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The article summarises findings from recent case study research into recruitment in small firms. The research aims to ascertain whether small firms follow the procedures outlined in the prescriptive literature on recruitment, and to what extent they rely on informal recruitment methods. It finds little evidence of the adoption of the recommended systematic procedures and a high use of “tried and trusted” methods including word‐of‐mouth recruitment and the hiring of “known quantities”. The implications of this are examined. While these methods have certain advantages, they may also give rise to a number of problems. The study argues that the adoption of more formal procedures and methods could reduce staff turnover in small firms and its associated costs. However, it concludes that many small employers would remain unconvinced by the case for opening up recruitment channels, and may find their existing approaches more cost effective in the short term.

This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accounting's top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accounting's top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accounting's ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accounting's top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.

This paper aims to explore the management of working time flexibility and firm performance, measured by operating hours, in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe.

The paper analyses the European Capital Operating time, Work and Employment Survey (EUCOWE), designed to collect workplace information on operating hours. With data on more than 17,000 establishments in six European countries – France, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK – the paper analyses working time patterns and operating hours.

The authors show the positive relationship between company size and operating times and how SMEs make more limited use of more advanced forms of working‐time organisation that may allow them to extend their operating hours. The use of less complex working time measures such as overtime does not have the same positive association with operating hours. However, the results also highlight that smaller establishments can still benefit from the adoption of certain working time practices. The results suggest that the influence of the regulatory environment on the use of working practices or the duration of operating hours is not straightforward, and as such the impact of national regulatory frameworks cannot be discounted in the country‐specific differences identified.

The paper uses the first comparable data on operating hours and working patterns to demonstrate the limitations on SME operating times across European countries.

In the highly saturated sports industry where sport teams represent a complex offering loaded with intangible and tangible attributes, it is important to implement appropriate marketing strategies that will ultimately contribute to the development of strong brand equity. In this paper, the authors focused on the relationship between brand variables and marketing activities on the development of brand equity. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to study the impact of brand personality on the evaluation of marketing promotional activities and the impact on the brand equity.

Respondents (2,400) were recruited through an online survey and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The survey revealed that the congruence between the brand personality and the promotional activities has a positive impact on its evaluation and on brand equity. In addition, the results showed that consumers who consider the financial strength of the team as an important factor evaluate more positively the value of congruent and incongruent promotional activities.

Brand managers should maintain consistency between their brand personality and their promotional activities in order to maintain and increase their brand equity.

The results contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of brand personality on the evaluation of promotional activities. Also, it examines an important factor (financial consciousness) that could influence how fans react in front of an incongruent promotional activity. This research brings a better understanding of the impact of brand personality on marketing strategies and brand equity.

While it is well known that managers make scheduling decisions based on multiple objectives, the majority of sequencing research is directed towards single criterion assessments of scheduling performance. A preference value decision model approach for the selection of job shop sequencing rules using multiple performance criteria is presented. The model is general in nature and may be applied to any of a number of sequencing rules and performance measures. A case example is provided to illustrate the procedure.

Snacking contributes to one-quarter of children’s total daily energy intake in the USA, with many snack foods being nutrient-poor and energy-dense. Snacking and sugary beverage consumption have been identified as potential contributors to childhood overweight and obesity and may play a particularly important role among children from socioeconomically disadvantaged households that generally display higher rates of obesity. This exploratory study investigated associations between consumption of snack foods, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) and overweight and obesity in children from low-income households.

Data from households that participated in a multi-state cost-offset (CO-CSA) community supported agriculture intervention in 2016 and 2017 (n = 305) were analyzed. Fixed effect regression models were used to estimate associations between child monthly consumption of salty snack foods; sweet snack foods and SSBs; and child weight status, accounting for demographic characteristics.

No associations were found between snack or SSB consumption and child overweight. However, household income was significantly, negatively related to all three consumption variables (Salty snacks: ß = −0.09, SE = 0.04, p = 0.02; Sweet snacks: ß= −0.10, SE = 0.04, p = 0.01; SSB: ß= −0.21, SE = 0.05, p = 0.0001). The results suggest that household income may play an important role in children’s snacking and SSB behaviors among more disadvantaged households.

Factors beyond snack food and SSB consumption should be explored to better understand childhood overweight and obesity, and to inform future obesity interventions.

Socioeconomic disparities in childhood obesity are an ongoing policy-relevant issue within the USA and internationally. This study provides new information about child snacking behaviors in a unique, low-income population and contributes to the evidence base regarding the role household context in shaping child consumption behaviors.

Stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships are increasingly common as a result of relatively high rates of divorce and remarriage and increased longevity. When relationships are close, stepgrandparents may be valuable resources for stepgrandchildren, but the relational processes salient to the development of these ties remain largely unknown. The purposes of our research were: (1) to explore the complexity of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships, and (2) to examine processes that affected stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development.

We present results from four grounded theory projects, which were based on semistructured interviews with 58 stepgrandchildren who provided data about 165 relationships with stepgrandparents. Collectively, these studies highlighted key processes of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development operating within four distinct pathways to stepgrandparenthood – long-term, later life, skip-generation, and inherited pathways.

Stepgrandchildren’s closeness to stepgrandparents was influenced by factors such as timing (the child’s age and when in their life courses intergenerational relationships began), stepgrandparents’ roles in the life of the middle-generation parent and the quality of those relationships, whether or not the stepfamily defined the stepgrandparent as kin (e.g., through the use of claiming language), intergenerational contact frequency, and stepgrandparents’ affinity-building.

Our study furthers understanding of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild by attending to the importance of context in examining the processes that affect intergenerational steprelationship development. Exploring processes related to intergenerational steprelationships strengthens our understanding of the benefits and challenges associated with steprelationship development. Our study also sheds light on the “new look at kinship” and the processes that inform the social construction of family in a changing familial landscape.

This paper aims to propose that millennials – those born between 1980 and 1995 – are uniquely impacted by the long-term impact of the pandemic, which has accelerated the work from home movement and exacerbated organizational issues associated with working remotely. Millennials, on the cusp of embarking on important leadership roles in this new remote work environment, pose challenges and opportunities for organizations will that will last long after the pandemic.

This paper provides a viewpoint based on a narrative review and on the authors’ professional experiences within organizations. Based upon these findings, this paper has reimagined the Mumford skills model to explore millennial managers in this new remote work, post-pandemic context. The goal of this narrative review was to provide a full picture of the “Millennial manager” and the challenges they face in becoming effective managers, as well as highlight the important strengths they bring to the table.

Managers may have challenges regarding job satisfaction, productivity and organizational commitment. The positive factors are millennials prefer flexibility, teamwork and creating a positive work-life balance. The negative side has to do with isolation and the ability to embrace the organization culture in a remote environment. This model shows positive and limiting factors of millennials related to organization effectiveness. The major propositions and model were that millennium managers in this new environment increase interpersonal communication to maintain trust, effective mentoring, resolve strong organizational culture and ensure effective delegation and conflict resolution.

This study discovered challenges for managers, including developing loyalty and improving employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Active listening is necessary for team management to show that all team members are valued irrespective of the work environment. Active listening and empathy will increase social support at work, which improves personal well-being and productivity. Millennials will continue to use their technological skills, their desire for teamwork and their preference for participative management, resulting in becoming an invaluable asset in this era of organizational transformation. The challenge for organizations is to realize the millennial generation possesses many talents and must successfully engage them in the pursuit of organizational goals.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge regarding millennials in organizations with a specific focus on the new work environment created by the global pandemic. The authors hope that their adapted skills model – the millennial manager skills model – becomes an important resource for articulation this new environment that millennial managers are in and that this model can be further refined and expanded through empirical exploration.