Doing More with Less: Women's Leisure During Their Partners’ Military Deployment

Women whose partners have been deployed on military missions during wartime typically experience increased stress as they adjust to maintaining work, family, and household roles. The purpose of this study was to explore leisure in the lives of women during their partners’ deployment. Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 10 employed mothers whose partners had been deployed for at least a six-month period. Findings indicated that the loss of daily support from partners and concern for partners’ safety contributed to women shifting their focus from individual to family leisure as a means of coping and caring for their children.     

Measuring the Impact of Product Placement on Children Using Digital Brand Integration

Recent marketing literature has called for more research that focuses on the influence of new media on children and, specifically, the use of product placement. The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of food and beverage product placements on children of different ages. Using an experimental approach, groups of children viewed the same television program, but with either healthy products or unhealthy brands digitally inserted. A detailed survey then measured aided and unaided recall and immediate choice behavior. In total, 225 children from two schools took part in the experiment. The results indicated strong recall for the products placed, especially for the unhealthy products, and particularly among older children. However, the placements had only a modest influence on immediate behavior, with regression analysis suggesting that the packaging was more significant in influencing choice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Adding insult to injury: consumer experiences of being denied credit

To inspire confidence in consumer credit and improve outcomes for consumers, negative experiences such as being denied credit must be handled appropriately. We conducted an online survey with 298 UK citizens who had a credit application denied to gain a better understanding of their experience of being denied credit. We found that privacy issues make this experience more upsetting for consumers than necessary. When being denied credit, respondents are most concerned about (1) being denied credit ‘in public’; and (2) not being informed about the reasons why they are denied. Only 23% of our respondents knew why they had been denied; 116 (62%) believed they had been denied credit because of their credit record, but 28% had never checked it. Out of the 194 respondents who had checked their record, 38 identified errors in their credit reports, and in 14 of these cases (38%) debts that they had paid off were incorrectly listed as outstanding. Based on our findings, we propose several changes to the credit application process: (1) providing sensitive but helpful information in a private manner, e.g. a preview of their credit score before they commit a loan application; (2) credit denial notifications with information on what to do next; and (3) giving applicants more information about checking their credit report and who to contact for correcting errors.     

Does Culture Matter in Inter-Firm Cooperation? Research Consortia in Japan and the USA

Collaborative research consortia allow firms to pursue scale and scope economies in research, finance large costly proposals, share risks, avoid unnecessary duplication, internalize the externalities created by research spillovers, and allow the use of firm-specific complementary skills and resources. In this study we examine the evolution of cooperative research organizations in the USA and Japan. We explore the factors which influence the emergence of alternative forms of cooperation. Specifically, we examine the role of culture and the institutional environment in molding the organization of cooperation between firms in R&D and the consequences of such cooperation. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tying the pieces together: A normative framework for integrating sales and project operations

Synchronizing sales efforts with project operations, such that (1) there is a steady flow of work that can be completed in a non-chaotic project environment, (2) resources maintain high utilization, and (3) desired deliverables reach customers within the promised lead-time, is extremely difficult. This paper proposes a normative approach to uniting the sales process with project operations capacity by coordinating movement of potential customers through the sales funnel with the company's internal project capacity. It also addresses contingencies with respect to company throughput as a result of changes in managing the market, the sales funnel, and project operations, while taking into consideration variation in scheduling as well as in managing project task and duration uncertainty.     

Family Leisure and Leisure Service Provision: Making the Case for Including Perspectives from Practice

ABSTRACT

Research over the last 20 years has contributed to the conceptualization and theorizing about family leisure. Missing from this body of knowledge has been research that focuses on the provision of family leisure programs and services that includes the perspectives of practitioners. Also missing from this research are the perspectives of those who engage in programs and services that have been designed for or offered to families. The first purpose of this article is to, through a discussion of the literature, demonstrate the potential value of engaging recreation and leisure agencies in research that advances knowledge about how family leisure is practiced in program and service contexts. The second purpose is to identify potential areas of inquiry that not only will contribute to advancing theory about family leisure but also support practice in delivering recreation and leisure programs and services for families.     

Technology sourcing and output of established firms in a regime of encompassing technological change

This paper argues that when the technological basis of an industry is changing, the firm's approach to technology sourcing plays a critical role in building the capabilities needed to generate new technical outputs. Using survey and archival data from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry during the period 1981–91, we find that different approaches to technology sourcing (internal R&D and external R&D) are related to different types of biotechnology‐based output at the end of the period. Internal R&D was positively associated with patent output. Acquisition activity was positively related to number of biotechnology‐based products. Greater use of R&D contracts and licenses was associated with stronger reputation for possessing expertise in biotechnology. These findings underscore the importance of taking a multifaceted approach to technology sourcing in order to build the absorptive capacity needed to generate new technical output. Surprisingly, we also found that involvement in joint ventures was negatively related to patent output. This raises interesting questions about the strategic use of joint ventures in a regime of encompassing technological change. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.