In this article, we contend that employers' willingness to provide former prisoners with integrative forms of employment is related to the extent to which liberal societies abstract, idealise and prioritise the interests of the self over the interests of society. Using the United States of America as a critical case to illustrate this argument, we unite the neoinstitutional sociology of organisations with Weick's small wins approach to problem solving to show how an especially individualistic embodiment of liberalism contributes to the construction of a social and institutional reality that discourages firms from behaving integratively towards former prisoners. In so doing, we produce a conceptual framework that points to ways by which the scarcity of integrative firms within individualist liberal societies might be addressed.

Large numbers of women transition through menopause whilst in paid employment. Symptoms associated with menopause may cause difficulties for working women, especially if untreated, yet employers are practically silent on this potentially costly issue. This review summarises existing research on the underexplored topic of menopause in the workplace, and synthesises recommendations for employers. Longstanding scholarly interest in the relationship between employment status and symptom reporting typically (but not consistently) shows that women in paid employment (and in specific occupations) report fewer and less severe symptoms than those who are unemployed. Recent studies more systematically focused on the effects of menopausal symptoms on work are typically cross-sectional self-report surveys, with a small number of qualitative studies. Though several papers established that vasomotor (and associated) symptoms have a negative impact on women's productivity, capacity to work and work experience, this is not a uniform finding. Psychological and other somatic symptoms associated with menopause can have a relatively greater negative influence. Physical (e.g., workplace temperature and design) and psychosocial (e.g., work stress, perceptions of control/autonomy) workplace factors have been found to influence the relationship between symptoms and work. Principal recommendations for employers to best support menopausal women as part of a holistic approach to employee health and well-being include risk assessments to make suitable adjustments to the physical and psychosocial work environment, provision of information and support, and training for line managers. Limitations of prior studies, and directions for future research are presented.

For countries such as Australia exporting education is recognised as an important contributor to the nation’s economy. The embodiment of this export industry in Australia is the presence of international students in tertiary institutions across the country. Despite their considerable contribution to social, political, cultural and economic life, there have been recent examples of violence, exploitation and discrimination against international students in Australia. To understand how international students are both welcomed and excluded from Australian life, we use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyse news reports published in an Australian national newspaper from 2009 to 2011. Following van Dijk (Ideology: a multidisciplinary approach, Sage, Thousand Oaks, 1998) we view newspapers as ideological institutions that mobilise discursive power to polarise public opinion to support their ideological agenda(s). In the case of international students we use CDA to show how media discourses construct international students in ways that commodify their participation in higher education and marginalise them as the excluded ‘other’ in Australian society. Our conceptual and analytical approach has broader implications for national higher education policy and international student experience by exposing the social inequalities that accompany globalised international education.

Existing menopause research is dominated by medical and psychosocial paradigms, with key foci on symptom reporting, and the complex interplay of psychological, social and cultural factors that mediate the effects of climacteric symptoms on women's health and well-being. Work is an underexplored concept and context for menopausal experience in these disciplines, whilst the menopause and women in midlife are neglected topics in management and organization studies. As an ever-increasing number of women are working for longer in the OECD's key and ageing economies, and the menopause is a near universal event for women, this is a topic that warrants investigation. This paper presents selected findings of a multidisciplinary, mixed methods (internet survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews) investigation of the relationship between work, women and the menopause. The study is based on data collected from a sample of female employees (survey n=583; 18 interviews) in two Australian universities, and analyzed through the concept of biosociality. The paper describes and critically discusses the complex nature, meaning and epistemological status of the relationship between women's self-reported and ascribed menopausal status, symptoms commonly associated with menopause, and the contextual and embodied dimensions and experiences of paid employment.

The scholarly bias toward Western and English-speaking settings in the study of international education overlooks the experiences of international students in emerging education hubs in Asia. To redress this imbalance, this article offers insights into the crucial role of place in the study destination choices of a group of international postgraduate students currently enrolled at a Malaysian university. Findings from semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with 33 students indicated that placeand specifically the pull factors of the country of Malaysiahad a primary role in their choice of overseas university. More significant than the individual attributes of any one higher education institution, key social and cultural pull factors included the sense of Malaysia as a safe environment, shared cultural values with the students' own background, the financial benefits derived from low tuition fees and low cost of living, proximity to the students' home country as well as access to culturally important items such as halal and other dietary requirements. Understanding the significance of such national-level pull factors in study destination choice has important implications for the Malaysian government's strategy of competing in the global market for international students.

In liberal market capitalist societies, a wasteland confronts individuals released from prison, induced by influences that coalesce to create an institution that is an all but insurmountable barrier to their reintegration into the mainstream labour market. This situation has attracted little attention from diversity management scholars and in this paper we address this omission by engaging in theory building that surfaces and analyses the cultural, normative and regulative elements of this institution. We argue the prisoner re-entry problem in liberal market capitalist societies requires that policy makers, practitioners and diversity theorists apply themselves to a highly unusual task: fabricating a body of theory and practice that informs the development of strategies to support employers in liberal market economies to engage in ‘institutional avoidance’, even when this may draw unfavourable attention to the firm, and be ill-received by employees who do not have a criminal record.

This essay, and the special issue it introduces, sets out to reignite ethical interrogations of the theory and practice of Human Resource Management (HRM). To cultivate greater levels of boundary-spanning debate about the ethics of HRM, we develop a framework of four tenors for scholarly work: the ethical-declarative, the ethical-subjunctive, the ethical-ethnographic, the ethical-systemic. Each of these tenors denotes particular grounds for ethical critique and encourages scholars to consider the subjects and objects of their enquiry, the disciplinary scope of their work and the limits to subsequent claims about ethics and HRM. We provisionally locate each of the papers comprising the special issue with regard to one, or more, of these tenors.

Over the last twenty years or so the number of international students in Australia has grown rapidly. At the same time, official responsibility for providing support to international students has been devolved from governments to educational institutions. In this paper we argue that while education institutions have a significant role in supporting international students, there is a large gap in social support provided to them when off-campus. This is a gap which we believe could be filled by local government, to provide international students with greater integration and security when they are off campus. The ideas outlined in this paper are based on a critical examination of international students' experience in Australia and are intended to contribute to and advance recent debates about the safety, security and value of international students to Australian society. We argue that international students' status as temporary visitors creates the conditions for social exclusion, that is, an inability to engage fully in the economic, cultural, social and political aspects of Australian life. In light of this, we suggest that local government, especially as it relates to the provision of human services, has a role in helping international students access social support services. We argue that local government can be instrumental in ensuring the social inclusion of international students in our communities. This, we suggest, would improve international students' overall study experience and contribute to their greater integration and participation in the Australian community.

To show how research and teaching, core academic activities are discursively shaped through policy discussion we critically identify and examine the institutional effects of senior academics' discourses on research-led teaching. The analysis sheds light on the interrelationship between university policy and the powerful and productive effects of senior management 'talk' in framing the object of policy, the relations between research and teaching. Our approach moves analysis of the teaching and research relationship beyond system-wide debates and challenges, to a detailed study of the effects of institutional ideology and attendant discourses. Our analysis of senior academic managers' interview data reveals that implicit in the call to construct a stronger alignment between teaching and research, is the valorisation of research at the expense of teaching and learning which is problematised and devalued. Our contention is that policy implementation based on these simplified assumptions may well strengthen university research outcomes but in doing so may prove unsuccessful in improving teaching and learning outcomes. The contribution of our analysis is that it surfaces complexities that underpin apparently instrumental and normative institutional policy prescriptions and in so doing contributes to a deeper understanding of the political and practical effects of senior managers' views on policy implementation.

This article is about public toilets for women. Drawing on data provided by the textual material posted in women's toilets in Victoria, Australia, it is argued that in western nations, toilets represent more than instrumental facilities for the disposal of waste products. Because they also serve as repositories of social anxieties about bodies, gender, cultural and religious differences and health/death, public toilets are sites used to order the disorder of women's bodies and activities. Cultural intolerances have problematised differences in ablution practices and 'correct' toilet behaviours are frequently prescribed. As unique examples in the west of cultural and gendered practice, women's toilets offer rich material on the discipline and meaning of gendered space in a range of different environmental settings.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on efforts to develop two stand‐alone subjects on sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a mainstream business curriculum at Monash University, Australia.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents details on the educational rationale and design of the two subjects in corporate sustainability and CSR.FindingsAlthough many universities offer support for education for sustainability, previous research indicates that most curriculum initiatives in this area have been driven by individual faculty. This paper provides examples of curriculum development that emerged from the grass‐roots initiative, in the absence of an integrated and mainstreamed programme for sustainability.Practical implicationsThe paper encourages all faculty, no matter their circumstances, to consider the development of curriculum for sustainability. While individual subjects cannot effect wholesale change, each effort can, no matter how piecemeal, make a difference.Originality/valueThe cases in this paper highlight the importance of skills, knowledge and values to the curriculum for sustainability and CSR. Because there is no formula for how these are integrated into the curriculum, the paper illustrates how individual faculty members have brought their own disciplinary and pedagogical backgrounds to their curriculum design.

In this paper we argue that living in university accommodation is a possible means of improving the security of international students. Our argument is supported by a qualitative case study of a single Hall of Residence on Monash University's Clayton campus. Data were collected primarily from interviews with three groups of participants - six international students currently living in that Hall of Residence, three international students who used to live in the Halls of Residence, and three College Heads. The primary finding of this study was that international students living in university accommodation felt very physically secure and experienced a reduced threat level to their social security. It is intended that our findings will assist universities and government in improving the security of international students studying in Australia, thus contributing to a more sustainable Australian education export industry.

There are many reasons to develop closer links between research and teaching. To do this, we argue the need to move beyond university rhetoric that fractures the engagement of teaching with research and instead focus on the development of what is necessary to bring these two core academic activities closer together. Opening with a review of the current literature on research‐led teaching, the paper then highlights the various debates about whether or not the divide between research and teaching can be broached. We then explore a number of often contradictory myths that we argue universities subscribe to in their efforts to bring teaching and research together as they simultaneously create structures to separate them. The paper seeks to better 'marry' research and teaching activities in higher education settings, concluding with a set of principles that could be used by university leaders to guide the implementation of research‐led teaching.

Sources and extent of food waste in Australia and environmental and financial problems that it causes are reviewed. Major contributors to food waste are identified. Policy decisions and strategies to minimise and distribute wasted food are examined. Efforts by "food activists", charities and non-government agencies to recover and distribute wasted food are described. A call is made for collaborative partnerships between government, food producers and manufacturers, social activists, scholars and consumers to challenge the current business paradigm that "tolerates" waste. For this paper, food waste/wastage refer to food items considered to be edible but for whatever reason not consumed.

Affirmative action has been a particularly contentious policy issue that has polarised contributions to the debate. Over recent times in most western countries, support for affirmative action has, however, been largely snuffed out or beaten into retreat and replaced by the concept of ‹diversity management’. Thus, any contemporary study that examines the development of affirmative action would suggest that its opponents have won the battle. Nonetheless, this article argues that because the battle has been won on dubious ethical grounds it is important that we do not allow affirmative action to sink unnoticed. This article explores and challenges the ethical and philosophical underpinnings of opponents’ views and finds their cases against affirmative action are not ethically sound. The article concludes there are strong ethical grounds for those organisations which seek to do well, to reassert affirmative action programmes in the global efforts to eradicate systemic discrimination and disadvantage.