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TILL I took on the work of a local librarian under the Essex County Library I think I had never felt what a reality the phrase, “Republic of Letters,” stands for. I had vaguely thought that it implied a sort of mental relationship between all book lovers and creators, but that it could connote such a real community of interest and feeling, as I have seen growing up in Bulphan since we started just a year ago, I should not have thought possible. I hope I shall not be misunderstood, or give the impression that the millenium has arrived, or that we have sloughed off our ordinary selves and are all hobnobbing together in consequence of taking a ticket under the Carnegie scheme,—but just one common factor we have discovered between us: we all come to the library because we are honestly interested in books; not because we ought to be, but because we are.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the contributions made by Charles Clinton Spaulding, a prominent black business leader in the USA in the early 1900s. This paper highlights the management philosophies and practical work of Spaulding, an individual who considerably influenced African-American management thought and practice, and played an important role in Corporate America from the turn of the twentieth century onward.

The research was conducted by reviewing and synthesizing a number of writings including published works by Spaulding himself, as well as articles about Spaulding from sources such as history journals, newspapers and other resources.

Spaulding’s contributions were significant, from his insight regarding the fundamental necessities for the effective management of a business, to his management style and implementation of practices which reflected his recognition of the importance of transformational leadership, employee development, diversity, corporate social responsibility and a strong positive culture for the successful management of an enterprise. Thus, this paper concludes that the title of “Father of African-American Management” is a fitting tribute to this business pioneer who overcame the odds to become the most successful black business executive in the early twentieth century.

The contributions made by minorities, including African-Americans, to management thought and practice have not been adequately covered in the literature. This paper begins to fill a noticeable void by drawing from infrequently acquired sources such as Spaulding’s article “The Administration of Big Business” and highlighting his contributions to the African-American community and the business community at large.

Extended from Hofstede’s cultural framework, this study investigated the differences between the Australian (representing the Western culture) and Chinese (representing the Eastern Culture) consumers in regard to their attention paid to product attribute cues presented on food labels and the degree of such attention controlling for an individual-level moderator of product involvement.

Data were collected using face-to-face interviews with semi-structured questionnaires for both Australian and Chinese samples. The questionnaire data were analysed using factorial between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) to investigate the influence of culture and product involvement on the attention paid/degree of attention to product nature-related (e.g. brand name), product assurance-related (e.g. country-of-origin) and health-related attribute (e.g. nutritional panel) cues.

The findings revealed that Chinese consumers, as compared to Australian consumers, paid attention to more product-assurance cues (i.e. country of origin) and health-related cues (i.e. bioactivity indicators). The degrees of attention to these cues were also greater among Chinese consumers than for Australian consumers. Product involvement moderated the relationship between culture and attention towards product nature and product assurance-related cues.

Results from this study enable exporters to customize their labelling design by strategically including label information that is more salient to certain export markets.

This study offers a novel insight into the impact of culture on consumers’ attention to food product attributes and the interaction effects of product involvement on these relationships, hitherto underexplored.