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Offers the authors′ predictions of how TQM will develop in the near future: states that an increased number of quality key figures will be presented at board meetings; predicts an increase in public access to comparisons of company quality; believes there will be a rise in numbers of ISO 9000 certified companies in the service and public sectors; contends that quality will become integrated into management systems, including reward schemes and employee evaluation appraisals.

Describes symptoms of a TQM process not working. From eight years experience working with TQM in the service industries, an 11‐point plan has been devised for sustaining the TQM process after the first 12 months

Definitions of quality are contradictory and often misunderstood. Rather than rely on gurus or consultants, practitioners should remember the aim of quality: to produce good products, services and good management. By implementing new ways of managing, organizations can achieve the desired results. Reliance on methodologies will not.

Dark triad (DT) personality traits, that is, Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy, are socially unenthusiastic and predict a range of antisocial behaviors. Academic entitlement, similarly, demonstrates the students’ rising temptation of higher grades without putting corresponding efforts. Based on coercion theory, this research investigated power distance as mediator between DT and academic entitlement (externalized responsibility and entitled expectations). Further, this study examined DT model of personality as a predictor of academic entitlement in Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs).

Chinese HEIs were ascertained for data collection. Students (with bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees) responded to 719 questionnaires for data analysis. Hypothesized relationships were examined through partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM).

This study established positive and significant direct link between DT and academic entitlement. The indirect effect through power distance was found insignificant between the relationship of DT and academic entitlement.

Based on coercion theory, this study extends the prevailing literature through unexplored effects of DT on academic entitlement and role of power distance in Chinese HEIs. This study validated the effect of DT on academic entitlement; however, direct-only no-mediation of power distance between the relationships is novel in Chinese HEIs. Moreover, power distance as mediator is novel between the relationships. Hence, this study provides an understanding of mentioned associations and contributes to the literature.

Based on the institutionalized agency theory, this paper aims to analyses the role of earnings management (EM) in mediating the relationship between ownership structure (OS) and the cost of equity capital (COE).

The authors test the above relationship by investigating a sample of 249 European non-financial listed companies during 2005-2012. The authors adopt different measures for both EM and COE and identify three main types of ownership by the majority share of the ultimate owners. Path analysis is used to explore the role of direct, mediated (i.e. EM) and total effects of OS on COE.

While OS directly affects COE, the results support the idea that an EM-mediating effect contributes to further explain this relationship in some ownership structures. Particularly European listed family-owned firms experience lower COE owing to the prevailing direct and negative effect of OS, despite the fact that both accrual and real EM mediate and have a positive effect on COE. In financial institutions-owned firms, only a direct and positive effect can be observed on COE while state-owned firms do not have a direct influence on the COE, although they do reduce real EM, which, in turn, decreases the COE in a mediated effect. Further analysis comparing the Anglo-Saxon context with Continental Europe shows more detailed results.

The study marks its entry into the international debate on the evolution in the value relevance of accounting information by arguing that the COE implications of EM depend on institutional factors such as OS and the context investigated.

The paper contributes to extant finance, accounting and corporate governance literature by providing new, robust evidence on the mediating role of EM in defining COE for different ownership types and their diverse risk-taking propensities in Continental Europe, which differs from the Anglo-Saxon context both institutionally and legally.

In the process of the implementation of the eBologna program and the recent change of the university system, curricula at German universities have been redesigned; courses have been condensed and learning content has been re‐structured into modules, each of which requires an evaluation. Simultaneously, skills required for working in research and development changed; knowledge of mathematical or numerical algorithms and programming skills play an increasingly important role in the daily job routine of the working engineer. The purpose of this paper is to describe, implement and test a new course on numerical simulations along with a new software infrastructure, addressing this predicament.

To support learning by practical exercises, engineering faculties, the faculties of mathematics and physics, and the Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart setup a project for implementing an online programming lab for teaching the required skills. The focus of this project is to provide easy access to the necessary software tools, to avoid the overhead of installation and maintenance, and to seamlessly integrate these tools into the e‐learning infrastructure of the university.

Student evaluations showed a high acceptance of the project and the developed software is now well‐accepted and taken as a self‐evident part of the homework routine.

An online programming lab that integrates seamlessly into the e‐learning infrastructure of the university and is platform and system independent by following the established SCORM standard.

Pharmaceuticals have played an important role in improving the quality of life of the human population in modern times. However, it must also be acknowledged that both the production and use of pharmaceuticals have a significant, negative impact on the environment and consequently, a negative impact on the health of humans and wildlife. This negative impact is due to the embedded carbon in pharmaceuticals' manufacture and distribution and the waste generated in their manufacture, consumption and disposal. Pharmaceutical waste is comprised of contaminated waste (unwanted pharmaceuticals and their original containers) and non-contaminated waste (non-hazardous packaging waste). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The article is a literature review.

The article identified a gap in the literature around pharmacist attitudes and behaviour toward the environmentally responsible handling of pharmaceutical waste.

Pharmacists, with their professional commitment to the quality use of medicines and their active participation in the medicines management pathway, already play an important role in the more sustainable use of pharmaceuticals. Even so, they have the potential to play an even greater role with the environmentally responsible disposal of pharmaceutical waste (including packaging waste) and the education of other health professionals and the general public on this topic.

We conceptualize new ways to qualify what themes should dominate the future international business and management (IB/IM) research agenda by examining three questions: Whom should we ask? What should we ask, and which selection criteria should we apply? What are the contextual forces? Our main findings are the following: (1) wider perspectives from academia and practice would benefit both rigor and relevance; (2) four key forces are climate change, globalization, inequality, and sustainability; and (3) we propose scientific mindfulness as the way forward for generating themes in IB/IM research. Scientific mindfulness is a holistic, cross-disciplinary, and contextual approach, whereby researchers need to make sense of multiple perspectives with the betterment of society as the ultimate criterion.

This paper aims to review the relevant literature on mergers and acquisitions in an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of what we know about mergers and which parts of the puzzle are still incomplete.

This literature review consists of three key sections. The first part of this paper summarises the literature on the cyclical nature of mergers referred to in the literature as merger waves. The second section reviews the causes and consequences of takeovers; it first reviews the causes, or drivers, of acquisitions, while focusing on the fact that acquisitions happen in waves and then reviews the consequences of takeovers, with a predominant focus on the impacts of mergers on the economic performance of acquirers. The third part of the review summarises the theories, as well as previous empirical studies, on determinants of announcement returns and post-acquisition performance of combined firms.

Merger activity demonstrates a wavy pattern, i.e. mergers are clustered in industries through time. The causes suggested for this fluctuating pattern include industry- and economy-level shocks, mis-valuation and managerial herding. Market reaction to announcement of acquisitions is, on average, slightly negative for acquirer stocks and significantly positive for target stocks. The combined abnormal return is positive. These findings have been consistent over several decades of investigation. Prior research also identifies a number of factors that are related to performance of acquisitions. These factors are categorised and reviewed in five different groups: acquirer characteristics, target characteristics, bid characteristics, industry characteristics and macro-environment characteristics.

This review illustrates a number of issues. Prior research is heavily biased towards gains to acquirers and factors that affect these gains. It is also biased towards finding sources of value creation through mergers despite the fact that several theories suggest that mergers can be value-destroying. In fact, value destruction is often attributed to managers’ self-interest (agency problem) and mistakes (hubris). However, the mechanisms through which mergers destroy value are rarely addressed. Aside from that, the possibility of simultaneous creation and destruction of value in acquisitions is not often considered. Finally, after several decades of investigation, a key question is not completely answered yet: “What are the sources of value in mergers and acquisitions?”

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether priming words related to a healthy eating goal can facilitate self-control among depleted people.

A between-subject experimental design was employed, and participants were randomly assigned to conditions.

Consistent with prior research, this research finds that depletion hurts self-control, and that priming words related to a healthy eating goal facilitates it. What is novel is that if people engage in an initial task that requires self-control (that is, if people are depleted), priming health-related words has no positive influence on self-control.

Priming health-related words has no impact on preference when consumers are depleted; implying that marketers of healthy food products should place their product at the beginning of a consumer shopping experience, when resources are most available. In other words, the decision to associate a brand with health-related claims must be strategically coordinated with retail location decisions to maximize its effect on consumer choice. From a public policy perspective, there are some implications for grocery store layouts. For example, it may be argued that removing temptations near the entrance of a grocery store might allow consumers to conserve their effort, which may result in healthier choices.

This research finds that priming consumers with health-related words can encourage healthy eating choices, but only when consumers have not already engaged in self-control. This is a new insight to theory (specifically, the depletion model and the theory of nonconscious goal priming), and provides an important contribution to a significant and timely issue (that is, how to prevent and reduce obesity). This paper presents relevant implications and concludes with a number of worthwhile future research ideas.