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Disruptions and shortages of drugs have become severe problems in recent years, which has triggered strong media and public interest in the topic. However, little is known about the factors that can be associated with the increased frequency of shortages. In this paper, the authors analyze the drivers of drug shortages using empirical data for Germany, the fourth largest pharmaceutical market.

The authors use a dataset provided by the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte [BfArM]) with 425 reported shortages for drug substances (DSs) in the 24-month period between May 2017 and April 2019 and enrich the data with information from additional sources. Using logistic and negative binomial regression models, the authors analyze the impact of (1) market characteristics, (2) drug substance characteristics and (3) regulatory characteristics on the likelihood of a shortage.

The authors find that factors like market concentration, patent situation, manufacturing processes or dosage form are significantly associated with the odds of a shortage. The authors discuss the implications of these findings to reduce the frequency and severity of shortages.

The authors contribute to the empirical research on drug shortages by analyzing the impact of market characteristics, DS characteristics and regulatory characteristics on the reported shortages. The authors’ analysis provides a starting point for better prioritizing efforts to strengthen drug supply as it is currently intensely discussed healthcare authorities.

By reviewing the overall concept of corporate political strategy (CPS), the purpose of this paper is to display a contemporary summary of issues of the diverse global CPSs. This study additionally aims to provide relevant corporate political behavioral concepts that surround a firm’s political actions when entering specific politico-economic markets as well as future work recommendations. This paper further provides a contemporary bibliographic analysis on CPS.

Through a systematic ISI Web of Knowledge^TM All Databases literature review on “CPS,” the research was refined in relation to articles from “all year time-span,” “social science,” and “business economic” areas. After relevant papers were retrieved, sorted, and analyzed, a final bibliographic analysis on CPS was performed using HistCite reference graph maker.

Results of this research provide a table with a conceptual summary of different CPS types, approaches to political strategy, participation levels, assessment of the political environments, research implications, as well as other related CPS factors.

There is still a lack of empirical research on how specific firm CPSs can help overcome the effect of foreignness within different host countries. This study provides an overview and list of CPSs that companies use when entering a particular politico-economic context as well as inner CPS research streams.

This contemporary conceptual taxonomy on CPS provides researchers as well as practitioners with insights into the global CPS evolution, in addition to a current picture of CPS within different contexts.

Governmental regulations aiming to protect environmental goals often require firms to increase sales prices with negative consequences on price fairness perception. Companies might therefore either justify the price increase by highlighting the good cause (environmental framing) or they could blame the government for the regulation (governmental framing). Firms might also communicate their investments in the relationship to motivate customers to stay. This paper aims to examine the impact of such communication content on price increase fairness perception and switching intention in a contractual service setting.

This paper first examines the content of 119 price increase letters from electricity suppliers in a qualitative pilot study. The main study then tests our research framework with 552 respondents using a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects experimental scenario design (manipulating framing, effort and regret communication).

Customers perceive governmental framing as fairer than environmental framing. Effort and regret communication by firms weaken or reverse this effect. They reduce customers’ fairness perception for the governmental framing, while regret communication increases it for the environmental framing. However, regret communication also increases switching intention in both framings through a strong direct effect.

Cost-induced price increases are perceived on a “locus continuum” on which reason-framing and relationship investments can shift the consumer perception. Future studies may apply our framework in different industries and contexts.

The results provide guidelines for communicating price increases. Firms should prefer a governmental framing and they should also hesitate to communicate relationship investments, which signal internal locus of the firm, such as effort or regret.

Our results question the naive assumption of general positive effects of environmental framings and relationship investments on customer responses. Based on a new view on attributions of cost-caused price increases, we suggest and find several counterintuitive results. We argue that the framing and relationship investments shift the cause perception of an external cost increase on the attributional locus continuum.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge on the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on retailers’ performance. An analysis using a comprehensive conceptualization of CSR reveals that CSR has positive implications for retailers’ firm performance and illustrates which CSR dimensions are the most important to focus on. It becomes clear that retailers must care about both downstream- and upstream-oriented CSR dimensions in the value chain. The paper highlights the impact of CSR communication activities for company success both in terms of general communication to the stakeholders and relating to in-store communications.

The authors conducted a survey among retailers. Data analysis was performed applying partial least squares structural equation modeling.

While CSR generally has positive effects on retailer performance – despite cost associated with CSR implementation, the authors show that diverse dimensions have different effects. Also, both downstream (customer-oriented) as well as upstream (suppler-oriented) activities count. Also, CSR communications, thus talking about what good a retailer does, is of high relevance.

This paper offers both theoretical implications on CSR dimensions in retailing as well as practical help for retailers on how and why to implement and communicate CSR activities.

Charitable food assistance in affluent societies shows a polarisation between growing abundance, on the one hand, and social exclusion, on the other. It establishes a connection between both sides. In Germany, such charity is especially represented by the so‐called Tafel non‐profit organisation. The purpose of this article will be to explore the structural problems of the non‐profit organisations' charitable practices.

This qualitative study encompassed Tafel initiatives, the donating businesses and the people on the receiving end.

It will be shown that collecting and distributing excess food is at least an ambivalent, to some degree even conflictive means and that it is hardly the solution to the social and ecological problems addressed. Charitable food assistance contributes more to cementing exclusion and excess rather than to overcoming them.

The article will draw conclusions on unrealistic views of exclusion and problematic operations of the movement itself.

There is conflicting evidence of the extent to which business relationships in the UK construction industry are based on trust between closely collaborating parties or alternatively are more adversarial in nature, based on dependence between the parties. This study seeks to provide empirical evidence about the effects of trust and dependence in business relationships in this industry.

A large quantitative survey was conducted with buying firms, resulting in a total of 636 usable responses from 404 firms to test a model using structural equation modelling. The authors test the extent to which trust and dependence act as antecedents to four dimensions identified from the literature as being important determinants of relationship quality: commitment, communication, satisfaction, and long‐term orientation.

The results provide good evidence for the hypotheses in the authors' model: relational characteristics associated with relationship quality are mainly driven by the interpersonal trust between buyers and their suppliers. Interorganisational dependence, evidence of more adversarial relationships, has either no direct impact on relational consequences or at best far less impact than trust.

This research substantiates trust as a key factor influencing relational characteristics associated with relationship quality in the UK construction industry. The findings confirm the earlier work in this industry that trust is an important strategic tool in supplier relationship management.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce librarians, faculty, and other interested individuals to contemporary German literature in English translation.

German‐language authors born in 1950 or later and listed on the Contemporary Living Authors Comprehensive List developed by the German vendor Otto Harrassowitz are searched in OCLC's WorldCat database to determine the existence of English translations. A bio‐bibliographical list is then developed featuring all contemporary German‐language authors who have achieved an English language translation of at least one of their literary works.

Of the approximately 1,400 writers on Harrassowitz's comprehensive list, a surprisingly large number of almost 80 authors of the younger generation (born in 1950 or later) have been translated into English.

This bio‐bibliography of contemporary German belles lettres (of the younger generation) in English translation is the first of its kind. It can be used by librarians to check their current library holdings and to expand their collections of German literature in English translation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how social responsibility initiatives can be integrated into different tiers of retailers’ private label brands (PLB) and introduces a conceptual model and opposing predictions building on research in social responsibility and evolutionary psychology. The empirical evidence from two studies suggests that retailers should consider the type of PLB (i.e. quality tier) in the introduction of social responsibility initiatives.

To investigate opposing predictions, the authors conducted two experiments with presence of social responsibility initiative and PLB quality tier as the factors. The authors present the results from 168 Canadian consumers focussing on two product categories.

The findings of two experiments are more consistent with an explanation based on resource synergy beliefs rather than costly signaling theory. Social responsibility initiatives enhanced consumer evaluations of high-quality PLBs, but hurt consumer evaluations of low-tier PLBs.

Retailers should differentiate the way they accommodate social responsibility initiatives based on the type of their PLBs. Specifically, the beneficial effect of social responsibility initiative only exist for high-tier PLBs. Introducing social responsibility initiatives may hurt preference for low-tier PLBs.

This paper is the first to propose two theoretical models that address how social responsibility initiatives can affect consumer evaluations of PLBs. The initial empirical evidence is more coherent with resource synergy beliefs explanation rather than costly signaling explanation. These results suggest that social responsibility initiatives have asymmetric effects for different tiers of retailers’ PLBs.

Passion is considered a critical aspect of entrepreneurship. According to the dualistic model of passion (DMP), entrepreneurs’ passion for their work can be harmonious or obsessive, leading to different personal and work outcomes. Drawing on DMP and the self-determination theory, this paper investigates these two types of passion for work and their effects on entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being (SWB), psychological strain and social loneliness.

The authors conducted a self-administered online survey with 312 entrepreneurs in Turkey. The authors selected the sample using purposive sampling and referrals through snowballing via associations, university start-up organizations, entrepreneur lists and personal networks. The data are analyzed using multiple regression analysis.

The results show that harmonious passion is negatively related to strain, while obsessive passion is positively related to both strain and social loneliness. Furthermore, both types of passion are associated with higher SWB. Finally, age moderates the relationship between obsessive passion and SWB.

The findings draw attention to another dark side to entrepreneurship and a useful perspective to raise awareness that entrepreneurs may think positively of obsessive passion and ignore the negative consequences.

This study contributes to the literature by showing that both positive and negative consequences of passion may co-exist based on the entrepreneurs’ self-perceptions. It also contributes to the very scarce research in non-western, emerging contexts in entrepreneurial passion research and constitutes the first study conducted on this topic in Turkey.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the training provided to US and European expatriates in Morocco, and subsequently build the body of knowledge for international HRD in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The study used the models of Black and Mendenhall and Mendenhall and Oddou, subdividing the skills needed to be successful in a foreign country into three categories of skills; maintenance of self, interpersonal skills, and cognitive skills. The population for the study comprises 109 private companies in Morocco, with 34 responding, resulting in a response rate of 31 per cent.

Pre‐departure training was provided to all respondents, but none indicated receiving any training post‐arrival. None of the respondents' spouses or children received any training. Further, there was no tuition in Arabic, and very few received tuition in French. Co‐workers, locals, and neighbors were found to be major factors in assisting expatriates' adjustment.

The study is limited by the small sample size. The inconclusive results of this research provided some information that needs further exploratory studies to address the impact neighbors, co‐workers, and locals may have on the expatriates' adjustment. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of training that assists expatriates' adjustment and performance in Morocco.

Morocco is part of the countries that constitute the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). MENA countries share similarities in culture that can impact global HRD practices. The results of the study add to the knowledge of international management and global HRD theory and practices.