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This paper aims to look at the leadership lessons which can be learnt from Scottish soccer coach, Alex Ferguson.

The paper examines the characteristics and methods of Alex Ferguson's leadership style and how managers in business can apply the wider principles that underlie them.

Just like football teams, businesses have long periods of fantastic success as well as times when winning titles or new business seems an unattainable goal. A great leader takes their team through good times and bad. With the enrolment and engagement of their people, they too can be a true leader and someone that people actively choose to commit to and follow.

The author believes that managers can learn much from Ferguson's principles of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of leadership in business growth and productivity.

It does this through reference to coaching activity, drawing on practical, real life experience. The productivity source is quarterly reports from the Office for National Statistics. Research from the Bank of England suggests that decreased productivity is more of a contributory factor to the recession than previously thought.

Productivity in British industry has fallen. Thinking short‐term and cutting costs hinders long‐term growth.

Leaders need to evaluate their practice, asking questions of themselves and look at making more long‐term plans. They need to involve and engage key personnel now and in the future.

This paper examines the role of leadership in business growth and productivity, finds that productivity in British industry has fallen, and outlines what actions leaders need to take.

The European Commission has published a revised proposal for a European Parliament and Council directive to harmonise member states' rules on consumer protection in relation to the distance marketing of financial services. Financial services had been specifically excluded from the scope of the Distance Selling Directive which came into force in the UK on 31st October, 2000. Included in the proposal is the right of a consumer to receive a comprehensive set of information about the financial services supplier and the contract before the contract has been concluded, and the right to withdraw from the contract without penalty during a period of 14 days after entering into the contract. Questions have arisen as to whether the proposal is an example of wholly unnecessary intervention at European level and whether it is introducing unnecessary red tape for the financial services industry. One of the most important problems with the proposal relates, however, to a fundamental disagreement between member states as to whether the directive should be a maximum harmonisation measure or simply minimum harmonisation. With the current protracted state of negotiations, it remains unclear as to whether this proposal will ever achieve political agreement.

The paper aims to use a neoliberal ideology to frame an analysis of how the power of ideas can be used to maintain a failed corporate governance model based on stockholder primacy.

The paper employs the concept of corporate hegemony to provide an understanding of the conditioning environment in the USA in the 1990s. It examines the tactics that neoliberals used to gain consensus for their ideology and to skillfully deflect criticism in the face of significant policy failures that have had a global impact.

The paper highlights the power of ideology to create a desired outcome. It finds that Sarbanes‐Oxley represented a neoliberal victory in that it legitimated shareholder primacy and continued use of a failed corporate governance model.

Sarbanes‐Oxley did not address the systemic problems associated with deregulation; it will not resolve the basic problem of how to prevent corporate malfeasance in an economic environment that rewards arbitrage capitalism, high risk and a focus on short‐term profits.

If shareholder primacy weakens accountability, as the paper suggests, then accounting researchers need to develop models that focus on deregulation rather than on regulatory capture and the use of state power to promote private interests. Accounting academics need to assume the role of public intellectuals and to reject Milton Friedman's focus on negative freedom as the sole objective of economic activity and examine economic well being in terms of positive freedom.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between firm service characteristics and customer satisfaction as moderated by firm competitive strategy. Specifically, this research utilizes Porter's depiction of generic competitive strategy to explain the strength of the relationship between a service's particular servicescape choices and customer satisfaction.

The empirical data for this research were obtained from 1,287 customers of ten service organizations representing three industry segments. Multiple regression analysis is utilized to test three hypotheses that propose firm competitive strategy moderates the strength of the relationship between service characteristics and customer satisfaction.

The results support the assertion that firm competitive strategy has an impact on the strength of the relationship between customer satisfaction and servicescape characteristics. Of note, these findings indicate that the payoff for investment in physical surroundings differs depending on firm competitive strategy.

The results point to the importance of aligning firm strategy and operational decisions when seeking to maximize customer satisfaction. Decision makers benefit from understanding how strategy matters in service operational choices.

The paper makes connections across academic disciplines to highlight the importance of linking firm competitive strategy with service operation choices to enhance customer satisfaction. The model developed here, supported with empirical results, provides insights for both researchers and practitioners regarding the value of investment in service‐related activities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and test certain assumptions concerning the role of the media in its coverage of the Olympic Games, US men's and women's basketball in particular, and its perceived impact on brand image of the athletes' performance from a fan's motivational and financial perspective.

Uses and gratifications theory and sport fan motivation scales were used to identify potential impacts of media coverage and branding on athletic performance. Based on a study of 143 working professionals that identified themselves as Olympic sport fans in the Pittsburgh, PA metropolitan area, several hypotheses were tested.

The most to least important factor-based constructs found from a PCA (Principal Components Analysis)/factor analysis included competitiveness, fan commitment, media connections, media impacts, demographics and financial impacts. When using the construct athletic performance at the Olympic level as the dependent variable, results suggested that competitiveness, media connections and fan commitment were significant for males only, while only media connections for significant for females. Males were found to be more player-centric than females, willing to be more focused on the competitive nature of the Olympic Games and to dedicate more money for such activities.

Focusing on Olympic Games and associated athletes' competitive nature opens a unique perspective from fan's gender perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to provide useful insights underlying the popularity of search engine technologies within a social media-intensive environment.

The degree of social interaction for social media platforms that integrate search engine technologies as part of the homepage and related experience is very mixed on part of its users. Through Barnard’ theory of authority acceptance, social media and its popularity may be examined by the ability of its users to create effective messages that can be broadcasted to many, yet controlled by individual. The hypotheses tested the interaction of social media and search engine with gender and technological ease-of-use factors.

The statistical evidence suggested that significant technological and ease-of-use aspects of search engines are not meaningful, based on gender alone. Males may slightly be prone to take advantage of such technologies, but their search and use patterns are not much varied from their female counterparts. Social media, generally more fully captured authority in individual search patterns, and a number of interactions among gender status, search engine characteristics, and social media were found to be significant and profound. The testing of these hypotheses directly reflect the complexities of unique needs among users of search engines within a social media environment.

Search engine technologies with a social media context has allowed for the development of a modern, user-driven internet experience that has been powered by users’ imagination and is designed to at least partially satisfy users’ need for self-directed engagement. Organizations are well advised to provide a mindful, less controlled, and more interactive presence of potential users, especially through an increasingly mobile presence.

Individuals as well as organizations are rapidly discovering that it is becoming easier to share and distribute their content, especially for more creative and innovative content, among all of its users. As businesses continue to focus on the quality of one’s own content, individuals are increasingly taking advantage of some tools to exert more control over their experiences and what they are willing to share, resulting in more user-based partnerships will formulate. As the transition of traditional forms of marketing to newer forms of integrated marketing, the future for search engines as marketing tools by social media users appears to be very promising in adding contextual content within users’ homepage.

West Edmonton Mall, in Alberta, Canada, is frequently thought of as the world's most widely‐known shopping development. By late 1985 it had become the world's largest shopping centre, with 5 million sq ft; and had the largest parking space — 20,000 cars. Alan Hallsworth, who recently visited the Centre, suggests that it may now be at a crossroads. It suffered a roller‐coaster disaster with loss of life in 1986, and legal action is still pending; large numbers of young people, described as “mall rats”, wander around the Mall at weekends; and there are faults in the design. These are his personal impressions.

In this study, workplace spirituality is discussed in the context of remote work and the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the focus is on the changes in the meaning and function of employees in the organization during the evolutionary process of industrialization and management paradigms. Afterward, conceptual frameworks for spirituality and workplace spirituality are presented, and in the last section, academic studies that deal with workplace spirituality with distance or hybrid work arrangements are included. Early studies offer insights and recommendations on conceptualizing, developing, and managing workplace spirituality. They all emphasize that spirituality is necessary for remote work as a tool to overcome stress and mental health problems and increase employee well-being. Unfortunately, the remote work and workplace spirituality literature is relatively narrow and needs to be expanded.