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This study aims to explore how key stakeholders and recipients of local food access programs operate strategically to meet individual and community food needs, enhance experiences of dignity and promote social justice. The study of a fragmented community food system highlights the connections between micro and meso dimensions of food access, illustrating how people work around food system limitations to access food.

Using qualitative in-depth interviews with food assistance managers, workers, volunteers and recipients, this study examines the period before the implementation of a centralized community-based food access initiative in a mid-sized, rural Oklahoma college town with a high rate of food insecurity. This study asks: What are community members’ experiences in a fragmented food assistance system? In what ways do individuals use everyday resistance and workarounds to actively promote experiences of dignity and social justice in food access spaces?

Those involved in sites of community food access build important networks to share information and engage in negotiation and trade to gain access to useful food resources. As forms of everyday resistance, such practices encourage co-construction of dignity and social justice in stigmatized spaces.

This research contributes to literature examining micro- and meso-level community dynamics that inform agency, dignity and social justice in community food access approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to show how to identify red flags in letters responding to customer complaints and demonstrate elements of effective response letters.

Using actual form letter responses, the paper shows how to identify weaknesses in form letters and remedies for improving their credibility. Measurement criteria follow the concept of fairness which has roots in Kant's moral idealism theory.

The paper identifies key elements that should be included in credible form letters. A combination of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice is required for an effective response.

Tourism and hospitality managers issuing effective template responses (form letters) have the opportunity to improve consumer trust, loyalty, and future complaint intentions.

The training exercises provide examples for managers and consultants to teach employees how to develop effective responses to customer complaints.

Explores the developmental role and meaning of executive degree programmes in the lives of working executive participants. Uses Levinson’s concepts of developmental stages, the central components of the life structure, and Mead’s concept that meaning is found in the response of the other, as the theoretical framework. Data were gathered using semi‐structured interviews that explored respondents’ work life, biographical and family influences, and the educational experience. A short questionnaire was used to gather demographic data. The subjects were executive participants in the Executive Program at The Claremont Graduate School. The sample of 12 ranged from 36 to 55 years of age. The respondents were equally distributed by gender. The data supported Mead’s notion that the meaning of the degree programme would be found in the response of significant others. The interview data indicated that respondents enjoyed a high level of support for their educational goals from significant others at home and at work. There was no support for Levinson’s model where the role/meaning of the programme would be different for participants at different stages of adulthood. However, the experience did effect life structures in predictable ways.

Purpose: The authors attempt to capture new forensic science students’ pre-conceptions of the field and their assessment of competencies. Methodology: The authors surveyed students at a Historically Black College and University and a Primarily White Institution on their viewership of crime and forensic TV shows and measured their competencies in a range of forensic science skills at the start and end of the semester, along with having students capture errors and evidence from an episode of CSI Las Vegas. Findings: Students who were viewers of crime series with and without prior forensics coursework over evaluated their level of preparedness at the start of the semester, often ranking themselves as moderately or well prepared in blood spatter analysis, fingerprinting, bodily fluid, and hair/fiber collection. Research limitations: The authors relied on a convenience sample of forensic science courses, and their comparison of student learning was disrupted by COVID-19. Originality: The authors examine student concerns with working at crime scenes and reflections on their abilities to succeed in the field. The authors discuss the need for incorporating media literacy, content warnings, and emotional socialization and professional development into forensic science curricula to better equip and prepare students for careers as crime scene investigators and forensic analysts.

Understanding whistleblowing behavior by identifying preferred reporting channels and associated personality characteristics can aid organizations in their attempts to encourage whistleblowing. The authors investigate whether both Dark Triad characteristics and gender affect whistleblowing intentions and whistleblowing channel preferences. Using a sample of undergraduate business students, the authors find individuals with higher levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics indicate that they are less likely to blow the whistle than individuals with lower levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics. They are also more likely to use non-anonymous channels over anonymous channels and individuals with lower levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics show the opposite channel preference. The authors also find women more likely to report, and when reporting, they prefer anonymous over non-anonymous channels. The results provide support for organizations in cultivating an organizational culture that promotes communication among employees and potentially includes incentives to promote whistleblowing.

This paper investigates the dynamics between state affect and trusting cognitive beliefs on post-adoptive information technology (IT) use behaviors in the form of intention to explore and deep structure usage. That state affect can influence behaviors is recognized in practice. In fact, some studies examine the impact of affective constructs, but the way state affect impacts how individuals use IT remains largely unexplored. The authors theorize that state affect, in the form of positive and negative affect, will influence trusting cognitive beliefs regarding an IT artifact (in terms of perceived helpfulness, capability and reliability) and, more importantly, directly influence intention to explore and deep structure usage.

The authors test the model using a sample of 357 IT users. Survey items were derived from established measures, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results of this study suggest that positive affect and negative affect impact trusting cognitive beliefs. Trusting cognitive beliefs positively impact intention to explore with an IT and deep structure usage of an IT. Even in the presence of trusting beliefs, though, positive affect directly impacts intention to explore. Positive affect and negative affect both also have various indirect, mediated effects on intention to explore and deep structure usage.

In order to maximize value from workplace IT, the results suggest managers foster an authentic, positive work environment in order to harness or redirect employees' emotional energies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current status of, and provide guidance for future direction in, the implementation of Indian Education for All, a multicultural education initiative, into Montana's statewide education system.

The paper reports on and analyzes the historical foundation, current status, and practical implications of Montana's Indian Education for All initiative. The abbreviated case study utilizes a combination of focus group and individual qualitative interviews of educational leaders representing the Montana state education agency, Montana K‐12 school administration, and the Montana University and Tribal College systems.

Montana educational leaders have made dramatic progress implementing Indian education into Montana's K‐12 schools and university systems. The process is complex on many levels; including political, cultural, organizational, emotional, and financial issues. Many challenges remain before statewide systemic change occurs.

The study's findings have implications for world cultures and educational systems regarding the creation, organization, and implementation of a multiculturally literate and responsive education system.

The article provides original data regarding the varying degrees of challenge and success experienced by educational leaders in their implementation of multicultural education, with special emphasis on indigenous populations.

Purpose – This chapter explores how discourses of obesity as addiction are taken up by weight loss surgery patients and medical and scientific professionals.

Methodology/approach – Based on 14 semistructured interviews, I discuss the ways in which bariatric patients partially account for their presurgical bodies and contemporary struggles with weight loss and regain by referencing food addiction. This work is part of a larger project involving 35 interviews and participant-observation work and therefore these results should thus be considered preliminary.

Findings – I argue that bariatric patients and bariatric professionals portray weight loss surgery as an extraordinary tool that allows the “out of control” to become controllable. However, bariatric patients also emphasize the hard work that is entailed in both losing weight and maintaining a weight loss even after surgery.

Social implications – I suggest that this portrayal, in addition to being an accurate assessment of the potential for regain following weight loss surgery, is a technology of stigma management.

Originality/value – This work contributes to the sociology of the body and medical sociology literatures by illustrating that, within a neoliberal and anti-fat social context, highlighting the hard work involved in weight loss and weight maintenance allows bariatric patients to demonstrate proper subjectivity and thereby reclaim “proper selves” as they work toward a “proper bodies.”