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The purpose of this study is to estimate the amount of cash flow deficit, if any, needed to maintain the operating costs and service debt of a startup cow–calf enterprise. The study compares long-term profitability and risk between starting small and building a herd to full carrying capacity or by starting at desired herd capacity.

A dynamic cattle growth model was developed to capture expanding and maintaining the desired herd size. Discounted cash flow (DCF) models over a 15-year period were calculated to estimate net present value (NPV), modified internal rate of return (MIRR) and cash flow deficit to keep the business operating and service debt. Simulation analyses were conducted considering price and production risk.

Starting at the desired herd size was preferred, according to NPV/MIRR and cash flow deficit, but the differences were not substantial. Assuming the operation is liquidated at book values, there was a 36.3% probability of this enterprise having a zero or positive NPV. If the conservative terminal value assumption is relaxed up to feasible market values, the cow–calf enterprise is economically attractive at an estimated 2.4% opportunity cost of capital. However, the producer would experience a cash flow deficit during the first seven years, which was simulated to be $14,892 and $15,985 annual for both strategies.

Innovative methods used in this study include varying the annual opportunity cost of capital as a function of financing decisions, stochastic prices by cattle type and stochastic weaning weights that are a function of a dynamic cattle model.

The authors examined the impact of the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) and Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments to United States agricultural producers on non-real estate agricultural loans.

The authors used quarterly, state-level commercial bank data from 2016–2020 to estimate dynamic panel models.

The authors found MFP and CFAP payments not associated with the percentage of non-real estate agricultural loans with payments over 90 days late. However, these payments associated with the percentage of non-real estate agricultural loans with payments between 30 and 89 days late. The available data utilized cannot consider when producers received the actual payment and what they specifically did with those funds.

The contribution of this study is for US policymakers and agricultural lenders. The findings could be helpful in designing and implementing future ad hoc payment programs and provide an understanding of potential shortcomings of the current safety net for agricultural producers in the Farm Bill. Additionally, findings can assist agricultural lenders in predicting the impact of ad hoc payments on their distressed loan portfolios.

This paper aims to examine the antecedents of brand passion and brand community commitment, namely, self-congruity and athlete attraction, as well as their effects on online brand advocacy in online brand communities.

The sample comprises members of a Facebook football fan club brand community. An online survey measuring athlete-level factors, team-level factors and online brand advocacy provides data to test the conceptual framework using structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLS-SEM).

The findings of this paper support the positive spillover effect from athlete subbrand to team brand advocacy, as self-congruity exerted positive effects on brand passion and brand community commitment, while athlete attraction influenced brand community commitment, leading to online brand advocacy.

The findings validate the dimensions of online brand advocacy and advance research on sports brand hierarchy in brand architecture by establishing the transference effect from athlete to the team brand.

To effectively manage their brands online, brand managers need to pay attention to the powerful and multifaceted tool of online brand advocacy. Brand managers can capitalize on their active advocates by working closely with them to co-create uplifting and authentic brand stories that are worthwhile for sharing, especially in times of crisis.

Building on the developmental trajectory of brand love and vicarious brand experience, the findings verify the directionality of the spillover effect and offer insights into the development of brand advocacy across different brand levels.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) offers management researchers an approach which allows deep examination of the relationship between individuals and their environments, particularly in complex social situations. Phenomenology studies phenomena, or things and events, as they are perceived by people's consciousness. Interpretivism allows researchers to access such internal awareness of research participants by attempting to understand the words used by subjects to describe their experiences and perceptions. Inherently subjective, this approach requires self-awareness by the researcher and the willingness to abandon preconceived notions in favor of interactive listening and exploration, relying on terms and concepts volunteered by participants rather than nominated by theory or preceding literature. Qualitative text analysis software can be utilized to facilitate aggregation and distillation of the voluminous narratives that result from the open-ended semi-structured interviews typically employed to collect data for IPA. However, impartiality and discernment on the part of the researcher remain essential in interpreting any automated analytical results. The researcher becomes in essence a second-hand observer, peering through windows voluntarily opened by participants, attempting to understand their understanding of their world.

This chapter introduces IPA, providing an overview of its rationale and approach, and illustrates its application in a management-related setting, focusing on cultural adaptation of immigrant professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an accounting association and its key members define, control, and claim their knowledge; adopt a closure and/or openness policy to enhance their status/influence; and respond to structural/institutional forces from international organisations and/or the state in a particular historical context, such as a globalised/neo-liberalised setting.

The authors draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical tools (field, capital, habitus, and doxa) to understand how public sector accrual accounting was defined, and how the Korean Association for Government Accounting was formed and represented as a group with public sector accounting expertise. The research context was the implementation of accrual accounting in South Korea between 1997/1998, when the Asian financial crisis broke out, and 2006/2007, when accrual accounting was enforced by legislation. The authors interviewed social actors recognised as public sector accounting experts, in addition to examining related documents such as articles in academic journals, newsletters, invitations, membership forms, newspaper articles, and curricula vitae.

The authors found that the key founders of KAGA included some public administration professors, who advocated public sector accrual accounting via civil society groups immediately after Korea applied to the International Monetary Fund for bailout loans and a new government was formed in 1997/1998. In conjunction with public servants, they defined and designed public sector accrual accounting as a measure of public sector reform and as a part of the broader government budget process, rather than as an accounting initiative. They also co-opted accounting professors and CPA-qualified accountants through their personal connections, based on shared educational backgrounds, to represent the association as a public sector accounting experts’ group.

These findings suggest that the study of the accounting profession cannot be restricted to a focus on professional accounting associations and that accounting knowledge can be acquired by non-accountants. Therefore, the authors argue that the relationship between accounting knowledge, institutional forms, and key actors’ strategies is rich and multifaceted.

A proposed typology of moral exemplars in business highlights instances selected to illustrate standards for inclusion. The typology distinguishes among champions, heroes, and saints as different kinds of business exemplars. The typology reflects variations in both specific decision conditions and moral value emphases of business actors. The typology also differentiates moral exemplars from moral neutrals (i.e., amoral actors) and moral sinners (i.e., moral value scofflaws). The objective is to advance understanding of moral character and moral courage in business settings.

The methodology combines original conceptual argument and brief case summaries taken from available literature. The chapter is not a systematic survey of literature but cites key works. Construction of the typology involved iteration between conceptual development and case interpretation.

The chapter separates business cases into private business and public business, and applies Adam Smith’s distinction between citizenship and good citizenship. An additional distinction is made between extreme conditions and normal conditions. Moral heroism in business is restricted to life-and-death or strongly analogous situations in extreme conditions such as hazardous whistleblowing. Moral sainthood in business involves extreme maximization of a single value going far beyond simple compliance with legal requirements and typical ethical norms – Smith’s definition of citizenship. Moral championing in business concerns some degree of lesser self-sacrifice in defense of important values reflecting Smith’s definition of good citizenship.

The chapter is a selection of literature undertaken in iteration with the conceptual development effort. The original research aspect of the chapter is thus quite limited. The author is not positioned to judge the accuracy of published information, for or against a particular instance. The classifications thus depend on whether the instance would, if the generally reported facts are basically accurate, serve as a reasonable illustration of standards for inclusion. Criticisms have been made concerning some of the instances discussed here.

The emphasis is on providing standards for defining moral exemplars for business to suggest how much can be accomplished in business through moral influence.

The conceptual contribution is original, although drawing on the philosophical literature debate about saints and heroes. The chapter treats exemplar as the overarching construct, separated into three kinds: heroes, saints, and champions. Sinner is implicit in the notion of saint. The chapter adds moral champions and moral neutrals to isolate moral heroism. The cases exist in the literature, but have been combined together here for the first time.

Alternative education settings (AES; i.e., self-contained alternative schools, therapeutic day treatment and residential schools, and juvenile corrections schools) serve youth with complicated and often serious academic and behavioral needs. The use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) and practices with Best Available Evidence are necessary to increase the likelihood of long-term success for these youth. In this chapter, we define three primary categories of AES and review what we know about the characteristics of youth in these schools. Next, we discuss the current emphasis on identifying and implementing EBPs with regard to both academic interventions (i.e., reading and mathematics) and interventions addressing student behavior. In particular, we consider implementation in AES, where there are often high percentages of youth requiring special education services and who have a significant need for EBPs to succeed academically, behaviorally, and in their transition to adulthood. We focus our discussion on: (a) examining approaches to identifying EBPs; (b) providing a brief review of EBPs and Best Available Evidence in the areas of mathematics, reading, and interventions addressing student behavior for youth in AES; (c) delineating key implementation challenges in AES; and (d) providing recommendations for how to facilitate the use of EBPs in AES.

The purpose of this paper is to examine multiple dimensions of reflexive and reciprocal mentorship as they work through the fear of teaching challenging and politically charged ideas.

This piece is a case study of the complex instances of reciprocal mentorship within a teacher education program. Objects of analysis included the informal educational experiences from the bi-monthly meetings and student-teaching experiences. Semi-structured interviews, field notes, interpersonal discussion and the authors’ own reflections were used as data sources.

The authors found that having difficult conversations in informal spaces provided social studies teacher candidates with the opportunity to get more comfortable with challenging conversations; that mentorship is helpful when shifting context between formal and informal spaces; and that once these teachers grew more comfortable, they moved from mentee to mentor with support and guidance from their own mentors. The authors conclude by providing several implications for pre-service teachers, teacher and teacher educators, as they help social studies practitioners work with and beyond the politics of fear.

Limitations such as subjectivity, generalizability and implementation exist. Factors such as personality, program, cultural background, lived experience and other elements played a role in the findings. Therefore, the authors do not suggest these are monolithic claims about the nature of mentorship, teacher education or teaching, but rather the authors wish to share these findings and recommendations.

The authors argue that three major findings emerged from the data. First, informal spaces are valuable for initiating difficult conversations among mentors and mentees. Second, shifting between formal and informal spaces can be uncomfortable, but allow for mentoring opportunities during these challenging instances of becoming. Third, moving from mentee to mentor includes valuable reciprocal mentorship within a learning community.

This research project is grounded in the needs of the participants and researchers. To the authors’ knowledge, a project of this type with similar participants has not been done.

This chapter examines the 1999 trial of Aaron McKinney for the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming whose death propelled forward an incipient movement to legislate against hate crimes. It explores the competing ways in which Aaron McKinney was conjured as a legal persona, defined through the opposing lenses of gay panic and of homophobic hate. It situates those personae in conflicting narratives of criminal culpability emerging out of indeterminate legal doctrines and definitions (the unwritten law; the meaning of ‘malice’), and argues that in conjuring them, adversarial criminal trials necessarily destabilise the ‘default legal person’. In doing so, trials performatively reconstruct the past in ways that both mark and mask a past events. In the McKinney case, contests over his culpability emerged against a backdrop of loss, both epistemological and affective, generating a projective reckoning with Shepard’s death in ways that enabled a politically transformational mourning process.

This study aims to investigate the critical role of online brand community (OBC) engagement and brand evangelism: the role of age, gender and membership number.

To achieve the study’s objective, 303 active Facebook OBC users were surveyed. The AMOS structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test the hypothesised model.

The results indicate that OBC engagement improves brand evangelism. Specifically, the results show that age, gender, and OBC membership number moderate the relationship between OBC engagement and brand evangelism. Interestingly, this study found that female, younger and low-OBC follower consumers more significantly contribute to nourishing brand evangelism than male, older and high-OBC follower counterparts.

OBC engagement is validated as a key brand evangelism driver, further substantiating its role as a crucial strategic metric. Moreover, age, gender and OBC membership number as moderating factors in the association between OBC engagement and brand evangelism (word of mouth referral, brand defence and future purchases) have been verified. Although the findings suggest that improved OBC engagement contributes to evangelism, this effect transpires more significantly among female, younger and low-OBC followers than male, older and high-OBC followers.