Intending to be ethical: An examination of consumer choice in sweatshop avoidance

While much research in ethical consumption has focused on contexts such as food, this research explores ethical consumer decision-making in the context of intention to avoid sweatshop apparel. This research seeks to deepen the Theory of Planned Behavior with respect to the motivation and volitional stages underlying behavior. The findings of the research, based on 794 consumers, are novel and support an enriched framework which reveals that the role of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control are mediated by desire, intention and plan. The findings have implications for research seeking to address the ‘intention-behavior’ gap

An Examination of the Volitional Stages in Consumer Decisions to Avoid Sweatshop Clothing

While much research in ethical consumption has focused on contexts such as food, this research explores ethical consumer decision-making in the context of intention to avoid sweatshop clothing where consumer concern has increased but response from the market remains limited. This research seeks to deepen the theory of planned behaviour with respect to the volitional stages underlying behaviour. The findings of the research support a modified theory of planned behaviour model and also reveal volitional stages from intention to trying and plan which reveal the stages of consumer decision-making to avoid sweatshop clothing. Implications for consumer decision-making are discussed

Holographic gauge mediation via strongly coupled messengers

We consider a relative of semi-direct gauge mediation where the hidden sector exists at large 't Hooft coupling. Such scenarios can be difficult to describe using perturbative field theory methods but may fall into the class of holographic gauge mediation scenarios, meaning that they are amenable to the techniques of gauge/gravity duality. We use a recently found gravity solution to examine one such case where the hidden sector is a cascading gauge theory resulting in a confinement scale not much smaller than the messenger mass. In the original construction of holographic gauge mediation, as in other examples of semi-direct gauge mediation at strong coupling, the primary contributions to visible sector soft terms come from weakly coupled messenger mesons. In contrast to these examples, we describe the dual of a gauge theory where there are significant contributions from scales where the strongly coupled messenger quarks are the effective degrees of freedom. In this regime, the visible sector gaugino mass can be calculated entirely from holography.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figures, references added, typos and minor errors correcete

Probing the Geometry of Warped String Compactifications at the LHC

Warped string compactifications, characterized by non-singular behavior of the metric in the infrared (IR), feature departures from the usual anti-de Sitter warped extra dimensions. We study the implications of the smooth IR cutoff for Randall-Sundrum (RS) type models. We find that the phenomenology of the KK gravitons (including their masses and couplings) depends sensitively on the precise shape of the warp factor in the IR. In particular, we analyze the warped deformed conifold and find that the spectrum differs significantly from that of RS, and present a simple prescription (a mass gap ansatz) which can be used to study the phenomenology of IR modifications to 5-d warped extra dimensions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; v2. typos corrected, references added, improved resolution of Figure

The contribution of ethical obligation and selfidentity to the theory of planned behaviour: an exploration of ethical consumers - a reflective comment

The attention given to ethical consumption in today’s academic environment is something we only dreamed off when writing this paper over 10 years ago. This wealth of scholarship is a measure of the extent to which ethical consumption has infiltrated marketing and business thinking over the past decade or so. The Theory of Planned Behaviour framework used in the revisited paper is still very much alive and well today and following the traditional of this paper many have sought to extend this original theory to improve its applicability in ethical contexts. A criticism of the revisited paper and of much of current research also is a lack of insight into actual behaviour arising from ethical decision-making. Much is written about an attitude-behaviour gap in ethical consumption, but little research has fully explored the extent of this gap

The orchestra of ideas: Using music to enhance the ‘fuzzy front end’ phase of product innovation

By introducing music composition theory, we offer a new perspective from which to understand the ‘fuzzy front end’ (FFE) phase of product innovation with regard to both value outcomes and the innovation process. Focusing on ideas co-created by consumers, we draw on an ethnographic study to examine how young consumers tackled a real-life challenge to produce a digital product that would engage audiences in classical music. Working with two organizations, one a city symphony orchestra, the other a global technology corporation, this work bridges innovation and aesthetics and challenges the established mind-set of the science-art schism in business management. The findings contribute to innovation theory by introducing a hybrid model that structures FFE activities based around the composing process. We also illuminate how music can facilitate and ensure greater value for consumers as ‘the composers of ideas’. Managerial implications are suggested

Anomalous U(1)_A and Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

We suggest a new mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking in the supersymmetric Standard Model. Our suggestion is based on the presence of an anomalous U(1)_A gauge symmetry, which naturally arises in the four dimensional superstring theory, and heavily relies on the value of the corresponding Fayet-Illiopoulos \xi-term.Comment: Latex, 11 pages, discussions and references adde

Drug release profile for an ETS-1 inhibitor in ReGel

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An Information Security Education Initiative for Engineering and Computer Science

This paper puts forward a case for an educational initiative in information security at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Its focus is on the need for such education, the desired educational outcomes, and how the outcomes may be assessed. A basic thesis of this paper is that the goals, methods, and evaluation techniques of information and computer security are consistent with and supportive of the stated goals of engineering education and the growing movement for outcomes-based assessment in higher education