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Farmers' collective action via cooperatives is critical to achieving a wide range of economic and social benefits that lead to sustainable development and enhance the welfare of rural communities. Adopting a qualitative case study method, the paper compares the development and governance attributes of two cooperatives and seeks to identify how non-economic conditions explain their differences. The cases are selected from the United Kingdom and China, representing different cultural and legislation contexts, to explore the role of culture and legislation in formulating the governance of farmer cooperatives. The results demonstrate that: (1) the formation of member groups due to considerable member heterogeneity may lead to the skewed allocation of control rights and income rights; (2) legislation play an important role in formulating the governance of cooperatives; and (3) national culture potentially has influence on cooperative governance, but direct evidence is in insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transfer of human resource management (HRM) practices from the corporate business context into schools has taken a novel turn. No longer restricted to the management of school teachers, HRM techniques are now being applied to the management of students. HRM views the student as a human resource to serve the school, and seeks to systematically regulate students’ identities in order to align them with school values and goals. This article introduces the Uncommon Schools model as an exemplar of student-centred HRM. The case study demonstrates how student-centred HRM is being operationalised in schools and concludes by exploring the potential effects on students of existing within an HRM system. The article is informed by critical management theories and argues that student-centred HRM constitutes a radical shift in the relationship between school and student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature that explores the relationship between ethnic identities and food consumption, with particular reference to business management studies. It focuses on the food shopping practices of south Asians in Britain in the period 1947 to 1975, to illustrate the need for more historically contextualized studies that can provide a more nuanced exploration of any interconnections between ethnic identity and shopping behaviour. The article draws on a reasonably long-standing interest in ethnicity and consumption in marketing studies, and explores the conceptual use of acculturation within this literature. The arguments put forward are framed by recent interdisciplinary studies of the broader relationship between consumption and identity, which stress the importance of contextualizing any influence of ethnic identifications through a wider consideration of other factors including societal status, gender and age, rather than giving it singular treatment. The article uses a body of empirical research drawn from recent oral histories, to explore how theses factors informed everyday shopping practices among south Asians in Britain. It examines some of the shopping and wider food provisioning strategies adopted by early immigrants on arrival in Britain. IT considers the interaction between the south Asian population and the changing retail structure, in the context of the development of self-service and the supermarket. Finally, it demonstrates how age, gender and socioeconomic status interacted with ethnic identities to produce variations in shopping patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]