Belinda Li, Virginia Maclaren and Tammara Soma
The purpose of this paper is to understand determinants of food waste through analysing patterns of practices including shopping, planning, consumption of leftovers and attitudes…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand determinants of food waste through analysing patterns of practices including shopping, planning, consumption of leftovers and attitudes around best-before dates.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey and waste composition analysis of 142 households was conducted in the City of Toronto. Bivariate analyses and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a structural equation model were used to identify relationships between per capita food waste, household socio-demographic characteristics and household food practices.
Findings
Constructs related to planning practices and best-before date practices were identified through the CFA. Household size and the best-before construct were negatively correlated with per capita food waste. The planning construct had no correlation, which may be attributed to the influence of the retail environment in encouraging unplanned purchases. The best-before construct was significantly correlated with the presence of children in the home, an indicator of the compromises that parents make in domestic provisioning to ensure healthy foods for their children, such as more caution in handling items after their best-before dates.
Originality/value
This is the first study of its kind that uses directly measured per capita food waste from a waste composition study in a structural equation model with a construct related to best-before dates to determine drivers of food waste. It is also the first to find that children in the home can have an indirect influence on food waste through the household's best-before practices.
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Andrew C. MacLaren, Mark E. Young and Sean Lochrie
The purpose of this paper is to explore commercial hospitality enterprise and its impact on settlement development in the American West during the 1800s, focussing on the story of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore commercial hospitality enterprise and its impact on settlement development in the American West during the 1800s, focussing on the story of the Fanthorp Inn in Texas, USA.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper outlines the theory relating to entrepreneurial opportunity and applies it to the historical case of the Fanthorp Inn, Texas, USA. The methodological approach of the paper is based on an in‐depth study into the development of one tavern using multiple sources of evidence.
Findings
First, opportunity on the frontier was controlled to the extent that it became objective in the Kirznerian sense. Second, commercial hospitality enterprise was used as a vehicle for settlement development in frontier America.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is limited by its use of one case study and the scarcity of sources of historical evidence. Further studies could engage with different examples of frontier hospitality businesses and develop the method further.
Practical implications
The paper provides deeper understanding of settlement development in the American West during the 1800s and supplies a methodological framework with which further organisational research can engage with historical sources of data. The findings also suggest that opportunity exists relative to its context.
Originality/value
The paper explores hospitality as a context for entrepreneurial activity in the American West and uses a historical case study method.
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Kashef A. Majid and Hari Bapuji
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the location of a firm’s headquarters and component sourcing impact a firm’s responsiveness in a product-harm crisis in local market.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the location of a firm’s headquarters and component sourcing impact a firm’s responsiveness in a product-harm crisis in local market.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data on 1,251 vehicle recalls from 12 manufacturers, six in the USA, three in Germany, and three in Japan. All of the recalls occurred in the USA between 2002 and 2010. The time the product was first released into the marketplace was used as the starting point while the time the recall was initiated (if at all) was used to record the probability of the product recall over time. Specifically, a survival analysis with an accelerated failure time model was employed to examine the speed with which a product is recalled. The authors examined the impact of foreign composition using information provided by the American Automobile Labeling Act, which lists the proportion of each vehicle that is composed of domestic parts (USA/Canada) and foreign parts. Organizational characteristics (i.e. size, market share, assets, net income, and reputation) and recall size (i.e. number of affected vehicles) that might have an effect on time to recall were controlled for.
Findings
The authors found that firms headquartered outside the local market would take longer to issue a product recall than firms that were headquartered in the local market. Firm headquartered outside the local market can reduce the time taken to recall by sourcing parts from the local marketplace, rather than from abroad. Interestingly, even local firms are affected by the location of component sourcing, such that they take longer to issue a recall if they sourced parts from abroad.
Originality/value
Research in international marketing has examined the benefits of integration to firms, but has not studied the risks of integration. By highlighting the challenges of managing institutional differences and integration difficulties, the authors show that location of headquarters and the location from where components are sourced have an effect on firm responsiveness in product-harm crises. Further, the authors build on the global supply chain management literature that has shown the effect of upstream activities (i.e. foreign production) on downstream activities (i.e. product quality). Specifically, the authors show that upstream activities can not only affect product quality, but also the ability of firms to respond to those product qualities in a timely fashion.
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The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities…
Abstract
The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.
My initial writing and critique of grounded theory (GT) was undertaken in complete ignorance of Kathy Charmaz's work. Subsequently, I made contact with her and was delighted to…
Abstract
My initial writing and critique of grounded theory (GT) was undertaken in complete ignorance of Kathy Charmaz's work. Subsequently, I made contact with her and was delighted to receive a warm and collegial response, something I came to understand was an essential part of her nature. In our ensuing collaboration, which included the two Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) Handbooks, my understanding of the method increased, thanks to her deep insights and extensive knowledge and familiarity with those writing about the method far and wide. But far more important was the way in which our friendship and partnership helped me appreciate and understand the depth and value of her significant contributions to ideas about camaraderie, research and social justice.
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The following article is reprinted from The Business World.
Although fewer than 150 years have passed since Jacques Daguerre perfected the first photographic image in 1839, the flood of evolving equipment and applications has already…
Abstract
Although fewer than 150 years have passed since Jacques Daguerre perfected the first photographic image in 1839, the flood of evolving equipment and applications has already generated a broad and richly varied field. Simultaneously one of the youngest arts and one of the newest technologies, photography is now used in medical research, space exploration, criminal investigations, agricultural production, design of industrial machinery, ad infinitum. At one extreme, it records family life and supplies the surest method of identification on drivers' licenses. At the other end of the spectrum, photography (once denounced in haute couture) has within the past five years not only become an “acceptable” art form, but has assumed centerstage in museums and exhibits throughout the United States and Europe.
Clive Bingley, Edwin Fleming and Allan Bunch
CLEARLY, I should have kept my trap shut last December, instead of expressing a hope for some snow over the Christmas holidays—in the month since then there has been little else…
Abstract
CLEARLY, I should have kept my trap shut last December, instead of expressing a hope for some snow over the Christmas holidays—in the month since then there has been little else descend from the skies, and my dear wife is already querying why we should spend vast sums of money on travelling to Austria in February for conditions readily available, as I write, on Hampstead Heath.
WE begin a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD with this number. For forty‐nine years we have striven to maintain the policy and programme of its founder and first Editor, James Duff…
Abstract
WE begin a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD with this number. For forty‐nine years we have striven to maintain the policy and programme of its founder and first Editor, James Duff Brown: to provide a journal for independent opinion to find utterance in; for young librarians to make their needs and aspirations known; for intelligent, and we hope generally constructive, criticism to be made; and for such personal chronicles to appear as would seem to create and perpetuate friendships. Much of permanent worth has adorned our pages and, of course, much that served the passing moment but always, even in the many controversial Letters on Our Affairs which for thirty‐three years have continued unbroken, the effort has been to serve and in no circumstances to allow personal anonymous attack. We shall continue in our established course but we hope, as conditions grow easier, to widen our activities in harmony with the necessary advances in library method and practice. We invite the new men, to whom the profession looks for the new heart which keeps its body going, to use our pages when they have anything to say.
DURING much of the Second World War, the affairs of the Library Association were conducted for the Council by an Emergency Committee. The record of its meeting on 10th June 1941…
Abstract
DURING much of the Second World War, the affairs of the Library Association were conducted for the Council by an Emergency Committee. The record of its meeting on 10th June 1941, includes the following: “A resolution having been received suggesting that a committee be formed to consider post‐war reconstruction, it was resolved that by means of a notice in the LIBRARY ASSOCIATION RECORD, Branches and Sections should be invited to formulate suggestions for the consideration of the committee. A draft questionnaire for the purpose of an enquiry into the effects of the war on the public library service was approved”. In July, the Committee reported “further arrangements … for carrying out an exhaustive survey designed to give the necessary data for full and detailed consideration and ultimate recommendation as to the future of public libraries, their administration and their place in the social services”. The promised notice appeared as an editorial in September.