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A subprime loan to straw borrower Charlotte Delaney was used to fraudulently strip equity from an elderly African American couple in Chicago. Following this loan from origination to securitization highlights responsibility for the wave of early payment default loans that contributed to the implosion of subprime lending. The Delaney loan, funded by subprime lender Mortgage Investment Lending Associates (MILA), was representative of the stated income, no down payment loans that defaulted in 2006 at the peak of the subprime bubble. MILA was suffering financially from demands to repurchase loans and was insolvent as early as 2004. MILA underwriters approved the Delaney loans despite obvious indications of fraud. Goldman Sachs bought MILA loans for inclusion in a $1.5 billion residential mortgage-backed security. Goldman Sachs warned investors that subprime loans were high risk and promised extensive due diligence. When subpoenaed for evidence of due diligence on MILA, Goldman Sachs provided none. The drive to generate profits through securitization explains why Goldman Sachs did not investigate and did not uncover MILA's inability to repurchase a growing portfolio of early payment default loans. Competition to buy subprime loans for securitization relieved lenders like MILA of pressure to verify that their loans were sustainable and not fraudulent.

The U.S. labor movement is in decline and a crisis of national leadership has emerged over conflicting prescriptions for labor's revival. Union leaders have seemingly established consensus on the need for change, but disagree about the nature of needed reform, and methods for accomplishing meaningful changes that might address the long-term crisis.

This paper strives to inform and advance debates on these issues. Two national union surveys conducted in 1990 and 1997 provide the primary evidentiary base. Given their critical role in this study, measures from the surveys and certain aspects of the surveys are scrutinized. These surveys span the “Sweeney Insurgency” and the early years of the Sweeney AFL-CIO administration. Although both surveys have supported previous cross-section based studies, no published work has expressly focused on the change and stability within national unions or the longitudinal potential these data collectively provide. Using this potential to reexamine relations between union structures, strategies, and performance, this paper seeks to establish an evidentiary base to inform the current debate about union reforms and their likely consequences. In addition, suggestions for future research on unions and approaches to studying unions are offered.

A RECENT visit to the Cricklewood works of Delaney Callay Ltd. revealed what must surely be a unique combination of metal joining facilities including an aluminium salt bath and a vacuum brazing furnace. It is intended to devote this article principally to a description of these latter facilities, but we begin with a few words about the Company's background and the philosophy which has led to their claim to a ‘metal joining service unequalled in Europe’.

The case study used a mixed-method approach, combining qualitative data from interviews with Ross Black and quantitative data from company financials and market reports. The analysis focused on understanding the strategic decisions, operational challenges and market positioning of Get Simple Box.

Get Simple Box, led by Ross Black, specializes in versatile portable storage solutions, offering container rentals, sales, modifications and delivery services across seven locations. With a focus on simplicity and essential modifications like windows and AC units, the company has generated over $10m in revenue, primarily from container sales. Using a service-oriented approach, Get Simple Box emphasizes direct local business communication and cost-effective solutions, differentiating itself from competitors. Applying Oliver Gassmann’s Magic Triangle framework, the company targets diverse customers, maintains streamlined operations and provides practical value, positioning itself strongly in the growing market for shipping container solutions.

Undergraduate Business Students in Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship.

Archive footage is now a staple of much cinematic and broadcast production. This chapter explores some of the ways in which archival material has been recycled and considers some of the tensions between filmmakers, archivists, and audiences throughout the process of research, production, and screening. It considers some of the controversies associated with the repositioning of material in short-form, narrative and documentary filmmaking, particularly in relation to content that was never intended for exhibition in the public sphere. Drawing upon Benjaminian ideas of accessing authenticity in a form that has been reproduced, it considers the responsibility of both filmmaker and viewer in critiquing moving image content that has borrowed, self-consciously or surreptitiously, from earlier filmic forms. It concludes by making recommendations for an ethical approach to recycling archival material in research contexts that are pertinent to the burgeoning field of academic creative practice, with a particular focus on the stakeholders involved and a reasonable contextual positioning of the source material in its remediated form.

The purpose of this paper is to convey useful and practical advice on one's development as a manager from the perspective of a successful entrepreneur.

Based on lessons learned from founding and leading a $300 million business.

Beware of the transition from school to business. Take jobs that offer real experience. Showing up is 90 percent of the battle. If you are not in a job that you consider to be as much fun as what you do when you are not working, then you should go and try to find that job. The best decisions you make will be the mistakes you avoid. If it doesn't make sense it can't last. When you are explaining you are losing. Hire people who care. Break down barriers to communication. Embrace humor. You can't lead when your pants are too tight. Never ignore the last mile problem. Big egos destroy companies.

Valuable for managers at every stage of their development, and especially for those just entering the work force.

According to the universalistic perspective, organizations from different sectors, across industries, and through different time periods should use a series of select human resource management practices (HRMP). The main purpose of this paper is to investigates whether there is any difference in the relationship between HRMPs and organizational performance across time (stable or not).

The data for this study are taken from two cross‐sectional surveys. The firms included in this research were selected from a sample of organizations from the public and private sectors based on firms that were included in Dun's Guide, Israel 1995/6 and 1999/2000, the Israeli Business Directory. In 1996, questionnaires were completed by 102 of the 230 designated companies. In 2000, using an identical sampling methodology and a similar questionnaire, the result was 104 useable responses of the 275 firms.

In general, results for both periods of time indicated that several HRMP contribute to enhanced organizational performance. Firms exhibited higher organizational performance when they treated their employees as assets and invested in their abilities, enhanced their power in the decision making process and used them as the main source for new employment.

From the theoretical perspective we suggest that researchers and HR managers have to take into account the culture context in each country when they try to export successful HRMP from one country to another. A major practical contribution of this research is that it demonstrates the importance of training and employee participation vis‐à‐vis organizational performance.

To explain recent regulatory guidance for different types of stakeholders, including asset managers, fund complexes, and institutional investors.

Summary of recent regulatory guidance and explanation for different types of stakeholders, including asset managers, fund complexes, and institutional investors.

While the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) letter does not open the door to direct access to Private Market Investments by 401(k) plan participants, it does provide a framework for the expanded use of private equity and, we believe, other types of Private Market Investments in managed asset allocation funds such as target date funds.

Practical guidance from experienced asset management and investment funds and ERISA lawyers.

This chapter reports the results of a 20-year longitudinal study of how American unions have adapted their internal administrative practices to meet the significant external challenges they face. In previous scholarly work, researchers have reported that the administrative practices of American unions were far more informal, ad hoc, and political than those of business, government, and other nonprofit organizations. The authors’ 2010 survey asked US-based national and international unions to provide data concerning their internal administrative practices. The results were compared with findings from similar surveys conducted in 1990 and 2000. The results of these surveys indicate a steady increase in unions’ adoption of more formal personnel policies, budget practices, strategic planning processes, and efforts to evaluate planned activities over the 20-year period studied. They also indicate that unions increasingly recruit individuals meeting college, technical, and professional qualifications. Taken together, the results suggest a recognition on the part of many unions that adapting their internal administrative practices to the new realities they face is a fundamental and a necessary part of any effort at organizational renewal.

The Morgan Library at Colorado State University in Fort Collins suffered catastrophic flooding as the result of a historic rain storm and flood that swept through the town on July 28, 1997. This study examines this single library's organizational disaster response and identifies the phenomena that the library's employees cited as their motivation for innovation.

Purpose – This study provides an example of a library where a pre-disaster and post-disaster organizational environment was supportive of experimentation. This influenced the employees’ capacity and motivation to create a new tool meant to solve a temporary need. Their invention, a service now called RapidILL, advanced the Morgan Library organization beyond disaster recovery and has become an effective and popular consortium of libraries.

Design/methodology/approach – This is an instrumental case study. This design was chosen to examine the issues in organizational learning that the single case of Morgan Library presents. The researcher interviewed employees who survived the 1997 flood and who worked in the library after the disaster. The interview results and a book written by staff members are the most important data that form the basis for this qualitative research.

The interviews were transcribed, and key phrases and information from both the interviews and the published book were isolated into themes for coding. The coding allowed the use of NVivo 7, a text analysis software, to search in employees’ stories for “feeling” words and themes about change, innovation, motivation, and mental models.

Three research questions for the study sought to learn how employees described their lived experience, how the disaster altered their mental models of change, and what factors in the disaster response experience promoted learning and innovation.

Findings – This study investigates how the disruptive forces of disaster can influence and promote organizational learning and foster innovation. Analysis of the data demonstrates how the library employees’ feelings of trust before and following a workplace disaster shifted their mental models of change. They felt empowered to act and assert their own ideas; they did not simply react to change acting upon them.

Emotions motivate adaptive actions, facilitating change. The library employees’ lived experiences and feelings influenced what they learned, how quickly they learned it, and how that learning contributed to their innovations after the disaster. The library's supervisory and administrative leaders encouraged staff members to try out new ideas. This approach invigorated staff members’ feelings of trust and motivated them to contribute their efforts and ideas. Feeling free to experiment, they tapped their creativity and provided adaptations and innovations.

Practical implications – A disaster imposes immediate and often unanticipated change upon people and organizations. A disaster response urgently demands that employees do things differently; it also may require that employees do different things.

Successful organizations must become adept at creating and implementing changes to remain relevant and effective in the environments in which they operate. They need to ensure that employees generate and test as many ideas as possible in order to maximize the opportunity to uncover the best new thinking. This applies to libraries as well as to any other organizations.

If library leaders understand the conditions under which employees are most motivated to let go of fear and alter the mental models they use to interpret their work world, it should be possible and desirable to re-create those conditions and improve the ability of their organizations to tap into employees’ talent, spur innovation, and generate meaningful change.

Social implications – Trust and opportunities for learning can be central to employees’ ability to embrace change as a positive state in which their creativity flourishes and contributes to the success of the organization. When leaders support experimentation, employees utilize and value their affective connections as much as their professional knowledge. Work environments that promote experimentation and trust are ones in which employees at any rank feel secure enough to propose and experiment with innovative services, products, or workflows.

Originality/value – The first of its kind to examine library organizations, this study offers direct evidence to show that organizational learning and progress flourish through a combination of positive affective experiences and experimentation. The study shows how mental models, organizational learning, and innovation may help employees create significantly effective organizational advances while under duress.

An original formula is presented in Fig. 1.