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The purpose of this paper is to determine if the star power of an athletic endorser influenced consumers’ consumption of the advertised product. Specifically, does the amount of star power an athlete is thought to have impact consumers’ direct consumption of the advertised product and media consumption of the athlete? Moreover, the components of star power, along with congruency measures, were examined to determine which components of star power influenced both direct and media consumption.

Four advertisements were created that used an athlete with high star power and an athlete with low star power. Respondents viewed two of the advertisements, but did not know which athlete had high star power or low star power. They were asked to answer a questionnaire that contained questions pertaining to the components of star power (source attractiveness, source credibility, professional trustworthiness, likeable personality and character style), congruency of the athlete and product, direct consumption of the advertised product and media consumption of the athlete.

Results indicated that overall star power increased the direct consumption of the advertised product and the media consumption of the athlete, however not each component was found to be significant. Character style was the only component that was consistently significant across all four advertisements. The congruency between the athlete and product was also found to be significant across all four advertisements.

First, this study only looked at two athletes; others may generate different results. Second, the products used in the study were fashion related; other categories of products may also generate different relationships. Third, only two brands were used. It was also assumed that the respondents knew the athlete in the advertisement. Finally, the questions used to measure direct consumption did not distinguish between buying the brand in the store or online.

This study has the potential to contribute theoretically by analyzing how and which components of star power affect consumption of endorsed products, as well as which components influence consumers. Moreover, adding a congruency measure will aide in strengthening the measurement of endorser effectiveness. The justification of the present study lies in the need to determine how the dimensions of star power an athlete possesses contribute to the consumption behaviors of consumers.

There is an increasing interest in using information and communication technologies to support health services. But the adoption and development of even basic ICT communications services in many health services is limited, leaving enormous gaps in the broad understanding of its role in health care delivery. The purpose of this paper is to address a specific (intercultural) area of healthcare communications consumer disadvantage; and it examines the potential for ICT exploitation through the lens of a conceptual framework. The opportunity to pursue a new solutions pathway has been amplified in recent times through the development of computer-based ontologies and the resultant knowledge from ontologist activity and consequential research publishing.

A specific intercultural area of patient disadvantage arises from variations in meaning and understanding of patient and clinician words, phrases and non-verbal expression. Collection and localization of data concepts, their attributes and individual instances were gathered from an Aboriginal trainee nurse focus group and from a qualitative gap analysis (QGA) of 130 criteria-selected sources of literature. These concepts, their relationships and semantic interpretations populate the computer ontology. The ontology mapping involves two domains, namely, Aboriginal English (AE) and Type II diabetes care guidelines. This is preparatory to development of the Patient Practitioner Assistive Communications (PPAC) system for Aboriginal rural and remote patient primary care.

The combined QGA and focus group output reported has served to illustrate the call for three important drivers of change. First, there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that patient-practitioner interview encounters for many Australian Aboriginal patients and wellbeing outcomes are unsatisfactory at best. Second, there is a potent need for cultural competence knowledge and practice uptake on the part of health care providers; and third, the key contributory component to determine success or failures within healthcare for ethnic minorities is communication. Communication, however, can only be of value in health care if in practice it supports shared cognition; and mutual cognition is rarely achievable when biopsychosocial and other cultural worldview differences go unchallenged.

There has been no direct engagement with remote Aboriginal communities in this work to date. The authors have initially been able to rely upon a cohort of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people with relevant cultural expertise and extended family relationships. Among these advisers are health care practitioners, academics, trainers, Aboriginal education researchers and workshop attendees. It must therefore be acknowledged that as is the case with the QGA, the majority of the concept data is from third parties. The authors have also discovered that urban influences and cultural sensitivities tend to reduce the extent of, and opportunity to, witness AE usage, thereby limiting the ability to capture more examples of code-switching. Although the PPAC system concept is qualitatively well developed, pending future work planned for rural and remote community engagement the authors presently regard the work as mostly allied to a hypothesis on ontology-driven communications. The concept data population of the AE home talk/health talk ontology has not yet reached a quantitative critical mass to justify application design model engineering and real-world testing.

Computer ontologies avail us of the opportunity to use assistive communications technology applications as a dynamic support system to elevate the pragmatic experience of health care consultations for both patients and practitioners. The human-machine interactive development and use of such applications is required just to keep pace with increasing demand for healthcare and the growing health knowledge transfer environment. In an age when the worldwide web, communications devices and social media avail us of opportunities to confront the barriers described the authors have begun the first construction of a merged schema for two domains that already have a seemingly intractable negative connection. Through the ontology discipline of building syntactically and semantically robust and accessible concepts; explicit conceptual relationships; and annotative context-oriented guidance; the authors are working towards addressing health literacy and wellbeing outcome deficiencies of benefit to the broader communities of disadvantage patients.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate who rules the world. The hypothesis is that it is the 0.1 per cent of owners and controllers of capital.

This study used secondary sources including the Bureau Van Dyk and The World Top Incomes database to look at distributions of income and wealth (stock ownership). This is supplemented with a secondary source analysis and with some interviews.

The top point one per centers, the wealthy, those on the top incomes and transnational capitalist class are all distinct but overlapping categories that describe the (white) men and (few) women who hold power through their ownership and/or control of capital and who are thereby directly or indirectly able to act hegemonically on an emerging global basis.

Theorists of the global school of capitalism Alveredo et al., 2013 argue that there has been a qualitatively new twenty-first century transnational capitalism in the process of emerging (see Robinson, 2012a). This paper tests this assumption and relates it to the work by Hamm 2010.

The flip side of this progressively widening concentration of income and wealth into fewer (0.1 per cent) hands brings new lows to the polarisation of class, exploitation and domination. All of these have intensified since the 1980s with the end of the Keynesian Compromise. This north/south accentuated division has implications for social justice.

This seeks to identify empirical evidence to support the theory of an emerging transnational capitalist class.

When a mission statement is introduced to enhance the quality of health care management, it is vital to assess the actual impact. This article aims to consider the effect of introducing a single mission statement into an association of 18 not‐for‐profit hospitals by investigating the views of different groups of employees.

The paper explores the impact a mission statement has had by examining questionnaire responses from different groups of staff including the designers of the mission statement and those at the delivery point of services.

The study's outcomes indicate the value of examining the views of staff that are not in senior management. The evaluation of the mission statement's impact by senior managers was at variance with that of other staff.

The findings highlight the inadequacy of only examining senior management's opinions when considering the benefits of having introduced a mission statement into an organisation. In this study we identify those who originated or contributed to the mission statement in the first place. Once launched, a mission statement can have an impact throughout all staff, and that information needs to be captured in any assessment. This is consistent with the high rating normally given to a mission statement being an aid to motivating all staff. An important dimension of this study is the impact of a single mission statement throughout a group of dissimilar hospitals.

Changing healthcare provision need not be sudden or damaging. If changes are made then many valuable services may be lost. This article aims to consider dramatic change and its negative effects on Indian rural healthcare provision.

A case study is used to evaluate rural India's developing private health insurance, combined with evidence from other micro health insurance effectiveness studies.

Rural health insurance schemes are financially and culturally precarious. Enthusiastically importing these ventures into rural scenarios fragments vulnerable healthcare systems that have served and survived many other threats. The new services may fail if not subsidised and the experiment might undermine what was already in place. Is it improvement or just change?

Missing rural health providers from the dataset means that data are not regularly available.

As more Western healthcare concepts are parachuted into developing areas, understanding and appreciating what already exists is necessary. New healthcare schemes must be critically evaluated, including the damage they could do to other healthcare provision.

Unlike other published research on private health insurance introduced in India and Africa, this study critically reviews the effect in rural areas from vital hospital services' perspective.

One of the more contentious areas of corporate governance today is how active a company's board of directors should be in the development and execution of corporate strategy. While the spotlight is on public companies, private ones (and even not‐for‐profits) would do well to pay attention. Even though private companies and many non‐profits operate without the glare of public scrutiny, the core governance issues they must grapple with are essentially the same as their public brethren.

There is evidence to show that human capital represents “our greatest competitive potential…”, hence, absenteeism removes our primary competitive weapon. The tangible cost of absenteeism in the US is estimated to be over $40 billion per year. This figure does not include intangible costs such as reduced efficiency, loss of morale, supervisor's overload, and missed opportunities. There is clearly a need for effective methods of reducing employee absenteeism. The present article reviews the literature on absenteeism, with the aim of answering the following three questions: (1) How should an organisation define and measure absenteeism?; (2) What are the underlying causes of absence?; (3) Which are the best methods that an organisation might adopt to reduce absenteeism?

For the purpose of applied research, we are interested in deriving and measuring multi-level future resilience, from a human capital perspective. This paper aims to set the theoretical foundations for a future resilience index to be launched in 2020.

Based on a review of the literature on individual, organisational and socio-ecological resilience, the researcher has distilled 10 elements of future resilience. These were elaborated into a 20-question index, which has been piloted with an anonymous organisation.

The 10 elements of future resilience, which the index will seek to measure include: emergency preparedness; creative adaptability; technological empowerment; dynamic employability; diversity cultivation; participative governance; systemic responsiveness; resource efficiency; purposeful motivation; and well-being orientation. Illustrative findings from the pilot show that organisational support for resilience across all 10 categories is seen as weaker than individuals’ perception of their own level of resilience.

The areas of strong versus weak performance revealed by the index, either individually or in terms of organisational support, give organisations a clear set of priorities for follow-up.

This paper has demonstrated that future resilience is a highly relevant and useful concept for society, organisations and individuals in these rapidly changing times.

Through the future resilience index, being developed by Antwerp Management School in collaboration with Randstad, this paper wants to encourage behaviours and capacities amongst employees that will increase resilience at the individual, organisational and socio-ecological levels. This is the first multi-level resilience measurement instrument aimed at human capital measurement.