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The principal objective of the study is to analyze the influence of ethnicity, culture and collective intelligence in entrepreneurial creativity, innovation and marketing of artisanal beer in Mexico.

The qualitative data have been gathered by conducting four workshops with twelve respondents in each workshop across four states of Mexico comprising Mexico City, Puebla, Queretaro and Guadalajara. These workshops were held for four hours during the pre-lunch period over the weekends, which was participated by a mix of entrepreneurs and consumers.

Artisanal entrepreneurship is driven by the culture, ethnicity, collective intelligence and frugal innovations. Ethnic products generate patriotic feeling and consumption for a social cause to encourage artisans at the grassroots with the local tags. Results also indicate that social media and crowd cognition play an important role in developing creative artisanal beer.

This study is founded on the theoretical maxims of social learning theory (SCT), social cognitive theory and theory of creativity. The contextual interpretation of SCT explains the socialization of concepts by modelling emotions and behavior to derive structural experiences as observed in artisanal entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs can develop brand emotions, boost anthropomorphic feelings and inculcate the sense of nationalism among consumers to market ethnic brands and develop social consciousness towards consumption of “Made in Mexico” products.

Artisanal beer face major challenge of customer outreach by enhancing the brand proximity and ethnic values. Ethnic products hold a strong image in niche market and need to be stimulated by the experience sharing through social media and community interactions.

This research study significantly contributes to the existing literature on ethnic entrepreneurship and creativity using innovative research approach.

The principal purpose of this study is to analyze the consumer emotions on virtual merchandising in the context of social consumption ecosystem driven by value and lifestyle across the big middle consumer segment.

The qualitative information has been collected from 114 respondents selected through snowballing technique within the metropolitan area of Mexico City. A semi-structured research instrument was used to conduct the in-depth interviews online.

The results of the study indicate that technology-led virtual merchandising stimulates arousal and merriment among consumers, which converges the self-image congruence and appearance similarity. The subjects of the study have endorsed that visual stimulus leading to self-image and body image congruence develop consistent arousal and merriment, which lead to positive purchase intentions and buying decisions and inculcate the perception as seeing is experiencing.

The samples drawn for this study may also limit the possibilities of generalization of the study results and map the consumer behavior in a predetermined pattern.

This study is founded on the theoretical maxims of theory of visual perceptions, cognitive theory of reasoning, theory of appearance and reality and Heider’s balance theory and contributes to these theories by explaining the relationship between the social self-concept and self-image congruence.

Firms retailing online fashion apparel should also be engaged in developing user-generated contents through communications on social media encouraging experiential videos, slogans and reviews.

This paper significantly contributes to theoretical and practical implications on virtual shopping, emotions and beliefs and consumption culture.

The paper aims to show how Latin American corporate executives are faced with a serious problem, low trust and peer confidence. The factors of criticism in the workplace, increased corporate controls, and growing expectations for improved performance and accountability, have accompanied this decline in trust. Traditional approaches to corporate governance, epitomized by organizational behavior theories, have focused on short‐term profits and organizational systems, which fail to achieve desired results. This paper presents the analysis of behavioral dimensions of cross‐cultural team performance in corporate environment in Mexico.

This paper is based on a literature review of previous research contributions focused on the managers of multinational companies operating in Latin American countries in a cross‐cultural environment. The success of the corporate ventures in Mexico has been evaluated from the perspectives of economic and relational attributes. The discussion in the study revealed that the degree of fit between a corporate parent and venture affects the success of the venture.

The paper finds that corporate venturing as a strategy for international business development has become significant in view of the process of globalization resulting in the free trade and business development opportunities for multinational companies. The success is associated with high levels of commitment, competitive skills and dynamics in functional management of the venture. In the study the variables of economic and relational dimensions of external and internal fit have shown greater association with venture success. It has also been found that ventures opt for greater autonomy and less economic dependency with their parent ventures for leading success and this finding makes intuitive sense.

The paper shows that the success in corporate venturing is associated with high levels of commitment, trust, group dynamics and skills in functional management of the venture. The discussions in the paper offer analytical insights for the managers to develop an operational balance in the team to achieve higher performance.

The thesis of the paper is developed around the issues of the cross‐cultural variables affecting workplace environment in reference to trust, team work and gender sensitivity required for achieving efficiency in a business ventures. The paper explores and maps the symbiosis between the cognitive drivers of team member personality and organizational work culture.

The purpose of this paper is to present the managerial perspectives of building, nurturing and evaluating sales teams in Mexico. This study discusses the impact of sales team design in reference to the underlying rationale of management control and team coordination as indicators of performance and sales unit effectiveness.

The major focus of the study is to discuss the impact of sales team design and task coordination as predictors of effectiveness of sales unit performance. A sample of 258 respondents has been covered under the study, categorizing them in equal proportion into three broad areas,: type of sales team, type of product market, and type of sales operations. Four industrial streams in sales were covered while selecting the sample respondents: consumer goods, consumer durables, industrial products, and consumer services.

The study reveals the balance between team designing and team coordination in performing sales. Work environment is largely governed by team coordination effects for the salespeople. Sales team‐building process has a substantial effect on sales organization effectiveness both directly and indirectly through its relationship with salespeople's behavioral performance.

The results of this study reveal that team performance largely depends on the effectiveness of team coordination, leadership and performance control through behavioral attributes. Sales managers may implement such controls effectively by establishing coordination, training, and feedback process rather than imposing command and control policy.

The thesis of the paper is developed around issues of the cross‐cultural variables and team management affecting workplace environment. The paper explores and maps the symbiosis between cognitive drivers of team members and team culture in performing the tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for team selling to sports firms that can be used to more effectively select members for sales and CRM teams and improve the performance of teams in attracting and retaining premium seating customers.

The paper provides a two‐stage framework based on the personal selling process and the activities that support CRM programs. Recommendations are guided by the sport marketing and team selling literature streams and by best practices in sport marketing.

The paper recommends the formation of two teams (personal selling and CRM) during the customer relationship cycle and provides guidelines for team member selection based on the critical activities that occur during the personal selling and CRM processes. Key success factors are provided, including the establishment of a customer‐focused organization and effective communication practices among team members and between selling teams.

Although the use of selling teams is gaining popularity in several industries, the broader sales literature lacks research that can support the development and effective management of selling teams. Within the sport marketing literature, there is no research on selling teams. The main academic contribution of the paper is the cross‐disciplinary merging of existing team selling research in the sales literature with current research and industry information on marketing and sales by sport organizations (luxury suite sales). For the practitioner, the framework provides guidance on effective team member selection and best practices for the effective management of selling teams.

This paper aims to present a nonlocal gradient plasticity damage model to demonstrate the crack pattern of a body, in an elastic and plastic state, in terms of damage law. The main objective of this paper is to reconsider the nonlocal theory by including the material in-homogeneity caused by damage and plasticity. The nonlocal nature of the strain field provides a regularization to overcome the analytical and computational problems induced by softening constitutive laws. Such an approach requires C1 continuous approximation. This is achieved by using an isogeometric approximation (IGA). Numerical examples in one and two dimensions are presented.

In this work, the authors propose a nonlocal elastic plastic damage model. The nonlocal nature of the strain field provides a regularization to overcome the analytical and computational problems induced by softening constitutive laws. An additive decomposition of strains in to elastic and inelastic or plastic part is considered. To obtain stable damage, a higher gradient order is considered for an integral equation, which is obtained by the Taylor series expansion of the local inelastic strain around the point under consideration. The higher-order continuity of nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) functions used in isogeometric analysis are adopted here to implement in a numerical scheme. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed model, numerical examples in one and two dimensions are presented.

The proposed nonlocal elastic plastic damage model is able to predict the damage in an accurate manner. The numerical results are mesh independent. The nonlocal terms add a regularization to the model especially for strain softening type of materials. The consideration of nonlocality in inelastic strains is more meaningful to the physics of damage. The use of IGA framework and NURBS basis functions add to the nonlocal nature in approximations of the field variables.

The method can be extended to 3D. The model does not consider the effect of temperature and the dissipation of energy due to temperature. The method needs to be implemented for more real practical problems and compare with experimental work. This is an ongoing work.

The nonlocal models are suitable for predicting damage in quasi brittle materials. The use of elastic plastic theories allows to capture the inelastic deformations more accurately.

The nonlocal models are suitable for predicting damage in quasi brittle materials. The use of elastic plastic theories allows to capture the inelastic deformations more accurately.

The present work includes the formulation and implementation of a nonlocal damage plasticity model using an isogeometric discretization, which is the novel contribution of this paper. An implicit gradient enhancement is considered to the inelastic strain. During inelastic deformations, the proposed strain tensor partitioning allows the use of a distinct potential surface and distinct failure criterion for both damage and plasticity models. The use of NURBS basis functions adds to more nonlocality in the approximation.

The study aims to analyse the stability of embankments over the improved ground with stone column (SC) and pervious concrete column (PCC) inclusions using limit equilibrium method. The short-term stability of PCC-supported embankment system is rarely addressed. Therefore, the factor of safety (FOS) of column-supported embankment system is calculated using individual column and equivalent area models.

The stability analysis of column-supported embankment system is conducted using PLAXIS LE 2D. The various geometrical and shear strength parameters influencing the FOS of these embankment systems such as diameter of columns, spacing between columns, embankment height, friction angle of column material, undrained cohesion of weak ground and cohesion of PCC are considered.

The critical failure envelope of PCC-supported embankment system is observed to be of toe failure, whereas the failure envelope of stone column-supported embankment system is generally of deep-seated nature.

It is found that for PCC embankment system, FOS and failure envelope are not influenced by the geometrical/shear strength parameters other than height of embankment. However, for stone column-supported embankment system, FOS and failure envelope are dependent on all the shear strength and geometrical parameters considered in this study.

Due to the current volatile environment and fierce competition, manufacturing firms (MFs) must improve their performance to survive. In this regard, checking and monitoring the suppliers' risk should significantly improve the performance of MFs. In addition, a relation based on not being an opportunist, confidence and reliance are influential factors in reducing the supplier defaults on his/her supply obligations and improving supply chain performance (SCP). Besides, the moderator function of supplier involvement (SI) in the relationship between quality of the relationship (QoR) and supply risk mitigation (SRM) is undeniable.

Based on the survey of 148 samples from small to large-sized MFs in Jordan, Turkey and Egypt, empirical evidence has been conducted to support a majority of the authors’ hypotheses. This paper provides a theoretical review of buyer–supplier relationships and supply risk. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM)/Smart PLS-4.

According to the results, confidence and reliance have statistically significant and positive impacts on SRM, resulting in better SCP. Moreover, the findings show that SI positively affects and moderates the relationship between confidence (C) and SRM, while it has no statistically significant influence on the relationship between reliance (R) and SRM.

This study provides necessary material for managers and decision-makers in MFs to confirm the importance and understanding of the QoR in building relationships and business dealings with partners in the SC, in addition to limiting and mitigating the risks of an interruption in supply in particular. Therefore, building a high-quality relationship as a practice based on trust and reliability with suppliers positively affects the performance of the SCs of MFs.

This research paper offers empirical evidence for using QoR within SRM resources of MFs' context for enhancing their supply chain performance. This study is one of few studies that examine the QoR and SRM that contribute to enhancing SCP in MFs in developing countries, which also can serve as a reference for many SC managers and practitioners.

The subject area of the case study is strategic management with emphasis in stakeholder satisfaction and added value and business performance.

The case study illustrates the challenges of business dynamics in an emerging market. It is applicable, especially, for undergraduate and graduate students in management studies.

The case of LPCI Insurance Company in Mexico illustrates the challenges that firms face when doing business in an unstable, rapidly changing environment. Conflict-affected areas pose significant threats and opportunities for firms; it is, however, up to the firm to decide whether to avoid change and risk or to design and execute effective strategies to tackle such external issues. The case has been developed in a narrative way as to demonstrate the intricacies of internal incidents and board meeting discussions, which lead to strategic planning and decision-making.

outcomes It is expected that students enhance their awareness of businesses’ role in the protection of Human Rights as a key factor in their engagement in corporate social responsibility and achievement of objectives. It is expected that students also increase their awareness of the implications of operating in a conflict-affected area in emerging markets. Also, it is expected that students learn that doing business effectively requires a holistic approach to business dynamics.

Teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Many multinational companies have entered the market of organic cosmetics and toiletries (OCT) in the global marketplace. This study attempts to analyze the impact of economic and relational variables on customer and brand values in reference to OCT products in Mexico through empirical investigation in selected department stores that attract high profile customers. The study proposes a framework for future research in measuring the customer value in specific reference to the non‐conventional products.

This study is based on the primary data using the information of 369 respondents, who were involved in shopping at chosen retail self‐service stores in Mexico City, administering a semi‐structured questionnaire. The study was conducted in 11 retail self‐service stores in Mexico City including four departmental stores spread over three locations in Mexico. The data has been fit to the model developed for the study using linear equations. One of the prominent features emerged during the study is that customer perception is largely governed by marketing communications.

The study reveals that strategic product positioning and effective retailing augment the customer perceptions and help building the long‐run customer values towards the non‐conventional products owning unfamiliar brands. Results of empirical data have also shown that advertising and promotional strategies of the OCT brands helped customers review their preferences against the synthetic cosmetics and toiletries which appreciated the brand value for the OCT products of the companies in Mexican market.

Like many other empirical studies this research might also have some limitations in reference to sampling, data collection and generalization of the findings. Samples drawn for the study may not be enough to generalize the study results. Open ended questions were answered by the Mexican respondents in Spanish and sometimes transcription of the audio might have overlooked some issues. However, to ensure that the data cover a wider spatial and temporal dimensions in the study region, data should be cleansed and filtered with many variability factors affecting the consumer behavior and retailer performance.

Marketing of organic cosmetics encouraged by the growing environmental consciousness among the customers, is a recent phenomenon in the business. However, there is paucity of literature on this subject particularly in reference to Latin America. Hence, this paper attempts to contribute to the existing studies.