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A key pillar of Channel 4's success is the ability to engage with young people. However, the vibrancy and dynamism of youth culture mean having to look for new ways to understand this audience. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue.

The study used a mix of online forums, street interviews, blogs, video diaries and input from marketing professionals, designers, event promoters and others to explore today's tribes. The quantification of tribal characteristics proved a greater challenge. The solution was an online game, seeded and spread virally by users.

The study identified 23 tribes. Above this there are three broad tribal directions, each with its own primary influence: Townies (the mainstream), Indie Kids (guitar music) and Trendies (fashion). It is now possible to produce tribal profiles for over 200 brands, as well as media activities, drug usage and expenditure.

The study's method of quantifying the tribes meant that data on the size of each tribe should be treated with caution. The relative success of the seeding process could affect the number of responses achieved from a tribe.

Anyone needing to communicate with young people, from brands to the government, can benefit from the study. For example, media agencies have developed communications plans targeted towards different tribal areas.

This paper demonstrates that talking to young people on their terms and creating an imaginative and rewarding research experience produce genuine insight from probably the toughest audience to understand.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and nearly caused a meltdown of the financial system. This article looks at the situation before Lehman went bankrupt and how this event came to trigger a financial panic during the fall of 2008 and early 2009. Two key ideas inform the analysis. The first is that what triggers financial panics are typically hidden losses. The second is that confidence plays a key role in financial panics and that confidence can be conceptualized as a belief that action can be based on proxy signs, rather than on direct information about the situation itself.

The events surrounding the financial crisis of 2008 are well known, and subject to a broad level of agreement. Less accepted are theories regarding the larger context within which this crisis was able to unfold. Much has been made of the financialization of the American economy and the lax regulation of new financial instruments, both of which stem from the trend toward a laissez-faire economic policy that has characterized the United States since the late 1970s. I do not take issue with these claims. Instead, I argue that these developments have an earlier and deeper source: a breakdown in the ability of large American corporations to provide collective solutions to economic and social problems, a phenomenon that I term “the decline of the American corporate elite.” From a group with a relatively moderate political perspective and a pragmatic strategic orientation, this elite, through a series of historical developments, became a fragmented, largely ineffectual group, with a high degree of societal legitimacy but a paradoxical lack of power. I trace the history of this group, from its origins in the early 1900s, through its heyday in the post-World War II period, to its decline beginning in the 1970s and escalating in the 1980s. I argue that the lack of coordination within the American business community created the conditions for the crises of the post-1980 period – including the massive breakdown of 2008 – to occur.

Merger waves have typically been viewed through the prism of either corporate strategy or macro-economics. This paper aims to broaden debate about factors that cause – or are associated with – mergers/merger waves over a 120-year period. It ascribes “personalities” to six distinct waves and draws an overarching conclusion about how merger architects are viewed.

Databases and interviews are used to piece together detail about CEOs associated with six distinct and recognized merger-waves during a 120-year focal period. The study establishes and defends, a priori, principles for interrogating data to get a sense of each wave-era’s corporate personality/idiosyncrasy. For each era, two exemplar CEO-profiles are presented and – through inductive-reasoning – held out as representative.

Distinct personalities are associated with six merger waves. Each wave is given a summary anthropomorphic description which conveys a sense that it may be viewed as the non-rationale expression of aggregate and historically distinct CEO behavior within a circumscribed timeframe.

The work’s key limitation – explicitly acknowledged – is that it amassed data/evidence from disparate historical sources. However, the authors have developed and defended principles for addressing this concern.

Improved investment analyses, in particular. The work prefigures formal establishment of a new variable-set impacting share-price prediction.

The paper offers a perspective on how psychological/personality-related variables impact management decision-making, creating something of a bridge between mostly non-overlapping research disciplines.

The paper broadens debate about how and why merger waves occur. It removes the exclusive analysis of merger waves from the hands of economic historians and strategic management theorists.

Describes the history of the tobacco industry and its emergence as an extremely effective marketer and non-market strategist. After years of success, both publicly and politically, the leaders of the tobacco industry are faced with mounting political pressure and the financial threat of litigation from class-action lawsuits. The leaders face an industry-wide strategic decision of whether to acquiesce to government demands in exchange for immunity, focus on judicial success, or develop a new course of action.

To evaluate the formulation and implementation of non-market strategies in the context of regulatory, legislative, and legal institutions. To understand how various aspects of the non-market environment interact and how these environments not only change over time, but change market competition within an industry. Further, to formulate and decide between firm-specific and industry-wide strategies. Finally, to appreciate and reflect upon the potential conflict between non-market strategies and ethical concerns.