 0.059 Å). The carboximide N atom and the five C atoms of the 2-methyl­prop-2-enoyl substituent also lie in a plane (r.m.s. deviation = 0.009 Å), which subtends an angle of 84.34 (7)° to the naphthalamide plane. This orients the =CH2 group of the vinyl fragment towards the naphthalimide rings, giving the mol­ecule an extended configuration. The piperidine ring adopts a chair conformation and there is evidence for some delocalization between the naphthalene and piperidine units, the C—Npip bond length being 1.404 (4) Å. In the crystal structure, π–π contacts with centroid–centroid distances of 3.5351 (18) and 3.7794 (18) Å supported by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link adjacent mol­ecules in a head-to-tail fashion, forming dimers. These are further stabilized by other C—H⋯O contacts of varying strength, which stack the mol­ecules down the b axis

Projects in Geospatial Data Analysis: Spring 2015

This document contains semester projects for students in CSCI 4380/7000 Geospatial Data Analysis (GSA). The course explores the technical aspects of programmatic geospatial data analysis with a focus on GIS concepts, custom GIS programming, analytical and statistical methods, and open source tools and frameworks

Nigerian London: re-mapping space and ethnicity in superdiverse cities

This paper explores the idea of ‘superdiversity’ at the city level through two churches with different approaches to architectural visibility: the hypervisible Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and the invisible Igbo Catholic Church, both in North London, guide our exploration of invisible Nigerian London. Although Nigerians have lived in London for over 200 years, they live beneath the radar of policy and public recognition rather than as a vital and visible element of superdiversity. This paper argues that we can trace the journeys composing Nigerian London in the deep textures of the city thus making it visible, but this involves re-mapping space and ethnicity. It argues that visibility is vital in generating more open forms of urban encounter and, ultimately, citizenship

The Parthica of Pseudo-Appian

The Parthica found in the manuscripts of Appian's Roman History has received little attention since the work was shown to be a forgery by Schweighäuser in the late 18th Century. Since then it has been assumed that the work is of Byzantine provenance, and it has been omitted from subsequent scholarly editions of Appian. This article presents a reconsideration of the Parthica, its date, and the possible intentions of its pseudonymous author. It is argued that the work, whether or not an example of deliberate literary imposture, may in fact be of far greater antiquity than what is generally thought.</p

From Psychology to Marketing, Using the Repertory Grid Technique to Understand and Provide a Fresh Perspective on the Online Fashion Shopping Experience

In Consumer Research, it is hard to avoid mother disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology. This piece has its roots from Environmental Psychology; it builds on stimuli-response relations but is employed in the modern concept of ‘FASHIONSCAPE' i.e. the online fashion shopping environment. Believing that the best person to educate us about consumers are consumers themselves, this paper adopted George Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and employed the Repertory Grid technique to gain a deeper understanding of the overall shopping experience. All participants attended a one-to-one interview which generated one grid each. Content analysis of sixteen grids shows a new categorization of the components of the shopping experience, this includes Situational constructs, Elements-descriptive constructs, Risk, certainty and confidence constructs, Emotional constructs and Behavioural constructs with emotional constructs being the deepest that are formed via ‘laddering' (asking how and why questions). Moreover, analysis of web-elements (characteristics) shows that digital zooming/ 3D images and catwalk videos are two main influential factors on the buying decision whereas the attractiveness of social media integration, customer reviews, and chat with advisers is varying. This endeavour provides a fresh consumer-centric perspective on the shopping experience as lived by consumers and using their own words

Online shopping environments in fashion shopping : an S-O-R based review

A critical review of online environmental psychology articles based on the stimulus-organism-response-paradigm

The construction of online shopping experience: A repertory grid approach

This paper advances the theoretical understanding of online customer experience in the context of e-shopping. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of experience, the relevant prior theories and definitions vary. This paper explores what an online shopping experience is as constructed by consumers, using their own words. Adopting Kelly's (1955) personal construct theory (PCT), twenty-three repertory grid interviews were conducted and analysed using multi-coder qualitative content analysis (with an inter-reliability score of 76%). The findings highlight the fluid nature of experience and its construction (emotional, perceptual, situational and behavioural). The variations in meaning explored in otherwise mutually agreed abstractions of what an experience is suggest a need for a strong emphasis on the individualistic dynamic nature of experience, both in theoretical and methodological terms. Accordingly, the paper contributes to theory by adopting a holistic approach that allows a definition of experience from the user's perspective, thus challenging current perspectives on the online shopping experience, and particularly on the emotion, risk perception and situational variables. Key managerial implications for online businesses are provided by highlighting the importance of finding better ways of managing the individualistic experience by focusing on dynamic customer journeys