A case study and interview with Jill McDonald CEO and President of McDonald's Northern Europe Division

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how strategy is developed and implemented within a subsidiary of a global organization, the relationship between subsidiary and headquarters and the need for continuous change and adaption to remain relevant. Furthermore, this case study describes a successful process of invention and adoption. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on documentary evidence and a semistructured interview with Jill McDonald CEO and President of McDonald’s Northern Europe Division with responsibility for the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and the Republic of Ireland. Management research rarely captures the views of the top executive, yet the top executives have a broad picture and are key strategic decision makers. Findings – The case study and interview offers a unique insight into factors contributing to McDonald’s unprecedented success (it has paid an increased dividend for the past 37 years). It also sheds light on its successful internationalization strategy. Originality/value – The case study draws on published material and augments this with an in-depth interview with the Chief Executive. Very few case studies offer insight into the thinking of a Chief Executive managing a subsidiary of a global organization. Its value lies in the lessons that managers and students of management can draw on the approach adopted by a highly successful global organization.

African language books for children: issues for authors

Growing interest in bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted an urgent need for reading material in African languages. In this paper, we focus on authors, one of several groups of stakeholders with responsibility for meeting this demand. We address three main issues: the nature and extent of African language publishing for children; the challenges for authors; and the available support. Our analysis is based on interviews and focus group discussions with publishers, authors, translators, educationalists, and representatives of book promotion organisations from nine African countries and documentary data on children's books in African languages in South Africa. Although there is evidence of a growing interest in producing books in local languages, the number of titles is constrained by funding. The challenges for authors include the need to understand the ingredients for successful children's books and for the sensitivity necessary to negotiate the linguistic challenges associated with a newly emergent genre in African languages. Support, in the form of competitions and workshops, relies on external funding and expertise and offers only temporary solutions. We finish with suggestions for more sustainable ways forward.

Parental responsibility beliefs: associations with parental anxiety and behaviours in the context of childhood anxiety disorders

Background: High levels of parental anxiety are associated with poor treatment outcomes for children with anxiety disorders. Associated parental cognitions and behaviours have been implicated as impediments to successful treatment. We examined the association between parental responsibility beliefs, maternal anxiety and parenting behaviours in the context of childhood anxiety disorders. Methods: Anxious and non-anxious mothers of 7-12 year old children with a current anxiety disorder reported their parental responsibility beliefs using a questionnaire measure. Parental behaviours towards their child during a stressor task were measured. Results: Parents with a current anxiety disorder reported a greater sense of responsibility for their child’s actions and wellbeing than parents who scored within the normal range for anxiety. Furthermore, higher parental responsibility was associated with more intrusive and less warm behaviours in parent-child interactions and there was an indirect effect between maternal anxiety and maternal intrusive behaviours via parental responsibility beliefs. Limitations: The sample was limited to a treatment-seeking, relatively high socio-economic population and only mothers were included so replication with more diverse groups is needed. The use of a range of stressor tasks may have allowed for a more comprehensive assessment of parental behaviours. Conclusions: The findings suggest that parental anxiety disorder is associated with an elevated sense of parental responsibility and may promote parental behaviours likely to inhibit optimum child treatment outcomes. Parental responsibility beliefs may therefore be important to target in child anxiety treatments in the context of parental anxiety disorders.

How was patient empowerment portrayed in information leaflets describing the community pharmacy Medicines Use Review service in the UK?

Objective The Medicines Use Review (MUR) community pharmacy service was introduced in 2005 to enhance patient empowerment but the service has not been taken up as widely as expected. We investigated the depiction of the patient–pharmacist power relationship within MUR patient information leaflets. Methods We identified 11 MUR leaflets including the official Department of Health MUR booklet and through discourse analysis examined the way language and imagery had been used to symbolise and give meaning to the MUR service, especially the portrayal of the patient–pharmacist interactions and the implied power relations. Results A variety of terminology was used to describe the MUR, a service that aimed ultimately to produce more informed patients through the information imparted by knowledgeable, skilled pharmacists. Conclusion The educational role of the MUR overshadowed the intended patient empowerment that would take place with a true concordance-centred approach. Although patient empowerment was implied, this was within the boundaries of the biomedical model with the pharmacist as the expert provider of medicines information. Practice implications If patient empowerment is to be conveyed this needs to be communicated to patients through consistent use of language and imagery that portrays the inclusivity intended.

Goal sketching with activity diagrams

Goal orientation is acknowledged as an important paradigm in requirements engineering. The structure of a goal-responsibility model provides opportunities for appraising the intention of a development. Creating a suitable model under agile constraints (time, incompleteness and catching up after an initial burst of creativity) can be challenging. Here we propose a marriage of UML activity diagrams with goal sketching in order to facilitate the production of goal responsibility models under these constraints.

Championing the rhetoric: corporate social responsibility in the Ghanaian mining sector

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature that critically examines how mining companies are embracing community development challenges in developing countries, drawing on experiences from Ghana. Despite receiving considerable praise from the donor and industry communities, the actions being taken by Ghana's major mining companies to foster community development are facilitating few improvements in the rural regions where activities take place. Companies are generally implementing community development programmes that are incapable of alleviating rural hardship and are coordinating destructive displacement exercises. The analysis serves as a stark reminder that mining companies are not charities and engage with African countries strictly for commercial purposes.

Educational and psychosocial programmes for adolescents with diabetes: approaches, outcomes and cost-effectiveness

Diabetes incurs heavy personal and health system costs. Self-management is required if complications are to be avoided. Adolescents face particular challenges as they learn to take responsibility for their diabetes. A systematic review of educational and psychosocial programmes for adolescents with diabetes was undertaken. This aimed to: identify and categorise the types of programmes that have been evaluated; assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions; identify areas where further research is required. Sixty-two papers were identified and Subjected to a narrative review. Generic programmes focus on knowledge/skills, psychosocial issues, and behaviour/self-management. They result in modest improvements across a range of outcomes but improvements are often not sustained, suggesting a need for continuous support, possibly integrated into normal care. In-hospital education at diagnosis confers few advantages over home treatment. The greatest returns may be obtained by targeting poorly controlled individuals. Few studies addressed resourcing issues and robust cost-effectiveness appraisals are required to identify interventions that generate the greatest returns on expenditure. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Untangling rhetoric and reality in the CSR debate – the role of corporate social responsibility in effective business strategy

While there is a strong moral case for corporate social responsibility (CSR), the business case for CSR is certainly not irrefutable. A better understanding of how to integrate CSR into business strategy is needed but with ever increasing momentum towards sustainability as a business driver, it is often difficult to untangle the rhetoric from reality in the CSR debate. Through an analysis of eight case studies of leading firms from throughout the construction supply chain who claim to engage in CSR, we explore how consulting and contracting firms in the construction and engineering industries integrate CSR into their business strategy. Findings point to an inherent caution of moving beyond compliance and to a risk-averse culture which adopts very narrow definitions of success. We conclude that until this culture changes or the industry is forced by clients or regulation to change, the idea of CSR will continue to mean achieving economic measures of success, with ecological goals a second regulated priority and social goals a distant third.

Pathways to inflated responsibility beliefs in adolescent obsessive-compulsive disorder: a preliminary investigation

Background: An inflated sense of responsibility is characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). No previous studies have investigated its origins. Five potential pathways to inflated responsibility beliefs have been proposed; these are tested in this study. Method: A novel measure, the Origins Questionnaire for Adolescents (OQA), was developed to assess experiences on these five pathways. Reliability of the OQA was investigated. The experiences on the five pathways to inflated responsibility beliefs of sixteen adolescents with a history of OCD were compared to sixteen adolescents with no history of OCD. Parents also reported on adolescents’ experiences on the five pathways. Results: Inter-rater reliability was high. The internal consistency of the subscales were only partly satisfactory. The groups differed on one pathway; the clinical group reported a higher sense of responsibility for significant incidents with a negative outcome prior to onset of OCD. Conclusions: An inflated sense of responsibility, in combination with the occurrence of specific incidents, might act as a vulnerability factor for development of OCD. Future research should consider how to measure the subtle effects of experiences of responsibility over the course of development.

Stakeholder-defined corporate responsibility for a pre-credit-crunch financial service company: lessons for how good reputations are won and lost

This paper presents a study that identifies a stakeholder-defined concept of Corporate Responsibility (CR) in the context of a UK financial service organisation in the immediate pre-credit crunch era. From qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with employees and customers, we identify, in a wide-ranging stakeholder-defined concept of CR, six themes that together imply two necessary conditions for a firm to be regarded as responsible— both corporate actions and character must be consonant with CR. This provides both empirical support for a notable, recent theoretical contribution by Godfrey (in Acad Manag Rev 30:777–798, 2005) and novel lessons for reputation management practice.

Ensuring operational compliance and ethical responsibility in the regulation of ART: the HFEA, past, present, and future

Under the Public Bodies Bill 2010, the HFEA, cornerstone in the regulation of assisted reproduction technologies (ART) for the last twenty years, is due to be abolished. This implies that there is no longer a need for a dedicated regulator for ART and that the existing roles of the Authority as both operational compliance monitor, and instance of ethical evaluation, may be absorbed by existing healthcare regulators. This article presents a timely analysis of these disparate functions of the HFEA, charting reforms adopted in 2008 and assessing the impact of the current proposals. Taking assisted conception treatment as the focus activity, it will be shown that the last few years have seen a concentration on the HFEA as a technical regulator based upon the principles of Better Regulation, with little analysis of how the ethical responsibility of the Authority fits into this framework. The current proposal to abolish the HFEA continues to fail to address this crucial question. Notwithstanding the fact that the scope of the Authority's ethical role may be questioned, its abolition requires that the Government consider what alternatives exists - or need to be put in place - to provide both responsive operational regulation and a forum for ethical reflection and decision-making in an area which continues to pose regulatory challenges

‘Inherited commitments’: do changes in ownership affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) at African gold mines?

This paper critically examines the issue of ‘inherited corporate social responsibility’ in the gold mining industry, focusing specifically on the case of sub-Saharan Africa, a region plagued with excessive corruption, rampant poverty and weak governance. Whilst there appears to be little incentive to proactively engage with communities and implement cutting-edge environmental policies in the region, mine managers argue otherwise, highlighting a number of reasons for embracing corporate social responsibility (CSR). After briefly reviewing the philosophical underpinnings of CSR, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of these arguments, in the process, underscoring how tenuous the case for CSR in the extractive industries, and gold mining more specifically, is in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Following a change in ownership, new management faces few pressures to embrace CSR in its entirety and therefore, more often than not, finds itself in a position to implement programs and policies of its choice. More research is needed that further popularizes the issue of ‘inherited CSR’ in the gold mining sector and extractive industries more generally.

Unpacking the mechanism by which corporate responsibility impacts stakeholder relationships

Most research on corporate responsibility (CR) has investigated CR from the perspective of organizations, often focusing on how organizations define, manage and implement CR to gain benefits or competitive advantage. The benefits of CR for organizations are, however, often said to be achieved through increased support of stakeholders. Despite this, limited attention has been given to understanding CR from the perspective of stakeholders and, in particular, the mechanism by which CR drives stakeholder support. This study addresses this deficit. Building on advances in the application of psychological theories to the field of management, the research develops and empirically tests a theoretical model of how CR-related experiences and beliefs drive stakeholder trust and positive intent. The research is conducted with customers (n = 708) and employees (n = 359) of a service organization in the UK that introduced a range of CR-related activities into their business. The findings contribute to literature by empirically demonstrating (a) the impact of CR-related experiences on the development of beliefs about, and trust towards, the organization; (b) the importance of ‘others-related’ CR experiences even in the presence of ‘self-related’ CR experiences; and (c) the role of beliefs as partial mediators in how experiences of CR, both ‘self-related’ and ‘others-related’, translate into trust and positive intent.

Understanding the long term success of UK construction firms: the extent and role of 'hidden' corporate social responsibility

The construction sector is often described as lagging behind other major industries. At first this appears fair when considering the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is argued that CSR is ill-defined, with firms struggling to make sense of and engage with it. Literature suggests that the short-termism view of construction firms renders the long-term, triple-bottom-line principle of CSR untenable. This seems to be borne out by literature indicating that construction firms typically adopt a compliance-based approach to CSR instead of discretionary CSR which is regarded as adding most value to firms and benefiting the broadest group of stakeholders. However, this research conducted in the UK using a regional construction firm offers a counter argument whereby discretionary CSR approaches are well embedded and enacted within the firms’ business operations even though they are not formally articulated as CSR strategies and thus remain 'hidden'. This raises questions in the current CSR debate. First, is ‘hidden’ CSR relevant to the long term success of construction firms? and to what extent do these firms need to reinvent themselves to formally take advantage of the CSR agenda?

Evaluating the legacies of state-building: success, failure, and the role of responsibility

What impact do international state-building missions have on the domestic politics of states they seek to build, and how can we measure this impact with confidence? This article seeks to address these questions and challenge some existing approaches that often appear to assume that state-builders leave lasting legacies rather than demonstrating such influence with the use of carefully chosen empirical evidence. Too often, domestic conditions that follow in the wake of international state-building are assumed to follow as a result of international intervention, usually due to insufficient attention to the causal processes that link international actions to domestic outcomes. The article calls for greater appreciation of the methodological challenges to establishing causal inferences regarding the legacies of state-building and identifies three qualitative methodological strategies—process tracing, counterfactual analysis, and the use of control cases—that can be used to improve confidence in causal claims about state-building legacies. The article concludes with a case study of international state-building in East Timor, highlighting several flaws of existing evaluations of the United Nations' role in East Timor and identifying the critical role that domestic actors play even in the context of authoritative international intervention