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Small and emerging business failure rates are high for numerous reasons. Government regulation has been cited as a contributing factor, yet literature documenting the actual effects of government regulation on small business is limited. The purpose of this paper is to clearly outline the regulatory compliance costs and effects on small businesses in the California dairy industry.

This paper applies a public choice framework to the history of dairy regulation and performs a case study on a small business, The White Moustache (TWM). The case study traces the burdens and costs of state dairy regulations placed on TWM as they sought the necessary permits to sell their artisan yogurt.

Strict and unresponsive regulation restricted TWM from selling their product. To comply with state dairy regulations, the direct costs to TWM would have increased by 70 percent. In addition, regulation caused two and a half years of delay before the company decided to leave the state. California’s dairy regulations place burdens on small dairy businesses that work as a strategic barrier to entry in the marketplace.

This case study highlights the direct effects that strict and unresponsive regulation can have on entrepreneurs and emerging businesses through a case study. Improving the understanding of how regulation affects small business can highlight new paths forward and help improve the small business failure rate in the USA.

This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework to integrate a maturity model to the supply chain (SC) strategy, in order to understand how a maturity model can be useful in diagnosing and developing the capabilities of SC business processes (BPs) to meet SC's strategy.

The proposed framework was based on an SC strategy framework, in which a maturity model was added in order to diagnose and identify SC process capabilities that need to be developed, per maturity level, according to the type of SC strategy and the competitive strategy. A grid was proposed to analyze the relationship between them. An exploratory case study (multiple cases) was applied to verify the applicability of the model.

Findings indicate that a maturity model can delimit and align, as far as the company needs to reach, the SC strategic interests with the company's competitive objectives. However, some barriers and facilitating factors implicit can impact on this alignment. It is also noted that the maximum level of SC management (SCM) maturity may not be in the strategic interest of the company.

Due to the few empirical studies on the value of maturity models, this research contributes to the understanding of the usefulness of an SC process maturity model for the SC strategy. Moreover, the framework can show how a maturity model can serve as a parameter and guide to develop the capabilities of processes, resources and activities to meet the SC strategy and the reach of the competitive strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of cultural production, consumption and intermediation in the context of digital music.

This research adopts an interpretivist, ethnoconsumerist epistemology along with a netnographic research design combined with hermeneutic analysis. Interpreting both the text view and field view of an ethnoconsumerist approach, the netnographic research design includes participant observation across multiple social media platforms as well as virtual interviews and analysis of media material. The context of application is a digital music subculture known as Vaporwave. Vaporwave participants deliberately distort fundamental aspects of modern and postmodern culture in a digital, musical, artistic and storied manner.

Hermeneutic analysis has identified a critical and nostalgic narrative of consumerism and hyper-reality, evident as symbolic parallels, intertextual relationships, existential themes and cultural codes. As a techno savvy community embracing lo-fi production, self-releasing promotion and anonymity from within a complexity of aliases and myriad collaborations, the vaporous existentialism of Vaporwave participants skirts copyright liability in the process. Accordingly, Vaporwave is documented as blurring reality and fantasy, material and symbolic, production and consumption. Essentially, Vaporwave participants are shown to be digital natives turned digital rebels and heretical consumers, better described as cultural curators.

This research demonstrates a more complex notion of cultural production, consumption and intermediation, argued to be more accurately described as cultural curation.

As digital heretics, Vaporwave participants challenge traditional notions of modernity, such as copyright law, and postmodern notions such as working consumers and consuming producers.

Vaporwave participants present a case of digital natives turned digital rebels and consumer heretics, who are actively curating culture.

This interpretive ethnoconusmerist study combining netnography and hermeneutic analysis of an online underground music subculture known as Vaporwave shows digital music artists as cultural curators.

The main purpose of this research is exploring the tipping points for a radical shift in supplier (dis)satisfaction. This study identifies triggers and links them to consequences for the buyer–supplier relationship.

The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was used to interview Dutch supplier representatives in the infrastructure sector, resulting in rich descriptions of 29 critical incidents, extracting first-hand information.

Safety issues, technical disputes and recruitment of supplier’s technical staff have been identified as tipping points for suppliers to become dissatisfied. Implementing performance-based contracting is another critical incident that caused irritation and disappointment. On a more operational level, dissatisfaction was provoked by tender errors and price discussions with the buyer. This study also identified tipping points by which dissatisfied suppliers abruptly turned into satisfied suppliers. The effect of a solution-oriented buyer intervention appears to be most powerful if this behaviour transcends prior expectations.

Consequences of misunderstandings and discussion between supplier and buyer may be manageable or repairable, depending on the causes and triggers that influenced a supplier’s dissatisfaction. An early warning system could prove its worth, so that buyers are not faced with unpleasant surprises.

Despite the growing number of studies, processes of how antecedents lead to supplier (dis)satisfaction are not well understood. Antecedents are predominantly investigated by cross-sectional survey data, giving little insights into micro-processes and actual interaction between buyers and suppliers. Although CIT has been applied in many disciplines, the technique is hardly used within the context of purchasing and supply management research.