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This case is intended to be part of a first-year MBA marketing course, or a second-year elective in advertising, integrated marketing communications, market research, or marketing analytics. The case provides students with examples of two real advertising experiments and the challenges involved in executing the experiments. It allows for a discussion of the need for advertising experiments, and also, at a more general level, the need to measure the return on marketing. Biases surrounding the field experiments allow for a discussion of the problems with establishing a causal relationship between advertising and sales.

This case is intended to be part of a first-year MBA marketing course or a second-year elective in advertising, integrated marketing communications, market research, or marketing analytics. It provides students with two real advertising experiments and the challenges involved in executing them. It allows for discussion of the need for advertising experiments, and, at a more general level, the need to measure the return on marketing. Biases surrounding the field experiments provide an opportunity for discussion about the problems with establishing a causal relationship between advertising and sales.

The purpose of this paper is to examine four case studies from the International Successful School Principalship Project to explore and highlight how the role of the principal is critically important to sustaining school success. Implications for improving the preparation of aspiring and practicing school leaders are discussed.

Data were collected using multiple sources, including documents and interviews with a variety of people including the principal, other school leaders, teachers, school council/board members, parents and students. Each case study was analyzed to understand how the principal and other leadership contributed to school success.

There were several core dimensions of the principals’ leadership that led to sustained school success. Principals clearly articulated views on education and helped their schools set appropriate directions. They were all concerned with the professional development of teachers to build capacity and teacher leadership. All principals were instructional leaders who influenced teaching and learning and were committed to making a difference. They exhibited other qualities such as resilience and their motivation to sustain their efforts over time. Another important dimension was building community. These principals reached out to their communities. They clearly understood that they could not succeed in isolation.

The notion of sustainability in education remains ambiguous and this paper provides some empirical evidence of how successful school principals maintain school success over an extended period. Importantly, it considers how aspirant and practicing principals can be developed and supported in their efforts to lead and sustain successful schools.

The purpose of this cross‐cultural study of schools in Sweden and Texas is to examine the cultural contexts of schools in both settings, and the leadership role of principals in creating and sustaining inclusive schools for diverse populations.

The data were drawn from two studies; the first involving school visits, classroom observations, and interviews conducted in researcher exchanges between both countries. The second source of data comes from the authors’ participation in a multi‐national longitudinal study, the International Successful School Principals’ Project (ISSPP). A common survey instrument, individual interviews, school visits and observations provide the data for this study.

The seven themes that emerged were manifested in ways that reflected the differing philosophies of each country: engagement and pride, high expectations, student autonomy, early student learning and development, teamwork, diversity and integration, and international focus on academic rankings. It is concluded that the creation of inclusive schools in a diverse context requires that principals maintain a focus on academic accountability while also working consciously to address social and civic issues.

Current migration and immigration patterns create a need for research, like this study, that examines how the social philosophies of different countries might support or hinder the success of various efforts to develop leadership for inclusive schools with diverse populations.

Examining the leadership of inclusive schools within two countries that differ substantially in their relative emphases on individualism and socialism provides valuable insights into how national philosophies are reflected in the ways school systems respond to diversity.

The diversification phase observed in the American economy since 1975 (Leontiades, 1980) has led to significant questioning about the dimensions constituting related diversification. During the 1980s, the disappointing performances of businesses that had implemented related diversifications pushed researchers to take a closer look at the challenges involved in integration to discover commonalities in progressing from potential synergy to synergy achieved. As a result, many recent research endeavors have attempted to describe the management and integration process best suited to the context (Haspelagh & Jemison, 1991; Marks & Mirvis, 1998; Pablo, 1994; Shrivastava, 1986). Obviously, their attention focused primarily on initiatives targeting integration on the functional, structural, and operational levels, without really taking into account the historical, cognitive, and cultural baggage that each business carries around with it.

This research is intended to provide a better understanding of the factors that contribute to creating synergies between companies undertaking an integration process involving related diversification. Based on the cognitive approach, it is premised on the notion that creating synergy primarily depends on reconciling the collective representations of the companies involved rather than on simply implementing measures designed to achieve technical and operational integration.

This study places particular emphasis on the concept of collective representations, which recognizes that organizational players come to adopt a relatively homogeneous view of the world. It proposes an analysis framework and research method enabling it to go beyond the limits of attempts that, up until now, have strived to quantify and substantiate the mental schemata of organizations involved in merger acquisition. Moreover, these attempts have been criticized as being too vague (Côté, Langley & Pasquero, 1999; Grant, 1988; Lampel & Shamsie, 2000).

In order to characterize the content of collective representations specific to each of the organizations undergoing integration, we propose applying a new approach in the sociology of organizations called the theory of conventions (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991, 1994). The convention theory posits that organizational players share representation systems that help forge interaction rules. Collective, concerted action is made possible by mobilizing common frameworks, that is, conventions. These conventions are characterized by higher principles specific to each city. The outcome can be agreement or conflict, depending on whether player justifications are rooted in the same city or not.

Through the longitudinal analysis of the case of related diversification, specifically a Canadian chartered bank’s acquisition of two brokerage subsidiaries (1987, 1994), this study examines the evolution of the integration initiatives and collective representations of the businesses involved. We made two significant observations in examining the various integration initiatives undertaken by the bank during the period under study. First, the integration initiatives could be described as falling into the technical, structural, and operational categories. Second, their outcomes, both qualitatively and quantitatively, were far from conclusive.

Concurrent analysis of justificatory fragments of the three organizations, during the period under studied, revealed divergence between the justification modes that each of the businesses opted for. This divergence of dominant collective representations enabled us to interpret the issues encountered during these initiatives and posit a new explanation for their qualified success.

Very little is known about the influences of corporate strategy and regulation on the risk of regulated firms. The current study addresses this gap by examining the relationship among the level of diversification, the regulatory environment, and risk levels of regulated electric utility companies. Results suggest that both the regulatory environment and level of diversification impact firm risk. Specifically, the regulatory environment in which a firm operates moderates the relationship between diversification and risk. Electric utilities operating in the least favorable regulatory environments benefited the most from diversification in terms of risk reduction, while electric utilities in the most favorable regulatory environments experienced increases in risk from diversification. These findings extend previous studies by showing how both the regulatory environment and corporate strategy impact the risk of regulated utilities.

This paper aims to present two distinct approaches to migrant entrepreneurship.

Drawing on ethnography of two Ghanaian migrant businesses, one of which draws on the Ghanaian community and another which distances itself from it, the author shows that the current understandings of social capital romanticise the notion of community. The author argues that to gain a better appreciation of the ways in which community resources are used by migrant entrepreneurs, we would need to reject such romanticised notions.

The ethnography revealed the operation of two entrepreneurial strategies. These, in turn, were shaped by the nature of the migrant community and the resources that entrepreneurs have at their disposal.

The limitation of this research is that it draws on only two cases. Focusing on two cases allowed for an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms at play but limits the ability to generalise beyond these two cases. Further research will have to use large-scale survey designs to test the mechanisms which have been identified in this paper.

There are multiple, sometimes conflicting, tendencies in any specific entrepreneurial context, and the author proposes that this configuration of factors leads to the dominance of one or the other entrepreneurial approach.

Underlying these dynamics is an attempt to reconcile the demands of two competing tendencies within the entrepreneurial context: the profit motive versus the community spirit.

The author concludes with a brief discussion of concept of strategic coethnicity by which this dilemma can be solved.