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At the marketing/entrepreneurship interface, most research concerns how entrepreneurs market their businesses, rather than how advertisers market to entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to address this gap.

The authors undertake a content analysis of 88 recent issues of the two largest print magazine titles targeted at American entrepreneurs, with particular attention to advertising content for known small business success factors.

This study finds no correlation between factors most important to small business success and advertising volume. However, this study finds a strong, inverse correlation between US small business performance for each success factors and the volume of advertising for that competitiveness factor. Finally, it is found that advertisement characteristics (placement, timing, repetition, contact channel, and competitor comparison) vary by competitiveness factor.

This study is limited to print advertising to US entrepreneurs. The findings imply that small business competitiveness factors may need to be amended, and that the nature of advertising to small businesses should be further investigated.

The ability to identify shortcomings in what small businesses need to succeed may spur advertisers to remedy the gap with product promotions that create awareness of need solutions.

This study is the first to use content analysis of B2B print advertising targeted at entrepreneurs to develop insights into the nature of the target market (US entrepreneurs); to explore the extent to which advertised goods and services match needs of the target market; and to examine whether advertisers communicate the various factors that address target market needs, in different manners.

We propose that the ambiguity of discourse around a category – rather than being problematic – improves the longevity of that category. This is especially true in the creative industries. Using methods and theories drawn from sociology and art history, we tested this thesis using swing as a case study. Based on three years of archival research we found 70 co-existing definitions of swing and 89 different uses of the term. These multiple meanings enabled various understandings to come in and out of focus over time, contributing to swing’s longevity. Our findings extend to other categories within the creative industries.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

In family business studies, inconsistent findings exist regarding the relationship between family involvement and firm innovation. The purpose of this paper is to understand the heterogeneity of family firm innovation.

The authors draw on governance literature and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective to examine how the extent of family governance and the type of SEW objectives jointly influence innovation strategies in family firms.

The authors develop a typology of family firm innovation strategies, positing that the family firm’s risk orientation, innovation goal, and knowledge diversity vary depending on the degree of family involvement in governance and the type of SEW objective. The authors propose that four family firm innovation strategies (e.g. Limited Innovators, Intended Innovators, Potential Innovators, and Active Innovators) emerge when family involvement in the dominant coalition (high or low) is contrasted with the SEW objective (restricted or extended) pursued by the family.

Understanding how governance and SEW goals work together to influence the firm’s innovation strategies is potentially valuable for managers of family firms. The authors offer practical suggestions for how to strategically reposition the firm to pursue innovation strategies more in line with those of the Active Innovator.

This study contributes to the family business literature by using a multi-dimensional approach to examine family firm heterogeneity. In addition, by articulating various family firm innovation strategies, the authors offer insight into the previously inconsistent findings concerning firm innovation behavior and outcomes in family business studies.

The literature related to knowledge management (KM) is robust with respect to insights regarding firms in general. However, less is known about the KM of family firms despite these firms being the most common form of business organization worldwide. Further, even though the number of studies examining family-firm KM has increased in recent years, the insights gained remain fragmented. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to help coalesce and advance the study of family-firm KM.

In pursuit of these goals, a systematic literature review was conducted. Using a 6-step, systematic literature review protocol, 74 articles focused on family-firm KM published in 23 journals were identified and reviewed.

This literature review contributes to the synthesis and advancement of family-firm KM scholarship in several ways. First, key factors and relationships are identified and integrated into a robust framework. Second, scholarly insights are synthesized, and a review of the primary antecedents, outcomes and moderating factors associated with family-firm KM processes is presented. Third, promising opportunities for future research are highlighted to advance family-firm KM scholarship.

With a focus on reducing the fragmentation in the literature, this review synthesizes insights related to the most commonly studied antecedents, outcomes and moderators associated with family-firm KM. Additionally, antecedents are organized and reviewed according to the nature of their influence on family-firm KM processes, highlighting the simultaneous opposite effects of some influences. Further, key outcomes are synthesized based on their family versus firm-centric orientation. Even further, insights and opportunities focused on advancing the theory, antecedents, outcomes, moderators and other issues related to family-firm KM are presented in an effort to support the continued progress of scholarship in this area.

The simplest, unfortunately least effective, “defense” against Deputy Governor Danforth is, of course, to say “well, I just don't see things like that”. In Salem there was no mediating device between the wielders of judgment and those whose lives were to be judged, for the judges were putative agents of a higher, immutable logic. Hence, there was no appeal against the arbitrariness of the theocratic judgment — “As God have not empowered me like Joshua to stop this sun from rising, so I cannot withhold from them the perfection of their punishment” (Miller, 1976, p. 104), bemoaned the hapless Danforth. The standard is the standard. This, in fact — the absence of mediating structures — partially defines a theocratic state, a state that asserts a unitary system of meaning. But the liberal democratic state is partially defined by precisely its opposite — the presence of such mediating structures and the possibility of some distance between those who judge and those who are judged. An element of a liberal state is the live practice of holding logic of government publicly accountable; the increasing absence of this condition in Western democratic states is corrosive of liberalism.Evaluators inhabit that mediation territory — which is why it is so important for us to maintain some distance from each side of the judgment-equation (and, hence, Democratic Evaluation — in its best expression — refuses to make recommendations). Contemporary Western political cultures are fearful of such arbitrary power and vest some vestigial democratic authority in intermediary agencies. Evaluation — to greater and lesser degrees politically neutral — has thrived on that. Perhaps, as our democracies grow more liberalized and less liberal that ethical space in which we conduct our business becomes more straitened — perhaps, too, we are, as a community, increasingly co-opted into political ambitions. Nonetheless, there is at least an opportunity at the margins to play a role in enhancing the self-determination of people and increasing the accountability of policies and programs to that aim. Central to the task of such an intermediary role is resistance to the passion of precision. There are many ways to define standards and there are many approaches to understanding quality, and it is the responsibility of the impartial evaluator to resist the arbitrary dismissal of alternatives. We should treat with professional scepticism the increasingly common claims that such concepts as “national standards”, “best practices”, “quality control criteria”, “benchmarks” and “excellence in performance” are meaningful in the context of professional and social action.Glass (1978) warned evaluators and assessors against ascribing a level of precision in judgment to a subject matter that has less of it in itself — here evaluation contaminates its subject. Programs are rarely as exact in their aspirations, processes, impacts or meanings as our characterisations of them and as our measurements of their success and failure. Glass urged evaluation to avoid absolute statements and to stay, at best, with comparative statements — rough indications of movement, what makes one state or position distinct from another, distinguishing ascendance from decline, etc. Given the 20-odd staff at the Rafael Hernandez School, the 200-or-so pupils, the range of languages and social backgrounds, the plurality of meanings perceived in a curriculum statement — given all of these where is the boundary between the exact and the arbitrary? And if we are to settle for the arbitrary, why commission someone as expensive and potentially explosive as an evaluator? Ask a cleric.