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As pressures on organizations to adapt and solve problems creatively increase, employee creativity will become an increasingly important concern. The pressures on businesses and government organizations to adapt to new technologies and external threats require resourcefulness and creativity. Several training interventions have been shown to be effective in enhancing the participants’ creativity. In addition, a number of managerial behaviors seem to affect subordinates’ creativity. However, the topic of training managers to boost their subordinates’ creativity has been virtually ignored. This paper examines the research on creativity training, management training, and the managerial behaviors that affect subordinates’ creativity. Appropriate methods of management training intended to enhance subordinates’ creative performance are suggested.

International outsourcing has been traditionally looked upon as a low end cost effective servicing option to take advantage of the cost arbitrage that exists across countries. Of late, many outsourcing vendors have realized that the advantages of cost differentials that spurred a lot of the global outsourcing business in the past 20 years will disappear in the medium term. The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective about how much value addition, besides cost, traditional outsourcing vendors can provide and what may be the facilitator/inhibitors of such activities.

A case describing the setting up of an offshore analytics operation is presented, which gives a backdrop to the challenges faced in relatively high end value creation processes in a remote outsourced (offshore) environment. This provides some empirical support to a proposed model for facilitating the outsourcing of value‐added services.

A model is proposed for determining the degree to which value‐added services can be outsourced. The key dimensions that influence the degree of outsourcing are: the expertise of the vendor; the environmental stability of the offshore domain; the physical barriers to outsourcing complex business processes such as, communication problems and proximity issues; the possibility of knowledge leakage from the outsourcing domain; and the cost benefits of outsourcing.

The paper contends that conventional offshore‐based service vendors may find it difficult to acquire “expert power” and, set aside negative perceptions of “environmental stability” of their domain, in the pursuit to climb up the value chain in their client organizations. The validation of the proposed model is an opportunity for future research.

This paper is one of the first to present a model that will govern the growth of international outsourcing opportunities in high‐end value‐added processes. It also provides some directions for outsourcing vendors to enhance their capabilities over time to leverage this opportunity.

This paper aims to examine brand innovativeness. While innovativeness has been studied at the product and firm levels, there is little research at the brand level. This paper argues for why this is needed, develops a conceptualization of consumer perceived brand innovativeness (CPBI) from a theoretical perspective and then develops and validates a measure for CPBI.

Three qualitative studies were conducted to generate an enriched and more detailed understanding of what brand innovativeness means to consumers. Data were collected using free association and open-ended elicitation techniques. Next, a CPBI scale was developed and validated in three quantitative studies.

The results indicate that innovative brands are related with several interesting core and secondary associations that have not been adequately addressed in previous research. CPBI is conceptualized as a unidimensional construct. Altogether six studies show that the proposed CPBI measure is valid and reliable.

The present study is the first to identify the limitations of product and firm innovativeness conceptualizations with regards to brand innovativeness. It develops a unique and theoretically supported conceptualization and operationalization of CPBI. The first brand concept map for the concept of innovative brands is presented. The results of the studies indicate the measure’s ability to successfully predict important consumer behavior variables such as purchase intentions, and to demonstrate superior predictive performance compared with a key related scale in the mobile phone category.

When do you throw it all away? The first senior female in a male-dominated business school decides it all comes down to a question of principle – and maybe a few others. What is the best balance between her responsibilities to students, family, and the next generation of female leaders? Can she both be true to herself and compromise? What factors should influence this decision? This case brings together questions about power and influence, rational decision-making, leadership, and the intra and inter-personal responsibilities of organizational “firsts.” Further, issues related to a university's effort to better compete within the global higher education marketplace, provide a valuable opportunity to explore institutional approaches to promoting diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency.

This case, which was developed from primary sources, highlights the array of competing objectives and personal and political tensions involved in university administration.

This case was designed for graduate students in Masters of Public Administration, Masters of Business Administration, Masters of Education in Organizational Leadership, or similar graduate degrees that include significant management and leadership content. Students working with this case should have already completed foundational courses in topics such as organizational management, public policy, leadership, strategic human resources management, or their equivalents within their respective programs of study. Virtually all of the issues raised by this case address core themes, concepts, theses, and theories associated with an accredited graduate program in educational management, business or public administration.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the long-term cointegrating relationship between ocean, rail, truck and air cargo freight rates, as well as the short-term dynamics between these four series. The authors also test the predictive ability of these freight rates on major economic indicators.

The authors employ a vector error-correction model using 16 years of monthly time series data on freight rate data in the ocean, truck, rail and air cargo sectors to examine the interrelationship between these series as well as their interrelationship with major economic indicators.

The authors find that truck freight rates and as well as dry bulk freight rates have the strongest predictive power over other transportation freight rates as well as for the four major economic indicators used in this study. The authors find that dry bulk freight rates lead other freight rates in the short-run but lag other freight rates in the long run.

While ocean freight rate time series have been examined in a large number of studies, little research has been done on the interrelationship between ocean freight rates and the freight rates of other modes of transportation. Through the use of data on five different freight rate series, the authors are able to assess which rates lead and which rates lag each other and thus assist future researchers and practitioners forecast freight rates. The authors are also one of the few studies to assess the predictive power of non-ocean freight rates on major economic indicators.