Evaluating a community-led project for improving fathers’ and children’s wellbeing in England

Although under-researched and under-theorised compared to other settings, there is potential for the family setting to be harnessed to support the development of healthy children and societies and to reduce health inequalities. Within this setting, the role of fathers as health facilitators has yet to be fully understood and considered within health promotion. This paper draws on a two year evaluation of a community embedded intervention for fathers and children in an area of multiple deprivation in North West England. The evaluation integrated a variety of qualitative methods within a participatory evaluation framework to help understand the development and impact of a programme of work co-created by a social enterprise and fathers from within the community. Findings suggest that allowing fathers to define their own concerns, discover solutions to these and design locally appropriate ways to share these solutions can result in significant change for them, their children and the wider community. Key to this process is the provision of alternative spaces where fathers feel safe to share the substantial difficulties they are experiencing. This improved their confidence and had a positive impact on their relationships with their children and with significant others around them. However, this process required patience, and a commitment to trusting that communities of men can co-create their own solutions and generate sustainable success. We suggest that commissioning of services delivered ‘to’ people could be replaced, or supplemented, by commissioning appropriate organisations to work with communities to co-create solutions to needs they themselves have recognised

Driven to excess? Linking calling, character and the (mis)behaviour of marketers

We are presently at a point of unique circumstantial convergence where recession, an increased emphasis on business ethics, and marketer’s reluctance to accept shifting social agendas have combined to identify the need for a new approach to marketing. Using concepts from the human resources, marketing and psychology literatures, and especially Erich Fromm’s ideas concerning economic character, this paper posits that marketers – as a professional community – are driven to promote consumerist outcomes; victims of an automaton amalgam of calling and character. The analysis suggests the vulnerability of both marketer and consumer are mutually reinforcing and that we need, somehow, to break this damaging cycle of dependence. We know little, however, about how marketers think and feel about their discipline, so this paper also promotes an agenda for marketer behaviour research, as a countervailing balance to a currently disproportionate focus on the consumer

Doing business in Libya: assessing the nature and effectiveness of international marketing programs in an evolving economy

The aim of this paper is to investigate, in one emerging Arab economy (Libya), the strategic and tactical choices of MNE (multinational enterprise) domestic appliance brands and, also, the attitudes of local consumers towards those choices. Various choice characteristics are investigated - including marketing mix standardization/adaptation - and, also, country-of-origin brand (COB). To establish extant organizational choices, local representatives of four established brands were interviewed and survey responses from 609 consumer were analyzed. No statistically discernible relationship between standardization/adaptation choices and consumer attitude towards marketing programs was found, but the study identified one especially successful brand that appeared to owe its achievements to an especially holistic approach to marketing that demonstrated 'fit' with the market concerned. Coincidentally, findings also address the conventional country-of-origin wisdom, and this is investigated/speculated upon accordingly. This is one of few marketing studies concerning Libya, and it adds to the limited literature on an increasingly relevant region

Artificial cell research as a field that connects chemical, biological and philosophical questions

This review article discusses the interdisciplinary nature and implications of artificial cell research. It starts from two historical theories: Gánti's chemoton model and the autopoiesis theory by Maturana and Varela. They both explain the transition from chemical molecules to biological cells. These models exemplify two different ways in which disciplines of chemistry, biology and philosophy can profit from each other. In the chemoton model, conclusions from one disciplinary approach are relevant for the other disciplines. In contrast, the autopoiesis model itself (rather than its conclusions) is transferred from one discipline to the other. The article closes by underpinning the relevance of artificial cell research for philosophy with reference to the on-going philosophical debates on emergence, biological functions and biocentrism

Conceptualising and measuring defensive marketing orientation (DMO): some inaugural thoughts on assessing marketing's place in 'society's doghouse'

Many have suggested marketing should be at the heart of organisational decision making whilst, coincidentally, lamenting its continued failure to earn strategic sway. Blame is frequently applied to the organisation itself, implying that marketers are unfairly marginalised. For marketing to succeed, however, it must appear both credible and contemporary, yet there is substantive research suggesting, 1) marketing's reputation is far from ideal and, 2) that practitioners remain tethered to traditional means of endeavour, often counter-productive in the context of newer, customer-focused, manifestos. Analysis of both marketing and psychology literatures reveals a lack of tools for determining marketer attitudes toward marketing orientation (MO) or post-MO concerns and, consequently, the commitment of the agent most critical to marketing's aspirations is rarely tested. This paper makes a case for rectifying such discrepancy and, via critical reflection on recent measurement debates, suggests an inaugural perspective on how evaluation might be achieved. An agenda for further research is offered, too

Urinary biomarkers of physical activity: candidates and clinical utility

Chronic physical inactivity is a major risk factor for a number of important lifestyle diseases, while inappropriate exposure to high physical demands is a risk factor for musculoskeletal injury and fatigue. Proteomic and metabolomic investigations of the physical activity continuum - extreme sedentariness to extremes in physical performance - offer increasing insight into the biological impacts of physical activity. Moreover, biomarkers, revealed in such studies, may have utility in the monitoring of metabolic and musculoskeletal health or recovery following injury. As a diagnostic matrix, urine is non-invasive to collect and it contains many biomolecules, which reflect both positive and negative adaptations to physical activity exposure. This review examines the utility and landscape of biomarkers of physical activity with particular reference to those found in urine