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Currently there is no universally accepted approach to supply chain risk management and assurance. To begin to shed more light on the practical operational challenges presented when considering supply chain risk mitigation through the sharing of information, this paper discusses the results of an empirical study conducted with manufacturing supply chain professionals. The study examines state-of-the-art challenges to managing risk in today's supply chains by reporting on data collected in 2021.

To develop a rich picture of the challenges of information sharing in multi-tier supply chains, the authors adopted a qualitative research design. The authors conducted 14 interviews with supply chain professionals and ran two focus groups that were industry specific: one focused on the nuclear industry and the other on automotive.

The study identifies contemporary practical challenges to information sharing in supply chains – specifically challenges related to data quality and the acceptance of sub-optimal normative supply chain practices, which have consequences for supplier assurance fatigue and supply chain transparency.

The topical and contemporary study shows how an acceptance of the normative practices of a supply chain can have a cumulative effect on the likelihood of supply chain disruption due to shortcomings in approaches to information sharing. The notion of the acceptance of the status quo in this context has received limited research attention, and hence offers an extension to current discourse on supply chain risk and resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the major trends and contributions published in the Advances in Project Management book series and place them in the context of the findings and outputs from the Rethinking Project Management Network. A key aim is to address the concerns of project practitioners and explore the alternatives to the assumed linear rationality of project thinking. The paper further offers a guided catalogue to some of the key ideas, concepts and approaches offered to practitioners through the series.

This is a conceptual review paper that reflects on the main areas covered in a book series aimed at improving modern project practice and explores the implications on practice, knowledge and the relationship between research and practice. The topics are addressed through the prism of the Rethinking Project Management Network findings.

The paper explores new advances in project management practice aligning them with key trends and perspectives identified as part of the Rethinking Project Management initiative. It further delineates new areas of expertise augmenting those mentioned in the disciplinary canons of knowledge.

The paper offers a new understanding of how knowledge is created in, for and by practice. Improving the relationship between theory and practice may demand a new appreciation of the role of practitioners and the value of their reflection in context.

The primary implication is to explore the new directions and perspectives covered by authors in the Advances in Project Management series, and identify main areas and topics that feature in the emerging discourse about project management practice. In addition, new conceptualisations of the role of practitioners in making sense of project realities are offered and considered.

New areas of interest and activity are identified and examined, offering a catalogue of new writing and perspectives in project practice. Reflection on the relationship between research and practice encourages fresh thinking about the crucial role of practitioner knowledge and reflection.

This paper aims to provide insights for educators seeking to enact culturally responsive-sustaining education and research in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The authors examine what happened when the community-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) initiative they engaged with traditionally marginalized high school students was interrupted as a result of physical distancing necessitated by COVID-19.

Data for this inquiry were taken from a broader on-going ethnography of youth’s participation in the YPAR project and included audio and video recordings from meetings of the YPAR initiative and messages exchanged between and among authors and youth. Authors used components of culturally responsive-sustaining education and theories related to student voice as an analytic frame through which they considered how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced their work.

Three findings are examined in this paper. They consider: how youth participants and the authors stayed connected after they were no longer able to meet in person; how youth chose to center the needs of the subsidized housing community where they lived while continuing their work; and how youth and authors navigated the uncertainties they encountered in looking ahead to future possibilities for their study as the pandemic continued.

This study provides urgently needed insights for educators and researchers grappling with how they may enact culturally responsive-sustaining education and research during the COVID-19 global pandemic and beyond.

Service providers on highly competitive online outsourcing platforms employ various signals to entice buyers to make online purchases. One such signal—the solution exemplars—attracts attention through depictions of exemplary prior work completed by the service providers. Unfortunately, it is not known the extent to which solution exemplar characteristics affect sales performance nor is it clear how such signals perform in the presence of complementary signals such as service provider expertise. This paper explores these issues.

Extending signaling theory, the authors develop a model to explore the effects of solution exemplar characteristics (i.e. exemplar quantity, exemplar diversity and exemplar popularity) on sales performance under the moderating impact of service provider expertise. The authors test the model using proprietary data from ZBJ.com, a leading online outsourcing platform in China.

Exemplar quantity and exemplar popularity positively affect sales performance; exemplar diversity has no significant impact on sales performance and service provider expertise positively moderates the relationships between exemplar quantity, exemplar popularity and sales performance.

This work makes several significant contributions. First, the authors enrich the research on signals in online outsourcing by exploring the impact of solution exemplar characteristics on sales performance. Second, the authors analyze three solution exemplar characteristics: exemplar quantity, exemplar diversity and exemplar popularity. Third, this work shows that service provider expertise moderates the relationship between solution exemplar characteristics and sales performance. Important practical implications for both online outsourcing platforms and service providers are discussed.

The previous literature has often focussed on Asian migrants’ acculturation to western cultures with data collected in the western contexts. The purpose of this paper is to explore western consumers’ acculturation to East Asian cultures and their consumption behaviour, which fulfils the research scarcity in this area.

This study was conducted via carrying out in-depth interviews with 18 British sojourners in China, exploring how they acculturated to Chinese culture, with a particular focus on their food and media consumption choices. This study applied inductive qualitative data analysis to build on but explore beyond existing theory.

The findings show that British consumers display a diversified acculturation strategy towards different products. They present an integrative approach to food consumption with a negotiable identity to host culture value whilst they adopt a separated approach relating to traditional media consumption, showing a non-negotiable consumption stance. They apply an assimilated approach for pragmatic reasons in terms of social media adoption.

British sojourners in China hold a different cultural stance in different areas of consumption. The study contributes to existing theory by arguing the complexity of a continuous negotiation process between different value systems in sojourning consumers’ consumption choices, which existing acculturation models have not yet examined. By emphasising the context speciality, the findings give marketers clear marketing implications when targeting sojourning consumers who declare their value stance via consumption practice.

Provides a bibliography of CD‐ROM for librarians, covering case studies, costs, product evaluation guidelines, databases, CDI, downloading/copyright and CD vs. online, for use when making decisions about the adoption of CD‐ROM.

This paper describes the personal history and intellectual development of Morris B. Holbrook (MBH), a participant in the field of marketing academics in general and consumer research in particular.

The paper pursues an approach characterized by historical autoethnographic subjective personal introspection or HASPI.

The paper reports the personal history of MBH and – via HASPI – interprets various aspects of key participants and major themes that emerged over the course of his career.

The main implication is that every scholar in the field of marketing pursues a different light, follows a unique path, plays by idiosyncratic rules, and deserves individual attention, consideration, and respect … like a cat that carries its own leash.

In the case of MBH, like (say) a jazz musician, whatever value he might have depends on his originality.

The purpose of this paper is to address the knowledge gap on the use of benchmarking techniques as utilized by facilities management (FM) professionals for the purpose of identifying means to improve industry benchmarking practices and guide the direction of future FM benchmarking research.

Data were collected through surveying 585 FM practitioners representing various countries, organization sizes, types, industries. The data were summarized and analyzed through creating frequency tables, charts, and cross-tabulations. The survey results were compared to a previously published study on benchmarking use to identify the similarities and differences between benchmarking for FM functions vs core business functions.

The findings indicate that while FM-oriented benchmarking has been adopted at similar levels as other industries, FM-oriented benchmarking tends to be simplistic, lacks a strategic position in the company, often relies upon self-report survey data, is often performed by an individual with no formal benchmarking team and does not utilize process benchmarking or benchmarking networks. These findings emphasize the need for benchmarking education, advocacy for FM as a strategic business partner, the development of verified data sources and networks specifically for the unique greater facilities management field functions.

These findings provide needed data on the state of FM practitioner use of benchmarking specifically for FM functions in North America. The results can be used as an assessment for the industry, to improve practitioner use and knowledge, and to identify further avenues for academic study.

The value of this study lies in filling in identified knowledge gaps on how FM practitioners are using benchmarking in practice. These data are absent from the research literature and offer the potential to help bridge the academic-practitioner divide to ensure that future research will focus on addressing practitioner needs for the industry.

Middle level teachers, at times, link historical content with relevant English literature in interdisciplinary units. Elementary teachers periodically employ history-themed literature during reading time. Interconnections between language arts and history are formed with developmentally appropriate literature for students. Historical misrepresentations, however, proliferate in children’s literature and are concealed behind engaging narratives. Since literacy and historical thinking are essential skills, children’s literature should be balanced within, not banished from, the classroom. Using America’s peculiar institution of slavery as a reference point, this article examines children’s literature, identifies almost a dozen areas of historical misrepresentation, and proffers rich primary source material to balance the various misrepresentations. We provide teachers with reason for caution when including such literature; but also model how to locate, use, and, at times, abridge primary source material within an elementary or middle level classroom. Such curricular supplements provide balance to engaging but historically-blemished children’s literature and enable educators to attain the rigorous prescriptions of Common Core.

ONE MUST BEGIN with Dickens. A chapter by Christopher Hibbert in Charles Dickens, 1812–1870: centenary volume, edited by E. W. F. Tomlin, and The London of Charles Dickens, published by London Transport with aid from the Dickens Fellowship, make a similar study here superfluous; both are illustrated, the latter giving instructions for reaching surviving Dickensian buildings. Neither warns the reader of Dickens's conscious and unconscious imaginative distortion, considered in Humphrey House's The Dickens World. Dickens himself imagined Captain Cuttle hiding in Switzerland and Paul Dombey's wild waves saying ‘Paris’; ‘the association between the writing and the place of writing is so curiously strong in my mind.’ Author and character may be in two places at once. ‘I could not listen at my fireside, for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my ears that I was dead.’ (Our Mutual Friend)