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The innovative process of new product development remains unique within most organizations. This uniqueness stems from the requirements of the new product development manager to grapple with both the universe of emerging technologies from which a new feature or improvement must be found and to simultaneously maintain a constant awareness of the requirements of an ever-changing customer base. Amongst all of this uncertainty, there is still a time when new product development managers choose to ignore the warning signals that a project is failing and continue to commit resources. This paper refers to this as irrational commitment. This paper aims to examine the uncertainty of new product development and the reasons for this irrational commitment to failed projects.

The paper used a structured systematic review of literature to identify the most common types of irrational commitment in new product development and their impact on the corporation.

The paper provides insights into the causes and effects of management irrationally committing to new product development projects that are doomed to failure. It suggests that the three major areas of knowledge that need to be better integrated into the decision-making process are technology trends, marketing knowledge and the capabilities of the company itself.

Because of the chosen research approach of using a systematic review of literature, primary research needs to be conducted in the future to validate and refine the findings of the paper.

The paper provides leadership with guidelines to avoid irrationally committing to failed new product development efforts.

This paper adds to the literature on innovation systems.

The post-truth moment comes at a time of deference for epistemic authority, which has serious implications for democracy. If democracy implies an epistemology, attempting to live a democratic way of life implies a theory about the nature of knowledge among other theoretical aspects (e.g. political and ethical). At the time of ‘fluid modernity’, the post-truth politics of renouncing truth damages the foundations of democracy, for how could we proceed with a democratic way of life without truth as a common denominator for deliberation? While a defining feature of the post-truth era is its intrinsic relativism, Gellner (2013) warns this could lead to ‘cognitive nihilism’. Thus, it is imperative to (i) find our way back to reasonableness (based on both reason and emotions) based on a Freirean dialogic middle ground, instead of renouncing truth (that is any notion of truth), and (ii) critically discuss possibilities for various approaches to truth-seeking. While it is important to question the foundation and reasonableness of truth, two crucial issues arise: which theory of knowledge and whose theory of knowledge should be accepted as the epistemological basis of truth? Moreover, this chapter will argue that a more plausible notion of truth is neither one that is based on intrinsic objectivity nor intrinsic relativism, but one that is based on the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity; that is a relational (nor relative) and dialectic understanding of truth which does not rule out the existence of facts but questions the political constructs of facts. The final section of the chapter focuses on the application of the understanding of truth as a relational dialogical epistemology. While arguing for a dialogical theory of truth, the chapter also problematizes the predominant view of evidence-based research and policy and offers an in-depth discussion of how our understanding of the relational dialogical notion of truth can be utilized in the analysis of cases involving pro-active discrimination and affirmative action.

The United States military, like most militaries, has traditionally been a male-dominated organisation. Contemporary military historians argue that wars and the militaries that fight them are “an entirely masculine activity” (Keegan, 1993, p. 76) and “[b]efore it was anything else, war was an assertion of masculinity. When everything else is said and done, an assertion of masculinity is what it remains” (Van Creveld, 2001, p. 161). Because the military's “core activity” is combat (…), a task viewed primarily in masculine terms because it has generally been defined as “men's work”, a “deeply entrenched cult of masculinity pervades US military culture” (Dunivin, 1997, p. 2). Language has codified the long history of the masculine warrior paradigm. Van Creveld notes that the Old Testament utilises the same term for “adult man” and “warrior” while medieval Germans used “becoming a man” and “carrying a sword” interchangeably (Van Creveld, 2001, p. 164). James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy in the late 1980s, called combat the “quintessentially male obligation in any society” (Webb, 1997, p. 4). If societies have obligated men to combat, they have rewarded them by connecting combat to the achievement of manhood. Men bestow manhood on one another: men are made, not born (Goldstein, 2001). According to Kimmel (2000a, p. 214), “What men need is men's approval (…) we test ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood.”

Few countries have sufficiently long and detailed returns data for real estate to permit sophisticated analysis. This paper aims to examine the potential diversification of private real estate investments using returns data for major regional centres in Ireland and the UK.

Optimal real estate‐only portfolios are constructed using total returns, income returns and appreciation returns for office and retail real estate in ten cities within Ireland and the UK. The analysis uses IPD data for the period 1984 to 2002. Total return, income return and appreciation returns are treated as separate asset streams in the modelling of portfolios.

The results show different risk levels; in particular the income stream carries low risk, whereas the capital appreciation element is much more volatile and risky. Optimal portfolios, office or retail, whether income, appreciation or total returns, indicate that provincial markets perform well and are capable of pushing London out of the optimised portfolios.

Limitations stem from the optimal portfolios being based on return series without a consideration of market depth. Future research will seek to construct weighted portfolios.

The paper constructs optimal portfolios for three scenarios: low return; medium return; and high return across sectors, return streams and major regional centres in Ireland and the UK. The results show that regional centres perform well and can exclude London real estate from optimal portfolios.

This study reviews the teaching of real estate in the USA for the first 100 years after the foundational curriculum was laid down in 1923 by three key institutions: the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB), the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities (The Institute) and the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Its line of investigative pursuit is the persistent lamentation by American real estate scholars that real estate is not getting the respect it deserves as an academic discipline compared to its peers in the school of business such as accounting, finance and marketing. The study addresses a fundamental question: What is the cause of this endless “search for a discipline”? This is motivated by the belief that identification of the root cause of this “search for a discipline” will lead to the requisite solution: the intellectual foundation of the real estate discipline.

The study used qualitative document analysis to review two primary documents published in 1959 as reports on business education in the USA: (1) Higher Education for Business, financed and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, and (2) The Education of American Businessmen – financed and sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The impacts of the publications on the teaching of real estate to date have been reviewed in the context of scholarly actions and literature that has been generated in relation to the two documents.

The two primary documents impacted negatively on the teaching of real estate. The committee members who produced the two reports had indicated that real estate did not fit into the business curriculum hence should not be taught in business school. This conclusion led to unintended negative outcomes for real estate education. The negative impact of the reports arose principally because the teachers of real estate misinterpreted the outcome to mean that they should tweak the real estate curriculum to fit in the pedagogical framework of the business school. This reaction is responsible for perpetuating the identity crisis that has plagued real estate as an academic discipline since its inception as a subject of study in 1923. Secondly, at the inception of the real estate education in 1923, while the AACSB accepted real estate as a discipline in the school of business, Richard T. Ely wrote the curriculum under land economics which has led to the persistent collegiate dilemma regarding the teaching of the discipline.

The study sheds light on the situation of business education in the USA and AACSB-accredited colleges internationally. It draws attention to the incoherent body of knowledge of business education and will help schools of business to redesign their curricula to include course contents that rightly reflects the business oriented academic disciplines.

The study is timely as it has been done 100 years since the development of the first standard collegiate real estate curriculum following the 1923 conference at Madison. The study has reviewed the first 100 years in terms of the persistent quest: “in search of a discipline”. In so doing, it has uncovered the root cause of this search during the first centennium; and to end the search, it proposes that real estate should not be taught as a business discipline.

Refers to previous research on the relationship between returns for different asset classes and on cointegration; and applies Johansen’s (1988) methodology to develop a prediction model. Uses 1978‐1995 data on five US asset classes (treasury bills, long‐term bonds, large capitalization common stocks, unsecuritized real estate and securitized real estate equity) to investigate cointegration between them. Shows that the index of unsecuritized real estate is positively related to treasury bills and negatively related to long‐term bonds and securitized real estate; and that returns for it can be forecast more accurately by using VECM models rather than unrestricted VAR models. Considers the implications for portfolio allocation, compares the results with other research fundings and calls for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to review the content and contributions of the book by Sayles and Chandler entitled Managing Large Systems: Organizations for the Future. The paper seeks to uncover the elements of the nature and elements of project organizing presented in the book.

The paper presents the main ideas in the book, along with a few important issues to organization theory, including interdependence, timing, and the role of project management.

The paper demonstrates that the book by Sayles and Chandler presents an early attempt of formulating a theory of project organization. The embryonic theory is based on insights about the importance of interdependence and time in understanding different forms of project organizing and the role of project management.

The present paper is especially concerned with the ideas presented in the book that relate to time and timing in project organization. Although these issues are well addressed in the book by Sayles and Chandler, they are currently pressing, yet typically ignored in much project management research. Previous research has given limited attention to the insights presented in this book published more than 40 years ago. In that respect, the ideas presented in the book by Sayles and Chandler seems to have had more impact on organization theory than on project management, although, the book as such is undoubtedly a study of project organizing and the management of projects. This observation thus sheds some new light on the conventional thinking, and somewhat simplified idea, about the unidirectional relationship between organization theory and project management.