Breaking out of the silo mentality

The return to methods focusing on language and experience following the dominance of experimental methods has in the last few decades led to debate, dialogue, and disagreement regarding the status of qualitative and quantitative methods. However, a recent focus on impact has brought an air of pragmatism to the research arena. In what ways, then, is psychology moving from entrenched mono methods approaches that have epitomised its development until recently, to describing and discussing ways in which mixed and pluralistic research can advance and contribute to further, deeper psychological understanding?.

The effects of relocation on Royal Air Force families

This doctoral research project examines the effects that geographical transience has on Royal Air Force families. The methodology employed in this exploratory and qualitative study consisted largely of open-ended interview questions but also included a series of demographic variables. In total, 29 RAF personnel without families, 33 RAF personnel with families, 33 RAF spouses, and 15 RAF children participated in this research (N = 110). All respondents volunteered to take part in the study and were based in the United Kingdom at the time of data collection. The interviews were transcribed and content coded according to six major relocation themes arising from the literature (change, tasks, support, coping, difficulty, and outcome). QSR NVIVO 2.0, a qualitative data analysis software package, was used to facilitate the process. Through the utilisations of qualitative methodology, the researcher was able to offer various novel and reoccurring variables that appear to play an important role (at least subjectively) in relocation. Additionally, frequencies associated with these factors were presented. The findings were integrated with those from the literature in order to offer an initial comparison and differentiation between civilian and military samples. The main theoretical contributions were the introduction of the concept of mobile mentality, the creation of a novel relocation model that takes familial interaction into account, and the development of a taxonomy for the classification of relocation outcomes. Finally, additional observations, recommendations for future research, and practical implications are reviewed.

Margetinggeschichte:Die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik, Hartmut Berghoff

Book revew: Marketinggeschichte: die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik [Marketing history: The genesis of a modern social technique], edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Frankfurt/Main, Campus Verlag, 2007, 409 pp., illus., [euro]30.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-3-593-38323-1. This edited volume is the result of a workshop at Göttingen University in 2006 and combines a number of different approaches to the research into the history of marketing in Germany's economy and society. The majority of contributions loosely focus around the occurrence of a ‘marketing revolution’ in the 1970s, which ties in with interpretations of the Americanisation of German business. This revolution replaced the indigenous German idea of Absatzwirtschaft (the economics of sales) with the American-influenced idea of Marketing, which was less functionally oriented and more strategic, and which aimed to connect processes within the firm in order to allow a greater focus on the consumer. The entire volume is framed by Hartmut Berghoff's substantial and informative introduction, which introduces a number of actors and trends beyond the content of the volume. Throughout the various contributions, authors provide explanations of the timing and nature of marketing revolutions. Alexander Engel identifies an earlier revolution in the marketing of dyes, which undergoes major change with the emergence of chemical dyes. While the natural dyestuff had been a commodity, with producers removed from consumers via a global network of traders, chemical dyes were products and were branded at an early stage. This was a fundamental change in the nature of production and sales. As Roman Rossfeld shows in his contribution on the Swiss chocolate industry (which focuses almost exclusively on Suchard), even companies that produced non-essential consumer goods which had always required some measure of labelling grappled for years with the need to develop fewer and higher impact brands, as well as an efficient sales operation. A good example for the classical ‘marketing revolution’ of the 1970s is the German automobile industry. Ingo Köhler convincingly argues that the crisis situation of German car manufacturers – the change from a seller's to a buyer's market, appreciation of the German mark which undermines exports, the oil crises coupled with higher inflation and greater frugality of consumers and the emergence of new competitors – lead companies to refocus from production to the demands of the consumer. While he highlights the role of Ford in responding most rapidly to these problems, he does not address whether the multinational was potentially transferring American knowledge to the German market. Similarly, Paul Erker illustrates that a marketing revolution in transport and logistics happened much later, because the market remained highly regulated until the 1980s. Both Paul Erker and Uwe Spiekermann in their contribution, present comparisons of two different sectors or companies (the tire manufacturer Continental and the logistics company Dachser, and agriculture and trade, respectively). In both cases, however, it remains unclear why these examples were chosen for comparison, as both seem to have little in common and are not always effectively used to demonstrate differences. The weakest section of the book is the development of marketing as an academic discipline. The attempt at sketching the phases in the evolution of marketing as an academic discipline by Ursula Hansen and Matthias Bode opens with an undergraduate-level explanation on the methodology of historical periodisation that seems extraneous. Considerably stronger is the section on the wider societal impact of marketing, and Anja Kruke shows how the new techniques of opinion research was accepted by politics and business – surprisingly more readily by politicians than their commercial counterparts. In terms of contemporary personalities, Hans Domizlaff emerges as one fascinating figure of German marketing history, which several contributors refer to and whose career as the German cigarette manufacturer Reemtsma is critically analysed by Tino Jacobs. Domizlaff was Germany's own ‘marketing guru’, whose successful campaigns led to the wide-ranging reception of his ideas about the nature of good branding and marketing. These are variously described as intuitive, elitist, and sachlich, a German concept of a sober, fact-based, and ‘no frills’ approach. Domizlaff did not believe in market research. Rather, he saw the genius of the individual advertiser as key to intuitively ascertaining the people's moods, wishes, and desires. This seems to have made him peculiarly suited to the tastes of the German middle class, according to Thomas Mergel's contribution on the nature of political marketing in the republic. Especially in politics, any form of hard sales tactics were severely frowned upon and considered to demean the citizen as incapable of making an informed choice, a mentality that he dates back to the traditions of nineteenth-century liberalism. Part of this disdain of ‘selling politics like toothpaste’ was also founded on the highly effective use of branding by the National Socialists, who identified their party through the use of an increasingly standardised image of Adolf Hitler and the swastika. Alexander Schug extends on previous research that criticised the simplistic notion of Hitler's charisma as the only explanation of the popular success and distances his approach from those who see it in terms of propaganda and demagogy. He argues that the NSDAP used the tools of advertising and branding precisely because they had to introduce their new ideology into a political marketplace dominated by more established parties. In this they were undoubtedly successful, more so than they intended: as bakers sold swastika cookies and butchers formed Führer heads out of lard, the NSDAP sought to regain control over the now effectively iconic images that constituted their brand, which was in danger of being trivialised and devalued. Key to understanding the history of marketing in Germany is on the one hand the exchange of ideas with the United States, and on the other the impact of national-socialist policies, and the question whether they were a force of modernisation or retardation. The general argument in the volume appears to favour the latter explanation. In the 1930s, some of the leading marketing experts emigrated to the USA, leaving German academia and business isolated. The aftermath of the Second World War left a country that needed to increase production to satisfy consumer demand, and there was little interest in advanced sales techniques. Although the Nazis were progressive in applying new marketing methods to their political campaign, this retarded the adoption of sales techniques in politics for a long time. Germany saw the development of idiosyncratic approaches by people like Domizlaff in the 1930s and 1940s, when it lost some leading thinkers, and only engaged with American marketing conceptions in the 1960s and 1970s, when consumers eventually became more important than producers.

Reporting and managing risk:a look at current practice at Tesco, RBS, local and central government

These case studies from CIMA highlight the need to embed risk management within more easily understood behaviours, consistent with the overall organisational culture. In each case, some form of internal audit team provides either an oversight function or acts as an expert link in that feedback loop. Frontline staff, managers and specialists should be completely aligned on risk, in part just to ensure that there is a consistency of approach. They should understand instinctively that good performance includes good risk management. Tesco has continued to thrive during the recession and remains a robust and efficient group of businesses despite the emergence of potential threats around consumer spending and the supply chain. RBS, by contrast, has suffered catastrophic and very public failures of risk management despite a large in-house function and stiff regulation of risk controls. Birmingham City Council, like all local authorities, is adapting to more commercial modes of operation and is facing diverse threats and opportunities emerging as a result of social change. And DCMS, like many other public sector organisations, has to handle an incredibly complex network of delivery partners within the context of a relatively recent overhaul of central government risk management processes. Key Findings: •Risk management is no longer solely a financial discipline, nor is it simply a concern for the internal control function. •Where organisations retain a discrete risk management cadre – often specialists at monitoring and evaluating a range of risks – their success is dependent on embedding risk awareness in the wider culture of the enterprise. •Risk management is most successful when it is explicitly linked to operational performance. •Clear leadership, specific goals, excellent influencing skills and open-mindedness to potential threats and opportunities are essential for effective risk management. •Bureaucratic processes and systems can hamper good risk management – either as a result of a ‘box-ticking mentality’ or because managers and staff believe they do not need to consider risk themselves.