Emerald Group Publishing

Access to care and factors that impact access, patients as partners in care and changing roles of health providers.

Sociologists and other social scientists, and medical and other health-care researchers explore sociological dimensions of relations between health care and people. The overall themes are providers of care, patients as consumers of health-care services, and modifications and reforms in health-care systems. Among the topics are insider knowledge and male nurses, medical interpreting by bilingual staff whose primary role is not interpreting, emergency situations when older homebound women had fortuitous help and a typology of helpers who were involved, feminist centers negotiating medical authority in the 21st century and implications for feminist care and the US women's health movement, and privatization in Malaysia and its effects on the health-care system. There is no index. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Advances in the economic analysis of participatory and labor-managed firms.

In this 12th volume of the series, 12 contributions are organized according to the following four themes: job design and organizational performance; compensation, worker attitudes, and productivity; worker cooperatives and nonprofit organizations; free trade and the ecological effects of alternative socio-economic systems. Contributors hail from seven countries and include economists working both inside and outside academia. They present a wide and diverse array of approaches and philosophies. Editor Devaro is affiliated with California State University East Bay. The volume is distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Assistive technology; principles and applications for communication disorders and special education.

Contributors from special education, speech and language science, and education technology provide information on assistive technology that is more closely related to augmentative and alternative communications than is treated in other sources, technology such as, for example, speech-generating devices. Among their topics are software and Internet resources for assistive technology and augmentative and alternative communication, low technology and high technology, synthetic speech, assistive technology for deafness and hearing impairments, and documentation and funding issues concerning assistive technology. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Augmentative and alternative communication for adults with aphasia.

For practicing clinicians, graduate and undergraduate students, assistive technologists, and others, researchers in communication and speech-language pathology explain how augmentive and alternative communications interventions approaches are being used to help people with aphasia, a brain impairment resulting from damage to areas of the brain that are responsible for interpreting and formulating language. After reviewing aphasia and approaches to intervention, they cover the efficacy in turn of technologically and no-technology based approaches, message enhancement, social validations and what the data reveal about interventions, and evidence-based clinical decisions. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Biennial review of health care management.

In this second biennial volume in the series, Blair (business, Texas Tech U.) and Fottler (health care management and informatics, U. of Central Florida) assemble nine articles that review research on micro and macro health care management topics, including the determinants of health care organizational performance, such as the influence of organizational factors on financial performance, the relationship between private equity ownership and nursing home performance, patient handoffs, and changing an organization's dominant logic to a more transformational style of problem analysis and decision making. The second section looks at health care decision processes such as patient navigation, determinants of health insurance coverage rates for young adults, evidence-based decision making, and the impact of text messaging in health care. The introductory article discusses issues in writing quality reviews for health management scholars. Contributors work in health management, policy and administration, and services in the US and Canada. No index is included. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The diversity of social theories.

Sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and historians critically assess a range of traditions in social theory and their current relevance. They also seek to apply, refine, integrate, or advance particular traditions in order to enhance our ability to analyze conditions of social life in the 21st century. The overall themes are revisiting modernity: between authoritarianism and revolution, author-meets-critics: Amy Allen's The Politics of our Selves, and theses — antitheses — syntheses: continuing the traditions of social theory. Among the topics are interrogating the haunting voices of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, explaining the power of gendered subjectivity, and theory and practice after the pragmatic turn. There is no index. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The early childhood educator professional development grant; research and practice.

Sutterby (U. of Texas at Brownsville) compiles seven essays that examine the implementation of professional development for early childhood educators in the US and models for various settings and means of implementation, such as mentoring, urban public preschools, and center-based settings. Most are connected to the Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Grants of the federal government. Early childhood and other researchers from the US consider implementation, evaluation, and length of programs, readiness to change, perceptions of educators, and programs for improving literacy skills and the quality of child care. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The economics of religion; anthropological approaches.

Anthropologists, along with environmental scientists, economists, historians of religion, and other researchers further an approach to studying religion that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Considering in turn theory, empirical evidence, and experimental studies, they discuss such topics as debating the sacrificial economy, Buddhism and the market economy in a globalized world, promising and engaging the future through ritual sponsorships in Mexico's eastern Yucatan, multi-level marketing at the crossroads of economy and religion, and an experimental test of the effect of religion on trust and cooperation. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Effective knowledge work; answers to the management challenges of the 21st century.

With an eye to increasing the productivity of knowledge work, North (Weisbaden Business School, Germany) and Gueldenberg (U. of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein), offer advice on "next practices" for analyzing and designing effective knowledge work in a manner that acknowledges the fundamentally different characteristics of such work from traditional labor. They address the nature of knowledge work; strategies and methods for increasing productivity, quality, effectiveness, and value together with well-being and work satisfaction of the worker; knowledge worker management; the selection and use of information and communication technology support; and methods for measuring performance of knowledge workers. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Finance and sustainability; towards a new paradigm?: A post-crisis agenda.

Sun (Leeds Metropolitan U., England), Louche (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium), and Pérez (U. Montpellier 1, France) present 15 papers originating out of a research program devoted to debating aspects of the 2008 global financial crisis within an embedded understanding of the economy that links economic activity to the broader socio-economic environment. The essays address three key research areas: reformulation of the conventional financial-market oriented paradigm dominating economic policy, corporate governance, and business management; analyzing the roles, behaviors, and attitudes of different stakeholders in economic and social life in relation to the financial crisis; and evaluating proposals to rebuild a financial and corporate governance system more oriented towards sustainability. They are presented in thematic sections devoted to financial capitalism and corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, sustainable finance, and financial choice and risk management in a complex world. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A global history of accounting, financial reporting and public policy; Asia and Oceania.

Previts (Case Western Reserve U., US), Walton (ESSEC Business School, France), and Wolnizer (U. of Sydney, Australia) present six country reports on the international history of financial reporting that are modeled on the approach taken in the 1995 work by Walton, European Financial Reporting: A History. The six countries examined are Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Governance, development and conflict.

Among the topics addressed in 13 contributions: an empirical framework for macroprudential monitoring of financial crises; a systemic perspective on multistakeholder sustainable development strategies; facilitators and inhibitors of political mass killing; the economics of Arab economic integration; global jihad and sectarian conflict in Pakistan; conflict prevention in Japan; changes in Angola around the 1989 Gbadolite Peace Accords; and the dynamics of fear — in Rwanda and in Nepal. Contributors are based in Turkey, India, Spain, Italy, Libya, Australia, and several other countries, including the US. The three editors are affiliated as follows: Manas Chatterji (Peking U., China; and Binghamton U., US); Darvesh Gopal (Indira Gandhi National Open U., India); and Savita Singh (formerly of Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, India). The volume is distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Human rights and media.

Volume six in a series on modern communications studies, this collection of ten essays explores the nexus of human rights and media in the context of traditional and mainstream outlets of mass communication. The work is divided into sections covering human rights media and civil society, and media discourse on human rights issues, and individual articles address such topics as the rhetoric and ideology of human rights in the media, war making and propaganda, child labor and photojournalism and disability and the media in the twenty-first century. Contributors include academics in communications, journalism and public policy fields as well as professional journalists from a variety of international institutions. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Inequality of opportunity; theory and measurement.

Rodríguez (U. Complutense de Madrid, Spain) presents nine papers from a workshop on "Inequality of Opportunities" organized by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative around a concept of equality of opportunity "which says that a society should guarantee its members equal access to advantage regardless of their circumstances, while holding them responsible for turning that access into actual advantage by the application of effort." Papers address the extent to which different measures of inequality of opportunity conform to the above principle, a new methodology for evaluating long-term income distributions according to the principle, the impact on inequality of opportunity in the design of tax and transfer schemes in 17 European countries, equality of opportunity for earnings acquisition in France between 1973 and 1993, vulnerability to poverty in Haiti, and inequality of opportunity in the United States between 1969 and 2007. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Institutional investors in global capital markets.

Thirteen papers, presented by Boubakri (American U. of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) and Cosset (HEC Montréal, Canada), investigate the economic and financial impact of institutional investors (i.e., investment companies, mutual funds, pension funds, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, and investment banks) and their investment preferences, as well as special issues related to sovereign wealth funds, including drivers of asset allocation. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Management education for integrity; ethically educating tomorrow's business leaders.

Wankel (St. John's University) and Stachowicz-Stanusch (Silesian University of Technology, Poland) unite contributors from the US, Europe, and Asia to explore current theories and practice on reforming business curricula to counteract the effects of ethically bereft business leadership. The contributors give examples of new teaching methods, exercises, and assessment techniques. An introductory chapter offers a rationale for reform by reviewing recent history in the business world. Part 2 explores business ethics education across the curriculum, in chapters on pedagogical tools and using literature to encourage moral engagement in business ethics courses. Part 3 describes values as pathways to ethical action, with chapters on scenario-based teaching and applications of the 'Giving Voice to Values' curriculum. Part 4 reflects on curriculum development in the context of liberal education; topics include holistic management education and the Marriott School model. The book is distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Measurement and research methods in international marketing.

The nine chapters in this collection present new developments in metrics for international marketing research, techniques for measuring marketing efficiency, and methodological advances in international marketing. A study from Drexel University assesses the effect of response format style on extreme responses from Americans and Koreans, and a report from the University of Alabama demonstrates problems with the conceptualization and interpretation of cultural distance measures. Other contributors describe the characteristics of stochastic frontier estimation, apply data envelopment analysis to the impact of advertising efficiency on shareholder value, and reveal heterogeneity in the American customer satisfaction index. Distributed in the US by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

New directions in information behaviour.

Information behavior is explained as information-related human processes embedded within someone's everyday social and life processes with evolutionary developmental foundations. Scholars of it survey new directions, models, and ideas in research on it. They cover research history and overview, psychological dimensions, contextual dimensions, emerging dimensions, and further research. Among the topics are meta-synthesis with information behavior research, adolescent metacognitive knowledge during the information search process, the theory of information worlds and information behavior, and understanding casual-leisure information behavior. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

New steering concepts in public management.

Groeneveld and Van de Walle (public administration, Erasmus U. Rotterdam, the Netherlands) compile 13 chapters by a group of European and Chinese government, political science, public administration, public policy, and management scholars who attended a conference of the International Public Management Network held at Erasmus U. Rotterdam in June 2010. Specially commissioned pieces and chapters based on papers from the conference are included. They explore new public management steering concepts and instruments that have emerged after New Public Management (NPM) and new organizational mechanisms, arrangements, and ideas for dealing with the fragmentation caused by NPM. These include whole of government, collaborative governance, networks, and outcome steering, with case studies of the obesity epidemic in the UK, urban regeneration projects in China, and welfare services. There is no index. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Project-based organizing and strategic management.

Cattani (strategy and organizations, New York U.) et al. compile 19 chapters by researchers of business, management, innovation, entrepreneurship, and organization studies from Europe, North America, and Singapore, many who participated in community-building efforts at the Academy of Management Annual Meetings from 2008-2010 in Anaheim, Chicago, and Montreal. They focus on research on project-based organizations and its relationship to strategic management and consider the social embeddedness of projects, the learning processes unfolding in project-based settings, and the development of project-related capabilities. They discuss definitions of project-based organizing, how these organizations can serve as a form that arises in response to uncertainty or turbulent environments, cooperative strategies used in the movie industry, the institutionalization processes by which temporary organizations become permanent, how organizations develop new capabilities, strategic responses to standardization, leadership, collaboration in virtual projects, organizations or products associated with multiple categories, and other topics. No index is provided. Distributed in North America by Turpin Distribution. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)