Retail stores as brands: performances,theatre and space

The scholars of Consumer Culture Theory studies as well as practitioners have recognised the potential power of spatial design in stores in constructing and communicating retail brands. Retail space and the aesthetic structuring of a range of expressive artefacts have become the stage on which shop attendants perform. This paper focuses on how management and shop attendants of Dutch menswear fashion house Oger communicate and construct the Oger brand, with a special focus on the spatial settings of the retail store. This study shows how the management carefully combines elements generally found in Italian ateliers, English gentlemen's clubs and boardrooms. The symbolic message behind the spatial design of the Oger flagship store is that of human quest for wealth and fame removed from the everyday life. In addition to this earlier observed interplay between design, display and consumption processes, this study indicates the important role of shop attendants in constructing and communicating retail brands. By forging links with organisation studies, we show how retail management carefully designed, managed and orchestrated retail space, objects and shop attendants’ roles to construct and communicate the Oger brand. The selling of products through performances in designed theatres connects organisation and economic and aesthetic realms. Finally, the paper introduces “internal design proxemics” as an extra analytical concept of spatial settings.     

How Can Social Enterprise Address Disadvantage? Evidence from an Inner City Community

This article examines the potential impact of social enterprise on disadvantage. The case study research involved participant observation over a 2-year period. Selection of cases was based on a preliminary typology for social enterprise and disadvantage was conceptualized using the European concept of social exclusion. This sees exclusion as multidimensional and relative to the standards of the society in which a person lives. The existing research literature suggests that the aggregate economic impact of social enterprise upon exclusion is marginal. This is a consequence of a mismatch between policy expectations and what is happening in the field. This study found that different forms of social enterprise impacted on exclusion in different ways. This article outlines these different impacts in order to open up a more balanced perspective on the potential and limitation of social enterprise in combating disadvantage.     

Inequality,Inflation, and their Impact on China's Investment Environment in the 1990s and beyond

Inequality, inflation, and unemployment have become increasingly explosive problems in today's China. In conjunction with an analysis of the spatial pattern of inflation, this paper examines the current trend of China's spatial disparities, in terms of economic output, real consumption, and real income, within inter-provincial, inter-regional and urban-rural framework. This paper also investigates the combined effect of the current high rate of inflation and spatial disparity on China's investment and business environment in the 1990s. Findings of this paper suggest that inter-regional inequalities in economic development and income distribution, especially since 1990, have been accelerated/exacerbated by high inflation, which appears to hit the poorer areas disproportionally. Given the reinforcement of disparity and inflation and the current upsurges of rampant localism, the investment and business environment of China in the 1990s, in terms of political and social unrest and economic profitability, will be severely undermined and will, therefore, become increasing uncertain. It is likely that this trend will extend beyond the millenium and last at least until the early 2000s.     

What does the Chinese market need? An empirical study of the determinants of Chinese imports, 1996–2008

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the determinants of import demand in China through a multilevel approach. Using disaggregated data over 1996–2008 and a dynamic panel model, we find that the Chinese import market is predominantly characterized by quality competition. However, the nature of the competition varies across different industries. In line with theory, quality plays an important role in industries that are characterized by the potential for quality improvement and product differentiation, whereas price is key in industries in which quality and product differences are rather small. Moreover, private consumption expenditure is more influential than other categories of expenditures. Additionally, variables that can influence the relative price of import products, such as the exchange rate, tariffs and the domestic price index, also have an impact on import demand.     

Bank liquidity,the maturity ladder,and regulation

We investigate the liquidity management of 62 Dutch banks between January 2004 and March 2010, when these banks were subject to a liquidity regulation that is very similar to Basel III’s Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR). We find that most banks hold more liquid assets against their stock of liquid liabilities, such as demand deposits, than strictly required under the regulation. More solvent banks hold fewer liquid assets against their stock of liquid liabilities, suggesting an interaction between capital and liquidity buffers. However, this interaction turns out to be weaker during a crisis. Although not required, some banks consider cash flows scheduled beyond 1 month ahead when setting liquidity asset holdings, but they seldom look further ahead than 1 year.     

Corporate leverage and the collateral channel

We investigate whether and how corporate leverage depends on the structure of corporate assets. Based on a large panel dataset of US firms from 1990 to 2010, we show that property, plant and equipment are important drivers of the collateral channel, while inventories and receivables are less important. The collateral channel is more pronounced for firms that have to rely on banks and trade creditors to raise debt finance, but it has become weaker for these firms after the start of the financial crisis. Our study provides new evidence on the cross-sectional and time-varying importance of the collateral channel for corporate leverage.     

Debate: Would outcome costing and integrated reporting link resources to strategy in the public sector?

This paper explores how three local authorities in England have tried to facilitate personalized home care for older people through changes in commissioning and market development activities; and how these changes have been experienced by support planners and home care agency managers. Overall, it appears that changes are well intended, but the practicalities of implementing them raise some challenges that mean desired objectives may not always be achieved.     

Meeting in the middle: joining reflection and action in complex public sector projects

In order for co-production to become a viable way of working in public sector management and policy-making, practitioners need to be more reflective and researchers need to be more action oriented. This article discusses reflective practice, action research and the idea of a community of inquiry in which both practice and science work together. The authors illustrate their ideas with an example from their own practice and explain the advantages of their approach.     

Job quality in the customer contact centre: conceptual foundation and scale development

To develop a comprehensive framework of dimensions of job quality in a customer contact centre (CCC), this study adopts the employee's perspective and proposes 12 dimensions. Previous studies suggest conceptualizations of the dimensions of job quality, but have failed to address the specific dimensions that need to be taken into account in a CCC setting. With its multiple dimensions, the proposed job quality scale achieves high internal validity, reliability and generalizability in the CCC setting. Yet the increasing role of such centres for service delivery makes them and their employees critical to customers' quality perceptions, and the findings of this study offer managers clear guidelines adjusted to the CCC environment.