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Analogies are used in all walks of life to help relate ideas, theories and feelings to other people. Uses cricket is used as an analogy to help throw light on the various aspects of business. These include strategy, marketing and sales principles. Also discusses leadership as well as the roles people play in teams (LIFO, life orientations) and how they may be influenced (influencing inventory). Examines the power, role, task and people types of culture in relation to the various different levels of cricket as well as the roles (Meredith Belbin) that the captain has to play in a typical league side. Discusses ethic, as cricket can offer an early introduction to dilemmas.

Digital asset management as a technology for handling electronic material is used in different contexts for various technical purposes. Explores the effects of this technology on the marketing supply chain, being a new application area of digital asset management solutions. A conceptual framework is provided to describe marketing processes in the world of information technology and marketing communication logistics. Based on a literature review, possible benefits of digital asset management in this setting are presented. Anticipated benefits are evaluated in an indicative case study. The description of marketing supply chains leads to new insights for supply chain management.

One of the main features of the reform of the Mental Health Act 2007 was the introduction of community treatment orders (CTOs). CTOs represent a fundamental shift in the rights of people with severe mental health problems, who have been detained in hospital under section 3 of the Mental Health Act and subsequently discharged. The call for the introduction of CTOs or similar legislation has been a feature of mental health policy over the past 20 years. Despite the detailed discussion of the relationship between ethnicity and psychiatry, there has been very little attention paid to the way that race was a factor in the community care scandals of the 1990s. This article, through the consideration of two very high profile cases ‐ Christopher Clunis and Ben Silcock, explores the media's influence on the construction of the debate in this area. In particular, it explores the way that the media reporting of the two cases had a role in not only perpetuating racial stereotyping, but also the stigmatising of those experiencing acute mental health problems. In addition, with the use of government papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, it considers the response to and the attempts to influence the media debate at that time.

Fashion supply chain (FSC) research has identified two important issues of sustainability management and risk management. However, investigation of these issues is relatively sparse and has primarily been independent with little combinatory research, despite their important interrelationships. The purpose of this paper is to address that gap by critically reviewing extant literature to synthesise important sustainability risk issues in FSCs and proposing an empirical research agenda.

This paper uses a structured literature review approach and Denyer and Tranfield’s (2009) context, intervention, mechanisms and outcome (CIMO) criteria for critical analysis to enable the development of future empirical research areas.

While sustainability and risk are discussed independently in the supply chain literature, combinatory discussions are very limited, despite the interdependence of these concepts. There is little substantial research on sustainability risk in global FSCs and therefore, an empirical research agenda is proposed with the four research directions to address the gap and take forward the notion of supply chain sustainability risk management in FSCs: definition; organisation and management; influence on performance; and development of a conceptual framework.

This paper provides a critical literature review and thus lacks empirical study.

This paper highlights important issues in sustainability risk management for FSCs and presents an agenda for future empirical research.

This paper contributes by providing a combinatory synthesis of sustainability and risk management in FSC literature and an agenda for future empirical research.

The case of the global freight forwarding industry is one example where networks of small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are playing an increasingly important role. Internationalisation opportunities and competitive advantages may be obtained by SMEs in pooling their resources and exchanging information and expertise. This empirical case study examines horizontal collaboration between SMEs that consider their other network members, first and foremost, as competitors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the moderating effect of uncertainty impacts the relationship of operational responsiveness and firm performance. Research on the relationship of supply chain fit and firm performance is discussed in isolation in different streams of research – such as in studies on responsiveness, agility, flexibility, efficiency and lean – without promptly recognising cross-stream contributions. This, at worst, prevents theory development. Therefore, the authors build a synthesis of literature from these streams. Grounded in the synthesis, a well-positioned empirical study that uses best research practices of past studies on the phenomenon is presented.

A cross-sectional survey sample of 875 Russian manufacturing firms was analysed with hierarchical regression.

The findings show that operational responsiveness leads to superior organisational performance if the relationship is moderated by uncertainty and supply chain responsiveness. Additionally, a direct relationship between operational responsiveness and operational performance was found. These results imply that efficiency is a precursor to responsiveness.

This paper contributes to the unification of practice–performance studies on lean, agility, flexibility, efficiency and responsiveness into a single stream of research: supply chain fit. The empirical results support contingency theory in the context of supply chain design. This paper also contributes by shedding light on supply chain dynamics of an under-researched national context. For managers, this paper offers concrete advice on decision-making regarding supply chain strategy trade-offs.

This paper aims to explore the theoretical foundations of relationship marketing from the perspective of several management‐related disciplines, and to attempt a fresh perspective that seeks to integrate these contributions.

Despite the recent popularity of research into relationship marketing, there is still some confusion surrounding the concept of and how it differs both from “non” relationship marketing and from other ways of managing marketing relationships. This confusion reflects, to some extent, the diverse origins of the concept and the scarcity of research into such fundamental questions as what is a relationship, and what forms of relationship are more or less suited under different circumstances to management through relationship marketing. Taking a broad approach to the subject, the paper explores and integrates these theoretical foundations.

This article finds that an integrated account can be offered for the emergence of relationship marketing as a coherent area for research. Areas of marketing research with particular relevance to the development of research into relationship issues are: supply chain management, interaction theory, database marketing, and services marketing. Future research into relationship marketing should focus on: the rationale, processes and structures involved in relationship marketing.

The paper encompasses and integrates the diverse theoretical origins of relationship marketing and integrates the research traditions emerging from these origins as they relate to relationship marketing. The paper then considers the implications and priorities for the future development of research and theory in relationship marketing.

This paper aims to examine how team familiarity, as a social resource accumulated through vertical and horizontal exchanges, in teams with undifferentiated member roles may satisfy the functional needs of a fluid team by facilitating operational effectiveness and contributing to its financial performance.

To analyze how vertical and horizontal team familiarity impacts team financial job performance, this paper collected three years of archival data from a moving services firm yielding a final sample of 306 moving jobs. This paper used a cross-sectional design and structural equation modeling to test the impact of vertical and horizontal familiarity on team financial job performance.

This paper found empirical evidence that vertical team familiarity affects horizontal team familiarity among teams with undifferentiated member roles. In addition, the analysis shows that horizontal team familiarity positively impacts financial team job performance. Finally, the results indicate that team leaders are capable of indirectly impacting financial job performance through their discretion to influence horizontal familiarity.

This study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of team familiarity in the organizational practices of organizing and assembling fluid teams with undifferentiated member roles. In particular, organizations relying on these types of fluid teams need to appoint the right leaders that, familiar to team members, allocate the right mix of member familiarity to increase team coordination and team performance.

This paper aims to report on findings of a cross‐sector empirical study of the sources and drivers of supply chain vulnerability.

The research was undertaken in accordance with the realist tradition. It begins with a descriptive exploratory stage involving an in‐depth exploratory case study of aerospace industry supply chains, validated through in‐depth interviews with managers representing other “critical sectors” of the UK economy. This is followed by an explanatory theoretical stage. The work is supported throughout with reference to relevant literature sources.

The findings highlight the absence of any widespread understanding of the scope of and dynamic nature of the problem, which should be considered from multiple perspectives and at four levels of analysis: value stream/product or process; asset and infrastructure dependencies; organisations and inter‐organisational networks; and social and natural environment.

The paper is normative rather than positive, so focuses on understanding why supply chains are vulnerable to disruption, rather than presenting itself as a prescription for management. The paper does not investigate academic definitions or existing taxonomies of risk.

The work provides some useful insights for practising managers and policy makers.

The paper reports on empirical research, then draws as appropriate on network theory and complex systems perspectives to produce a conceptual model of a supply chain as in interactive adaptive system.