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Logistics service providers (LSPs) may invest a lot of time in tenders unsuccessfully, as they do not meet the expectations of logistics service users (LSUs). In order to help them classify and target their customers more efficiently and effectively and make logistics outsourcing more successful for both LSUs and LSPs, this paper analyzes underlying dimensions of criteria German manufacturing and trading companies actually use in selecting an LSP and clusters of LSUs based on these dimensions.

A questionnaire survey with 110 manufacturing and 135 trading companies was conducted in Germany. Principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, analysis of variance and discriminant analysis were performed on the sample data.

PCA revealed eight dimensions of LSU criteria in selecting LSPs and that cost alone seems not decisive. Based on these dimensions, cluster analysis produced nine LSU groups. These groups differ the most in the selection criteria dimensions cost-performance ratio, operational collaboration, quality and locations. Recommendations for servicing these groups are given. The two largest groups, which make up 43.5%, seem not that demanding and price sensitive. The selection criteria dimensions and LSU groups enable LSPs to classify and target their customers more efficiently and effectively, to evaluate and develop their core competencies, and contribute to successful logistics-outsourcing relationships.

This research is the first to examine selection criteria dimensions and resulting clusters of German manufacturing and trading companies in order to make logistics outsourcing more successful.

The article highlights potential mismeasurement in working capital allocations among academicians and practitioners and revisits the relationship between firms' working capital and productivity, as evident from their values.

The research design acknowledges the relative role of firms' working capital vis-a-vis other assets in generating revenue, thereby effectively accounting for the overall asset efficiency in influencing firm value. The authors use a multivariate framework to draw inferences from the marginal impact of working capital and its components on firm value while controlling for asset utilization.

The authors find that, after accounting for asset utilization, the marginal impact of working capital and its components on firm value is quite weak. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that firms' trade-off between short-term and long-term assets per se should not have any value implications. After controlling for their asset turnovers, the authors find that higher allocations to working capital relative to other assets are not necessarily value-destructive. The findings contrast with the past literature.

The article, through its analytical and empirical insights, suggests that working capital allocations should be measured by managers and academicians relative to firms' other asset rather than their sales. Firm values should, therefore, be compared based on firms' overall asset utilization rather than inter-temporal allocations to short-term versus long-term assets.

Contrary to the existing literature so far, the article explicitly acknowledges the relative role of firms' other assets, and hence the overall asset utilization, to infer the marginal impact of working capital on firm value.

The paper investigates household food waste at domestic gatherings. It explains how surplus food and food waste are generated, managed and disposed of at gatherings hosted in homes. It reveals how hosts negotiate their social duties to be generous and moral duties to avoid food waste.

Twenty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted with female, Saudi citizens and analyzed thematically using Braun and Clarke's approach. Goffman's theoretical concepts were deployed later in the analysis process to expose the complex nature of hospitality practices.

It reveals two main insights. First, the hosts' social duties involve staging the dinner table in line with hospitality norms. Such a staging almost always results in large amounts of surplus, but is necessary to manage guests' impressions and avoid criticism. Second, the enactment of moral and religious beliefs helps to divert surplus food away from waste toward charitable giving and, thence, to other forms of consumption. The findings reveal the social and moral purposes that surplus food serves; it enables people to be generous and charitable.

Such insights provide guidance to practitioners by revealing how providing mechanisms for people to enact their existing moral beliefs can keep surplus food away from the waste stream.

It contributes to the limited food waste literature on domestic gatherings and moral and religious beliefs. Also, using Goffman's concepts adds depth to such an under-theorized area and a new lens to look at food waste-related practices as they are embedded within social interactions.

Tourism movements are increasingly of interest as economic, social and cultural events, which annually, and on a country basis make one destination more popular than another. Additionally, tourism is an important factor for establishing international peace, cultural and trade activities between human beings, increasing employment, furthering interaction between communities and bringing financial support to economies. In the tourism sphere, competing countries are trying to cope with each other by mentioning and emphasizing their differences. In this context, using the tourist supply in an efficient and productive way will increase the level of tourism support to countries and to regions on a large scale. In order to reach this aim, analysing and examining the differences in tourist demand in certain periods have key importance. The aim of this research is to examine the profiles and expectations of tourists coming to the Antalya Region of Turkey.

This paper examines how manufacturing firms impacted by the nitrogen oxides (NO_x) Budget Trading Program (NBP) strategically managed working capital to release funds for increased costs and mitigate the negative impact on firm performance.

The study uses a panel data set including 11,302 manufacturing firm-year observations listed on the US exchanges during the period 2000–2008. The authors use Tobin's Q to proxy for firm performance, and cash holding, cash conversion cycle (CCC), days sales outstanding (DSO), days sales inventory (DSI) and days payable outstanding (DPO) for working capital management (WCM). The empirical analysis is conducted using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) regressions.

The authors find that firms respond to the higher utility costs imposed by the NBP by decreasing CCC, DSO and DSI. This active WCM response partially mitigated the impact of increased compliance costs on performance for firms affected by the NBP. Results are robust in PSM regressions.

Climate change is a global issue that has attracted increasing attention in recent years. This study shows how firms can adjust short-term financing strategies to address the costs of compliance with climate change regulation.

The paper contributes to the emerging literature on corporate finance and climate policy actions. The authors use the unique experimental setting of the NBP to examine the regulatory impact on corporate financial management. The authors demonstrate how firms used active WCM to mitigate the negative performance impact of regulatory compliance with the NBP, providing novel insight on the implication of compliance with climate change legislation.

This paper aims to analyse the importance of service quality and store design as critical variables to promote differentiation and make consumers feel satisfied and committed to a retail brand. Retailers usually undervalue the store design as an element of the strategic mix. However, it may be one of the critical elements to increase retailers’ competitive advantages.

This exploratory study was based on 349 valid responses to a questionnaire online through a snowball sampling approach analysed with structural equation modelling.

The results confirmed that customers’ service quality positively impacts their satisfaction and commitment to the retail brands. However, store design moderates the relationship between customer satisfaction and commitment. The consumers with a higher appreciation for store design presented a lower impact of satisfaction on their commitment to the retail brand. This result shows that a significant part of their satisfaction includes store design appreciation.

This exploratory study was restricted to the Portuguese market, and the sample resulted from a convenience snowball approach.

The retailers should consider store design as an essential variable in their marketing plans to have satisfied and committed customers and be more competitive.

Research on consumers’ behaviour in the retail sector, including the assessment of store design, presents a great potential within the framework of consumer–brand relationship theory, but it is still under-researched. The new model presented highlights the role of store design as a moderator variable.

This study investigates the relationship between working capital investment (WCI) and firm value for Indian manufacturing firms using excess net working capital (NWC) and Tobin's Q as a measure of WCI and firm value, respectively. The study also examines whether firms use the cash released from excess investment in working capital to make long-term investments.

The sample comprises 834 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed Indian manufacturing firms whose data from April 2010 to March 2020 are analyzed using a fixed-effect panel regression analysis approach.

The empirical results show that excess NWC influences firm value negatively and significantly. However, the nature of the relationship becomes nonlinear upon dividing the sample into positive excess NWC and negative excess NWC. The findings from the study also reveal that firms redistribute cash freed from positive excess NWC for long-term investments to improve their value without impacting the corresponding risk.

Overall, the results suggest that firms with positive excess NWC can enhance their valuations by building adequate long-term investments from surplus WCI funds.

To the authors’ best knowledge, studies on this issue have primarily focused on developed economies. No study seems to have been done on this subject in the emerging South Asian economies. The present study is the first to bridge the research gap by investigating the relationship between excess WCI and firm value for manufacturing firms in India. Moreover, it examines whether a positive excess NWC reduction translates into corporate investments (CI).

Despite the number of articles over the past two decades mentioning the importance of the negotiation stage in the M&A process, there has been very limited theoretical development and empirical analysis emphasizing multiple factors critical to M&A negotiations. The purpose of our paper is twofold. First, we provide a review of the extant academic literature on negotiations in the M&A process. Then, drawing on the M&A process perspective and classical negotiation theory, we develop a framework to highlight major components of the M&A negotiation stage examined in existing studies and offer key insights of how this underdeveloped area of study is ripe with opportunities for future theoretical development and empirical research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of CEO narcissism in corporate acquisitions with a focus on frequency and size and furthermore to examine the subsequent stock market reaction.

The authors investigate 751 acquisitions made by 158 UK nonfinancial firms and 202 CEOs in the 10-year period 2007–2016. The authors use the ratio of first-person singular pronouns to total first-person pronouns in CEO speech as the main proxy for CEO narcissism but the results are robust to the use of signature size and picture as alternative measures.

The authors find that increased CEO narcissism is associated with an increase in M&A expenditures, an increase in deal size and a decrease in deal frequency. Thus, the authors find that narcissistic CEOs favor size over frequency (“go big”). Furthermore, the authors find that the stock market reacts less favorably to acquisitions announced by firms run by narcissistic CEOs.

The paper contributes to upper echelon research by investigating the association between CEO narcissism and corporate decisions in a UK setting. More specifically, the paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating how CEO narcissism is associated with corporate acquisitions in terms of the size and frequency of deals and how such irrational behavior is penalized by the stock market. Previous literature has focused on the more broad association between CEO narcissism and M&A expenditures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of narcissistic supply for the association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking.

The authors investigate a sample of 281 non-financial S&P 1500 firms and a corresponding 457 CEOs in the 10-yr period 2006–2015.

The association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking depends on the admiration, attention, and affirmation of own superiority (“narcissistic supply”) that the CEO receives given her/his current position. Thus, a narcissistic CEO with an insufficient narcissistic supply (small firm/small compensation) will crave for more and take more risks (“rock the boat”) while a narcissistic CEO with a sufficient narcissistic supply (large firm/large compensation) will protect the status quo and be reluctant to take new risks. Specifically, the authors find that a change from a slightly narcissistic CEO to a strongly narcissistic CEO, for positions entailing limited (abundant) narcissistic supply, is associated with an increase (a decrease) in corporate risk of 6%–8% (11%–27%).

Previous research indicates a positive association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking in specific domains such as M&A and R&D activities. This paper provides a novel contribution to the existing literature by identifying and assessing the important role of narcissistic supply for the association between CEO narcissism and corporate risk taking in general.