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The Premier League (PL) and the Bundesliga (BL) were chosen for this study due to their fundamentally different approaches to ownership regulation and the distribution of media revenues. Regulation in the PL is very liberal if compared to the BL's 50+1-rule. In the BL, the distribution of media revenues is mainly based on past performance, whereas equal distribution is dominant in the PL. The specific aim of this paper was a longitudinal analysis with a focus on the final outcome of the seasons.

This study looks at competitive intensity (CI) in the men's BL and the English PL because it is a crucial indicator for the long-term success of a sports league and the participants. To calculate the CI of both leagues and of all relevant sub-competitions (championship, Champions League (CL), Europa League (EL), Conference League (CoL) and fight against relegation), a CI index (CII) model was generalised and applied for an examination period spanning from 1998/99 to 2020/21.

Until 2008/09, seasonal CI in the BL was somewhat higher than in the PL. But afterwards, the BL's championship race's CI dropped considerably, while the PL's CI for qualification for the CL rose profoundly. Results also showed that the introduction of the CoL raised the leagues' CI indices.

Besides a methodological contribution with the generalisation of the applied CI index model, the findings are discussed in the context of the above-mentioned regulatory and distribution mechanisms also taking into account the very current discussion regarding general regulatory changes within European football.

For managers of sports leagues, it is crucial to produce an attractive competition. For that to happen, it is vital to consider that leagues frequently have more sub-competitions than “just” the championship. In European top football leagues, for instance, four sub-competitions are common (championship, qualification for Champions- or Europa League, avoiding relegation). This paper introduces a new method for measuring competitive intensity (CI) in round-robin sports leagues considering all relevant sub-competitions and applies it to Germany's Bundesliga.

The newly developed model calculates a CI-Index for each sub-competition and the league as a whole. The application to the Bundesliga analyzes its viability and the development of the league's CI over the past 22 seasons.

The newly introduced CI-Indices prove to be a viable tool for evaluating a league's competitive intensity. The application to the Bundesliga shows that the seasonal CI dropped after 2009/10, which can mainly be attributed to a decline in the championship's CI.

The results show that it is important to facilitate a high CI in each of Bundesliga's four sub-competitions. Efforts have to be made to ensure that especially the Europa League remains as attractive as possible for the participating teams and their fans because this sub-competition constantly makes the greatest contribution to the seasonal CI.

The new method measures competitive intensity by quantifying the different sub-competitions and their contribution to the seasonal CI. This allows the organizers of sports leagues to assess the intensity of the individual sub-competitions as well as the league as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the literature related to accounting and auditing services quality.

The authors performed a systematic literature review that considered 22 papers on the topic. The authors also applied a bibliometric analysis in order to identify the main characteristics of these studies to discuss and provide research opportunities in this field.

The bibliometric results indicate that most papers were published in services and marketing journals. The accounting service quality theme has been rarely researched in accounting field. In addition, based on our review, it was possible to identify that most papers use quantitative methods, such as surveys. The papers' conclusions diverge from each other, demonstrating a still fragmented literature.

Taken together, the paper shows how accounting services quality is relevant and emerging topic that demands future research about accounting professionals' skills, their activities and how their customers perceive quality in an environment of constant change.

The analyses indicate that there are six broad areas for future research on this topic: successes and failures of accounting services providers; the role of “client centricity”; digital accounting services; services quality and accounting education; services quality when considering different types of accounting and auditing services and development of a measurement scale and a theoretical model for accounting services quality. This paper contributes for the ongoing debate about how competition, technology and innovation are changing the landscape for accounting and auditing services providers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel method to analyse dynamic interactions of stakeholders to explain how a set of agents can act by considering the power/influence positions.

A novel mathematical application uses the importance of characteristics algorithm in combination with composition max-min to compare, group and order information according to the importance of its characteristics. The mathematical application is focused on a strategic analysis, evaluating stakeholder dynamics through power relationships.

The results show a comparison of the relationships among each of the stakeholders to obtain the relative intensity and importance of relationships between them, given by the fuzzy matrix FRInM and the fuzzy matrix FRIM, respectively. This application provides a useful tool for a dynamic analysis of stakeholders in a complex environment, where the best approach to performing a strategic analysis process is sought.

The main implication of the proposed approach is taking into account the importance of information to establish the boundaries and relationships of each characteristic according to its intensity. However, limitations are due to the nature of this research, based on theoretical assumptions regarding stakeholders and the use of a hypothetical example to show the operation of algorithms.

The primary advantage of this proposition is that it takes into account the importance of information to establish the relationships among the characteristics according to their intensity. In addition, it performs multiple comparisons among each characteristic of the information. The interests and opinions of decision makers can be parameterised. A mathematical application shows how each interest group could be classified and related according to subjective information.

Driven by the disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing debate about the international location of firms' manufacturing activities has increasingly highlighted the specific benefits and costs of near-shoring versus far-shoring. However, the effects of near-shoring versus far-shoring on customer perceived quality and purchase intention have not been examined. Thus, this study aims to develop a conceptual model and provide new evidence to fill this gap. In particular, the study explores the roles of brand familiarity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to explain the different levels of perceived quality and purchase intention in relation to near-shoring versus far-shoring.

This study includes two analyses of data collected from a sample of Italian customers. The first analysis consists of a 2 (high/low brand familiarity) × 3 (domestic insourcing, near-shoring, far-shoring) factorial design, and data are assessed via analyses of variance (ANOVA). The second analysis evaluates the suggested model in the two scenarios (near-shoring and far-shoring) via partial least squares–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) multigroup analysis.

Results showed that customer perceived quality and purchase intention were significantly higher for near-shoring than for far-shoring, but only when brand familiarity was low. No significant difference was found for participants with a high level of brand familiarity. In addition, the level of a brand's pre-offshoring perceived CSR was negatively related to perceived quality, and this was conceptually justified by the CSR-washing effect. Again, this effect was found only when brand familiarity was low.

The findings contribute to advancing the current understanding of the multiple effects of the offshoring decision and clarify that near-shoring and far-shoring have different effects for customers with low brand familiarity. The findings also emphasise that the far-shoring decision can elicit the perception of decoupling between the firm's CSR claims and CSR actions, thus decreasing perceived quality.

This study provides managers with additional inputs to make more informed decisions regarding offshoring. While the post-pandemic scenario seems to favour near-reshoring over far-shoring due to agility considerations, this study also provides additional evidence of the superiority of near-reshoring from the customer's perspective.

This is the first study to examine and prove the differential effects of near-shoring versus far-shoring on the customer's perceptions and behaviours.

This study investigates the influence of shared leadership on creativity and absorptive capacity in R&D teams. Based on theories of intragroup processes, it proposes that shared leadership positively affects such team outcomes up to a certain point, but at very high levels could cause loss of synergy and effectiveness, and therefore the relationship will follow an inverted U-shaped curve.

The study was conducted with 76 independent teams from the R&D unit of one of the largest energy companies in Brazil. Data were collected with two questionnaires answered by external team managers and team members. The study applied structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses.

Results indicate that there is a curvilinear relationship between shared leadership and external assessments of creativity and absorptive capacity in R&D teams. Although leadership shared among team members tends to favor creativity and realized absorptive capacity, at very high levels it yielded less than optimal outcomes. Team creativity had a direct positive effect on the teams' ability to explore and transform knowledge.

The study is the first empirical test of the influence of shared leadership on team creativity and absorptive capacity that proposes and confirms a quadratic effect. These results shed new light on the authors’ understanding of how intrateam leadership affects creative processes and absorptive capacity in the R&D context. These findings offer novel insights to inform practice as firms manage innovation performance.

Taking into account previous literature on the role that the parenting styles to which individuals are exposed to during childhood have in shaping prosocial behaviors and attitudes, this study aims to investigate the relationship between parenting styles of parents and peace attitudes.

The peace attitude and the parenting style questionnaires were completed by 358 adolescent and adult participants. Pearson correlation coefficients were extracted and a stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed.

The results indicate that individuals with authoritative parents tend to show stronger peace attitudes and open the way to further study what parental characteristics may be responsible for the development of peace attitudes in individuals.

Participants retrospectively assessed their parents’ style. Future research may recruit both the actual parents of participants to collect more accurate data on parenting practices or use observational methods.

This work seems to suggest that to achieve a more peaceful society, the ability of parents to raise their children by adopting an authoritative style should be taken into account and – if needed – enhanced. Understanding the developmental pathways that can influence individuals to consistently choose peace is important to promote a stable culture of peace across several levels of observation.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the relationship between parenting styles of parents and peace attitudes in their children.

This paper presents a contingency analysis of additive manufacturing's (AM) impacts, proposes a novel form of AM-enabled competitive capabilities and explores manufacturing contexts (including product-operation-organization-related factors) influencing those capabilities.

A theoretical model incorporating manufacturing competitive capabilities and contingency concepts is developed and validated using an empirical study on 105 manufacturing firms using AM. Structural equation modeling is applied for statistical data analysis.

The results indicate that the production volume and material type have contingency effects on AM-enabled product quality, cost reduction and green capabilities. Besides, it has been demonstrated that the degree of a country's economic development and the firm's experience have contingency impacts on AM's capabilities as well.

The contextual settings employed in this study are limited. A future contingency analysis requires further exploration of other factors (e.g. different AM technologies or application sectors) through in-depth case studies. Future studies can also be built upon the proposed framework to generalize the model for analyzing other emerging manufacturing technologies.

Uncertainties around AM implementation and its consequences place the context of evaluation as an essential facet. The derived insights aid practitioners in aligning the firm's internal characteristics (i.e. manufacturing and organizational contexts) with AM's promising competitive capabilities.

The study is among the first analysis to empirically and rigorously establishes the contingency effects of manufacturing and organizational factors on competitive capabilities related to AM, using a representative sample of manufacturers spanning different countries, firm sizes and other investigated manufacturing contexts.