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Uniting the perspective of narrative psychology with feminist and narrative criminology, we analyzed interviews with 58 formerly incarcerated women. We identified four distinct ontologies of blame that the women used to characterize the events, actors, and circumstances that resulted in their incarceration. We argue that these four ontologies of blame-personal responsibility, socioeconomic exclusion, relational caregiving associations, and compromised decision-making-each derive from the dominant U.S. cultural value of accountability that accords great social, moral, and personal weight to accepting responsibility for, and expressing willingness to endure the consequences of, wrongdoing. Our findings suggest that academics and therapeutic practitioners could assist the formerly incarcerated women with whom they work by encouraging a critique of dominant cultural values; by expanding accountability from the individual to the community; by situating accountability in past, present, and future contexts; and by facilitating ontologies of security.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the usage of selling influence tactics across prospective customers with differing information-related needs. Design/methodology/approach The research study uses an exploratory critical incident technique (CIT) methodology to identify and examine salesperson influence tactics. Findings This study identifies and explores the use of salesperson influence tactics across three information-based conditions often encountered by salespeople (i.e. information seeking customers, informed customers with information inaccuracies and informed customers making sub-optimal decisions). Regardless of condition, salespeople readily used non-coercive information exchange tactics. Whereas, recommendations and ingratiation tactics were applied by more effective salespeople when interacting with informed customers with information deficiencies. Furthermore, salespeople report executing less effectively with prospects with inaccurate preexisting information and with prospects making flawed or sub-optimal decisions. Research limitations/implications Findings illustrate the need for a renewed focus on salesperson influence tactics, the conditions under which they are effective, and how salespeople adapt their influence tactics to various situations. The exploratory nature of this study limits the generalizability of findings. Practical implications A framework of adaptive selling strategies is proposed to help tackle new challenges faced by B2B salespeople in today’s information intensive market. When interacting with more informed customers, pre-existing information is often inaccurate and incomplete. Thus, salespeople must assess and address these flaws and gaps and can adapt their influence strategies to do so effectively. Originality/value Industrial buyers today have virtually unlimited avenues to conduct extensive research and gain supplier information without the aid of interactions with salespeople. Thus, salespeople often enter sales interactions when their prospects have significantly more information than ever before. By examining salesperson influence techniques in selling situations that vary based on prospective customer preexisting knowledge, this research provides guidance on how selling may need to change in a more information intensive era.

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This book argues that unique rural cultural dynamics shape women’s experiences of incarceration and release from prison in the remote, predominantly white communities that many Americans still think of as “the Western frontier.” Together, these dynamics comprise an architecture of gendered violence, a theoretical lens applicable to women’s experiences of prison throughout the United States in its focus on how the synchronous operations of addiction and compromised mental health, poverty, fraught relationships, and felony-related discrimination undergird women’s lives. The architecture of gendered violence that comprises the primary pathway to incarceration among the Wyoming women in this study reflects the way the suite of concerns facing currently and formerly incarcerated women throughout the United States manifests in a remote rural context far from the coastal metropolises that dominate the production of criminal justice discourse and scholarship.