Communicating 'dual citizenship' - how do charities manage their reputation for 'good works' while undertaking commercial activities

Charities and not-for-profit organisations have traditionally eschewed commercial operations in favour of direct fund-raising from supporters. Building on Goodall’s (2000) exploration of sectoral values, it can be said that competitive pressures are driving charities to take on ‘dual citizenship’ through activity in both profit (commercial) and nonprofit (voluntary) sectors. In the United Kingdom, there are some 170,000 charitable organisations in England and Wales which generate £46 billion in annual revenue (UK Charity Commission 2008). There has, however, been little scholarly attention or professional focus on the impact that commercial trading by charities has on relations with key stakeholders, such as supporters, and upon the reputation of the community-focused organisations. This paper reports a case study of a UK charity and explores, using document analysis and phone interviews with supporter-stakeholders, their perceptions of the impact of commercial trading upon the organisation’s reputation as well as their relationship and level of engagement with the organisation. It found that donors are overwhelmingly in support of commercial activities, as long as these are aligned with the charity’s values. The study, however, also found that commercial activities should not deflect the charity from its perceived and announced mission. There were also lessons arising from the study on frequency and style of communication, and the relevance of models of communication, c.f. Grunig’s four descriptors, and measurements of relationships (Hon and Grunig 1999). The paper concludes with proposals for further research

Managing reputation for ‘good works’ while undertaking commercial activities: Communication best practice guidelines for charities

Charities and not-for-profit organisations have traditionally eschewed commercial operations in favour of direct fund-raising from supporters. Competitive pressures, however, are driving charities to take on ‘dual citizenship’ through activity in both profit (commercial) and nonprofit (voluntary) sectors. There has been little scholarly attention or professional focus on the impact that commercial trading by charities has on relations with key stakeholders, such as supporters, and upon the reputation of the community-focused organisations. This paper reports a case study of a UK charity and explores supporters’ perceptions of the impact of commercial trading upon the organisation’s reputation as well as their relationship and level of engagement with the organisation. It found that donors are in support of commercial activities, as long as these are aligned with the charity’s values. The study, however, also found that commercial activities should not deflect the charity from its perceived and announced mission

Managing reputation for ‘good works’ while undertaking commercial activities - communications best practice guidelines for charities

Charities and not-for-profit organisations have traditionally eschewed commercial operations in favour of direct fund-raising from supporters. Competitive pressures, however, are driving charities to take on ‘dual citizenship’ (Goodall 2000) through activity in both profit (commercial) and nonprofit (voluntary) sectors. There has been little scholarly attention or professional focus on the impact that commercial trading by charities has on relations with key stakeholders, such as supporters, and upon the reputation of the community-focused organisations. This paper reports a case study of a UK charity and explores supporters’ perceptions of the impact of commercial trading upon the organisation’s reputation as well as their relationship and level of engagement with the organisation. It found that donors are overwhelmingly in support of commercial activities, as long as these are aligned with the charity’s values. The study, however, also found that commercial activities should not deflect the charity from its perceived and announced mission

The Impact of Experiential Augmented Reality Applications on Fashion Purchase Intention

Utilizing the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of augmented reality (AR) (specifically augmentation) on consumers’ affective and behavioral response and to assess whether consumers’ hedonic motivation for shopping moderates this relationship. An experiment using the manipulation of AR and no AR was conducted with 162 participants aged between 18 and 35. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and randomly assigned to the control or stimulus group. The hypothesized associations were analyzed using linear regression with bootstrapping. The paper demonstrates the benefit of using an experiential AR retail application (app) to positively impact purchase intention. The results show this effect is mediated by positive affective response. Furthermore, hedonic shopping motivation moderates the relationship between augmentation and the positive affective response. Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalizability to other forms of augmentation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed model using different types of AR stimuli. Furthermore, replication of the study with other populations would increase the generalizability of the findings. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for retailers of the benefits of using AR when attempting to optimize experiential value in online environments. The study contributes to experiential retail and consumer purchase behavior research by deepening the conceptualization of the impact of experiential technologies, more specifically AR apps, by considering the role of hedonic shopping motivations.Peer reviewe

Trade openness and inflation: The role of real and nominal price rigidities

The paper revisits the long-standing question of the impact of trade openness on the inflation-output trade-off by accounting for the effects of product market competition on price flexibility. The study develops a New-Keynesian open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with non-constant price elasticity of demand and Calvo price setting in which the frequency of price adjustment is endogenously determined. It demonstrates that trade openness has two opposing effects on the sensitivity of inflation to output fluctuations. On the one hand, it raises strategic complementarity in firms' pricing decisions and the degree of real price rigidities, which makes inflation less responsive to changes in real marginal cost. On the other hand, it strengthens firms' incentives to adjust their prices, thereby reducing the degree of nominal price rigidities and increasing the sensitivity of inflation to changes in marginal cost. The study explains the positive relationship between competition and the frequency of price adjustment observed in the data. It also provides new insights into the effects of global economic integration on the Phillips Curve.This research was in part undertaken during my internship at the Monetary Policy Strategy Division of the European Central Bank. Its support is greatly appreciated. I am very grateful to Sean Holly, Giancarlo Corsetti, Philip Lane, Giacomo Carboni, Stephan Fahr, Leopold von Thadden, Ana Lamo, Massimo Rostagno, Jean-Pierre Vidal, Sergejs Saksonovs, Paul Youdell as well as to the participants of the Warsaw International Economic Meeting, DEGIT - XV and EDGE Jamboree for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. Financial support from the ESRC and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK, is gratefully acknowledged.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2016.02.00

Food Apartheid in Indianapolis

This project examines food deserts and food apartheid in Indianapolis

‘A Good Night Out’: When Political Theatre Aims at Being Popular, Or How Norwegian Political Theatre in the 1970s Utilized Populist Ideals and Popular Culture in Their Performances

Bertolt Brecht stated in Schriften zum Theater: Über eine Nichtaristotelische Dramatik (Writings on Theatre: On Anti-Aristotelian Drama) that a high quality didactic (and politi­cal) theatre should be an entertaining theatre. The Norwegian theatre company Håloga­land Teater used Brecht’s statement as their leading motive when creating their political performances together with the communities in Northern Norway. The Oslo-based theatre group, Tramteatret, on the other hand, synthesised their political mes­sages with the revue format, and by such attempted to make a contemporaneous red revue inspired by Norwegian Workers’ Theatre (Tramgjengere) in the 1930s. Håloga­land Teater and Tramteatret termed themselves as both ‘popular’ and ‘political’, but what was the reasoning behind their aesthetic choices? In this article I will look closer at Hålogaland Teater’s folk comedy, Det er her æ høre tel (This is where I belong) from 1973, together with Tramteatret’s performance, Deep Sea Thriller, to compare how they utilized ideas of socialist populism, popular culture, and folk in their productions. When looking into the polemics around political aesthetics in the late 1960s and the 1970s, especially lead by the Frankfurter School, there is a distinct criticism of popular culture. How did the theatre group’s definitions of popular culture correspond with the Frankfurter School’s criticism

Assessing the quality of audio and video components in desktop multimedia conferencing

This thesis seeks to address the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) research problem of how to establish the level of audio and video quality that end users require to successfully perform tasks via networked desktop videoconferencing. There are currently no established HCI methods of assessing the perceived quality of audio and video delivered in desktop videoconferencing. The transport of real-time speech and video information across new digital networks causes novel and different degradations, problems and issues to those common in the traditional telecommunications areas (telephone and television). Traditional assessment methods involve the use of very short test samples, are traditionally conducted outside a task-based environment, and focus on whether a degradation is noticed or not. But these methods cannot help establish what audio-visual quality is required by users to perform tasks successfully with the minimum of user cost, in interactive conferencing environments. This thesis addresses this research gap by investigating and developing a battery of assessment methods for networked videoconferencing, suitable for use in both field trials and laboratory-based studies. The development and use of these new methods helps identify the most critical variables (and levels of these variables) that affect perceived quality, and means by which network designers and HCI practitioners can address these problems are suggested. The output of the thesis therefore contributes both methodological (i.e. new rating scales and data-gathering methods) and substantive (i.e. explicit knowledge about quality requirements for certain tasks) knowledge to the HCI and networking research communities on the subjective quality requirements of real-time interaction in networked videoconferencing environments. Exploratory research is carried out through an interleaved series of field trials and controlled studies, advancing substantive and methodological knowledge in an incremental fashion. Initial studies use the ITU-recommended assessment methods, but these are found to be unsuitable for assessing networked speech and video quality for a number of reasons. Therefore later studies investigate and establish a novel polar rating scale, which can be used both as a static rating scale and as a dynamic continuous slider. These and further developments of the methods in future lab- based and real conferencing environments will enable subjective quality requirements and guidelines for different videoconferencing tasks to be established

“..Here to stay… so…..deal with it”: Experiences and Perceptions of Black British African Caribbean People about Nursing Careers.

There is a noticeable absence of studies reflecting the personal views and experiences of black British African Caribbean (BBAC) people as students and clinical participants in UK nursing careers. Previous research about their nursing career choices has always been reported as part of other mixed BME cohorts and migrant groups. Indications in the literature suggest that they were being actively discouraged by their families from choosing nursing as a career, because of their parents’ and grandparents’ negative experiences as migrant workers in the NHS, leading to very low or non-participation in the profession. This study set out to address this gap by giving them a distinct voice, independent of other cohorts. It explored the factors which influence their decision and their experiences, throughout a variety of life stages, from school through to university and into clinical practice. This was to identify whether the findings from earlier research are still relevant from their perspectives rather than that of their parents. Participants and schools in the study were recruited by purposive sampling, and data was collected in three phases, a pilot study phase, a survey phase and an interview phase. A quantitative and qualitative interpretive approach were adopted underpinned by a mixed methods design. Descriptive statistical analysis of the survey and qualitative content analysis (QCA) of the interview transcripts were utilised to enable interrogation of the data. Findings are discussed within the context of available empirical evidence, related policy perspectives and theoretical underpinnings. Four main themes emerged from the study, as specific influencing factors on their experiences. These are: careers advice and choice for nursing, support, discrimination/racism and personal resilience. The findings reveal that BBAC people receive little or no careers advice about nursing at any of their life stages. Consequently, they make uninformed decisions about modern nursing careers, leaving a gap in their knowledge. However, they are not discouraged from choosing nursing as a career, by their families. When they choose a nursing career, they are fully supported and encouraged by their parents and families, in order to survive as students and clinical practitioners. However, institutional support as students and practitioners is weak and very poor. Despite this, they do not intend to actively discourage their own children from making nursing a career choice. Racism, discrimination and racialisation remain core factors influencing their social, educational and other lived experiences, despite numerous equality legislation and implementation. These have a continuous negative impact on them as visible minority students and practitioners in the NHS. They respond to these negative experiences by developing personal resilience aided by strong social and cultural support provided by their families and community. These findings make a unique contribution to the knowledge base by giving BBAC participants their own distinct voice. This was achieved through listening to them at varied points in their life stages, from school through to university and as eventual professionals in nursing. This is important new knowledge, which has ensured a clear recognition of their personal perspectives, in their own voices. These insightful new observations are necessary to build a specific knowledge base about them and are very positive for future participation of BBAC people in nursing careers and the NHS. An adapted model for inclusive participation is proposed, based on the findings of the research

Letter from Anna Watson to John Muir, 1863 Dec 6

Ann Watson00342 Poynett Dec the 6, 1863 Dear Friend I have been so long in fulfilling my promise that I am almost ashamed to do it at I had my picture taken soon after I saw you but did not know where to send it till after I came home I have been at home now most seven weeks so there is little excuse for me but you must not be to hard on me as I never wrote much I have not been very well since I came home Mothers health has been poor David and his wife was here and stayed all night on their way back from Madison your aunt was here 3 weeks ago she was well then I have not seen her since there has been a good deal of excitment going on here about the draft there has been a good many drafted but all will pay that can get hold of the money I suppose your folks are all safe I will inclose that long promised picture although It is such a horable looking thing that I hate to send it but I will rather than tell a lie I should like to have you write and let us know how all the folks are and when you intend to make us another visit I will be at home most of the winter and I would like to have you come and bring Mary and Anna with you I will add no more but remain your sincere well wisher Anna Watso