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The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management and interested research a sense of how the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament is affecting worker productivity in the workplace. There are several positive and negative issues concerning how some employees are willing to spend work time following the NCAA tournament and related office gambling activities.

A review of the applied literature on sports‐related gambling and bracketing that is quite widespread in the USA and other countries was provided. The sample consisted of relatively well‐paid professionals, who may routinely engage in office pools and most universally are involved in bracketing March Madness plays. This resulted in 145 useable questionnaires recording responses to 28 variables from an initial sampling frame of slightly over 200 potential respondents associated with a major Pittsburgh‐based financial service provider. Factor analysis and multivariate statistical analysis were used to test several hypotheses.

Management appears to be successfully delivering the message that office gambling activities harm productivity if management activity discourages office gambling, but there appears to be a trade‐off as labor productivity may be slightly reduced on the short term, and employee cohesiveness may increase on the long term. It was also found that the degree of personal involvement is important; the more an employee is involved, the more negative the impact that March Madness activities will have on his/her productivity.

March Madness is a time‐honored tradition that many employees take for granted and will engage in regardless of the extrinsic controls that management may care to implement, making the extrinsic controls too expensive for a questionable return in enhanced labor productivity during March Madness.

It is an interesting academic research question concerning the balance of productivity losses and gains in employee cohesiveness that warrants additional research in the intrinsic motivations of both management and their employees.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and test certain assumptions concerning the employee productivity and employee morale associated with the annual participation in March Madness activities.

The sample consisted of relatively well‐paid professionals many of whom routinely engage in office pools and most universally are involved in bracketing March Madness plays, from a major Pittsburgh‐based financial service provider. Multivariate statistical analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Although management may advertise that their companies lose operational productivity, respondents generally agree that there is little drop off in workplace productivity. Apparently, there is a trade off between labor productivity, which may be slightly reduced on the short term, and employee cohesiveness, which may increase on the long term.

March Madness activities are such time‐honored traditions that it may be questionable whether any efforts on the part of management to curb office pooling would be effective, due to the expense, uncertain consequences, and doubtful impacts on productivity arising from such initiatives.

Continued research to determine the balance of productivity losses and gains in employee cohesiveness and morale is needed to develop appropriate strategies to effectively deal with the complexities posed by March Madness activities in the workplace environment.

Casino gambling in the United States has increased significantly in the last 30 years, going from just 2 states (Nevada and New Jersey) in 1988 to 41 states with over 980 casinos. This rapid growth of casino gambling has resulted in additional social costs, including workplace embezzlements committed by problem gamblers. Embezzlements contribute to greater fraud risk for organizations in casino regions and are expected to rise as casinos multiply and increasingly cater to convenience gamblers. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the proximity of casinos as a fraud risk factor for embezzlement. The authors recommend that internal and external auditors for companies located in casino areas assess this fraud risk and where appropriate, perform audit procedures to address this risk. There is also an opportunity for external auditors to assist those companies located in casino regions (that may lack internal auditors) in establishing fraud prevention programs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the functional motive and trait antecedents of four forms of gambling – slot machines, skilled card games, sports betting, and participating in marketing promotional games such as sweepstakes and contests.

A hierarchical model of motivation and personality (3M model) was employed to investigate the trait and functional motive antecedents of four gambling activities. Five motives for gambling were identified – money, excitement, social interaction, escape from problems, and self‐esteem enhancement. In addition, the effects of demographic variables (i.e. age, gender, and education) on four gambling types were examined. A total of 1,158 responses were collected from an online consumer panel.

The results suggest that the four forms of gambling have divergent motives, traits, and demographic profiles.

Future research should further explore other possible traits in predicting different gambling activities (e.g. superstitious beliefs). Another limitation of the study is the online panel sample, which is somewhat older and more highly educated than the general public.

The findings will help marketers better segment the market based on unique profiles of personality traits, functional motives, and demographic variables associated with each gambling type and design communication strategies to reach the targeted consumers.

Previous researchers have neither investigated the functional motives for gambling nor compared the motives for divergent forms of gambling. This research employs a hierarchical model (3M model) to investigate the trait and functional motive predictors of multiple forms of gambling.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the market demand of sport lottery in China from the following perspectives: available types and varieties of sport lottery, number of retail outlets, public welfare funds, promotion costs, per capita income, and population.

As the earliest province of issuing the sales of sport lottery and having one of the largest sales volumes in China, Guangdong Province was chosen for conducting the current study. Data were obtained from 14 sport lottery administration and distribution centers and statistics bureaus of 14 corresponding municipal cities. Multiple regression analysis was used.

Multiple regression analyses revealed that number of retail outlets, promotion cost, per capita income, and public welfare funds were positively (p<0.05) predictive of sport lottery sales; however, available types and varieties of sport lottery were not found to be significantly (p>0.05) related to total sport lottery sales. The findings are discussed in the context of theories and practices in the marketing and administration of sport lottery sales in China.

Similar studies are suggested to be conducted in provinces and regions beyond Guangdong Province.

This study combined socioeconomic characteristics of the population, lottery game characteristics and management factors for the first time.

The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the Dutch property market from the angle of crime‐inducing conditions and circumstances.

The perspective adopted is in line with recent developments in the study of crime and crime prevention, which focus not so much on perpetrators, as on the opportunities they have to commit a criminal offence.

Despite the exploratory character of the analysis, it can be concluded that the real estate sector lends itself very well to an entwining of regular and irregular activities. Real estate has become booming business, attracting domestic and foreign investment. The market is closed, dominated by old boy networks, with possibilities to conceal irregularities. Regulations, law enforcement and (both formal and informal) control seem to be inadequate. Hence, it is less transparent than other markets and enables legitimate and illegitimate entrepreneurs to meet, co‐operate and share expertise and knowledge.

Strategies to prevent serious forms of crime in the real estate sector vary from self‐regulation and administrative measures to public and private policing. The various public and private institutions tend to stick to a primarily domestically oriented approach, whilst social research in this area is still predominantly based on national studies. The author recommends that comparative, multidisciplinary empirical research on irregularities and crime in the real estate sector in various (European) countries needs to be conducted.

This is one of the first attempts to apply principles of analysis of potential crime‐inducing vulnerabilities to the real estate sector.