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Organisational learning (OL) is a critical capability family firms (FFs) need in order to adapt to an increasingly turbulent environment. Given the uniqueness of FFs and their differentiated decision-making processes, this review addresses fragmentation in the literature and synthesises prior research outlining the development of OL in FFs.

A systematic literature review was conducted using four databases, and 53 pertinent papers on OL in FFs published from 1998 to 2023 were analysed using the theory, characteristics, context and methodology (TCCM) framework.

The last five years (2019–2023) show a marked increase in interest in OL in FFs, with a rise in the number of quantitative studies. The findings indicate that OL is mainly studied as a unidimensional construct, while it is a multidimensional capability. Strategic management and organisational behaviour theories are commonly employed, while theories specific to family business such as socioemotional wealth (SEW) and familiness are underrepresented. Most studies focus on FFs in the Northern Hemisphere, and few studies examine OL in FFs located in the Global South. The TCCM framework reveals the complexity and multi-layered nature of OL in FFs.

This is one of the first systematic reviews to synthesise research on OL in FFs. The proposed research agenda identifies fruitful areas for future investigations concentrating on the multidimensional nature of OL, family-related outcomes, as well as contextual and methodological research directions of interest to family business researchers.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of accessibility, quality perception, and price perception on consumer satisfaction with imported fruit, specifically imported Asian pears. The moderating role of the country image was also assessed.

A total of 413 Americans aged over 19 years who had purchased imported Asian pears were surveyed through an online questionnaire. Structural equation modeling and multiple group analysis were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Accessibility, quality perception, and price perception exhibited a significant impact on consumer satisfaction with imported Asian pears and influenced behavioral intention through satisfaction. Multiple group analysis results revealed a moderating effect of the country image on these relationships. Accessibility had a significant impact on consumer satisfaction of consumers with a high country image of Korea, whereas prices had no significant impact on them. In contrast, price was determined as a key satisfaction factor for consumers with a low country image of Korea, whereas accessibility did not have a significant impact.

This study contributes to the literature on imported fruits and provides practical implications for promoting the consumption of imported Asian pears in the US.

Active participation in the Lied Library construction management proved to be an interesting challenge as well as a learning experience for library personnel. Problems of architectural design flaws, change‐orders, and other issues were discussed during the project management weekly meetings in which the library was represented. In order to make the library technologically adaptable and extend the life of the building, different types of infrastructure were put into place, including an automated storage and retrieval system. Unanticipated problems caused construction delays, and the library administration had to remain flexible while preparing for the move into the building.

The paper introduces a new method for single step synthesis of copper phthalocyanine green pigment using microwave irradiation to activate C−H bonds on the aromatic rings that are possible by creation of chlorine radicals. The aims of this study are to investigate the possibility of high-efficiency product reaction, removing acidic wastewater, time optimization, and maximizing number of chlorine on aromatic rings.

The paper presents a new synthesis technique, which does not have the problems of the conventional methods. Microwave irradiation is used as a chemical reaction initiator by creation of chlorine radicals in saturated aqueous solution of sodium chloride and C−H bond activation on aromatic rings. The approach yields to a high quality of product, uniform particle size distribution, high efficiency and an environmental friendly procedure.

The paper introduces the use of suitable materials and water solvents in chemical reactions under microwave radiation at low temperatures. This shows that the microwave irradiation activates C−H bonds on aromatic rings and creates chlorine radicals at the same time, which results in relatively fast reaction of synthesis copper phthalocyanine green.

The ammonium molybdate catalyst, which is used in this method, should be weighed carefully. The effects of transition metals on chemical reactions in the presence of microwave irradiation can also be chlorinated other unsaturated bonds.

The method develops a simple and practical solution to improve the synthesis of phthalocyanine green pigment.

The synthesis method of copper phthalocyanine green pigment is novel. CuPhcCl₁₆ has numerous applications in industrial.

Highly coloured, thermally stable metal free, copper, cobalt and nickel of the hexadecachloro‐ and hexadecabromo‐phthalocyanine were synthesized by the urea fusion technique in the dry method. The structure of these compounds was confirmed via spectrophotometric measurements such as ultraviolet‐visible, nuclear magnetic resonance and infrared spectra. Evaluates the pigmentary properties of these compounds according to standard international methods. From the results reveals that these compounds have outstanding properties which allow them to be excellent pigments for various applications.

This paper aims to examine from an information processing perspective how Delphi-based analyses can be used to overcome some challenges of dynamic business environments in emerging markets.

Delphi-based, future-oriented approach utilizing scenario planning methodology based on real-time expert-panel data.

Delphi-based analyses can indeed serve as an information processing aid to reduce uncertainty and equivocality in an emerging market.

A multistage analysis approach integrating the political, economic, socio-cultural and technological-stakeholder framework to support and better structure managers’ information processing in an emerging market.

This paper aims to report on an in-depth qualitative study that focuses on the convergence of the interpretive activities of knowing, living in and valuing the world in lay reasoning about climate change. Although awareness is growing that lay people interact with scientific knowledge about climate change in complex ways, relatively little is known about this interaction. Much quantitative research on public attitudes to climate change does little to draw out the cognitive and experiential processes by which lay people arrive at understandings of climate change.

Through narrative analysis of qualitative interviews, this paper examines lay rationalities of climate change as a process of not only knowing the world (epistemology), but of being oriented towards the world (ontology) and valuing the world (axiology).

The findings emphasise the extent of individual variation in lay interpretations of climate change, and their internal complexity. Almost all participants display differences in reasoning about climate change when considering their personal lives as compared to the wider, public world. Distinct accounts of self and world in lay rationalities are evident in the ways that participants imagine the future and express their feelings of culpability for and responsibility to act on climate change.

This paper argues that lay reasoning about climate science does not just engage ways of knowing the world but also ways of being in and valuing the world so as to open up multiple trajectories for comprehension.

The subject area is international business and global operations.

The study includes BSc, MSc and MBA students and management trainees who are interested in learning how an industry can be assessed to make a decision on market entry/expansion. Even senior management teams could be targeted in executive education programs, as this case provides a detailed procedure and methodology that is also used by companies (multinational corporations and small- and medium-sized enterprises) to develop strategies on corporate and functional levels.

A group of five senior executive teams of different Swiss luxury and lifestyle companies wanted to enter the Middle East market. To figure out the optimal market entry and operating strategies, the senior executive team approached the Head of the Swiss Business Hub Middle East of Switzerland Global Enterprise, Thomas Meier, in December 2012. Although being marked with great potential and an over-proportional growth, the Middle Eastern luxury market contained impediments that international firms had to take into consideration. Therefore, Thomas had to analyze the future outlook for this segment of the Middle East retail sector to develop potential strategies for the five different Swiss luxury and lifestyle companies to potentially operate successfully in the Middle East luxury and lifestyle market.

The study identifies barriers and operations challenges especially for Swiss and other foreign luxury and lifestyle retailers in the Middle East, understands the future (2017) institutional environment of the luxury and lifestyle retail sector in the Middle East and applies the institutions-resources matrix in the context of a Swiss company to evaluate the uncertainties prevailing in the Middle East luxury and lifestyle retail sector. It helps in turning insights about future developments in an industry (segment) into consequences for the corporate and functional strategies of a company.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 5: International Business.

In the days of our childhood we were told that the process of picking tea in China involved a preliminary purificatory ritual on the part of the picker. Thus, he ate no fish, indulged in baths, and dressed himself in clean clothes as essential preliminaries before pursuing his occupation. This may have been true so far as the tea that was to be consumed by the Chinese went. So far as this country was concerned, it is on record that somewhere about the year of grace 1850 the ingenious Celestial was sending us consignments alleged to contain silkworm‐dung faced with tea‐dust and a little Prussian blue, sand, and gum, and so forth, a decoction of this being drunk by certain inhabitants of this happy land under the firm belief that they were partaking of the “cup that cheers but not inebriates.” Such frauds were possible, as at that time but little attention had been paid to the subject of food chemistry, and no attention at all to the kind of food that was being eaten by the people of London and elsewhere. The subject of food was chiefly dealt with from the point of view of the requirements of the inland revenue, and so long as the Government obtained the duty that was demanded, but little heed was paid to the quality of the product taxed. Very recently we have had arriving at the docks a carge of foods from Hankow, China, consisting largely of frozen pigs. We are assured that these redoubtable porkers have been fed on rice, and while alive have been carefully tended. It is not stated that they were fed from golden troughs, or that they were slaughtered by, say, members of the Chinese aristocracy, but it is stated and assumed that they are all that any self‐respecting Englishman can possibly desire. A point in their favour is also made of the cheapness of the pork yielded by them. At the present time our food is nothing if not cheap, and “cheap food” has become a party cry whose success depends on the obsession of the minds of a large number of ill‐informed persons with the idea that the only attribute of a food which is worthy of consideration is its cheapness. The fact that we are receiving foodstuffs of the nature of meat from China is one that demands special and more serious consideration from the authorities in view of its possible prejudicial influence on public health, and the important changes that may take place in the nature and origin of our meat supplies. The consignment in question consists of game of various kinds, eggs, ducks, and pork. About 4,600 frozen pig carcases were unloaded. It is asserted that the pigs were fed on rice, or at all events on clean food, and there seem no grounds for disbelieving the truth of this statement; but the increase in this trade which is looked for from those financially interested in it does not necessarily mean that the goodness of future consignments is assured. The fact that the trade may greatly develop makes it difficult to see how a proper supervision can be maintained over the Chinese farmers who will presumably furnish the material of future consignments. Inspection in China is, however, imperatively demanded in the interests of public health on this side. Only a small proportion of the consignment we refer to has been put on the market up to the present, and this was subjected to a very careful and thorough inspection at this end before it was put on the market. The process of inspecting every carcase that may be landed is one that from the mere amount of time and labour involved presents serious difficulties, and the thawing process necessarily leads to a certain amount of deterioration. But if the trade in Chinese pork increases, and the resources of China to supply pigs to the world's markets are practically illimitable, we do not see how it will be possible to adequately inspect every consignment that comes across, while on the other hand no country requires more careful looking after than China in this respect. Inspection on the other side must apparently be left in the hands of the exporters, a most undesirable course to adopt, and one that should therefore not be encouraged. It need hardly be pointed out that the Chinese authorities can or will do nothing in the matter. For a system of inspection to be thorough and adequate, and such inspection is absolutely necessary in this case, it is needful to have inspectors who are experts at their work, capable of exercising independent judgment, and who are above suspicion. It is hopeless to expect to find such people among the ranks of the ordinary Chinese. The farmers whose stock and premises are to be inspected must also be people with some elementary notions of what is required of them. It need hardly he pointed out that no such state of affairs exists in China, and indeed, under present circumstances, is unthinkable, nor is it right that we in this country should run risks while a system of adequate inspection is worked out; in other words, that we should educate the Chinese farmer for his own benefit while running risks ourselves. It is stated that the stockyards and plant are well adapted for the work they have to do, and this we readily believe, but in an Oriental country in which there are no such things as health laws in existence, and where each man in this respect may do very much as seems right in his own eyes, the fact that we are obtaining from it an important article of food wherewith to feed large numbers of our poorer population is not one that can be viewed without serious apprehension as to the possible consequences. Stress has been laid on the fact that the pork is cheap, and that when an adequate system of inspection has been devised, the complete thawing out of the consignment will be no longer necessary and that Chinese pork will rank with the meat supplies that we obtain from the colonies. We have heard of the Greek Kalends, and it is possible that by the time they arrive the Chinese pig breeder and coolie will be a sufficiently cleanly person to be trusted with matters of this sort, but until that time does arrive we most strongly dissent from any line of action that would tend to shift any responsibility on to his shoulders. The pig is a dirty feeder, and the Chinese variety of the genus sus has the fullest opportunity for indulging his propensities for filth. He is also an animal peculiarly liable to various forms of disease of which swine fever is not the least objectionable. The care that is taken by the local authorities in this country regarding swine is sufficient evidence of this. But to make the British farmer conform to certain regulations while permitting pigs to be imported from China where no such regulations, or indeed, any at all, are enforced, seems to us to be the limit of hardship and absurdity. Sir PATRICK MANSON in the year 1881, at the request of the Chinese Government, made a careful examination of the bazaar pigs in Amoy. As a result of this examination he came to the conclusion that the flesh of such pigs was not sufficiently healthy to allow of its being safely eaten by Europeans at least. Though the proportion of pigs affected by Trichina spiralis was about 1 per cent., his conclusion was that with pork “cooked as the natives cook it, there can be little danger, but a roast leg of pork cooked in foreign style would certainly be a most dangerous dish.” The method adopted by natives was to cut the pork into small pieces and very thoroughly cook it. These were bazaar pigs, and of Amoy, which is far south of Hankow, but the bazaar pig in Hankow is probably not very different to his southern brother, and the conditions now in China are probably not much altered for the better since 1881. The pigs for the English market must be obtained from native breeders, and unless these breeders exercise unusual care in the feeding and housing of their stock, it is unlikely that any somewhat perfunctory system of inspection will do much towards‐mitigating the danger arising from The consumption of their pork It may be remarked that no people are more conservative than the Chinese, and to expect a Chinese peasant to radically alter his method of treating his stock, for reasons that he is entirely unable to appreciate, because there happens to be a market in England for the pork is really expecting too much. Nor does it seem that a consular invoice would be any real remedy. The time for insisting on consular invoices would probably be at the end of another series of “revelations,” and moreover, to attempt to make a consul professionally responsible for the soundness of large quantities of such pork, would be to impose a strange burden upon him.

This study aims to develop a photo-based methodology to identify occupants' collaborative image of the energy-efficient small-size housing.

Employing qualitative and quantitative approaches, 24 photos were randomly selected from different urban areas of Brisbane (Australia) city for an online survey. A total of 36 participants evaluated the photos 159 times.

Conducted content analysis resulted in the identification of 5 attribute-based factors, generated from 16 semantic categories and 74 attributes. Using a non-parametric Chi-square test, the factors were categorised in two levels, i.e. (1) envelope elements (primary and secondary) and passive climatic principles; and (2) architectural composition principles and neighbourhood quality.

The discussion on the results via the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) suggests that regarding the external aspects, the people's image of energy-efficient housing could be influenced by their perceived control over changeable and adjustable attributes.

The photo-based methodology developed by this paper has the potential to quantify occupants' collaborative image of small-size housing energy efficiency, which would be essential in assisting them to adjust their dwelling units regarding the congruity of the energy efficiency attributes with their preferences.