The issue of rank-and-file membership participation in the affairs of their trade union has received little attention in Australia. In this paper we focus on possible correlates of such participation. Based on a questionnaire survey of members of a public sector union (N=752) we devise three...

There is a well established literature on the antecedents of organizational commitment, though the relative importance of these antecedents to particular groups of workers remains unclear. Relying on a general set of antecedents for all workers may result in the application of inappropriate HRM...

Sociological work that has engaged with the issue of patient involvement in health care suggests it needs to be recognised that decision-making is not simply an individual cognitive act contained in a single consultation, but a process that is distributed across multiple encounters in relation...

The current recession has deeply affected the way Americans view their personal financial situation. In their annual analysis of opinion surveys of Americans, Robert Blendon and John Benson find that nine out of ten Americans have a negative view of the economy and that the economy is hurting...

The authors explore the interactions between retailer conflict, types of competition, and retail regulation. Their study is set within the wider debates surrounding the attempts to retheorise retail geography, and, more specifically, in the context of retail competition within interwar Britain....

With this issue, we introduce a new annual survey of Americans' attitudes toward their own lives and the state of the nation. Undertaken by two Harvard researchers and based on both their own surveys and the surveys of others, the analysis finds that Americans' optimism about their individual...

This article is the fifth in an annual series intended to help people gain a deeper insight into how Americans see their own lives. It has become clear that the economy is now weighing heavily on Americans. But they cite different reasons for their concerns. Some are affected more by a lack of...

When asked, many Americans say they are doing well financially. But further details begin to raise doubts. A majority are concerned that they cannot meet the costs of a typical life. It is not the availability of jobs they are so much worried about as the ability to afford what they believe they...

How did Americans view the state of their nation last year? Robert Blendon and John Benson summarize the results of some fifty surveys over the years that cover a range of economic and social issues. At the end of 2005, a large majority of Americans thought the economy was not faring well. Most...