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Customers have high expectations that company representatives contacted online will go out of their way to be helpful. One type of social media that may be particularly useful as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool is microblogging platforms such as Twitter. The purpose of this paper is to look at the impact of perceived helpfulness of customer representative microblog responses on people's perceptions of brand trust, brand benevolence, brand attitudes and intentions to try or purchase a brand.

A field experiment was conducted to manipulate three variables: type of helpfulness response (empathetic or problem‐solving), amount of helpfulness (less or more helpful), and interface in which responses were viewed (branded, Google, or Twitter).

The interaction between type of helpfulness and amount of helpfulness led to greater perceptions of company trustworthiness and benevolence when there were many problem‐solving responses than when there were few, but the number of empathetic postings did not reveal this same pattern. Furthermore, attitudes towards the brand were greater when there were many problem‐solving postings than when there were few problem‐solving postings, and lower when there were many empathetic postings than when there were few empathetic postings.

Marketers must think carefully about whether they have the necessary resources to successfully engage consumers on microblogs. This paper found that simply acknowledging that a problem exists is not the level of engagement that consumers expect. Thus, companies that cannot afford to monitor microblogs for signs of consumer distress and then respond to consumers' problems are advised to not publicly respond in purely empathetic ways.

Modeling of long‐range world trends began in a rigorous way in 1968, when the Club of Rome initiated the Forrester and Meadows studies which resulted in the computer models Worlds 1, 2, and 3. Publication of the results in popular form in Limits to Growth catalyzed worldwide discussion of the finiteness of the earth with respect to explosive growth in population and technological civilization. While these first‐generation world models had a profound effect on how many people now view social progress and the future of mankind, they were criticized for being over aggregated and failing to take into account sufficient human factors, such as social and political organization, values, and the force of secular and religious traditions.

Concern for environmental issues has entered the agenda in many companies within the manufacturing industry. The purpose of this paper is to analyse implications for the decision criteria when environmental issues are introduced into manufacturing strategy. Furthermore, the purpose is to present a framework illustrating how concern for environmental issues affects the manufacturing strategy formulation process.

The paper is based on a review of literature on environmentally conscious manufacturing and literature on manufacturing strategy. These two fields of research are merged in the analysis.

The analysis shows that concern for environmental issues may lead to a number of potential implications for the decision criteria. These implications may, in turn, affect the manufacturing strategy formulation process. A framework is presented that illustrates the interrelationships between the drivers for environmental concern, effects for the competitive priorities, implications for the decision criteria, and how it may affect the manufacturing strategy formulation process.

Inclusion of environmental issues potentially complicates the manufacturing strategy formulation process. This implies a need for further studies on the challenges companies face in the strategy formulation process.

The implications for the decision criteria and the framework presented in the paper may encourage companies to prepare for inclusion of environmental concern in the manufacturing strategy formulation process.

Manufacturing strategy has not traditionally included concern for environmental issues. The paper adopts a novel approach in which research findings on environmental concern are integrated with literature on manufacturing strategy.

This chapter tackles the tension between equity and excellence that critics often highlight in opposition of diversity initiatives and efforts in the higher education employment setting. We present several arguments that respond to the assumptions undergirding these criticisms, by drawing on prior research to emphasize that equity and excellence are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, we present new evidence from a national sample of Black and Hispanic Engineering Faculty (BHEF) (n = 68) to argue that their racialized work experiences promote exclusive environments that serve to sustain their underrepresentation and marginalize their performance contributions. We conclude with a new direction for how to cultivate inclusive work environments in higher education.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

This paper aims to develop a methodology for lean implementation that reduces the risk of damaging a company's key resources and abilities through the application of core competence theory.

Academic literature provided background conceptual understanding of lean and core competence theory for an industrial working party of domain experts from 15 major aerospace companies in the UK to develop a methodology for lean implementation that would not damage firm's competences. The methodology was trailed through cooperative inquiry in a business unit of a leading global aerospace company using a case study approach.

An accessible definition of core competence that captures academic theory was proposed through an industrial working group. Further a methodology for lean implementation, drawing upon core competence theories was developed. The method comprised four tools: market analysis, the visible value stream, customer value analysis, and financial modelling. Tools drew upon established practice and their joint application is intended to safeguard a company's key resources and capabilities from loss or impact during lean implementations. Application in a single case study company and the effects observed over a number of years indicated the methodology, though developmental, was capable of significant positive effects.

The paper provides a practical definition of core competence and application of theory within a lean implementation, trailed and validated in an industrial setting. Competence theory has previously been described as “lack‐lustre” due to the abstract nature of the ideas.

The concepts of supply‐chain design and management have come to the fore, owing to the ever‐increasing complexity of the systems driving buyer‐supplier relations in both industrial and consumer‐based markets. The unprecedented levels of supply‐chain management complexity are partly attributed to the Internet, through its more recent business acceptance and commercial use. Deals with new competitive challenges being realised from the unprecedented speed of growth of the Internet and building commercially‐viable supply chains to meet the challenges faced by emerging virtual organisations.