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This paper aims to analyse the success of the three main mergers that have taken place in the US airline industry since 2008. Delta and Northwest, then Continental and United and finally US Airways and American Airlines have all tied the corporate knot. This is the latest attempt of the industry to improve profits and to fight off low cost rivals. What then is the current assessment of the three new major airlines?

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The reforms that began through deregulation under President Carter in the late 1970’s have led to a series of major airline mergers over the past decade. This has certainly improved their profits in the short term and led to a more robust strategic position. None of this though should hide the fact that they have been operating with a major tail wind in the form of falling oil prices. As prices rise again, the airlines will face a sterner test.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Vegetable salads, despite their recognized health benefits, are an increasingly common cause of foodborne illness worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to determine the prevalence of E. coli with virulence genes in ready-to-eat raw mixed vegetable salads sold in collective catering in Abidjan.

A total of 436 strains of E. coli were isolated from 306 ready-to-eat raw mixed vegetables salads and then identified biochemically and molecularly based on the uidA gene responsible for beta-glucuronidase activity. The virulence genes were determined by polymerase chain reaction.

The prevalence in vegetable salads of E. coli with virulence genes was 35.3 percent. The distribution of pathovars was 21.2 percent enterotoxigenic (ETEC), 4.9 percent enteropathogenic (EPEC), 0.7 percent Shigatoxigenic (STEC), and 7.5 percent Enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC). It appears from the study that vegetable salads sold in collective catering in Abidjan are at risk for contamination by E. coli pathovars.

Processing conditions for these salads during preparation appear to be hygienically insufficient, so measures to control the risk of contamination are necessary.

The primary goal of this review is to identify emerging themes in the cold supply chain (CSC) and their future research directions, methodologies, and theories.

The review looks at CSC related articles from Scopus database published in the years 2000–2020. Thereafter, bibliometric and co-citation analyses have been conducted to identify emerging themes, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives related to CSC management.

This study revealed a clear research gap in CSC literature with emerging themes relevant to diverse aspects. Primarily, the most prominent authors, methodologies, and theories were identified from bibliometric analysis. Next, we generated clusters to identify the insights of each cluster using co-citation analysis. Consequently, the significance of clusters concerning the number of articles, theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and themes was recognized. Finally, a few future research questions regarding emerging themes have been identified.

The importance of co-citation and bibliometric analyses in studying the evolution of research over a definite time is emphasized in this work. As per emerging themes, implementing digital technologies has increased the efficiency of traditional CSC and transformed it into digital CSC.

As per the authors' knowledge, this work is the first in literature to explore the significance of identifying emerging areas and future research directions in managing CSC through literature review based on bibliometric and co-citation analysis.

How diversity in management boards affects employer attractiveness has yet to be fully clarified. This paper aims to contrast the two main theoretical rationales – similarity attraction and diversity attraction – and examines whether potential employees are more attracted to an organization with a homogenous board (in terms of gender and ethnicity) or to an organization with a diverse board.

Participants (N = 629) were simultaneously presented with two pictures of management boards, whereby the gender and ethnic composition of the boards were manipulated. Moreover, to examine whether social desirability influences the ratings of an organization’s attractiveness, survey anonymity was varied using an indirect questioning technique.

The findings supported the diversity attraction rationale: organizations with gender-balanced, multicultural boards were seen as more attractive than organizations with monolithic boards. However, this effect seemed to be influenced – at least partially – by social desirability.

Additional research is needed to examine the extents to which people care about the degree of similarity between themselves and a management board.

The findings illustrate board composition as an employer branding strategy. Specifically, the results indicate that an organization can benefit from a diverse management board when this information is communicated to applicants.

People’s attitudes toward organizations with diverse boards seem – in part – to be rooted in their motivation to comply with social norms.

Theoretical accounts (similarity attraction theory vs diversity attraction) lead to somewhat contradicting predictions, and the available empirical evidence was rather indirect and correlational. This study provides a controlled empirical investigation contrasting the two contradicting predictions.