IT consultants' voluntary contract termination - a psychological contract perspective

This research explores the question why IT consultants terminate their employment contracts in a labour market with job drought, downsizing and salary cuts when they were among those who kept their jobs during layoffs. A process model for the maintenance of a psychological contract between employees and employers is presented, which combines the concept of psychological contract with a theory of the relation between intrinsic motivation and management practices and with theories of identity, self-esteem, influence and power. The research verifies and specifies the model based on a revelatory case study. The model helps explaining IT consultants’ behavior of voluntarily terminating their employment contracts beyond the crisis situation in the IT industry some years ago which motivated this research originally. It should assist managers in a more general context in avoiding practices, which might lead to their employees’ loss of intrinsic motivation and as a consequence to the loss of valuable employees for the organization.

The quality of dietary intake methodology and reporting in child and adolescent obesity intervention trials : a systematic review

Assessing dietary intake is important in evaluating childhood obesity intervention effectiveness. The purpose of this review was to evaluate the dietary intake methods and reporting in intervention studies that included a dietary component to treat overweight or obese children. A systematic review of studies published in the English language, between 1985 and August 2010 in health databases. The search identified 2,295 papers, of which 335 were retrieved and 31 met the inclusion criteria. Twenty-three studies reported energy intake as an outcome measure, 20 reported macronutrient intakes and 10 studies reported food intake outcomes. The most common dietary method employed was the food diary (n = 13), followed by 24-h recall (n = 5), food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) (n = 4) and dietary questionnaire (n = 4). The quality of the dietary intake methods reporting was rated as ‘poor’ in 15 studies (52%) and only 3 were rated as ‘excellent’. The reporting quality of FFQs tended to be higher than food diaries/recalls. Deficiencies in the quality of dietary intake methods reporting in child obesity studies were identified. Use of a dietary intake methods reporting checklist is recommended. This will enable the quality of dietary intake results to be evaluated, and an increased ability to replicate study methodology by other researchers.

A study of voluntary disclosure of listed Chinese firms - a stakeholder perspective

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate stakeholder power changes and their impact on firms' disclosure decisions in the Chinese stock market. Using legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory, the paper identifies newly emerged stakeholder groups for listed Chinese firms during three distinguished periods of the development of the Chinese stock market.

Design/methodology/approach – Panel data analysis was undertaken over a period from 1995-2006 with an aim to examine the influence of stakeholder power changes on voluntary disclosures made by 297 listed firms in their 12 years of annual reports. A voluntary disclosure checklist has been used for hand-collecting data from annual reports.

Findings – The finding shows that different stakeholder groups exert different degrees of influence on firms' decision-making in respect of information disclosure during different stages of the development of the Chinese stock market.

Research limitations/implications – The impact of a stakeholder power changes on corporate disclosure has not been well addressed and how listed Chinese firms respond to these changes is still a significant gap in the Chinese corporate disclosure literature. In this study, the paper uses proxies to represent each stakeholder group, discuss power changes of each group and predict the impact of power changes on firms' voluntary disclosure.

Originality/value – The paper identifies the new content of the “social contract” between listed firms and Chinese society and identifies various stakeholder groups of listed Chinese firms in the context of a new “social contract”. The paper predicts that voluntary corporate disclosure is the result of stakeholder pressures and firms use voluntary disclosure as one of their strategies to manage the firm-stakeholder relationship.

Fortification. Folic acid and spina bifida. Is it safe? Is it wise? Is it right?

Food fortification takes many forms. The example discussed here is unusual, because in many countries now it is required by law: the fortification of flour with the B vitamin folic acid, or MFFFA for short. Voluntary fortification of various food products was first used to help prevent and control child and maternal anaemia associated with folate deficiency (1). In the mid-1990s, policy-makers in various countries began considering using mandatory fortification under a novel policy paradigm, that fortification was needed to increase the folic acid intake and protect the health status of people who had a special requirement for this nutrient, irrespective of the folate status of the population as a whole.

Is socioeconomic status associated with dietary sodium intake in Australian children? A cross-sectional study

Objective To assess the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and dietary sodium intake, and to identify if the major dietary sources of sodium differ by socioeconomic group in a nationally representative sample of Australian children.

Design Cross-sectional survey.

Setting 2007 Australian National Children's Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey.

Participants A total of 4487 children aged 2–16 years completed all components of the survey.

Primary and secondary outcome measures Sodium intake was determined via one 24 h dietary recall. The population proportion formula was used to identify the major sources of dietary salt. SES was defined by the level of education attained by the primary carer. In addition, parental income was used as a secondary indicator of SES.

Results Dietary sodium intake of children of low SES background was 2576 (SEM 42) mg/day (salt equivalent 6.6 (0.1) g/day), which was greater than that of children of high SES background 2370 (35) mg/day (salt 6.1 (0.1) g/day; p<0.001). After adjustment for age, gender, energy intake and body mass index, low SES children consumed 195 mg/day (salt 0.5 g/day) more sodium than high SES children (p<0.001). Low SES children had a greater intake of sodium from processed meat, gravies/sauces, pastries, breakfast cereals, potatoes and potato snacks (all p<0.05).

Conclusions Australian children from a low SES background have on average a 9% greater intake of sodium from food sources compared with those from a high SES background. Understanding the socioeconomic patterning of salt intake during childhood should be considered in interventions to reduce cardiovascular disease.

Dietary sodium intake is associated with total fluid and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in US children and adolescents aged 2 - 18 y : NHANES 2005 - 2008

Background: Increasing dietary sodium drives the thirst response. Because sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are frequently consumed by children, sodium intake may drive greater consumption of SSBs and contribute to obesity risk.

Objective: We examined the association between dietary sodium, total fluid, and SSB consumption in a nationally representative sample of US children and adolescents aged 2–18 y.

Design: We analyzed cross-sectional data from NHANES 2005–2008. Dietary sodium, fluid, and SSB intakes were assessed with a 24-h dietary recall. Multiple regression analysis was used to assess associations between sodium, fluid, and SSBs adjusted for age, sex, race-ethnic group, body mass index (BMI), socioeconomic status (SES), and energy intake.

Results: Of 6400 participants, 51.3% (n = 3230) were males, and the average (±SEM) age was 10.1 ± 0.1 y. The average sodium intake was 3056 ± 48 mg/d (equivalent to 7.8 ± 0.1 g salt/d). Dietary sodium intake was positively associated with fluid consumption (r = 0.42, P < 0.001). After adjustment for age, sex, race-ethnic group, SES, and BMI, each additional 390 mg Na/d (1 g salt/d) was associated with a 74-g/d greater intake of fluid (P < 0.001). In consumers of SSBs (n = 4443; 64%), each additional 390 mg Na/d (1 g salt/d) was associated with a 32-g/d higher intake of SSBs (P < 0.001) adjusted for age, sex, race-ethnic group, SES, and energy intake.

Conclusions: Dietary sodium is positively associated with fluid consumption and predicted SSB consumption in consumers of SSBs. The high dietary sodium intake of US children and adolescents may contribute to a greater consumption of SSBs identifying a possible link between dietary sodium intake and excess energy intake.

Maternal dietary intake during pregnancy has longstanding consequences for the health of her offspring

Over the past 100 years, advances in pharmaceutical and medical technology have reduced the burden of communicable disease, and our appreciation of the mechanisms underlying the development of noncommunicable disease has broadened. During this time, a number of studies, both in humans and animal models, have highlighted the importance of maintaining an optimal diet during pregnancy. In particular, a number of studies support the hypothesis that suboptimal maternal protein and fat intake during pregnancy can have long-term effects on the growing fetus, and increase the likelihood of these offspring developing cardiovascular, renal, or metabolic diseases in adulthood. More recently, it has been shown that dietary intake of a number of micronutrients may offset or reverse the deleterious effects of macronutrient imbalance. Furthermore, maternal fat intake has also been identified as a major contributor to a healthy fetal environment, with a beneficial role for unsaturated fats during development as well as a beneficial impact on cell membrane physiology. Together these studies indicate that attempts to optimise maternal nutrition may prove to be an efficient and cost-effective strategy for preventing the development of cardiovascular, renal, or metabolic diseases.

A school-based education programme to reduce salt intake in children and their families (School-EduSalt): protocol of a cluster randomised controlled trial

The current salt intake is very high for children as well as adults in China. A reduction in salt intake is one of the most cost-effective measures to curb the rapidly growing disease burden attributed to blood pressure and cardiovascular disease in the Chinese population. A lower salt diet starting from childhood has the potential to prevent the development of such conditions. The School-EduSalt (School-based Education Programme to Reduce Salt) study aims to determine whether an education programme targeted at school children can lower salt intake in children and their families.

Voluntary demand for auditing by farm businesses: an Australian perspective

 This study investigates voluntary demand for auditing by Australian farm businesses, a significant but relatively unexplored segment of the economy. Most farms operate as family partnerships or sole proprietors and we thus focus on incentives to audit arising from internal sources (owner-manager), controlling for traditional incentives arising from external contractual constraints (i.e., debt), organisational characteristics (i.e., size), and agency conflict. We hypothesise that an external audit assists management in enhancing internal control by complementing the process of profit planning and control (budgeting) and that increased family conflict provides an incentive to engage external audit. Of the 457 survey questionnaire respondents, 27% voluntarily engage an external auditor and 66% conduct some formal written planning. Results from logistic regression analyses support the predicted impact of both size and debt on audit, and further support the hypothesised impact of budgeting. The positive association between budgeting and audit confirms the complementary relationship. More importantly, this relationship is not confounded by the combined impact of size and budgeting and debt and budgeting on voluntary audit. In addition, family conflict has no impact on voluntary demand for auditing by farm business.

Are voluntary wheel running and open-field behavior correlated in mice? Different answers from comparative and artificial selection approaches

Voluntary wheel running and open-field behavior are probably the two most widely used measures of locomotion in laboratory rodents. We tested whether these two behaviors are correlated in mice using two approaches: the phylogenetic comparative method using inbred strains of mice and an ongoing artificial selection experiment on voluntary wheel running. After taking into account the measurement error and phylogenetic relationships among inbred strains, we obtained a significant positive correlation between distance run on wheels and distance moved in the open-field for both sexes. Thigmotaxis was negatively correlated with distance run on wheels in females but not in males. By contrast, mice from four replicate lines bred for high wheel running did not differ in either distance covered or thigmotaxis in the open field as compared with mice from four non-selected control lines. Overall, results obtained in the selection experiment were generally opposite to those observed among inbred strains. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.