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The nature of the relationship between job characteristics, personality, and job satisfaction was investigated. A longstanding debate exists between psychologists that believe structural characteristics of the job are the primary determinants of job satisfaction (Kulik, Oldham, & Hackman, 1987; O'Reilly & Roberts, 1975) and those that believe personal attributes of the worker are most important (Hackman & Lawler, 1971; Pervin, 1968). Information was collected from 163 participants on the Job Characteristics Inventory, the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (Form G), and the satisfaction scale of the Job Diagnostic Survey. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that job characteristics successfully predicted job satisfaction (average Ra2 =.30). A series of hierarchical regressions indicated that personality had neither a direct effect on satisfaction nor a moderating effect on the job characteristics‐job satisfaction relation. These results indicate that, at least as measured by the MBTI, the characteristics of the individual may be of little importance during job redesign.

X acquires securities of a company, Y plc. It transpires that Y plc has induced X to acquire the securities by a misrepresentation as to the underlying asset worth of Y plc. Y plc subsequently goes into insolvent liquidation. Should X's claim against Y plc for damages arising from the misrepresentation be subordinated to the claims of Y plc's creditors? This question fell to be determined by the House of Lords in the recent English case of Soden v British & Commonwealth Plc. The facts and key issue of the case can be summarised briefly. British & Commonwealth Plc (B&C) acquired the entire issued share capital of Atlantic Computers plc (Atlantic), the holding company of a large corporate group, by means of a successful takeover offer having first built a stake in Atlantic through market purchases. The acquisition proved ruinous and both B&C and Atlantic were placed in administration under the provisions of UK insolvency legislation. B&C subsequently issued proceedings claiming damages from Atlantic (and its directors) on the footing that B&C had been induced to acquire the shares by a misrepresentation as to the value of Atlantic's assets and business. The proceedings were somewhat unusual in that they involved a parent company seeking to recover damages directly from its subsidiary which were designed to reflect the loss suffered by the parent arising from the acquisition of the subsidiary. The question for their Lordships was whether any damages ordered to be paid by Atlantic in these proceedings constituted ‘a sum due to any member of the company (in his character of a member) by way of dividends, profits or otherwise’ within the meaning of s. 74(2)(f) of the Insolvency Act 1986. If B&C was claiming in the character of a member of Atlantic then its claim, once determined, would rank for payment below the general creditors in any distribution of Atlantic's assets. The administrators of Atlantic sought to persuade the court that B&C's claim fell within s. 74(2)(f) as otherwise B&C would rank pari passu with Atlantic's creditors whose potential return would be diminished as a result.

The decision of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to seek disqualification orders in the High Court against several former senior executives of Barings under the Company Directors' Disqualification Act 1986 (CDDA) has brought the bank's collapse firmly into the province of company law. The immediate cause of Barings' collapse in February 1995 was put down to the unauthorised trading activities of a group subsidiary, Baring Futures (Singapore) Pte Ltd, on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. These activities were attributable to Nick Leeson, the senior floor trader and general manager of Baring Futures. The unauthorised trading produced losses amounting to some £827m which were concealed by Leeson in an unnamed client account. The bank's collapse raised fundamental questions about the system of financial regulation and, in particular, the interaction of banking supervision and the regulation of financial services under the Financial Services Act 1986. For present purposes, it also exposed the failure of the bank's senior management to maintain a proper system of internal controls.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins, members, activities, and influence of the Ratio Club, a British cybernetic dining club that met between 1949 and 1958. Although its membership included some of the best known British cyberneticists, such as Grey Walter and Ross Ashby, along with pioneering scientists such as Alan Turing, the club is poorly documented, and its significance is difficult to establish from published sources.

The approach involved the consultation and analysis of unpublished material in both private and public archives in the UK and the USA, coupled with interviews with surviving members, guests, and contemporaries.

The Ratio Club grew out of a distinctively British strand of cybernetic activity that was mainly fuelled by the deployment of biologists to engineering activities during the Second World War. It was also strongly influenced by the approach of the psychologist Kenneth Craik. Although members were keenly aware of contemporary American developments, such as Wiener's approach to the mathematics of control, and the psychological and sociological concerns of the Macy Conference, the emphasis of the club was on the application of cybernetic ideas and information theory to biology and the brain. In contrast to the wide influence the later Macy conferences exercised through their published transcripts, the Ratio Club influenced its core disciplines though its members, several of whom became prominent and effective advocates of the cybernetic approach.

This is the first journal paper to give an authoritative, detailed, and accurate account of the club's origins, activities, and importance.

Purpose – This chapter evaluates the shift in black voter support from Mayor Adrian Fenty to Mayor Vincent Gray in the 2010 DC mayoral election. The complexities of new black leadership are used as a theoretical framework for understanding the salience of gentrification, crossover racial appeal, campaign tactics, and policy implementation in the mayoral transition from one black candidate to another.Design/methodology/approach – This study used polling data from The Washington Post one month prior to the 2010 DC Democratic primary (The Washington Post, 2010). Using a sample of 630 respondents, multinomial logistic regression was used to measure the extent to which substantive policy positions, racial crossover appeal, and/or personal traits factor into voter preferences.Findings – The results reveal that a combination of personal, racial, and substantive factors contributed to Adrian Fenty’s defeat in 2010. The implications suggest a reexamination of the significance of symbolic representation in voter candidate preferences and the shifting complexity of black leadership in the procurement of black substantive representation.Originality/value – This chapter captures the transitional nature of black leadership in order to distinguish viable strategies for blacks to secure both elected office and black empowerment, while offering a more nuanced approach to analyzing the changing nature of the black voting calculus in the United States.

This study aims to build on embedded approaches to stakeholder management and examines how organizational decision-makers consider social responsibility toward proximal stakeholders in crises that encompass an entire system of stakeholder relationships.

Within a criterion-based sample of eight Latin American private universities, this paper develops in-depth exploratory case studies to examine the prioritization of stakeholders in higher education institutions’ decision-making during the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis.

Contrary to the notion that during crises organizations prioritize stakeholders that provide resources that are critical to survival, this study finds that in contextual crises stakeholder management is informed by social responsibility. In addition, the findings suggest that crises may be tipping points for changes toward mission-driven approaches to governance.

Acknowledging the roles of social responsibility and proximity in stakeholder management during contextual crises allows for more informed governance of organizations that face disruptions in their system of stakeholder relations.

This study contributes unique insights into the decision-maker’s prioritization of stakeholders during the COVID-19 crisis. The uncertainty associated with the emerging “new normal” allowed for an extreme test of socially embedded versus resource-oriented approaches to stakeholder management.

In the years to come, traditional product‐centered strategies alone won’t create the kind of growth companies desire. An alternative platform for driving significant, sustained new growth is demand innovation (as opposed to product innovation). Demand innovation focuses on using one’s product position as a starting point from which to do new things for customers that solve their biggest problems and improve their overall performance. Embedded in the customer’s use of your product are all kinds of hassles and inefficiencies as they buy it, use it, store it, maintain it, finance it, and eventually dispose of it. This broader web of activity represents tremendous economic activity, often 10 to 20 times greater in total value than the product market itself. Understanding and participating in this customer “value chain” is the key to demand innovation. Making demand innovation profitable means improving both your customers’ economics and capturing value for your company. Here success is rooted in putting to use a set of powerful hidden assets that your company may already have. Five types of hidden assets are described with guidelines for how to master the new discipline of demand innovation. Five principles are offered to guide managers through the challenges that arise for developing new‐growth projects into major opportunities.

On account of its easy and intuitive usage as well as obvious advantages (e.g. access to work data from anywhere, at any time and through any means) the evolutionary cloud computing paradigm favors the use of shadow IT. Since many employees are not aware of the associated risks and possible legal violations, unauthorized use of cloud computing services could result in substantial risk exposure for any company. The purpose of this paper is to explore and to extend the body of knowledge concerning the topic of cloud computing with regard to shadow IT.

The aim of this contribution is to identify the reasons for the use of cloud computing services and the resulting shadow IT from an employee’s perspective, to demonstrate the counteractions a company may take against the unauthorized use of cloud computing services and to elaborate on the inherent opportunities and risks. We follow a mixed-methods approach consisting of a systematic literature review, a cloud computing awareness study, a vignette study and expert interviews.

Based on a triangulation of the data sets, the paper at hand proposes a morphological box as well as a two-piece belief-action-outcome model, both from an employee’s and employer’s point of view. Our findings ultimately lead to recommendations for action for employers to counteract the risk exposure. Furthermore, also employees are sensitized by means of insights into the topic of unauthorized usage of cloud computing services in everyday working life.

The limitations of the triangulation reflect the limitations of each applied research method. These limitations justify why a mixed-methods approach is favored – rather than relying on a single source of data – because data from various sources can be triangulated.

The paper includes recommendations for action for the handling of the unauthorized usage of cloud computing services within a company, e.g., the set up of a company-wide cloud security strategy and the conduction of an anonymous employee survey to identify the status quo.

This paper fulfills an identified need to explore the usage of cloud computing services within the context of shadow IT.