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Facilities management is addressed and, as a result of research amongst the client and professional sectors, a definition of facilities management is given. Examples of effective facilities management are given. The author maintains that its importance is increasing amongst organisations aiming to remain competitive.

There are striking similarities between publicly-held government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and investor-owned public utilities. Each firm enjoys large scale economies that give a significant competitive advantage over other companies, possesses a dominant market position that it may be able to exploit to earn profits above competitive levels, and has a strong incentive to enter new markets when the life cycle of its core markets constrain its ability to increase profits. The recent behavior of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac indicates that the government must impose more stringent economic regulation on those GSEs in order to be sure that they achieve their public purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to address some of the fundamental issues surrounding crop insurance ratemaking, from the perspective of the reinsurer, through the development of a scientific pricing framework.

The generating process of the historical loss cost ratio's (LCR's) are reviewed, and the Erlang mixture distribution is proposed. A modified credibility approach is developed based on the Erlang mixture distribution and the liability weighted LCR, and information from the observed data of the individual region/province is integrated with the collective experience of the entire crop reinsurance program in Canada.

A comprehensive data set representing the entire crop insurance sector in Canada is used to show that the Erlang mixture distribution captures the tails of the data more accurately compared to conventional distributions. Further, the heterogeneous credibility premium based on the liability weighted LCR's is more conservative, and provides a more scientific approach to enhance the reinsurance pricing.

Credibility models are in the early stages of application in the area of agriculture insurance, therefore, the credibility models presented in this paper could be verified with data from other geographical regions.

The credibility-based Erlang mixture model proposed in this paper should be useful for crop insurers and reinsurers to enhance their ratemaking frameworks.

This is the first paper to introduce the Erlang mixture model in the context of agricultural risk modeling. Two modified versions of the Bühlmann-Straub credibility model are also presented based on the liability weighted LCR to enhance the reinsurance pricing framework.

A growing stream of consumer research has examined the intersection of family dynamics, consumption practices and the marketplace. The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the complex nature of family for senior families (adult children and their elderly parents) who employ the use of elder care services and facilities.

This research analyses data gathered from in-depth interviews with adult siblings and their elderly parents through the lens of assemblage theory.

This paper advances a conceptulisation of the family as an evolving assemblage of components, including individual members; material possessions and home(s); shared values, goals, memories and practices; prominent familial attributes of love and care; and marketplace resources. Three features of the assemblage come to the fore in senior families: the fluid meaning of independence for the elderly parent, the evolution of shared family practices and the trajectory of the assemblage that is a function of its history and future.

This research focuses on a stage of family life that has been under-theorised; applies assemblage theory to the family collective, demonstrating that a family can be conceptualised as an ever-evolving assemblage of human and non-human components, and this is a useful lens for understanding how senior families “do” family; and argues for a broader notion of family – one that is not household-centric or focused on families with young children, that encompasses members and materiality and that foregrounds the dynamic, evolving nature of family life.

An innovation in container handling and transportation has revolutionised New Zealand. Doug Baker explains the concept of ground level packing and unpacking.

On 2 September 2015, it was announced that Tom Ford would again be ‘dressing James Bond’, Daniel Craig, in Spectre (Mendes, 2015) after tailoring his suits for Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008) and Skyfall (Mendes, 2012). Ford noted that ‘James Bond epitomises the Tom Ford man in his elegance, style and love of luxury. It is an honour to move forward with this iconic character’.

  With the press launch of ‘Bond 25’(and now titled No Time to Die) on 25 April 2019, it is reasonable to speculate that Ford will once again be employed as James Bond’s tailor of choice, given that it is likely to be Craig’s last outing as 007. Previous actors playing the role of James Bond have all had different tailors. Sean Connery was tailored by Anthony Sinclair and George Lazenby by Dimitro ‘Dimi’ Major. Roger Moore recommended his own personal tailors Cyril Castle, Angelo Vitucci and Douglas Hayward. For Timothy Dalton, Stefano Ricci provided the suits, and Pierce Brosnan was dressed by Brioni. Therefore, this chapter will analyse the role of tailoring within the James Bond films, and how this in turn contributes to the look and character of this film franchise more generally. It aims to understand how different tailors have contributed to the masculinity of Bond: an agent dressed to thrill as well as to kill.

Do socially responsible funds, as a whole, perform as well as the average of all mutual funds in their respective categories? This paper examines fund characteristics as well as risk and performance measures of all available socially responsible funds (SRFs) in the U.S. mutual fund industry over the last fifteen years. The contribution of this paper is two unique findings. First, although SRFs have had a relative advantage in terms of lower expense ratios, lower annual turnover rates, lower tax cost ratios, and lower risk, SRFs also exhibit lower returns, and two risk‐adjusted return measures indicate SRFs have inferior reward‐to‐risk performance. In particular, domestic stock SRFs have not generated competitive returns relative to conventional funds in the same categories over the past ten to fifteen years. These results contrast those found in the extant SRI literature which suggest socially responsible investing has little or no cost. Second, a finer partitioning by fund type reveals not all SRFs have similar relative performance. SRFs in balanced fund and fixed‐income fund categories, especially during the past three years, have performed better than the category averages with lower risk, higher returns, and higher risk‐adjusted returns. This suggests the costs of socially responsible investing are not homogenous.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Mid South Building Supply, a 100% employee-owned company, survived the Great Recession. Research has found that employee-owned companies are more likely to survive recessions than other companies. Why this happens was unclear. Thus, this research was conducted to learn why this might happen.

The case study approach was chosen to uncover the causes because this approach has played a significant role in uncovering organizational phenomena. Moreover, the industry was chosen because of the vulnerability of firms in it to recessionary forces.

Mid South uses practices that enhance both financial and psychological ownership. Prior research has suggested that both are important.

Case study research is limited because only a single frim is investigated. Thus, additional studies need to be performed to confirm the results.

Although this is a single case study, the practical implication is that enterprises that want to improve their probability of surviving should apply the findings of this study.

Firms that provide employment stability to employees are more likely to survive. In turn, research would suggest that this is associated with greater family and community stability.

Whereas prior studies have used across-industry data to find that employee-owned firms are more likely to survive recessions than others, what such firms do differently was unclear. A literature review failed to reveal a prior study that looked at the internal practices that may cause this to happen.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the operating characteristics as well as risk and performance measures of all available self-proclaimed socially responsible funds (hereafter SRFs) in the USA over the ten-year (2007–2016) period. The first research question addressed is: Do SRFs perform as well as the average of all mutual funds in their respective categories? The second research question addressed is: Are SRF expense ratios correlated with fund performance?

This study analyzes all socially responsible equity mutual funds, as self-reported to Morningstar. This paper empirically compares operating characteristics and performance measures of SRFs relative to category averages in the US mutual fund industry. Operating characteristics include expense ratios and annual turnover rates. Performance measures include conventional return, risk and risk-adjusted return measures.

Although prior research suggests that socially responsible investing (SRI) indexes and SRI-friendly stocks have favorable returns, this study finds that these self-proclaimed SRFs underperform the average of all mutual funds in matched equity categories. However, this study demonstrates that a simple filter based on expense ratios can identify those SRFs that will enable investors to do quite well while doing good.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the authors report that self-proclaimed SRFs, as a whole, have not generated competitive returns relative to other mutual funds in the same categories over the past ten years. This result contradicts the notion that socially responsible investors do not give up return performance when investing with their conscience. Second, the authors find that those SRFs with expense ratios in the lowest quartile of their respective category have significantly higher risk-adjusted returns and significantly lower turnover than category averages. Thus, by focusing on SRFs with low-expense ratios, socially responsible investors can do quite well while doing good.