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Issues of diversity and inclusion are at the forefront of public discourse and policy initiatives. Media and product lines have recently faced scrutiny for not being inclusive of difference. We conducted a content analysis of books intended for the tween (ages 8–12) girl. More specifically, these books were from the preeminent tween girl company, American Girl. A company perhaps best known for their line of dolls and historical fiction books, American Girl also publishes advice books with the intention of addressing a range of topics pertinent to the tween girl. Since the company strives to appeal to all girls, the authors analyzed these advice books for images and messages of racial, religious, ability, and sexuality difference in an effort to identify who American Girl’s American girl truly is. The findings of this chapter revealed an overall lack of diversity in the American Girl advice books in not only images but also messages. Images of White girls were more common than those of non-White girls, and any representation of religious, ability, or sexuality difference was minimal. Analysis of the content of the messages also revealed few mentions of difference, and categorization of the books suggested an emphasis on relationships with other people and bodies/appearance as important. It is apparent from this analysis that American Girl’s American girl is White, able-bodied, religiously ambiguous (though presumably Christian), and heterosexual. The need for American Girl to be fully inclusive of diversity across all their product lines is apparent.

A review of publications in teaching and teacher education over 10 years (2000–2010) on teacher professional development is the subject of this chapter. The first part synthesises production referred to learning, facilitation and collaboration, factors influencing professional development, effectiveness of professional development and issues around the themes. The second part selects from the production nine articles for closer examination. The chapter concludes by noting how the production brings out the complexities of teacher professional learning and how research and development have taken cognizance of these factors and provided food for optimism about their effects, although not yet about their sustainability in time.

Franchising manifests a bundle of risks created by the delegation of functions as both franchisor and franchisee exploit their respective comparative advantage. The galvanization of this advantage is governed by the franchise agreement and optimized by the effectiveness of the governance structure. This chapter considers the concept of risk and discusses its implications in valuing franchisee-operated businesses. It examines how risks arise, where they congregate and synthesizes the specific franchising issues relating to risk-adjusted cashflows, risk analysis, risk mitigation, and risk pricing. The authors propose that risks in franchising are multi-layered and hierarchical. Consequently, this relationship is represented in a Franchise Risk Ecology (FRE) comprising risks inherent in the market, the franchisor, the system, the industry, and within the franchisee-operated business.

Miriam Adelman, who holds the M. Phil. in sociology from New York University and Doctorate in Human Sciences from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, has been Professor of Sociology at the Universidade Federale do Paraná (UFPR), since 1992. She is responsible for initiating the first gender studies and research activities at that institution, as co-founder of its “Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero,” begun in 1994 and continuing today as the major institutional space for promoting women's and gender studies at the UFPR. In addition to current research and teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate Social Science and Sociology programs at the UFPR, she is also an active member of the Brazilian gender studies community and participates on the Editorial Board of the Revista de Estudos Feministas, one of Brazil's two major feminist academic journals. She has published numerous articles in scientific journals in Brazil and abroad, as well as book chapters on topics ranging from feminist theory, post-colonialism and contemporary sociology to women in sport and gender in film. She has one edited volume (Gênero Plural: um Debate Multi-disciplinar, 2002, Editora UFPR, with Celsi Bronstrup Silvestrin) and is currently organizing another, on gender representations in film.

Just now we are having an interesting discussion among the Boards of Study (on Economics, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, and History) of London University on the existing confusion and overlapping in their theoretical basis (arising from a claim by the sociologists for a separate degree). If Law were not so strongly professionalized in England the Law Faculty would also be concerned. I prepared a memorandum, based on the examination questions during the last five years, showing that the conception of human nature now given, or assumed, in Economic teaching is quite different from that given in Sociological teaching, and that all the other groups of study differed in that respect among themselves. The sociologists, e.g. emphasise “Imitation” and ignore Hedonism. The economists assume Hedonism and ignore Imitation. The Psychologists reject both Hedonism and Imitation. Law is either purely empirical or Benthamite. Even the distribution of concrete subject matter leaves great gaps. No one, for instance, treats of the newspaper Press, or the Churches, or advertisement. At Oxford the confusion, overlap and insufficiency is more marked. Could you not make a memorandum showing how things stand at Columbia?

This chapter explores the implications of patrimonial politics in the Dutch East India Company empire in the context of establishing a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa in the mid-seventeenth century. The Cape extended the reach of Company patrimonial networks with elite Company officials circulating throughout the Indian Ocean empire and consolidating their familial ties through marriage both within the colonies and in the United Provinces. These patrimonial networks extended to the Cape as elite Company officials created families locally or married Cape-born women. As the colony grew, the Company created a class of free-burghers some the wealthiest of whom were tied directly into elite Company patrimonial networks. But from the early eighteenth century onwards these elite Company networks came into conflict with the evolving free-burgher patrimonial networks with which they were in direct competition. This paper argues that local patrimonial networks can evolve in a settler colony that challenge the elite patrimonial networks of the imperial elite.

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Black Greek-lettered organizations (BGLOs) are institutions and organizations that provided African Americans with options for unification and education during years of overt racial discrimination when education and socioeconomic comforts were limited for the vast majority of Americans of African descent, and they continue to serve as support structures for African Americans today. Nevertheless, in the “postracial” era of accountability, questions surrounding the relevance of these organizations have become common discourse. While these organizations face similar narratives, HBCU and BGLO research, successes, and issues have not yet been analyzed, synthesized, or even acknowledged in significant ways. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to promote the need for research and scholarship that explores and highlights the parallels and intersections of today’s HBCUs and BGLOs through a review literature on BGLOs and educational outcomes.

The intention of this chapter is to examine race and racism in the accounting industry in the context of neutrality. Objectivity and impartiality minimize the space for alternative voices, too often unheard from the margin, that speak of a differing racialized professional existence for the Black accountant. A Critical Race Theory (CRT) of accountancy is called for among a number of takes in the genre of Critical Accounting to begin a process of unpacking systemic processes within the profession, which encourage homogeneity and exclusion.

Belief in professional colorblindness as impartiality where race is concerned is critiqued as a tool of domination that fosters injustice because it hides racism from the institution while simultaneously allowing racist practice to go unchallenged.

One particular egregious type of workplace mistreatment is supervisor abuse, which has received extensive attention due to its heavy cost to organizations including up to 23 billion dollars in annual loss resulting from increases in absenteeism, health care costs, and productivity loss. Employees attribute causes to abusive supervision, and these attributions impact subsequent reactions. In some cases, employees may feel that abusive supervision is justified, leading to the reaction of Schadenfreude, or pleasure in another’s pain. In this chapter, we discuss antecedents to Schadenfreude, its role in observed mistreatment, and propose a conceptual model based on attribution theory.