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This study surveys professional niche sports sponsors in an effort to empirically understand what selection criteria these companies deem important when evaluating professional niche sports sponsorship proposals. Findings suggest that professional niche sports properties may possess unique attributes on which sponsors place very high levels of importance, such as cost effectiveness, flexibility in assisting sponsors achieve their objectives, a more targeted fan-base and decreased sponsorship clutter. Pragmatically, findings provide professional niche sports managers with tools that may be useful when competing for sponsorship funding against more established mainstream sports properties. Theoretically, the current study begins to fill a gap in the sports sponsorship literature which has primarily focused on mainstream professional sports, major intercollegiate sports and elite amateur sports such as the Olympic Games.

Multiple forces that shape the identities of adolescents and young adults also influence their subsequent career choices. Early work experiences are key among these forces. Recognizing this, youth service programs have emerged worldwide with the hope of shaping participants’ future trajectories through boosting engagement in civically oriented activities and work. Despite these goals, past research on these programs’ impact has yielded mixed outcomes. Our goal is to understand why this might be the case.

We rely on interview, archival, and longitudinal survey data to examine young adults’ experiences of a European youth service program.

A core feature of youth service programs, namely their dual identity of helping others (i.e., service beneficiaries) and helping oneself (i.e., participants), might partly explain the program’s mixed outcomes. We find that participants focus on one of the organization’s identities largely to the exclusion of the other, creating a dynamic in which their interactions with members who focus on the other identity create challenges and dominate their program experience, to the detriment of a focus on the organization and its goals. This suggests that a previously overlooked feature of youth service programs (i.e., their dual identity) might prove both a blessing for attracting many diverse members and a curse for achieving desired outcomes.

More broadly, our results suggest that dual identity organizations might attract members focused on a select identity, but fail to imbue them with a blended identity; thus, limiting the extent to which such organizations can truly “redirect” future career choices.

In recent years, organisations around the world have been seriously affected by a range of economic, political and social upheavals that have gathered momentum in most parts of the globe. The viability of the conventional (pyramidal) organisational structures is being challenged in conjunction with major shifts in the roles of mid and top managers. In many countries, the pace of the above socio‐economic events and uncertainties is happening at an unprecedented pace. Some markets are showing signs of potential gigantic expansions while others (historically prosperous) are on the verge of complete collapse (Dent, 1991). In responding to the socio‐economic challenges of the nineties, organisations (across the board) have resorted to dismantling the conventional pyramidal structure and adopting so‐called “leaner” structures (see Zeffane, 1992). The most common struggle has been to maintain market share in an economic environment increasingly characterised by excess labour supply (Bamber, 1990; Green & Macdonald, 1991). As organisations shifted their strategies from “mass production” to “post‐fordism” (see, for example Kern and Schumann, 1987), there has been a significant tendency to emphasise flexibility of both capital and labour in order to cater for the niche markets which are claimed to be rapidly emerging, world‐wide. This has resulted in massive organisational restructuring world‐wide.

This paper aims to examine whether the disclosure obligations in areas of water stress required under the revised Global Reporting Initiative standard (GRI) 303 Water and Effluents, 2018 will improve the quality of corporate water reporting. As a key new requirement is to disclose the impact of water withdrawals from (and discharges to) areas experiencing water stress, the authors examine the ambiguity of the term “water stress” and the extent to which following the GRI’s guidance to use the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and/or the Water Risk Filter will enable quality corporate water reporting.

The study is informed by the notion of public interest reporting, on the basis that the provision of contextual water information is in the public interest. To explore the ambiguity of the term “water stress”, the authors conduct a semi-systematic review of hydrology literature on water stress and water stress indices. To explore the efficacy of using the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and/or the Water Risk Filter, the authors review the operation and underlying data sources of both databases.

The term “water stress” has a range of definitions and the indicators of water stress encompass a wide variety of differing factors. The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and the Water Risk Filter use a combination of different risk indicators and are based on source data of varying quality and granularity. Further, different weightings of water risk information are available to the user, which yield different evaluations of water stress. A variety of approaches are permitted under GRI 303.

Effective implementation of GRI 303 may be impeded by the ambiguity of the term “water stress”, varying quality and availability of the water stress information and the fact that different water stress calculation options are offered by the water databases. The authors suggest that the GRI closely monitor compliance, implementation approaches and scientific developments in relation to the water stress requirements with a view to providing further guidance and improving future iterations of the standard.

Whilst there have been many calls for improved contextual water reporting, few previous studies have explored the challenges to implementing reporting requirements related to the determination of “water stress”.

Hospitals have used process redesign to increase the efficiency of the emergency department (ED) to cope with increasing demand. While there are published studies suggesting a positive outcome, recent reviews have reported that it is difficult to conclude that these approaches are effective as a result of substandard research methodology. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of hospital staff on the impact of a process redesign initiative on quality of care.

A retrospective qualitative case study examining a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) initiative in a large metropolitan hospital from 2009 to 2010. Non-probability sampling identified interview subjects who, through their participation in the redesign initiative, had a detailed understanding of the implementation and outcomes of the initiative. Between April 2012 and January 2013 26 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed with thematic content analysis.

There were four important findings. First, when asked to comment on the impact of the LSS implementation, without prompting the staff spoke of quality of care. Second, there was little agreement among the participants as to whether the project had been successful. Third, despite the recognition of the need for a coordinated effort across the hospital to improve ED access, the redesign process was not successful in reducing existing divides among clinicians and among managers and clinicians. Finally, staff expressed tension between production processes to move patients more quickly and their duty of care to their patients as individuals.

One of the first studies to explore the impact of process redesign through in-depth interviews with participating staff, this study adds further evidence that organisations implementing process redesign must ensure the supporting management practices are in place.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the recent efforts of a large publicly funded healthcare organisation in Sydney, Australia to implement integrated care (IC) “at scale and pace” in the messy, real-world context of a District Health Service.

The paper outlines the theoretical and practical considerations used to design and develop a localised IC Strategy informed by the “House of Care” model (NHS England, 2016).

The need for cross-agency partnership, a shared narrative, joint leadership and an IC Strategy underpinned by proven theoretical models model is described.

This paper highlights key factors relating to implementation and evaluation of a local IC Strategy in the real world.

Physical social cues can influence the buyer and seller in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. The current behavioural model does not account for the role of implicit bias. The purpose of this paper is to present that relationship and introduce a process model to weaken implicit bias through training with the employment of transformational conversation.

With social cues as the predecessor to inferences, there is the potential for implicit bias to derail relationship building in a B2B context. The author’s qualitative field study offers guidance for businesses to make informed decisions about implicit bias training.

The study findings show that an interactive workshop following a process model with the addition of transformational conversation can weaken implicit bias.

The research was conducted with a small cohort of information technology professionals. More research should be done specifically with sellers and buyers in various industries over a longer period of time with periodic follow-up on sales performance and relationship building.

Minority groups had a combined buying power of $3.9tn in 2018. For sellers to succeed, they have to be able to modulate the implicit biases that interfere with good sales relationships.

This paper introduces implicit bias as a moderator into the conceptual framework of the behavioural response to social cues in the B2B context and offers a model of implicit bias training using a process model with transformational conversation.