Pushing speed? The marketing of fast and convenience food

The Menu: This paper explores the complex relationship between the marketing of fast and convenience food, and Western constructions and experiences of time in late Modernity, through a polemical analysis of a set of recent British television advertisements for a variety of brands in this sector. A cursory reading of these ads reveals some apparent contradictions in the deployment of time in fast/convenience food marketing: they seem to celebrate both speed (time as “sameness” and “continuity”) and nostalgia (time as “difference” and “discontinuity”). We go beyond a simple understanding of these alternative tropes as indices of competing brand strategies by interpreting their wider relations to the systemic and cultural vicissitudes of contemporary global capital. We conclude that the temporal articulation of fast and convenience foods presented in the ads is not in fact paradoxical, but dialectical. This dialectical relationship is an essential and continuing ideological structure of late Modernity.     

Performance effects of category assortment and stock allocation decisions for a cash-and-carry wholesaler

This study develops and tests a model of how category assortment, category stock level and within-category stock allocation decisions might affect category sales and stock turnover and reflect category-varying levels of sales heterogeneity and sales volatility. In doing so, it addresses recent calls to consider multiple dimensions of assortment planning. It uses the cash-and-carry wholesaling setting to isolate non-space-related assortment planning and performance variables otherwise difficult to treat in a conventional retailing (e.g. supermarket) context. It develops a structural equation model of how category sales volatility and heterogeneity, as antecedents, might influence both category assortments and stock allocations and thus, in turn, influence category performance.     

Measuring market orientation: A multi‐factor,multi‐item approach

The marketing literature reflects remarkable inconsistency in defining two of its most frequently used terms, “the marketing concept” and “market orientation”. Through a critical review of the marketing literature and an empirical analysis of data collected from 248 Canadian firms, the authors established a four‐component measure of “market orientation”. The resulting multi‐factor, multi‐item instrument provides a foundation for future studies.     

Community Connections to Enhance Undergraduate International Business Education: An Example of Business Consulting Projects

Practical project experience as a means of augmenting traditional classroom learning has long been viewed as a value adding curricular exercise. While students participating in the projects gain valuable skills that will enhance their personal marketability, successful projects also benefit the client companies involved and help enhance the image of the university. Substantial effort goes into planning and implementing such an experience and involves extensive coordination with multiple constituents. This article details how a project-based capstone experience was developed in partnership with the local business community and the College's Center for International Business as part of the degree requirements for a relatively new Bachelor of Science in International Business program.     

Emerging Market Multinationals: Coopetition for Global Growth

Since the dramatic geopolitical shift toward liberalization in the last century, emerging‐market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) have become major players in global markets and continue to account for an increasing share of global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. Given this trend, the questions of how and why EMNEs pursue FDI deserve greater attention. This article builds on recent work that uses resource dependence theory (RDT) to explain EMNE internationalization strategies. We propose that EMNEs, while often resource deficient relative to their developed‐market competitors and, therefore, more dependent on others in the external environment, are uniquely positioned to overcome these deficiencies over time through simultaneous cooperation and competition—coopetition—with their global rivals and host‐ and home‐country governments. These propositions contribute to the EMNE internationalization literature by more fully incorporating RDT into current theories of internationalization, highlighting the importance of managing dependencies over time to maximize global growth. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Strategies for NABE’s Long Term

NABE has engaged in a major “roadmapping” exercise to develop its strategies for the long term. Its goal was to determine NABE’s purpose, values, direction, and the means of achieving its goals. Four major initiatives are presented and discussed; and the importance of continuing professional education is emphasized, as is the critical role of NABE members’ participation in its activities.     

Adequacy of International Codes of Behavior

International codes of corporate behavior have been proposed, discussed, negotiated, and promulgated by governments, transnational corporations, and inter-corporate associations over the past few decades. It is not clear that they have been resoundingly as successful in changing corporate behavior – particularly as to corruption and environmental protection – as have national government requirements imposed on foreign enterprises and their own officials. This article arrays the many attempts to structure cooperative action to re-order corporate behavior on several dimensions – restrictive business practices, labor conditions, human rights, environmental production, and corruption. It then assesses the extent to which behavior has been changed and what techniques are more effective in making corporate behavior more ethical.     

Learning and development expertise: an Australian analysis

Learning and development (L&D) practitioners draw on a distinctive range of knowledge, skills and techniques in their work. Over the years, there have been attempts to capture this range and identify typical L&D roles. The research presented here was undertaken to identify characteristic areas of expertise (AOEs) of L&D practice in Australia, and to collect data about roles and organizational settings in which these AOEs are deployed. The research was commissioned by the Australian Institute of Training and Development. Literature relating to L&D was consulted, and Australian L&D experts were interviewed to draft a list of L&D AOEs. Responses to a survey by 589 Australian L&D practitioners were used to appraise the model. A principal components analysis of perceptions of the importance of the different types of expertise revealed that practitioners tended to rate one of three ‘clusters’ as important to their work: a strategy and analysis cluster, a learning facilitation cluster and a design and systems cluster. This analysis raises the question of contemporary L&D roles with implications for strategic HRD policy and professional associations. The typology may be utilized to target professional L&D activities, and provides impetus for further research to investigate the internal relationships between cluster components.     

Managerial Sharing,Mutual Fund Connections,and Performance

In this study, we examine the effect of mutual fund connections, through managerial sharing, on performance and stock holding commonalities. Our analysis of return correlations and portfolio holdings indicates that more interconnected funds tend to buy and sell similar stocks, hence increasing the similarity of portfolio holdings and undermining the distinctiveness of their investment strategy. Our results also indicate that highly connected funds significantly underperform weakly connected funds by about 1.4% on a yearly risk‐adjusted basis. We show that fund family performance is unaffected by the intensity of fund connections, and that greater fund connections could significantly enhance family‐level profit margins.     

The Myths and Facts of Patent Troll and Excessive Payment: Have Nonpracticing Entities (NPEs) Been Overcompensated?

“Nonpracticing entities” (NPEs) own patents but do not practice the patented technologies. They are sometimes referred to as “patent trolls,” who hold up practicing companies to seek exorbitant payments. This paper conducts a review of the theoretical literature, which is inconclusive on whether NPEs have been systematically overcompensated. This study offers the first empirical study in license royalty rates, and its econometric analysis demonstrates that NPEs have not been overcompensated in license markets, regardless of whether other relevant variables are controlled. This conclusion is then put back into the larger context of NPE economics to lay out topics for further research through cross-examining other major conclusions in this field.