Thomas J. Davis and Charles P. Stetson
One exciting part of the venture capital industry is the extraordinary wealth achieved by the companies for investors and employees. Well‐established companies will find it…
Abstract
One exciting part of the venture capital industry is the extraordinary wealth achieved by the companies for investors and employees. Well‐established companies will find it profitable to implement the basic principles that make venture‐backed companies successful.
Purpose – This paper examines William Stetson Merrill, the compiler of A Code for Classifiers and a Newberry Library employee (1889‐1930) in an attempt to glean lessons for modern…
Abstract
Purpose – This paper examines William Stetson Merrill, the compiler of A Code for Classifiers and a Newberry Library employee (1889‐1930) in an attempt to glean lessons for modern information studies from an early librarian's career. Design/methodology/approach – Merrill's career at the Newberry Library and three editions of the code are briefly examined using historical, bibliographic, and conceptual methods. Primary and secondary sources in archives and libraries are summarized to provide insight into Merrill's attempts to develop or modify tools to solve the knowledge organization problems he faced. The concept of bricolage, developed by Levi‐Strauss to explain modalities of thinking, is applied to Merrill's career. Excerpts from his works and reminisces are used to explain Merrill as a bricoleur and highlight the characteristics of bricolage. Findings – Findings show that Merrill worked collaboratively to collocate and integrate a variety of ideas from a diverse group of librarians such as Cutter, Pettee, Poole, Kelley, Rudolph, and Fellows. Bliss and Ranganathan were aware of the code but the extent to which they were influenced by it remains to be explored. Although this is an anachronistic evaluation, Merrill serves as an example of the archetypal information scientist who improvises and integrates methods from bibliography, cataloging, classification, and indexing to solve problems of information retrieval and design usable information products and services for human consumption. Originality/value – Bricolage offers great potential to information practitioners and researchers today as we continue to try and find user‐centered solutions to the problems of digital information organization and services.
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Ram Alagan, Robert O. White and Seela Aladuwaka
This research underlines the usefulness of Civil Rights Geographic Information Systems (CR-GIS) for understanding the social struggles and assessing the critical needs of the…
Abstract
This research underlines the usefulness of Civil Rights Geographic Information Systems (CR-GIS) for understanding the social struggles and assessing the critical needs of the disempowered population of Alabama’s “Black Belt.” The social struggles have been persistent for decades in the Southern states, particularly in Alabama. Researchers have recognized the political and historical root causes and implications for these social struggles. The geographic region of Alabama’s Black Belt is significant because it became the epicenter of the Civil Rights struggle and still represents the vestiges of the social policy known as “Jim Crow.”
Although GIS has a great potential to explore social and political struggles, currently, it is not profoundly associated with Civil Rights studies. This research employs CR-GIS to illustrate the impact of the disfranchisement caused by biased geopolitics in three selected cases/issues: (1) gerrymandering and voting rights, (2) transportation, and (3) poverty in the State of Alabama. While there has been some progress in overcoming the social struggles in the Black Belt, there is a need for qualitative and quantitative analyses to understand persistent social, economic, and Civil Rights struggles in the region. GIS could be a valuable tool to understand and explore the social struggles in the disempowered communities of the “Black Belt” in Alabama. By incorporating the existing information and conducting ground truth studies, this research will lay the basic foundation for extended research by creating a policy template for empowering the disempowered for better social, economic, and political integration in the “Black Belt region.”
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Alexandra L. Ferrentino, Meghan L. Maliga, Richard A. Bernardi and Susan M. Bosco
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in…
Abstract
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.
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The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban…
Abstract
The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban action films throughout the 1980s. Susan Jeffords subsequently argued that Hollywood's ‘hard bodied’ male action heroes of the period were reflective of the social and political thematics that distinguished Ronald Reagan's tenure as America's President (1994, p. 22). But while Jeffords' arguments are convincing, they overlook contemporaneous films featuring female and ‘soft’ bodied urban action heroes.
The Angel trilogy (Angel, 1984; Avenging Angel, 1985; and Angel III: The Final Chapter, 1988) features three such understudied examples. Indeed, the films' diverse and atypical range of action heroes demand that they are interrogated in terms of their protagonists' gender, sexual orientation, lifestyle choices and age. Featuring narratives about the prostitutes and street folk who frequent Los Angeles' Hollywood Boulevard, the films' key characters are a teenage prostitute and her guardians: a transvestite prostitute, a lesbian hotelier and an elderly cowboy. All three films feature narratives that revolve around acts of vengeance and vigilantism.
This chapter will critically discuss the striking ways in which the films' ‘soft’ bodied and atypical protagonists are presented as convincing action heroes who subvert contemporaneous ‘hard’ bodied norms. It will also consider to what extent their subversive rewriting of typical urban action film narratives and character relations might be understood to critique and deconstruct the themes and concerns that usually characterized such films during the Reagan era.
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Ram Subramanian and Grishma Shah
To understand how certain cultural dynamics play out in the case, the main attributes of Hofstede and Meyer’s work are first highlight. While Hofstede focuses on national culture…
Abstract
Theoretical basis
To understand how certain cultural dynamics play out in the case, the main attributes of Hofstede and Meyer’s work are first highlight. While Hofstede focuses on national culture, Meyer’s uses culture as a tool by which to gauge behavior within organizations, teams and individuals. Below the main elements of their work are highlighted. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are detailed in IM Exhibit 1. Note there are six dimensions on a scale of 0–100. The higher the number, the higher that element of that dimension. For example, the individualism score for the USA is 91, whereas China’s score is 20, suggesting that Americans are much more individualistic, whereas the Chinese are much more collectivist. Students can find where the USA, France and China, the three countries discussed in the case, stand at the Hofstede’s website noted below. For reference, these are also noted in IM Exhibit 2.
Research methodology
All of the information in the case was gathered using publicly available secondary sources (i.e. news articles, annual reports and executive/employee interviews). All sources are cited at the end of the Case/IM.
Case overview/synopsis
On April 12, 2022, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the global leader in the personal luxury goods, released first quarter earnings for 2022, highlighting their latest acquisition, the New York City-based Tiffany & Co (Tiffany). Tiffany had performed well due to growth in demand in the USA following two difficult years because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This underscored the fact that Tiffany was still largely dependent on the US market, which was a cause for concern for CEO, Anthony Ledru, who was brought in by the parent LVMH to elevate Tiffany and exploit the high growth market for personal luxury goods in China and other parts of Asia-Pacific. LVMH’s acquisition of Tiffany had been completed on January 7, 2021, and LVMH was expecting the turnaround of the largely US-centric Tiffany to show results by shifting focus to higher-end and more iconic jewelry lines and greater expansion in China. Nonetheless, Ledru’s ability to address the China market for Tiffany was constrained by culture clashes between the company’s French owners and management team and its large cadre of US-based employees. Employees chaffed at what they felt was a rigid and autocratic management style and at the company’s insistence on limits to a work-from-home policy that was instituted in early 2020 because of the pandemic. Ledru and his top management team had to quickly overcome the internal clashes and employee issues to make significant inroads in the China market.
Complexity academic level
This case is appropriate for undergraduate and MBA courses addressing dynamics of global business, strategy and culture, such as cross-cultural management, international business, global strategy and organizational behavior. At both levels, its is found that the case will be valuable in generating a lively discussion on organizational and strategic challenges grounded in often lesser discussed issues around cultural fit. In most courses, the case should be positioned toward the end, mainly because it examines both cultural challenges (French ownership of a quintessentially American company) and strategic initiatives (how to grow the brand itself along with geographic expansion, i.e. China), assuming that the module has covered one or the other/or both at different points in the course.
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Dena Hale, Ramendra Thakur, John Riggs and Suzanne Altobello
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a scale to determine the consumer’s level of decision-making self-efficacy for a high-involved service purchase, specifically…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a scale to determine the consumer’s level of decision-making self-efficacy for a high-involved service purchase, specifically the purchase of medical insurance. One question to ask is how service providers can help consumers purchase the services that best meet their needs? Before interventions can occur, it is necessary to benchmark consumers’ perceptions of their own decision-making control and abilities.
Design/methodology/approach
A scale that measures consumers’ service decision-making self-efficacy was developed using the principles established for scale development validation. A four-study approach was used to reach the research objective.
Findings
The research consisted of four studies designed to: generate items to measure consumer service decision-making self-efficacy (CSDMSE); purify the scale and assess its dimensionality (second-order structure); establish the reliability and validity of the scale; and establish norms to provide details on its usefulness for aiding consumers with service purchases. The scale was found to be a higher-order construct, comprising three lower-order constructs.
Originality/value
Research suggests that consumer self-efficacy may affect their decision-making. The greater the consumer’s self-efficacy for decision-making tasks, the more efficient the decision-making process strategies are expected to be. This is the purpose for which the CSDMSE scale measure was created: to understand how, where and when service professionals can assist consumers with making appropriate service-related decisions and purchases.
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Carol Springer Sargent, Bhanu Balasubramnian, Blake D. Bowler and Charles Asa Lambert
Around the globe, low retirement savings threaten the economic well-being of large portions of the population. To better understand what promotes retirement sufficiency, we…
Abstract
Purpose
Around the globe, low retirement savings threaten the economic well-being of large portions of the population. To better understand what promotes retirement sufficiency, we investigate variables that correlate with retirement savings behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the 2021 National Financial Capability Study data, we examine factors correlated with having a retirement plan, contributing to a retirement plan and avoiding the depletion of retirement savings.
Findings
While strong financial behavior and actual financial literacy are each connected to retirement plan participation, the link attributed to strong financial behavior is nearly twice as strong as that for actual financial literacy. Strong financial behavior correlates strongly with leaving retirement savings in place. Having a financial literacy blind spot (i.e. not knowing that one does not know about financial literacy) correlates strongly with retirement savings depletion. Financial anxiety does not correlate with retirement plan participation or depletion.
Originality/value
Our measure of strong financial behavior explains much more variation in retirement savings than variables commonly explored in the retirement literature. Individuals facing income constraints without a financial literacy blind spot are less likely to deplete their retirement savings. Conversely, those with a financial literacy blind spot tend to deplete their retirement savings regardless of their financial vulnerability or strength. Our findings hold even when restricting the sample to households with incomes below the median ($75,000), as well as above the median, indicating that policies targeting non-income variables could enhance retirement outcomes.
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Women's movements played a significant role in the recent campaigns for constitutional reform in the UK. Their aim was to overturn the prevailing male domination in politics. This…
Abstract
Women's movements played a significant role in the recent campaigns for constitutional reform in the UK. Their aim was to overturn the prevailing male domination in politics. This article explores this process in Wales, a polity where the women's movement was comparatively weak and fragmented. In contrast to more familiar patterns of mass mobilization, “strategic women” used elite advocacy and “insider strategies” to engender the process of constitutional reform. Thus, this case study tests three widely held theoretical assumptions: that engendering state restructuring must be combined with broader activism; that insider strategies are more effective in influencing state actions; and, that the elite nature of such strategies means they can be neither democratic nor inclusive. The research findings detail the ensuing rise of state feminism and gains in women's representation and provide evidence of a paradox whereby elite action may translate into greater democratization in contexts where women's movements are comparatively underdeveloped.
This chapter presents a seven-part case developed for use in a graduate-level tax planning class. The case is organized in a taxpayer/business “life-cycle” approach. Over the…
Abstract
This chapter presents a seven-part case developed for use in a graduate-level tax planning class. The case is organized in a taxpayer/business “life-cycle” approach. Over the semester the case follows a married couple as they consider a number of investments, start a business, and expand the business. As the case progresses, the couple faces increasingly complex tax and business issues. The couple eventually winds down their involvement in the business and begins to plan for their retirement years. This chapter also provides a review of behavioral tax research published in the top accounting journals over the period 2004–2013. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the case could be adapted by behavioral tax researchers in their research programs and perhaps by accounting firms in their training programs.