Early retailing: London's shopping exchanges, 1550–1700

Location is an important aspect of retailing, and London entrepreneurs recognized it as early as the 1560s in building exchanges to house a collection of shops, taking them off the street. These shopping centres created a special shopping environment: shelter, safety, and shop agglomeration. Soon shoppers put on their own social display there, a further shopping attraction. Up to five of these centres existed in late seventeenth-century London, capturing about half of all shops. But the reputation of these facilities declined over time, the institution of shopping ‘mall’ apparently not continued or emulated again until the twentieth century.     

A new theoretical framework of shopping motives and channel preference behaviour in the digital era

The unprecedented dissemination of digital technology has changed people's psychology including their shopping behaviour in the last two decades. Smartphone led digital applications and advancements have disrupted consumers' shopping processes, purchase decisions, and priorities as well as increased their exposure, aspirations and expectations inevitably. Therefore, it is imperative to examine the relevance of various elements of shopping motives holistically. Therefore, the present study aims to develop a new theoretical framework based on significant elements of shopping motives for physical products in the digital technology era. For this purpose, an exploratory study, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modelling (SEM) were used. EFA generated five latent factors by grouping 18 independent variables. CFA validated latent factor construct and measured model fit. SEM visualized the path analysis and portrayed the pattern of relations between latent factors into a single factor structural model (consumer shopping motives framework). Results show that consumers' shopping priorities are changing as 3 conventional variables (‘role-playing’, ‘status and authority’, and ‘pleasure of bargaining’) became obsolete and 3 new (‘anywhere and any-time shopping’, ‘safe and secure digital transaction’, and ‘unbiased reviews and ratings”) came into existence prominently. The format and perspective of ‘fun, entertainment and recreation’ ‘social interaction and communication’, and ‘exposure to new and latest trends' have been changing. Consumers are becoming more technology-dependent in their shopping processes and purchase decisions. The validation of the framework on channel preference behaviour revealed that consumers largely prefer offline channels for the fulfilment of risk-free and social sub-motives, and online channels for convenience sub-motive. Therefore, broad structural change and clarity, specification of priorities, a shift in the format and perspective of few elements of shopping motives, intrinsic passion for the use of digital technology and web service in the shopping journey, and simplification of antecedents for growing popularity of multi-channel shopping paradigm are the key novelty of this study.     

Bags for Life: The Embedding of Ethical Consumerism

The aim of this paper is to understand why some ethical behaviours fail to embed, and importantly what can be done about it. We address this by looking at an example where ethical behaviour has not become the norm, i.e. the widespread, habitual, use of ‘bags for life’. This is an interesting case because whilst a consistent message of ‘saving the environment’ has been the basis of the promotion of ‘bags for life’ in the United Kingdom for many years, their uptake has only recently become more widespread and still remains at low levels. Through an exploratory study, we unpack some of the contextual barriers which may influence ethical consumerism. We do this by examining the attitudes which influenced people to start using ‘bags for life’, and how people persuade others to use ‘bags for life’. We use a case study analysis to try and understand why ethical behaviour change has stalled and not become sustained. We find that both individuals and institutions play a significant interaction role in encouraging a sustained behavioural change towards ethical consumerism.     

Human capital,migration strategy,and brain drain

Abstract

This research was motivated by the increasing number of foreign students and scientists who are in the United States on temporary visas and who are able to change their status to permanent immigrant. Origin countries, among them industrialized western European nations, are concerned about losing many of their best-educated and most talented citizens. This article modifies and extends a theoretical model of optimal human capital investment before and after migration to shed new light on the emigration/immigration of the highly skilled, and explores some possible implications for the study of the so-called ‘brain drain’ phenomenon.     

The Emergence of a New Regime: Business Management and Office Mechanisation in the Dutch Financial Sector in the 1920s

During the 1920s the methods, procedures and technologies used in the Dutch office workers' sector to conduct administrative processes underwent sweeping changes. New management styles, office methods and information technologies were introduced. These changes were closely related to each other, and served as a new organisational model for large-scale office activities. We may therefore speak of the emergence of a new ‘regime’ of office organisation. Important elements of the new regime were the standardisation and formalisation of internal communication flows, the introduction of systematic analyses of office operations and the use of punched card technology. In this article the causes, characteristics and consequences of this regime shift are traced by closely examining a couple of reorganisation projects that took place in the 1920s at two different Dutch financial institutions, one of which was successful and one of which amounted to a failure. These institutions were the Rotterdamsche Bankvereeniging (Robaver) and the national Giro Service. The cases demonstrate that the different elements of the new regime were closely connected, and that the new management styles and office methods were indispensable for the successful introduction of the new information technology.     

Accounting education,socialisation and the ethics of business

This study provides empirical evidence in relation to a growing body of literature concerned with the ‘socialisation’ effects of accounting and business education. A prevalent criticism within this literature is that accounting and business education in the United Kingdom and the United States, by assuming a ‘value‐neutral’ appearance, ignores the implicit ethical and moral assumptions by which it is underpinned. In particular, it has been noted that accounting and business education tends to prioritise the interests of shareholders above all other stakeholder groups. This paper reports on the results of a set of focus group interviews with both undergraduate accounting students and students commencing their training with a professional accounting body. The research explores their perceptions about the purpose of accounting and the objectives of business. The findings suggest that both university and professional students' views on these issues tend to be informed by an Anglo‐American shareholder discourse, whereby the needs of shareholders are prioritised. Moreover, this shareholder orientation appeared to be more pronounced for professional accounting students.     

Vocational education and training and employer engagement: an industry‐led sectoral system in the Netherlands

The overall objective of this paper is to determine, through a qualitative case study of the Dutch sectoral training system, factors associated with successful employer engagement. As well as examining the key features of the Dutch approach to vocational education and training (VET), the article makes a number of specific arguments: (1) employer ‘buy‐in’ is crucial to the success of the sectoral approach to VET; (2) simply establishing a system of sector‐based training bodies (e.g. skills councils) does not guarantee effective employer engagement; and (3) to make sectoral training work, especially in countries where a ‘supply‐led’ system dominates, a fundamental reform is required in areas such as funding, qualification structure, leadership and system support.     

Brain drain: Inclination to stay abroad after studies

‘Brain drain’ is a phenomenon in which people of a high level of skills, qualifications, and competence, leave their countries and emigrate. One major case of the brain drain happens when students from developing countries studying in the developed countries decide not to return home after their studies. We examined the reasons for international students’ inclination to stay in their host countries in a sample of 949 management students who came to study in the United Kingdom and the United States. The results support a three-fold model of factors that influenced this inclination. Students’ perceptions of ethnic differences and labor markets, their adjustment process to the host country, and their family ties in host and home countries all affect their intention to stay.     

‘The Municipal Store’: Adaptation and Development in the Retail Markets of Nineteenth-Century Urban Lancashire

This essay employs a case study of Lancashire's nineteeth-century retail markets in order to reassess the impact of economic and urban growth on retail forms. By revealing the resilience of markets in a county which experienced some of the most intense industrial and urban development of the period, it challenges those models of retail change which present an inverse relationship between economic and urban change on the one hand, and ‘traditional’ modes of retailing on the other. It examines the ways in which the region's markets responded to the new problems and opportunities generated by their changing physical, economic and social environment, focusing in particular on their management, their trade and their temporal and physical organisation. It reveals how, contrary to undergoing displacement by ‘fixed’ forms of shop retailing, markets adopted some of their characteristics and evolved as modern, profitable, daily, undercover ‘municipal stores’.     

INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS: SURVEYING THE ‘OLD’ AND THE ‘NEW’

This paper surveys and compares the literature on the ‘new’ institutionalism (North, Williamson, etc.) with that of the ‘old’(Veblen, Commons, Mitchell). A criterion for distinguishing these two schools is suggested, along with criticisms of the limitations of each. The ‘new’ institutionalism is associated with methodological individualism and the idea that the individual should be taken as given. Particular attention is paid to ‘new’ institutionalist treatments of markets and firms. The paper moves on to examine some ‘old’ institutionalist criticisms of ‘economic man’ as well as some negative features of the ‘old’ institutionalism. On the positive side, the latter is seen to have an ‘evolutionary’ dimension, related to modern work in the area of technological change.     

Interfield Dynamics: Law and the creation of new organisational fields in the nineteenth-century United States

Abstract

This article draws on the concept of ‘strategic action fields’ to examine the interaction of law and organisations in the nineteenth-century United States. Focusing on the emergence of savings banking, it analyses how new legal rules were created to define the actors, actions and relationships that constituted the organisational field. The article develops three conceptual claims about the dynamics of institutional contexts: (a) the configuration of state fields shaped the nature and timing of legal rule making vis-à-vis organisational fields; (b) state actors engaged in ‘inter-field framing’ by applying analogies from the legal field to define social order in the organisational one; and (c) the legal and organisational fields were mutually constituted through these interactions. The article concludes by elaborating on the broader value of the theory of fields in business history.     

An evolving historical paradigm: from ‘home economics' to ‘family and consumer sciences’1

With the professional name change in the United States of ‘home economics' to ‘family and consumer sciences’, the purpose of this paper is to facilitate communicating an understanding of our profession to our students. This paper focuses on an historical perspective depicting a progression of conceptualizations about the profession. Four developmental models are presented to provide a system of organization that will help students develop their professional identity. This paper is a reflection of an individual journey to gain a personal-professional identity. The sharing of this pilgrimage and the visual models that have been developed to enhance its communication have become a valuable resource and meaningful part of an undergraduate core class that provides students with the initiative to begin their own professional clarifications.     

Subsidiary capability upgrading under emerging market acquirers

This article leverages a case study of a recent Chinese acquisition in the United Kingdom to explore the upgrading of capabilities in the subsidiaries in developed countries acquired by emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs). The seemingly implausible upgrading phenomenon is explained by the EMNEs’ complementary assets, their GVC lead firm positions and the unique power relationship between the acquirer and acquired firms, which enable the EMNEs to ‘impel’ upgrading and encourage ‘co-learning’ in their acquired subsidiaries. The contributions to the literature on EMNEs, global value chains, and organizational learning are outlined and discussed.     

Embracing change: a leadership model for the learning organisation

Accelerating environmental change has allowed theorists and practitioners to envision an organisational entity known as the learning organisation. The phrase ‘learning organisation’ has existed in the literature for several decades. More than other writers, Senge has popularised the term in the 1990s. However, other writers have made significant contributions to this topic. Woolner, for example, developed a model that identified five distinct stages through which organisations progress on the way to becoming learning organisations. A needed link in the literature should portray a model of leadership and the stages of a learning organisation. The model proposed by this author utilises the three leadership behaviours of visioning, empowerment, and leading-learning, and is offered as a catalyst for improved practice as well as food for thought for researchers who aspire to build theoretical relationships between the topics.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and International Human Rights Law

The United Nations Special Representative on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, John Ruggie, has adopted a new framework for considering this issue within the international legal system. This article examines this framework in terms of its coherence, its consistency with international human rights law and how it can be ‘operationalized’ (which is required by the United Nations). In regard to the states legal obligation to protect human rights, it is considered whether this obligation is broader and deeper than is envisaged in the framework, especially if it can include the extra-territorial activities of corporations. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights is examined in terms of its conceptual and definitional problems, and the article also questions whether there will be sufficient legal remedies available to victims under the framework.     

Marketing orientation and activities in the arts-marketing context: Introducing a Visual Artists’ Marketing Trajectory model

Abstract

Answering the call by Fillis, this paper aims to build an ‘arts-marketing orientation’ model by exploring the parallel relationship that exists between the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and the notion of the ‘career trajectory’ (as it applies to visual artists). In so doing, this paper provides a finer-grained understanding of the marketing orientation and activities of visual artists as they progress through their career. Qualitative analysis of the data (and the subsequent development of the Visual Artists’ Marketing Trajectory model) suggests that the marketing orientation and activities undertaken by visual artists deviates significantly from the assumptions underpinning traditional marketing theory. Unlike customer orientation (central to traditional marketing theories), this research suggests that in the arts-marketing context, the marketing orientation and activities of visual artists change according to the career trajectory stage in question.     

Tastes differ: Comparing company strategies,innovation trajectories and knowledge sources in Dutch soft drink production in the 1930s

Impelled by a crisis in Dutch horticulture in the early 1930s, two Dutch food preserving companies, Hero and De Betuwe, decided to start producing non-alcoholic drinks made from fruits and vegetables. Different kinds of knowledge were needed for this radical innovation. Innovation trajectories were established and knowledge was incorporated, but the knowledge sources and ‘knowledge filters’ of the two companies were very different. Hero's Swiss parent played an important role in transferring Swiss knowledge of production techniques to its Dutch subsidiary company. De Betuwe, on the other hand, mainly relied on knowledge provided by the existing Dutch horticultural innovation network. While succeeding in the soft drink market was to a certain degree a competition between publicly available knowledge and private knowledge, in the end both companies succeeded in producing a comparable product, but their routes to success were different.     

Linking Social Issues to Organizational Impact: The Role of Infomediaries and the Infomediary Process

When do organizations decide to ‘adopt’ a given social issue such that they come to acknowledge it in their patterns of action and communication? Traditional answers to this question have focused either on the characteristics of the issue itself, or on the traits of the focal organization. In many cases, however, a firm’s decision to adopt or ignore an issue is not a straightforward function of firm or issue characteristics. Instead, we view issue adoption as a socially constructed process of information exchange between parties that are involved in the emergence and evolution of the issue, mediated by third-party organizations. We refer to this process as the infomediary process and these latter organizations as ‘infomediaries,’ after the information mediation and brokerage roles they play in the social processes linking social issues to organizational impact. We present a concise theoretical model of how infomediaries establish credible linkages between focal organizations and social issues. The thrust of the model is that the infomediation process, rather than the issue or firm characteristics, is what really drives firm-level issue adoption decisions.     

Price-aware enhanced dynamic recommendation based on deep learning

Price is one of the essential elements influencing consumer purchase behavior. Like consumers’ preferences in products, their price preferences also dynamically change over time. However, dynamic price preferences haven’t been fully considered in existed recommendation studies. In this study, we propose a deep learning-based dynamic recommendation model by considering consumers’ dynamic preferences in both product and price. We specially design a review-and-rating-based sequence generator to select products whose prices the consumers are satisfied with to form the new purchase sequence. We also develop a multi-level attention mechanism in the transformer layer to explore the correlations between consumers’ price choices and to combine the price preferences with the product preferences. Experimental results show the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art models on some real-world datasets. Our findings can help retailers understand consumers’ price preferences and make informed decisions related to pricing, discounting, and bundle sales strategies.