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The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a scale to determine the consumer’s level of decision-making self-efficacy for a high-involved service purchase, specifically the purchase of medical insurance. One question to ask is how service providers can help consumers purchase the services that best meet their needs? Before interventions can occur, it is necessary to benchmark consumers’ perceptions of their own decision-making control and abilities.

A scale that measures consumers’ service decision-making self-efficacy was developed using the principles established for scale development validation. A four-study approach was used to reach the research objective.

The research consisted of four studies designed to: generate items to measure consumer service decision-making self-efficacy (CSDMSE); purify the scale and assess its dimensionality (second-order structure); establish the reliability and validity of the scale; and establish norms to provide details on its usefulness for aiding consumers with service purchases. The scale was found to be a higher-order construct, comprising three lower-order constructs.

Research suggests that consumer self-efficacy may affect their decision-making. The greater the consumer’s self-efficacy for decision-making tasks, the more efficient the decision-making process strategies are expected to be. This is the purpose for which the CSDMSE scale measure was created: to understand how, where and when service professionals can assist consumers with making appropriate service-related decisions and purchases.

The purpose of this research is to develop a taxonomy of the impact of sales process regulations, guidance statements and laws (henceforth, referred to as “regulations”) on sales behaviours within the pharmaceutical industry, particularly as it relates to those within the USA.

Given the large number of regulations, guidance statements and laws and sales behaviours that comprise the domain of this study, this research uses a “multicenter, parallel-arm clinical trial data gathering method”. This approach aggregated or “stacked” the responses from three individual questionnaires; 7,493 total observations generated by 381 respondents were analyzed.

The analysis produced a six-cluster solution of regulations, guidance statements and laws indicating distinct taxonomic structures of items that affect selling activities.

The research was conducted with a single firm in the USA. Therefore, results may not be applicable to other geographical areas, firms and industries.

The knowledge of which behaviours are perceived by the salespeople to be impacted by what regulations, guidance statements and laws provides managers with a useful tool to sort their own companies’ regulations on the basis of the classification scheme.

This paper provides a novel taxonomic approach to organize sales activities affected by regulations, guidance statements and laws which provides a look at the unintended consequences of the item not compliance. Additionally, it uses a research methodology relatively unknown to social science inquiry.

Purpose – With an acknowledgement to Benedict Anderson's seminal writings on “imagined communities,” this paper examines several meanings and uses of the concept of imagination: theoretical, methodological, and substantive.

Methodology/approach – Application of these meanings are illustrated from eight qualitative researches, combining direct observations, interviews, participant observation, and document analysis.

Findings – Data are drawn from diverse settings, such as undocumented migrant communities, terrorism, Native American communities, collaborative divorce, nationalism, mass killers, players of video games, and genocide, to illustrate the potential uses and meanings of imagination.

Originality – These diverse researches illustrate the potential empirical and research contributions of these ideas.

This study contributes to the existing literature that corporate governance consist of internal and external governance behavior which refers to the complementarity of the elements of (1) competing values framework and (2) corporate legality framework theories and proper orientation in the provisions of the elements leads to a good corporate power in the modern legal environment. A questionnaire is designed, a survey is conducted based on the constructed corporate governance model in the study, which investigates the evolutionary background of the elements with the view of establishing the right corporate culture and corporate legality behavior. The empirical results revealed that there is a positive linear relationship between the elements of corporate culture provisions with internal governance behavior and a significant positive association between the elements of corporate legality provisions with external governance behavior. The model does not take into account long-term external factors. Therefore, measuring corporate governance may not be an easy task and may not be suitable for specific countries that have strong legal systems and corporate ownership. The elements in the model are practical to implement and facilitates corporate to improve shareholder involvement and governance reporting and hence prevent failure. The constructed model span almost every attribute embedding high quality corporate social responsibility and corporate governance for corporate to identify areas for improvement and contributes to existing corporate governance literature that, connecting corporate culture and corporate legality behavior positively affect financial markets and firm performance.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

Women in Management Review Volume 9 No. 1 of this journal contains five articles of interest. In the first, entitled “Power, Sex and Systems”, Virginia E. Schein examines the power‐related properties of professional and organisational systems and considers their influence on reactions to sexual harassment. It is argued that, when the socio‐cultural power model of male dominance operates within pluralistic/political professional and organisational systems, these systems can become breeding‐grounds for sexual harassment behaviours that are tolerated rather than told on. A contrast between careers within systems and less system bound jobs illustrates the influence of context on decisions to tell or tolerate.

Indian cities have always been cities of walkers. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to examine the walkability of Mumbai city and outlines the problems, challenges and scope for improving its walkability.

Five typical districts of Mumbai city were chosen for the field study. Within each of these districts, certain walking routes were mapped. A survey of 100 people belonging to the middle class and lower middle class was conducted via a structured questionnaire pertaining to the pedestrian difficulties and solutions. The researcher along with a group of students then actually walked each of the routes and collected more specific information.

It is observed that Indian cities are becoming increasingly unsafe for pedestrians. Sidewalks and pavements just do not exist. If a pavement exists it is poorly constructed and badly maintained. An attempt was made to derive a walkability rating for the city of Mumbai.

This study highlights several policy recommendations for enhancing the current pedestrian infrastructure and gives pedestrian-focused solutions.

Very little work has been done by the way of theory and methodology to plan and mould walkable cities. A change in focus is needed that puts people at centre stage.

The aim of the paper is to examine what type of relationship existed between the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Riggs Bank in respect of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance. Different commentators have established certain trends in the interaction between a regulator and a regulated entity, and this paper seeks to apply these findings to the relationship between the OCC and Riggs Bank and ascertain where this example lies in the wider domain of regulatory relationships. The paper then examines whether the relationship between the OCC and HSBC United States was similar to the one between the OCC and Riggs Bank or did the regulator adopt a more aggressive supervisory stance. Throughout this work, there is also a focus on the underlying incentives which may adversely affect how a financial institution interacts with a financial regulator and possible solutions to this problem proposed.

Research undertaken by commentators was assessed and their findings as the different regulatory relationships that may develop between a regulator and a regulated entity were applied to the interactions between the OCC and two different financial institutions, namely, Riggs Bank and HSBC United States. Examples from the Senate Subcommittee Reports into the AML failings into these financial institutions were examined through the prism of pre-existing regulatory relationship categories.

The paper ultimately concludes that the OCC was far too passive in its interactions with both Riggs Bank and HSBC United States and that the primary underlying motivations for both institutions were profit- rather than compliance-led.

One of the main limitations to this research was the absence of direct input from either personnel from the banking sector in the USA or of regulators from the same jurisdiction.

This paper proposes a number of practical solutions to recast the relationship between financial regulators and regulated institutions away from the former deferring to the latter to one where the former dictates to the latter.

This paper seeks to examine an actual regulatory relationship between a financial regulator and two different institutions that is reported in the public domain by applying pre-existing academic research on question of regulatory relationships and see how the practice differs or corresponds with the theory.

Formulaic in both their narrative and character development, buddy-cop films are unique in their ability to present ideas about masculinity and the journey towards manhood without sacrificing the likeability or relatability of their male leads. The focus of this chapter is how aspects of masculinity are depicted when there are two or more male protagonists in an action film. Examples I have selected for analysis are the highly successful franchises Beverly Hills Cop (1984–1993) and Lethal Weapon (1987–1998). In the case of Beverly Hills Cop, the male dynamic is unique in that there are a trio of male leads (as opposed to the traditional duo), each of which depicts masculinity in different ways, often resulting in the lead characters jostling for the role of the alpha-male. In contrast, the Lethal Weapon franchise explores the dynamics of age and the importance of mateship and mentoring in the construction of relationships between men. In both examples the necessity of vulnerability in the dynamic of solid man-to-man peer relationships is also paramount. The enduring popularity of these films and their subsequent sequels is indicative of the fact that while pop-cultural ideas around masculinity may be in a constant state of flux, elements of the stereotypical action hero remain prominent.

Discussions about the male action hero will be informed by Susan Jeffords Hard Bodies (1994), while concepts of maturing will be explored through the lens of Joseph Campbell's construct of the Hero's Journey and Carl Jung's archetypes, which, as I will demonstrate, are central components of the relationship dynamics present in each film.