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In 2000, Academic Enterprise in the University of Salford, UK began working with TradePartnersUK to investigate how higher education could support the development of international trade, particularly in the small‐ to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) sector. The UK business community has traditionally suffered from a lack of foreign language and business culture skills and little understanding of the cultures within which they operate. SMEs in particular, with more limited financial resources, find it difficult to free staff to attend even short‐term courses. This suggested that e‐learning might provide a partial solution, enabling courses to be accessed at a time and place convenient to the learner, and at a fraction of the cost associated with more traditional methods of delivery. From this background the BUCLA (Business Culture in Latin America) project emerged, initially focused on Mexico. In view of the success achieved, the project was subsequently extended to cover other Latin American countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of risk on the project delivery selection process of three primary methods in use in the USA, including design-bid-build (DBB); design-build (DB); and construction manager/general contractor (CMGC).

The review of empirical studies, national survey questionnaire, multivariate analysis, and cross-validating discussion are adopted for this research. The risk factors were identified through an exhaustive literature review and empirical studies that included more than $10 billion of transportation projects. Experts with an average of 25 years of professional experience related to risk and project delivery methods in the transportation industry were invited to participate in the survey.

There were six critical risk factors for DBB, seven for DB, and six for CMGC. These critical risk factors are ranked differently from each delivery method. The most critical risk factor for DBB is construction risk, for DB is scope risk, and for CMGC is constructability and documentation risk.

Knowledge of the risk factors will allow researchers to better understand the impact of risk on DBB, DB, and CMGC projects. The chief limitation of this research is that the primary data were mostly opinions from experts although several empirical data were collected for cross-validation. The future research may take into account the role of participant's risk aversion in project delivery decision frameworks.

Transportation agencies and other practitioners can use these risk factors to make more effective and defensible decisions on which delivery method is the most suitable for their projects. The result from this study provides a foundation for decision makers to use a risk-based approach in the project delivery decision.

This research is the first attempt to examine the impact of risk on the project delivery selection process.

How exactly could a higher education institution assist in the development of international trade? This was the burning question facing the University of Salford in the UK as it set about fulfilling the government’s ambitions to extend the higher education sector beyond teaching and learning to encompass support for economic regeneration and growth.

The authors set out to determine which human capital processes and practices were most strongly related to company financial performance.

The authors surveyed more than 3,500 employees and more than 150 HR executives in 26 organizations, all of which had implemented a proprietary tool on human capital development. They used financial data from those organizations to identify 18 human‐capital management activities that are significantly correlated with financial results. They also interviewed more than 80 business and HR leaders.

Analysis of the 18 activities led the authors to derive the five practices described in this article: align people practices with business needs; implement the practices with superior execution; enlist line managers in human capital management; make policies clear, fair, and consistent; and create an information‐sharing environment.

The article eschews a focus of fads – “online cross‐functional team‐based brainstorming” – to realign readers on which talent management practices really lead to financial success. Although most companies will recognize the practices as fundamental, they will learn what may be preventing them from implementing the practices, and how some companies are leading the way.

Food—national dietary standards—is a sensitive index of socio‐economic conditions generally; there are others, reflecting different aspects, but none more sensitive. A country that eats well has healthy, robust people; the housewife who cooks hearty, nourishing meals has a lusty, virile family. It is not surprising, therefore, that all governments of the world have a food policy, ranking high in its priorities and are usually prepared to sacrifice other national policies to preserve it. Before the last war, when food was much less of an instrument of government policy than now—there were not the shortages or the price vagaries—in France, any government, whatever its colour, which could not keep down the price of food so that the poor man ate his fill, never survived long; it was—to make use of the call sign of those untidy, shambling columns from our streets which seem to monopolize the television news screens—“out!” Lovers of the Old France would say that the country had been without stable government since 1870, but the explanation for the many changes in power in France in those pre‐war days could be expressed in one word—food!

The purpose of this paper is to identify the motivations to consume ecological foods in alternative food networks (AFNs).

In total, 150 questionnaires were applied; the questionnaire was adapted from Food Choice Questionnaire (Steptoe et al., 1995). Data were analyzed by means of multivariate statistics with factor and cluster analysis. In order to identify statistical differences (p<0.05), Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney nonparametric tests were performed.

Ten factors or motivations were found: social ecological concern, nutritional content, sensory aspects, certifications, naturalness, specialized consumption, trust in the seller, economic aspects, health and availability. Four groups were obtained and called: citizen consumers, in-process citizen consumers, conscious social consumers with no interest in certifications and conscious pragmatic consumers. It is concluded that differentiated consumers visit these establishments and their motivations are diverse, albeit they concur, to a varying extent, with the objectives of AFNs, finding a mixture of hedonic and ethical motivations.

This sort of works about specific places of consumption as well as specific consumers, in this case ecological, contributes to the development of future social research on other contexts, different consumers and products.

This sort of research has been carried out in various European cities, with a number of foods and over various sales channels; however, at present there is a debate around AFNs and the veracity of their goals. This way, the present work can contribute with an answer to whether the goals match the motivations of consumers.