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International management and ethnography What and why? ■

Gavin Jack University of Leicester, UK

The point of departure for this response is a broad sympathy for the authors’ aim to broaden the methodological basis of international management inquiry, and more specifically the study of multinationals, through ethnographic research. As noted by previous commentators (Adler, 1984; Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991; Chapman, 1997; Jack and Westwood, 2006; Redding, 1994; Westwood, 2001, 2004), comparative/cross-cultural/institutionalist research in international business and management has long been dominated by functionalist and positivistic approaches which provide a highly partial understanding of the lived experiences, the complex and contradictory meaning-making systems and the political and ethical interactions of human agents. Any writing which brings attention to these ‘forgotten’ facets of human life under the constant re-structuring of global capital is, in principle then, an important rejoinder to the prevailing epistemological consensus of international management research (IMR). Despite my sympathies for this piece, however, it is my aim in this response to suggest a number of ways in which the authors might have further nuanced and supported their arguments, and thus crafted a more persuasive case. The response is structured around a critical discussion of two key themes which emanate from my own idiosyncratic reading of the article: first, the authors’ object of critique; and second, the authors’ turn to ethnography.

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The object of critique? To begin, it is not always clear to me exactly what the authors’ object of critique is. In the abstract, the ‘discipline’ of international management is contrasted with the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach to understanding the nature of MNCs. The authors suggest that both ‘approaches’ are epistemically suspect since they under-emphasize ‘the subjective interpretations of human actors’ as well as the ‘ideologies and philosophies’ that give texture and meaning to life under global capitalism. Later in the text, however, the distinction between the two approaches is less well sustained, with the authors (controversially) suggesting that the varieties of capitalism approach has attained a dominant conceptual position in comparative international management. It seems that, to be precise, the foil for this piece is the national business systems literature, and the argument is one about the importance of ethnographic research for better understanding the impact of changes to national business systems, and multinational firms, on local communities of practice. Whilst any attempt to map the contours of an academic area of study is inevitably partial – that is to say selective in its choice of frames of reference and always grist to a particular rhetorical mill – the representational work in this article did raise some troubling issues. In this regard, the comment above about the lack of precision on the object of critique is telling. What exactly counts as international management? Is it a discipline? Can the varieties of capitalism approach stand in for all inquiry about MNCs? What is left out of the frame? In reading these questions back through the article, I found that the authors might have done more to improve the scope of their coverage of the literature, and to substantiate and finesse many of the claims. With regard to the question of what constitutes international management, first, I think there are limitations to what the authors have in mind. If we accept that there is some meaningful sense in which we can talk about ‘international’ management as an area of inquiry separate from ‘domestic’ or ‘national’ management (and for some management researchers this is not a given), then a number of differently labelled research areas are conventionally deployed to map out the terrain. For example, a line is often drawn between the typically economic focus of the international business literature and the broader sociocultural and institutional focus of international management; another line might be drawn between culturist and institutionalist views of international management, the former typically articulated via the work of Geert Hofstede, and the latter through the national business systems literature and more recent developments in institutional theory; and finally, a line is also often drawn between comparative and cross-cultural management, where the unit of analysis differs between the

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former’s focus on separate national cultural/institutional managerial or organizational forms and practices, and the latter’s focus on the nature and impact of the interaction and/or intersection of at least two cultural/institutional systems. To me, international management is highly contested terrain, like most areas of social and organizational research. With this particular sketch in mind, I found a number of ways in which the authors might have developed their argument. First, they might have broadened the literature base of their article to throw light on these wellestablished divisions. I was very surprised at the lack of coverage of the culturist perspective, and its articulation in the cross-cultural management literature, be it the Hofstede-inspired functionalist and positivist variety, or the more recent interpretivist concerns of qualitative IB/IM research. I would certainly point to the cross-cultural management literature as a counter-argument to the authors’ (unsubstantiated) claim that: In recent years the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach has come to dominate research into comparative international management. (p. 329)

A broader issue which my point raises is how, through writing, (all) researchers do not so much ‘discover’ a gap in the literature that needs to be addressed as much as fabricate novelty through various rhetorical twists and turns (Clifford and Marcus, 1986). I read the quote above as a purely rhetorical move by the authors which allows them to suggest that, since most comparative international management is about understanding varieties of capitalism, and since most of this is a kind of abstracted functionalism, comparative IMR is clearly lacking a feel for the subjective interpretations and experiences of local actors. It is then only a short step from this view to the next where ‘institutionalist comparative management’ (which by this stage in their argument seems to now stand in for all international management) is ‘relatively weak in its coverage of cultural interpretations of what goes on inside business organizations and their associated communities, especially during times of change’ (p. 330). Based on this rhetorical strategy, the authors can then go on to ‘re-discover’ that which is lost through this putatively dominant research approach by recommending anthropological sensemaking. But why, to re-iterate the point above, did the authors not then look at cross-cultural management, especially of the qualitative variety? It has plenty of insight into the interpretative schema and affective dimensions of life in and around multinationals. One answer might be that if it had been covered in any depth, then their forthright argument about the lack of a subjective element in IM research would necessarily be compromised. This became apparent to me when the authors explained (p. 328) that the success of the Japanese economy, and concomitant attempts by researchers to explain its success with different governance structures to the leading

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western economies of the time, led to the emergence of the varieties of capitalism approach. This is only half the story! The success of Japanese corporations, and the intensification of their internationalization in the late 1970s and 1980s, was also a key impetus for the cross-cultural management literature and the culturist perspective more generally. Given the authors’ previous and current research interests in Japanese employment systems, I would have expected the well-developed cross-cultural management focus on the transferability, or otherwise, of Japanese management practices not only to feature in this text more prominently, but to act as an instance of international management research interest in the subjective experience of multinational activity. It would seem that because of the framing of international management, and the ambiguous and changing signification of this conceptual territory throughout the article, that the culturist perspective rather fell out of view. However, it is not just the issue of what is ‘missing’ or marginalized that provides food for thought in this response piece. There are also some interesting questions related to arguments about the literature that is covered. For instance, central to the argumentative spine are the following sorts of claims, repeated in several places from the start to the end of the article. At the outset, where a distinction is drawn between international management and the varieties of capitalism approach, the authors suggest: epistemic developments in the field of comparative international management have been methodologically limited, with both the mainstream international management discipline and the heterodox ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach remaining heavily reliant on functionalist explanations of firm and market behaviour. (p. 325)

Later, they describe comparative international management as a body of knowledge of an ‘abstract and schematic nature’ (p. 330). And further on: ‘Perhaps the major criticism that can be levelled at the field of international management research’, they claim, ‘is that it tends to be unitarist in its understanding of what a firm is and how it behaves’ (p. 334). My reservation with such statements is that the authors never actually present any evidence of the assertions they articulate, and therefore fail to substantiate them in any great depth. Whilst I do recognize in these statements descriptions of the various approaches to which they allude, their portrayals would perhaps have more rhetorical power if backed up by some form of evidence. We are asked to take these statements on trust. On account of this, the authors leave themselves open to rather easy challenges to their authoritative renderings. I am sure, for instance, that researchers from institutional theory, old and new varieties, would complain about the authors’ ascription of unitarism to their views of the firm, and about their blanketing of the competing explanations of firm behaviour.

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Interestingly, and to be fair, the authors do qualify their claims in places, with words like ‘predominantly’ and ‘usually’, suggesting they are aware that their representations cannot stand in for everything, and that counterpositions do exist within the bodies of literature in which they have an interest. I am puzzled, then, as to why these openings to more nuanced representations of the field are not pursued, even through the use of endnotes. There is much recent writing in international management which suggests that research in the area, however we place boundaries around it, is a little more substantively and conceptually diverse than some of the bold assertions indicate (adverbs aside). International management is one area in which there are regular attempts to document the state of the field. Such ‘survey’ work, perhaps indicative of the need of researchers in the area to bring into existence their field of study, involves exercises in the categorization, codification and tabulation of published research into international management in terms of substantive themes, conceptual foci, country and context of study and methodological preference (for instance, Peterson, 2004; Thomas et al., 1994; Wright and Ricks, 1994). Even a cursory look at some of these surveys suggests an ever emergent diversity in IMR, a diversity which can also be seen in methodological terms in the growing number of publications/calls for papers/research emphasizing the need for qualitative research methods and broader constructionist epistemologies in international business. This includes, to name a few, a Blackwell Handbook (edited by Punnett and Shenkar, 1996), an Edward Elgar Handbook (edited by Marschan-Piekkari and Welch, 2004), a special issue of Management International Review (2006), numerous individual journal articles, wider writings on ethnography and international management (Brannen, 1996; Sharpe, 2004), and books and articles illustrating a postcolonial critique of (comparative) management and organization studies (Prasad, 2003; Westwood, 2001, 2004). Such surveys of the field and these individual pieces together represent some diversity in international management research and openings to other epistemic and methodological forms. The authors are, I guess, gesturing to such diversity through the qualifying adverbs in their text. However, the lack of any concerted attention to them does create something of a misleading impression of the field to those not familiar with it. I am not saying that international management is a site of epistemological openness and methodological pluralism. There is, however, a growing interest in non-functionalist and non-positivist approaches. To re-iterate then, in this first section of my response, I am not necessarily contesting the authors’ labelling of the prevailing epistemological and methodological preferences of international management, nor arguing against the central thrust of this article. I am, however, suggesting that the representation of the object of critique might have been nuanced further and situated more carefully in ‘the literature’ (sic).

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The turn to ethnography The second section of this response deals with the authors’ turn to ethnography as a methodology for garnering the subjective interpretations and experiences of the new MNC organizational ideology amongst its communities of practice. My reading of the authors’ construction of the nature and utility of the ethnographic enterprise for IMR raises a number of counter-points and a need for further clarification of some of the assertions they make. The first of these points relates to the particular version of ethnography which the authors wish to stand for, and its ontological and epistemological articulation. The authors suggest that for comparative international management, ‘anthropology and ethnography’ represents ‘perhaps an unusual methodological domain’ (p. 337). Again, for those familiar with the literature, there already exists not only a number of previous ethnographic studies of international management issues (Brannen, 1996; Sharpe, 2004), but also regular calls for more ethnographic work. Their claim is therefore hardly new (leaving the ‘perhaps’ qualifier to one side). So, if not convincing in terms of its novelty, how else might the authors persuade us of the ‘valuedadded’ of their ethnographic clarion call? To assess this, it is important to try to understand the exact version of ethnography they are promoting, and to isolate the ways it might be considered different from or superior to other versions. From the text, it seems that a combination of ethnography as espoused by Anthony Cohen and Clifford Geertz is advanced. In the former regard, Cohen’s argument for ‘self-reflexible’ forms of anthropological inquiry is used by the authors to illuminate two inter-related methodological concerns. First, the need for international management researchers to avoid imposing their own cultural categories onto their subjects of study. And second, for the researcher to engender ‘a deep awareness of the way actors impose their own meanings on the social situation’ (p. 338). To me, there is nothing especially new here, nor even perhaps specifically reflective of an ethnographic tradition. Both points are now extremely well rehearsed across a number of different research traditions. In the positivist terrain, for instance, the need to avoid imposing inappropriate cultural categories onto respondents is prominently discussed as a challenge for accomplishing good questionnaire design in cross-cultural contexts (Usunier, 1998). Even Hofstede (1983), the arch-positivist of cross-cultural management research, called attention to the ethnocentrism of American management theory and its inability to act as a universal conceptual schema for organizational analysis. And in the qualitative terrain, an interest in how actors impose meanings in social context can be regarded as one of the broadest, and most widely accepted, characteristics of this

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form of inquiry (Silverman, 1993). With these points in mind, I feel that Cohen’s work is under-utilized in suggesting what is distinctive about ethnographic inquiry. And what of Clifford Geertz? Does his work get a more nuanced representation? Well, no. In fact, there is no attempt to even articulate what a Geertzian approach to anthropology or ethnography might look like. This seems strange given his importance to the piece. I would have thought that the call for thick description, a term which Geertz takes from Gilbert Ryle, would have encouraged the authors to address his work in much greater depth. The authors might well have given readers insight into Geertz’s (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, for instance, and a critical discussion of the semiotic view of culture as text described therein. The authors might also have chosen to draw attention to the changing and even contradictory philosophical stances that characterized the development of Geertz’s views on culture (essentially, then, the question of his relationship to structuralist and post-structuralist thought) and on the nature of the ethnographic enterprise. Instead of engaging with Cohen in any real depth, and Geertz in any way at all, the authors would seem to offer us a view of a rather broad, and not especially well articulated, phenomenological conception of ethnography. They suggest that ethnographic sense-making will allow the researcher to provide detailed descriptions of ‘the life-world of large-scale business communities’, to ‘discover “what it feels like” to belong to a culture’, and thereby to treat community members as ‘occupying their own “worlds of meaning”’ (p. 338). Ethnography, they argue, ‘stresses the important of the ethnographer employing phenomenological suspension in order to “bracket” existing personal beliefs, preconceptions and assumptions’ (p. 338). I would have liked more discussion and explanation of the phenomenological basis of their espoused ethnography, and greater exposition of the ontological and epistemological commitments of such a world view. This becomes especially pressing when, in other places in the text, they talk of having a ‘realist’ view of structuration processes, and of having a conceptual interest in narrative. I am sensing a little bit of incoherence in the epistemological position of the authors. The lack of ontological and epistemological clarity of the authors’ own position becomes further evident in the fact that, to my mind, they have failed to provide any coverage of contemporary debates about ethnography within anthropology and sociology. Such debates confront, for instance, the colonial history of ethnography, the epistemological status of its endeavour, and the rhetorical status of its texts, and have been a feature of these disciplines for several decades now. It seems a little odd that they have been omitted. What I fear is created by the authors in their article is a unitarist portrayal of ethnography, that is to say one lacking the colour, texture and

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critique provided by recent vigorous critiques. Such investigations call attention to a number of important issues for IM researchers. First, the danger of assuming that all ethnography is inspired by some kind of phenomenological or interpretivist spirit. This is not always the case, since realist ethnography continues to exist, and, it should hardly need to be said, qualitative research should not be conflated with interpretivism. The existence of qualitative positivism (Prasad and Prasad, 2002) does not sit entirely comfortably with constructionist views of ethnographic methodology. Second, philosophical debates regarding the status of ethnographic writing and representation, often associated with the publication of James Clifford and George Marcus’s (1986) edited volume Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. This came to the fore when reading the following quotation: Sensitivity to the social interpretation of the community practices of multinationals will enable researchers to uncover the ‘everyday reality’ of the dominant ideologies associated with the restructuring of contemporary capitalism. (p. 326)

If one wanted to be picky about the broader significance of verb choice in this sentence (assume that is what I am doing right now), then the use of the word ‘uncover’ might be taken to reflect some kind of structuralist view shared by the authors about ethnography. This view might be said to assume that cultural systems, their rationality and sign system, might be ‘readable’, discoverable and timeless. It might also be said to articulate some version of a correspondence theory of culture, the foil for much critique in recent ethnographic debate. The authors could be read as hinting that it is possible to capture native member categories in a faithful way, neutrally, by bracketing, and to see these as true and accurate accounts of lived experience. But where is a gesture to the writings of, for instance, James Clifford, George Marcus, or Patricia Clough, just three figures from anthropology and sociology whose collective work on the status of ethnographic texts raises important political questions about the nature of ethnographic representation? Does the very act of writing ethnography not change the co-ordinates and ontological status of that which we observe as ethnographers? How does the status of ethnographic writing as a rhetorical form, with political and poetic dimensions, force us to become ‘self-reflexible’ of our subject positions as writers? Is ethnographic writing epistemic violence? Is it an essentially patriarchal form of representation, which attempts to mask its own desire to oppress? These questions attending the status of writing, and its philosophical articulation through, inter alia, constructionism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial theory, are conspicuous by their absence from this text. Third, in regard to the suggested use of native categories as definitive of ethnographic research, and as a way of capturing the subjective experiences

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of local actors, one does not need to go as far as anthropology to find some warnings about their use. There are several pieces of management research (for instance, Buckley and Chapman, 1997; Harris, 2000) which draw attention to the dangers of placing too much faith in native informant accounts of social and organizational realities. That is to say, the danger of placing too much store in these accounts as repositories of more ‘truthful’ or ‘accurate’ representations of reality. Often there is a tendency to romanticize, exoticize and/or essentialize a native informant view, to assume that it is even possible for the ‘subaltern to speak’. Important debates in postcolonial criticism, notably associated with Gayatri Spivak, should be enough for the interested reader to think through not only the colonial history of ethnography, but also of the compromised possibilities of ‘giving voice’ to those whose experiences of the world had been marginalized and rendered unspeakable by colonial relations. So far in this section, I have drawn attention to the manner in which the authors might have provided more concerted coverage of their own ontological and epistemological assumptions, and to have situated these better within wider debates on the contested status of ethnography. Further work might have militated against the tendency of the article, in my reading at least, to ‘unitarize’ ethnographic methodology. Moving on from this, there is the question of whether, despite these issues, the authors succeed in one of the other key objectives of the article: to demonstrate the value of ethnography as a way of attending to the (tough) local, subjective and ideological experiences of global restructuring. To demonstrate the value of ethnography for ‘revealing the sharp end of corporate ideology’, the authors (pp. 333–8) draw upon data they collected from previous comparative research on the contemporary experience of work and employment in MNCs in the UK, USA and Japan. The ‘microlevel evidence’ they present on such experiences allows them to ‘extrapolate themes that link to broader structural conceptions and economic processes’ (p. 335). My concern here is with the initial ambiguity regarding the research methods they deployed. On page 365 they suggest that their evidence is based on ethnographic observation and interviews, but data presented later in the article take form in their entirety in quotations based on interviews. As they say, ‘this project was based on interview research methods’ (p. 337). Key to the ethnographic enterprise, and for some its defining feature, are observational methods. For an article espousing the merits of ethnography, I would have expected this point to appear in bright lights, for the reader’s attention to be drawn to discussions about both the epistemological status of observational data as much as the practical and personal challenges of conducting observational research. I would also have expected the point to be made that ethnographers can, and typically do, make use of multiple

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methods for collecting data, ranging from interviews, journals, and observation, to visual research methods and poetry inter alia. To me, it really is not at all convincing to ‘demonstrate’ the merits of ethnography through the presentation of data purely emanating from interviews. What is being demonstrated then is not the value of ethnography, but the value of interviews. And the two are not the same. One can extend this point of critique. Towards the end of the article, I had the feeling that I was reading more of a reprise of previously published research findings than a persuasive case for ethnography. I am more than happy to accept the substantive points the authors make about the levels of convergence found in the dataset regarding governance structures, and managerial practices, across the different nations involved. And I am happy enough to interpret this as being ‘strongly associated with the spread of the new organizational ideology as a community of practice’ (p. 328). But I could read this in any of their articles. Where I am less persuaded is with the claim that: ‘We argue that these values and interpretations can most clearly be uncovered if analysts take on ethnographic approaches’ (p. 328–9). The value of ethnography to achieve these interpretations has not been demonstrated to me. I could gain an insight into the tough side of global restructuring just by picking up a newspaper or looking on the Internet! So, what is it I am getting that is different to these forms of ‘news’ through ethnographic research? The answer is just not clear.

A final thought As someone who has previously argued for an international management discipline that shows greater commitment to methodological pluralism, epistemic reflexivity and political awareness, I am very sympathetic to the spirit of this piece. Given the number of previous calls for more interpretivist and ethnographic work which pays attention to the subjective experiences of MNC global restructuring specifically, and structures and practices of international management more broadly, I was keen to know what this article would add to extant critiques of the epistemological and political basis of received wisdom. In this respect, I feel that the authors could have done more. And by ‘more’, I mean more effort to clarify, nuance and situate their object of critique in the literature, and more effort to bring to the readers’ attention debates on the status of ethnography and demonstrate more effectively the insights it can offer researchers. One of the key challenges of opening up international management is not just the suggestion of new methodological approaches, or research methods, but of encouraging and validating a grammar for philosophical discussion in which issues of ontology and epistemology are seen as

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paramount. Even within the more ‘groundbreaking’ work in international management which promotes qualitative inquiry, there is still a naïve belief at times that new methods are the panacea for the limitations of positivistic work. This kind of qualitative work continues a separation of theory and method indicative of positivist inquiry, and under-emphasizes the need for greater epistemic reflexivity in the discipline (Jack and Westwood, 2006). Whilst the authors do emphasize the need for more epistemological work (p. 338), I think the article needs to instantiate better what this might look like. And part of validating this kind of debate, and especially of convincing the putative ‘mainstream’ of the need for such debate, lies in more rigorous representations of the ‘received wisdoms’ which we set out to challenge.

References Adler, N.J. (1984) ‘Understanding the Ways of Understanding: Cross-cultural Methodology Reviewed’, in R.N Farmer (ed.) Advances in International Comparative Management, Vol. 1, pp. 31–67. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Boyacigiller, N. and N.J. Adler (1991) ‘The Parochial Dinosaur: Organizational Science in Global Context’, Academy of Management Review 16(2): 262–90. Brannen, M.Y. (1996) ‘Ethnographic International Management Research’, in B.J. Punnett and O. Shenkar (eds) Handbook of International Management Research, pp. 115–43. Oxford: Blackwell. Buckley, P.J. and M. Chapman (1997) ‘The Use of Native Categories in Management Research’, British Journal of Management 8: 283–99. Chapman, M. (1997) ‘Social Anthropology, Business Studies, and Cultural Issues’, International Studies of Management and Organization 26(4): 3–29. Clifford, J. and G.E. Marcus (eds) (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Harris, S. (2000) ‘Reconciling Positive and Interpretative International Management Research: A Native Category Approach’, International Business Review 9: 755–70. Hofstede, G. (1983) ‘The Cultural Relativity of Organizational Practices and Theories’, Journal of International Business Studies 14: 75–89. Jack, G. and R. Westwood (2006) ‘Postcolonialism and the Politics of Qualitative Research in International Business’, Management International Review 46(4): 481–501. Marschan-Piekkari, R. and C. Welch (eds) (2004) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for International Business. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Peterson, R.B. (2004) ‘Empirical Research in International Management: A

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Critique and Future Agenda’, in R. Marschan-Piekkari and C. Welch (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for International Business, pp. 25–55. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Prasad, A. (2003) Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. New York: Palgrave. Prasad, A. and P. Prasad (2002) ‘The Coming of Age of Interpretive Organizational Research’, Organizational Research Methods 5(1): 4–11. Punnett, B.J. and O. Shenkar (eds) (1996) Handbook of International Management Research. Oxford: Blackwell. Redding, S.G. (1994) ‘Comparative Management Theory: Jungle, Zoo or Fossil Bed?’, Organization Studies 15(3): 323–60. Sharpe, D.R. (2004) ‘The Relevance of Ethnography for International Business Research’, in R. Marschan-Piekkari and C. Welch (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for International Business, pp. 306–23. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Silverman, D. (1993) Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction. London: Sage. Thomas, A.S., O. Shenkar and L. Clarke (1994) ‘The Globalization of Our Mental Maps: Evaluating the Geographic Scope of JIBS Coverage’, Journal of International Business Studies 25(4): 675–87. Usunier, J.-C. (1998) International & Cross-Cultural Management Research. London: Sage. Westwood, R.I. (2001) ‘Appropriating the Other in the Discourses of Comparative Management’, in R.I. Westwood and S. Linstead (eds) The Language of Organization, pp. 241–62. London: Sage. Westwood, R.I. (2004) ‘Towards a Post-Colonial Research Paradigm in International Business and Comparative Management’, in R. Marschan-Piekkari and C. Welch (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for International Business, pp. 56–83. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Wright, R.W. and D.A. Ricks (1994) ‘Trends in International Business Research: Twenty-Five Years Later’, Journal of International Business Studies 25(4): 687–701. ■ GAVIN JACK is Reader in Culture and Consumption at the University of Leicester School of Management. Broadly situated within critical management studies, his research interests include: international, cross-cultural and diversity management; anthropological and cultural studies approaches to consumption; postcolonial organizational analysis. Address: School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK. [email: gaj8@leicester.ac.uk] ■