Reigniting the fire: a contemporary research agenda for social,political and nonprofit marketing

The paper reports on the core challenges faced by the nonprofit, political and social marketing disciplinary areas and suggests a series of research agendas to develop theory and practice to meet these challenges.

• Social marketing's research agenda involves the continued adaptation of the new developments in commercial marketing, whilst building a base of social marketing theory and best practice benchmarks that can be used to identify, clarify and classify the boundaries of social marketing against social change techniques.
• Nonprofit marketing is pursuing the dual research agenda of developing the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship whilst seeking deeper consumer‐based research to understand motivations for charitable behaviour and gift giving.
• Political Marketing's research agenda looks for an increase in the level of background research, core data and market research to use as a basis for developing more advanced theoretical and practical models. In addition, as political marketing is being transferred internationally between a range of political and electoral systems, there is a need for comparative research into both the relevance and effectiveness of these techniques to isolate nation independent and nation dependent political marketing strategies and campaigns.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Strategic Fears of the Ruling Class: The Construction of Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877

In early 1877, there were no immigration restrictions in any of the Australian colonies. Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877 was the first of many laws that restricted Chinese immigration, in a movement that ultimately led to the White Australia legislation of 1901–2. This article finds that, contrary to the hegemonic understanding of White Australia, there was no significant working class or popular pressure behind the passage of the Act. Instead, it reflected the agendas of Queensland's elite, and in particular their concern that the large influx of Chinese people to the Palmer River goldfield could threaten their strategic control of Far North Queensland. In support of anti‐Chinese laws, Queensland's conservative newspapers whipped up fears of a Chinese “invasion”, a theme that would continue for nearly a century.     

Communicating corporate social responsibility: an exploratory case study of a major UK retail centre

• Corporate 'social responsibility [CSR] is neither a fad nor an optional extra. The interest in it is reflective of a deeper change in the relationship between companies and their stakeholders. Healthy business requires a healthy community, and should be contributing to its creation and maintenance. The public increasingly wants to know about companies that stand behind the brands and products presented to them. And use their power to reward ‘good’ companies and punish the ‘bad’ ones. (Lewis, S. 2001 ).
• CSR is becoming ever more important in the modern business environment, as is evident by the fact that most leading public companies include a specific statement on their CSR policy within their annual reports. Indeed, changing societal expectations, increasingly intrusive media reporting, and ever more sophisticated and powerful pressure groups have caused all organizations to consider more carefully their wider social responsibilities not only out of altruistic reasons, but because of the need to consider the potential impact of their policies on their wider stakeholder relationships.
• It is argued in academic and professional writing that CSR orientated organizations benefit from a series of tangible and intangible benefits, when stakeholders are informed of their orientation. Corporations have reacted to these calls and this belief in a business case and are implementing CSR programmes or corporate change to bring about new corporate mindsets, and are in‐turn communicating the results of these programmes. However, in order to be able to effectively communicate it is necessary that organizations clearly understand the concept of CSR, both from a managerial perspective and homogeneous and individual stakeholder perspective.
• Aiming to help address this lack of understanding, the proposed paper provides a case examination of stakeholder and management perspectives of CSR in the North West of England in a retail setting. The study was conducted in 2003 around a Major UK retail centre using a mix method approach that drew out management cognate viewpoints on CSR and quantitatively tested these findings against stakeholder viewpoints on CSR. The study is served as a pilot for future studies into the area.
• It found that within the context of the case that the managers and stakeholders (when taken as one homogeneous group) shared a similar view of the concept of CSR. Additionally, the weaknesses of the research pilot brought to the surface methodological improvements that could impact on future researches into the area.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultures of the ‘new Europe’

Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner (eds), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community (Zed, London, 1997), xii + 276 pp., ISBN 1–85649–422–5 (pb)

Steven Vertovic and Ceri Peach (eds), Islam in Europe: The Politics of Religion and Community (Macmillan, London, 1997), xxiii + 283 pp., ISBN 0–333–68703–5 (pb)     

Book reviews

KUL B. RAI, DAVID F. WALSH and PAUL J. BEST (eds), America in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities in Foreign Policy (Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1997), 259 pp., ISBN 0–13–570961‐X (pb)

BRIAN JENKINS and SPYROS A. SOFOS (eds), Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, London, 1996), 294 pp.

WESLEY D. CHAPIN, Germany for the Germans? The Political Effects of International Migration (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1997), 173 pp., ISBN 0–313–30258–8 (hb)

JOHN REES, The Algebra of Revolution. The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition (Routledge, London, 1998), vi + 314 pp., ISBN 0–415–19876–3 (hb), 0–415–19877–1 (pb)

RANDY E. BARNETT, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998), 337 pp., ISBN 0–19–0829324–0 (hb)

J#AUURGEN HABERMAS, A Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998), 187 pp., ISBN 0–7456–2045–0 (pb)     

The ends justify the means: A global research agenda for political marketing and public affairs

Political marketing has developed into an increasingly mainstream discipline in universities globally over the last decade. There are many schools of political marketing with different approaches, such as the North American approach, the Western and Eastern European perspectives, and the Asian position. The study and application of political marketing has been categorised with different perspectives, such as electoral, governmental, and international aspects. It is becoming increasingly evident that political marketing needs further classification like any matured and established discipline. A close analysis of political marketing practices and academic research leads one to perceive two distinct areas of political exchanges in two different markets: the intranational market and the international market. The first deals with political marketing at a local, district, municipal, state/provincial, and national levels. The second deals with political marketing across national borders. As in the case of commercial marketing, international marketing became a major study field when marketing grew into a matured mainstream discipline in the 1980s.     

'Condemn a Little More, Understand a Little Less': The Political Context and Rights' Implications of the Domestic and European Rulings in the Venables-Thompson Case

In 1993 Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were found guilty of the abduction and murder of two-year-old James Bulger. Aged ten at the time of the offence, the children were tried in an adult court before a judge and jury amidst a blaze of publicity. They were named by the trial judge and sentenced to detention at Her Majesty's Pleasure [HMp]. The Home Secretary set a minimum tariff of fifteen years imprisonment. In December 1999 the European Court of Human Rights held that, in the conduct of the trial and the fixing of the tariff, the United Kingdom government was responsible for violating the European Convention on Human Rights. This article maps how the case became a watershed in youth justice procedure and practice influencing Labour's proposals for reform and the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act. Examining the progression of appeals through the domestic and European courts, it explores the dichotomous philosophies separating the United Kingdom and European approaches to the age of criminal responsibility, the prosecution and punishment of children, and the influence of political policy on judicial decisions. Finally, the 'backlash' against 'threatening children', the affirmation of adult power and knowledge, and the implications of the European judgments in the context of a rights-based agenda are analysed.     

Convention Compliance, Public Safety, and the Social Inclusion of Mentally Disordered People

The first part of this paper considers the impact of the HRA 1998 in the courts, and the application of Articles 3, 5, and 8 in relation to psychiatric detention, treatment without consent, and seclusion. The second part looks at its effect on the discourse of law reform. Here a key theme is the way Convention compliance has been used by the government to justify measures that will lead to a broadening of the scope of compulsory powers and a reduction in psychiatric service users' rights.     

Utilized coefficient of friction during walking: static estimates exceed measured values

This study compared utilized coefficient of friction (COF) measured during nonslip pedestrian gait to estimated utilized COF values calculated using anthropometric (i.e., leg length) and stride characteristic data (i.e., impact angle, step length). Twenty healthy adults walked at slow, medium, and fast speeds with kinematic and kinetic data recorded simultaneously. Estimated and measured impact angle varied with walking speed, with greater angles evident with faster speeds (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05, respectively). The estimated impact angle was greater than the measured impact angle (p < 0.05). Estimated and measured peak utilized COF values varied with walking speed, with higher utilized COF values evident with faster speeds (p < 0.001 and p = 0.001, respectively). Estimated utilized COF values were 86, 118, and 131% greater than measured peak utilized COF values for slow, medium, and fast speeds, respectively (p < 0.001). Higher estimated utilized COF values varied moderately with increased measured peak utilized COF values (r = 0.522; p < 0.001). These data suggest that impact angle and step length alone cannot be used to accurately assess the utilized COF on level walking surfaces.