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This study explores the motives and objectives of sports sponsorship in China, taking into account the sports, social and cultural contexts. It also adopts a comparative approach to examine the sponsorship of elite and grassroots sports events in China.

This study adopts a qualitative approach, employing semi-structured interviews with representatives of nine companies sponsoring elite and/or grassroots sports events in Western China. The data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis.

In China, sponsors are frequently driven to sponsor elite sport events by a sense of obligation and responsibility to the country, whereas their motives to sponsor grassroots sport events is primarily influenced by sincerity and goodwill. Chinese companies consider brand awareness, exposure and the relationship with the government and authorities as key factors for sponsorship, and use sponsorship to achieve market-related objectives.

Companies’ sponsorship motives and objectives have received significant attention in the literature, but mainly in Western countries. In the context of China, this study identifies how sponsors utilize social networks to shape their motives and objectives. It also reveals certain patterns common with the current literature, as well as specificities such as how the roles of the government and authorities are linked to the contingent economic and social context of the country. Furthermore, the differences between elite and grassroots sports events sponsorship are explained.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to describe the current situation regarding alcohol use and consumption in relation with sport in France.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on a literature review, the authors describe the particular regulatory French context regarding alcohol sales, publicity and consumption around sport and analyze the relationships between alcohol and sport participation, and sporting events.

Findings – Despite an apparent strict legal frame, exemptions, margins of manoeuvre and non-applications of the law portray the situation as more complex than it appears. As for sport participation, if the myth of ascetic sportsmen and sportswomen is not supported, the use and consumption profiles are not clear-cut depending on numerous factors such as age, gender, socio-economic status, intensity and level of sport participation, club membership and more importantly sport subcultures. However, in many cases, strong links with masculinity, as found in the literature, were observed. As for sporting events, the current situation regarding the bans on alcohol sales and sport sponsorship seems again more complex than the law suggests and appears to be continuously contested by stakeholders with different, but often convergent expectations.

Research limitations/implications – The results demonstrate a need to go deeper than visible and official appearances to properly understand the complex relationships between sport and alcohol in France. Particularly, and considering the lack of specific research and evidence regarding the situation, the current public debates regarding the situation cannot be properly informed and are thus strongly influenced by various stakeholders and lobbies, constituting an unsettled field.

The following papers represent a selection from presentations made to the Theory Session of the 1995 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Washington, D.C. The papers document the broad diversity of styles and topics of sociological theorizing. While this diversity appears to many as an impediment to science and paradigmatic closure, others celebrate it as a sign of intellectual liveliness and excitement. Without taking sides in this debate, one can appreciate the range of the papers published here, and one may even discern some commonalities, such as the attempt to bridge the gaps between various ideological camps and perspectives. If anything, what holds this collection together is a willingness to engage a variety of arguments, and to listen to what other schools of thought have to offer. In my view, this is the foremost task of theory today, for theory is uniquely equipped to detect unity in diversity. Without this effort, sociology is in danger of disintegrating altogether.

Discusses the papers in this issue in calculated style, with regard to social structure, human agency and social policy. Itemizes the papers one‐by‐one and gives their strength of argument or policy or an important argument in their favour.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and application of a numerical model for analysis of flow boiling phenomena and heat transfer.

For flow boiling processes, the fluid and vapour flow regimes in connection with the conjugate heat and mass transfer problem for specimen quenching through the entire boiling curve is modelled. Vaporisation and recondensation, the vapour fraction distribution and vapour movement with respect to the liquid are considered in the calculation of the two‐phase flow and heat transfer process. The derived flow boiling model is based on a mixture model and bubble crowding model approach for two‐phase flow. In addition to the conventional mixture model formulation, here special model implementations have been incorporated that describe: the vapour formation at the superheated solid‐liquid interface, the recondensation process of vapour at the subcooled vapour‐liquid interface, the mass transfer rate in the different boiling phases and the microconvection effect in the nucleate boiling phase resulting from bubble growth and detachment.

The model prediction results are compared with experimental data for quenching of a circular cylinder, showing good agreement in boiling state and heat transfer coefficient distribution. Simulation and experiments lead to a better understanding of the interaction of incident flow in the boiling state and the resulting heat transfer.

Fluid temperatures in the range of 300‐353 K and specimen wall temperatures up to 1,000 K are considered.

Flow boiling is an efficient heat transfer process occurring in several technical applications. Application background of the model development is in quenching of complex metallic specimen geometries in liquids subject to fast changing heat fluxes.

A general model for the complex two‐phase boiling heat transfer at high wall temperatures and fast flow conditions that can be used in engineering applications does not yet exist. The results provide detailed information describing the non‐uniform phase change during the complete quenching process from film boiling to pure convection.

Although Niklas Luhmann refrains from an explicit treatment of power as a force of social constraint, I propose that, if partially reconstructed, his Systems Theory can illuminate the subject considerably. I show this by distinguishing between five elements in Luhmann's treatment of each of the following six social subsystems: the economy, politics, law, science, religion and education. The five subsystem elements are: (1) a binary code, (2) a basis of authority, (3) a language of social communication, (4) a generalized medium of communication, and (5) a social function. Whereas Luhmann assumes that each subsystem approximates autopoiesis, or self‐contained internal operation and autonomy, I assume the pervasiveness of interpenetration, whereby operations is one subsystem nonetheless affect operations in others. Subsequently, I juxtapose the reconstructed systems‐theoretic framework developed in the first half of the paper with Michel Foucault's power/knowledge framework. I conclude that the use of a reconstructed systems‐theoretic approach, based loosely on Luhmann's original theory, could greatly illuminate the specifics of power/knowledge in modern societies, to an even greater extent than Foucault does himself.

Purpose – This essay attempts to answer the question, “What distinguishes inter-human influence from other forms of influence?”

Design/methodology/approach – Specifying the micro-foundations of social structures in terms of communicative inferences necessitates a revision of the concept of social structures (and institutions) as distributed, and hence, uncertain, structures of expectation. Institutional realities are generated in linguistic interaction through the indirect communication of generic references. The generalizing function of language – in particular, abstraction and memory – coupled with its reflexive function, to turn references into things, are sufficient to generate both social structures and institutions as collective inferences.

Findings – Social relations are fundamentally communicative relations. The communicative relation is triadic, implying an enunciator, an audience, and some referential content. Through linguistic communication, humans are capable of communicating locally with others about others nonlocally. Institutions exist only as expectations concerning the expectations of others. These expectations, however, are not only in the mind, and they are not exclusively psychological entities. Linguistically, these expectations appear as the reported statement within the reporting statement, that is, they are constituted through indirect discourse.

Research limitations/implications – An important implication for current sociological theory is that, from the point of view of a sociology defined as communication about communication from within communication, institutional realities should not be reified as existing naturalistically or objectively above or behind the communications through which they are instantiated.

Originality value – This approach, then, is decidedly anti-“realist.” The goal of such research is to examine the inadequacy of nonreflexive models of social order. Accounts of how sets of social relationships emerge will remain inadequate if they do not reflect upon the cognitive and communicative processes which make possible the consideration of such structures.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the contributors to individual resistance to diversity-related organizational change (DROC) and how it might be reduced.

From survey data collected through three separate samples of the US population, the study tested the antecedents and outcomes of resistance to DROC and the moderating effect of organizational justice on these relationships.

Findings reveal that attitudes about workplace diversity are influenced by individual factors (sex and race), which in turn are significantly related to individual resistance to DROC. Independently, organizational justice moderated the effects of employee attitudes and perceived threats on resistance to DROC, suggesting that resistance is increased when employees perceive they are treated justly.

This is the first known study to investigate resistance to DROC as well as its potential antecedents and outcomes. Findings suggest that organizational justice is an important consideration in implementing DROC.