Entrepreneurial Narratives in Sustainable Venturing: Beyond People,Profit, and Planet

Sustainable venturing, the process of starting a new sustainable enterprise, has been studied extensively through the triple‐bottom‐line lens. The narratives employed by sustainable entrepreneurs, however, have proven to be more complex and diverse. In this paper, we set out to inductively explore the narratives underlying sustainable venturing. We conducted an interpretative analysis to elucidate how these entrepreneurs perceive, think about and give meaning to sustainability as they develop their ventures. Findings allow for an expansion of the role of narratives in business venturing toward a more sophisticated conceptualization grounded in how actual entrepreneurs experience and enact sustainability in the context of their ventures.     

Trader networks and options risk management

We examine the effect of trading partner concentration and a matrix of variables which dictate the relative importance of a trader to the network on a set of large member proprietary traders’ risk. An increased closeness centrality and concentration of trading among network partners are found to reduce price, volatility and rebalancing risk. We further explore the nature of trading concentration established through traders’ recurring trading relationships to find that trading with an established and small network has a positive, yet costly, effect on inventory management. Relationships among market makers are important to managing their portfolio of risk.     

A Family Affair: A Case of Altruism or Aggrandizement?

The case recounts an incident of theft at a CEOs home during a company party. The rogue may well be an employee, and the CEO considers his options: should he let the matter pass and preserve the good will generated by the party, or should he stand on principle and engage the issue frontally? Three commentators provide perspective on an optimal response. They consider whether the CEOs true intent is to show appreciation or showcase opulence. In addition, the aberrant behavior at this celebratory event suggests some measures that management might take in the workplace.     

Glenn Adamson. Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. xi + 219 pp. ISBN 0-262-01207-3, $45.00 (cloth); 0-944110-81, $25.00 (paper).

Brooks Stevens participated in the transformation of the modernsetting of everyday life into a designed environment. Althoughhardly a household name, he influenced the conceptual infrastructureof mid-twentieth-century consumer culture as he worked withproduct manufacturers and communicated his understanding ofAmerican business and consumer product design. In this way,as well as in his design of many consumer products and vehicles,Stevens shaped our world and the way we have moved through it. Industrial     

Consumer entitlement theory and measurement

Previous studies of personality observe that a healthy individual maintains a level of entitlement. Consumer entitlement concerns the extent to which a customer expects special treatment in retail environments. To date, marketing scholars have not investigated consumer entitlement at the buyer–seller interface. This article represents an initial attempt to examine this construct in a retailing context. The development of a scale, the consumer entitlement inventory (CEI), is reported. The scale's psychometric properties were examined, with the use of an undergraduate sample ( N = 410). Antecedents and implications for consumer entitlement are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.