Search results for ""Emerald Publishing Limited""

The latest volume of Advances in Mergers & Acquisitions brings together the best research in acquisition strategy by leading scholars in the field of M&A. As more and more companies position themselves for growth and change in a fluctuating global financial climate this volume is a must for scholars and strategy specialists involved in the study or implementation of mergers and acquisitions. Contributions explore the "negotiation stage" of acquisition; the role of the customer; human impacts on the performance of a merger or acquisition; managing cross-border deals, and post-acquisition integration. Important new findings in this volume detail how non-financial considerations help to predict the success or failure of an acquisition strategy. It presents an extensive review of research from the last 30 years on how culture has a direct impact upon global deals and addresses the gap in academic research on how to bridge the organizational and national cultural differences which ultimately cause barriers between acquisition partners.

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To mark 40 volumes of Studies in Symbolic Interaction, this volume includes a special introduction from Series Editor, Norman K. Denzin. This 40th volume advances critical discourse on several fronts at the same time, including a report from the First Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines hui, Waikato, New Zealand; New Empirical Studies by D. Coates, J. Johnson, D. Altheide, C. J. Schneider and D. Trotter, R. J. Berger, C. Corroto, J. Flad, and R. Quinney, and B. Jarrett (respectively): new religious movements, the California School of Symbolic Interaction, Terrorism and the National Security University, the 2011 Vancouver Riot, The Terrains of Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, and mediation processes. In a separate section to highlight the diverse and challenging aspects of symbolic interactionism; Ryan Turner asks if animals have selves? Michael Katovich and Robert Young and Carol Thompson use Turners article as a springboard for insightful commentary on the selves of other animals and the selves of humans.

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Research on Indigenous participation in sport offers many opportunities to better understand the political issues of equality, empowerment, self-determination and protection of culture and identity. This volume compares and conceptualises the sociological significance of Indigenous sports in different international contexts. The contributions, all written by Indigenous scholars and those working directly in Indigenous/Native Studies units, provide unique studies of contemporary experiences of Indigenous sports participation. The papers investigate current understandings of Indigeneity found to circulate throughout sports, sports organisations and Indigenous communities. by (1): situating attitudes to racial and cultural difference within the broader sociological processes of post colonial Indigenous worlds (2): interrogating perceptions of Indigenous identity with reference to contemporary theories of identity drawn from Indigenous Studies and (3): providing insight to increased Indigenous participation, empowerment and personal development through sport with reference to sociological theory.

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Volume 29 contains articles on the economic history of Europe and the U.S. including "Understanding Aging During the Epidemiologic Transition" by Suchit Arora; "Estimating French Regional Income: Departmental Per Capita Gross Value Added, 1872-1911" by Paul Caruana-Galizia; "Improve and Sit. The Surrendering of Land at Rents Below Marginal Product in Nineteenth-Century Valencia, Spain" by Samuel Garrido; "Passage of the Married Women's Property Acts and Earnings Acts in the United States: 1850-1920 by R. Richard Geddes and Sharon Tennyson; "New State-level Estimates of Personal Income in the United States, 1880-1910" by Alexander Klein; and "Exports from the Colonies and States of the Middle Atlantic Region" by Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom and Thomas Weiss

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Increasing Student Engagement and Retention Using Multimedia Technologies: Video Annotation, Multimedia Applications, Videoconferencing and Transmedia Storytelling examines new research on how videoconferencing, video annotation, video mapping, and related technologies are being used in higher education to increase learner engagement in an epoch of increasing globalization and diversity. These enabling technologies are reshaping and reframing the practice of teaching and learning in higher education. Through case studies, surveys, and literature reviews, this volume will examine how video, mapping, and related technologies are being used to improve writing/publishing skills, academic literacies in students, and create engaging communities of practice through digital storytelling, narratives, and inter-culturalism. This volume will also discuss a framework for deploying and assessing these technologies.

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Advanced Literacy Practices: From the Clinic to the Classroom includes salient information about clinical literacy practices that transfer to other settings. From historical perspectives to cutting edge instructional techniques, this edited text includes elements of designing literacy clinics, models of reading and writing practices, technology-based instruction, and frameworks for meeting the diverse needs of students. As the second volume in the series, Literacy Research, Practice, and Evaluation, notable authors share their perspectives as effective literacy clinic directors of how to enhance the literacy achievement of students. These first-hand accounts are critical as readers glean from their career-long devotion and decades of research, practice, and experimentation. Readers garner rich perspectives on literacy improvement through this research-based practical guide. It provides a current examination of issues and trends in clinical literacy practices appropriate for novice and experienced educators and researchers alike.

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Volume 36 provides a broad review of the factors that lead to mergers and other alliances, the methods used to ensure effective and successful collaborations, and descriptions of the factors which contributed to less successful efforts at consolidation. The chapters include original research, case studies, literature reviews and conceptual papers.

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"Luxury Fashion and Culture" focuses on the study of how humans use high quality, highly pleasurable, and frequently rare products, services, and experiences to distinguish to themselves and others who they are as well as whom they are not - both within and across cultures. Luxury fashion enables the individual to transform herself - to play a part in scenes exuding refinement, acceptance, high status, and good taste and risk ridicule by playing the part badly. The chapters provide new theory, recipes of methods, and findings on how culture helps humans manage and respond to luxury fashion enactments. Rather than focusing on traditional cultural transformations, it focuses on personal expressions of self and archetypal role-playing and fulfilment through the power of luxury fashion. This volume: applies the perspectives of Veblen, Goffman, McCracken, Thompson, and Belk to provide a theoretical foundation to explain why and how humans buy and enact luxury fashion products, services, and experiences; includes confirmatory personal introspections of explanations of luxury fashion enactments with self-photographs and self-interpretations of the enactments to explain how individuals enact luxury fashion and respond to alternative fashion-marketing designs; and is unique in conjoining sociology, psychology, marketing, and economics to advance fashion marketing theory and research.

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21st Century Urban Race Politics begins by offering a twenty-first-century understanding of minority representation in historically majority-Caucasian cities and draws on case studies in cities throughout the United States. The aim of this volume is to take stock of what we know about the advantages and disadvantages of the "racialized" and "deracialized" approaches to governance and to describe a third approach, the "universalized interest approach." The authors argue that minority elected officials, when given the power and resources to do so, often do more than represent constituent interests without acknowledging the representation of members of their racial/ethnic group in urban communities. Contributors describe how mayors of various backgrounds have sought to represent minority interests in electoral and governing contexts. In each case, the mayors are found to represent minority interests. In most cases, the representation of minority interests is accomplished without deemphasizing the significance of race and as the mayor maintains support from whites within their electoral and governing coalitions. With case studies from across the country, in medium-sized and large cities, and mayors of various backgrounds, the volume provides a vivid account of how different minority mayors have handled minority representation in historically majority Caucasian cities and what lessons academics and politicians can learn from them.

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Business historians and economic historians frequently contribute to our understanding of strategic management, and strategy scholars often rely on a deep understanding of historical context to make sense of classic strategy issues. Historically, the two sets of scholars have not always communicated with each other as effectively as one might hope. They also have different approaches to methodology and assessment of validity of results, which adds to this 'two solitudes'. In this volume, strategy scholars, business historians, and economic historians are brought together to develop a volume that explores the complementarities of approaches.

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"Health Disparities Among Under-served Populations: Implications for Research, Policy and Praxis", focuses on a topic of national concern. Both disparities in health status and in health care reflect the continuing power of race, social class, and gender as forces that define the social determinants of health and the social, biological, and physical environments where groups live. Chapters focus on key issues that include substance abuse, psychological coping, trauma, infant mortality, HPV, environmental hazards, teen pregnancy, homeless youth, racism, discrimination, and cultural competence. The scholars who have contributed to this volume showcase their insight and keen analyses of these pressing issues through a variety of lenses, including but not limited to, sociology, economics, psychology, education, public health, history, urban studies, nursing, and environmental activism. This anthology critically examines the devastating impact of race, class, and gender on the health and health care of African Americans, Latinos and American Indians, with particular focus on children and adolescents.

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This book series' mission is to provide a forum for critique, commentary and discussion about key methodology issues in the strategic management field. Strategic management relies on an array of complex methods drawn from various allied disciplines to examine how managers attempt to lead their firms toward success. The seventh volume of the series is built around the theme of "West Meets East: Toward Methodological Exchange". Within this overarching theme, this volume consists of two parts. The first is "Developing Quantitative Techniques" and the second is ""Exploring Mixed Research Methods". With authors from an array of country backgrounds, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, Singapore, the UK and the US, this volume will help promote methodological exchange between the West and the East.

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This volume explores the theme of "resources" in entrepreneurship, and examines the resourcefulness of entrepreneurs that persevere in uncertain times to build new businesses. The different perspectives gathered in this volume present new ways of thinking about how entrepreneurs acquire, borrow, and make use of resources in seemingly impossible environments. Contributions discuss how entrepreneurs can yield success using bricolage; how to leverage "newness" and resource constraints as an advantage; and how high growth entrepreneurs overcome cognitive weaknesses and self doubt to succeed in new ventures. Further articles provide insights into resourcefulness of corporate entrepreneurial environments; links between knowledge flows and barriers in the entrepreneurship processes; and entrepreneurial resourcefulness in challenging and hostile economic environments.

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Assessment and outcomes evaluation have become increasingly important in librarianship. Although initially used in educational contexts to measure student learning, the strategy has migrated to other contexts such as hiring, employee development, overall organizational and institutional successes, measuring the outcomes of projects and operational changes, and self assessment at the personal level. This growing emphasis is partly due to increasingly stringent requirements that funds are used effectively to improve services and operations. The current economic climate and retrenchments in non-profit agencies, have raised the need for assessment and outcomes evaluation to a critical level. 'Contexts for Assessment and Outcome Evaluation in Librarianship' focuses not on the how of undertaking assessment and outcomes evaluation, but rather on their successes and failures in various contexts in which these tools have been and will be used.

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Advances in Accounting Education is a refereed, academic research annual whose purpose is to help meet the needs of faculty members interested in ways to improve accounting classroom instruction at the college and university level. We publish thoughtful, well-developed articles that are readable, relevant, and reliable. Articles may be either empirical or non-empirical, and should emphasize pedagogy, i.e., explaining how faculty members can improve their teaching methods or how accounting units can improve their curricula/programs. In this volume, a special section addressing the impact of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) on accounting education features pedagogical research designed to contribute to more effective teaching of IFRS related content.

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"Library and Information Science Trends and Research: Europe", co-edited by Professor Amanda Spink and Dr. Jannica Heinstrom provides an understanding of the new directions in library and information science/management, education and research in Europe. The volume focuses on new research directions within the field but will also discuss curriculum changes due to the rapidly developing information world. Europe has developed substantially both socially and economically in the last ten years with a growing population and economy. The field of library and information science/management has also grown in educational and research developments as information increasingly has become a part of people's everyday social and life processes. This book is directly relevant to information scientists, information professionals and librarians, social scientists and people interested in understanding more about the trends and research in library and information science/management in the European region. Undergraduate and graduate students, academics, educators, and information professionals interested in library and information science will find this book of particular benefit.

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This volume explores three recent challenges the military faces: changing missions, changing socio-economic and demographic conditions, and end of conscription. The military will have to change its view of the world, the nature of conflicts and its profession considerably.

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This book presents a portrait of the social advantages and limitations of climate change related modeling in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region. Physical systems modeling - such as of climate, weather, water, and soil - can be useful planning tools, and are essential to the forecasts and projections used operationally for decisions on climate and development. However, these models and their limitations are rarely discussed in terms of how they are interpreted, misinterpreted, used, not used, needed and not needed by society at the local level for climate change adaptation. This publication addresses the implied but largely uncritiqued relationships between scientific modeling knowledge and local adaptation responses. It also presents theoretical perspectives on modeling and adaptation, supported by case studies of model use, non-use, interpretation and misinterpretation in the HKH region for application at the local level. It provides a critical angle into the value of modeling at multiple decision making scales in society, but focused on local needs. Case studies are presented from a variety of HKH countries, as defined by ICIMOD (which includes Bangladesh and Myanmar).

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Since 1976, increased attention has been paid to the diminishing numbers of Black males in higher education, and rightly so: the total numerical enrollments of Black female undergraduates has outstripped their male counterparts by a factor of nearly 2 to 1. Since intervention, however, the enrollment growth rate among Black males (60 per cent) exceeded that of Black females (40 per cent) (NCES, 2008). Needless to say, this good news was welcomed by many. However, as Cole & Guy-Sheftall (2003) have pointed out, it may be misguided to assume that improving the status of black men will single-handedly solve all the complex problems facing African American communities. Are we indirectly neglecting Black females? And what of their future? The purpose of "Black Female Undergraduates on Campus" is to identify both successes and challenges faced by Black female students accessing and matriculating through institutions of higher education. In illuminating the interactive complexities between persons and place, this volume is aimed toward garnering an understanding of the educational trajectories and experiences of Black females, independent of and in comparison to their peers. Special attention is paid to women pursuing careers in the high demand fields of teacher education and STEM.

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This volume of the "International Perspectives on Education and Society" series examines the transformation of education policy in China, with a special emphasis on transformations in the post-1978 period. While educational policy has experienced major shifts and reversals since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the late 1970s and the early 1980s signalled a significant shift in China's openness and willingness to make widespread and rapid changes in education to meet the demands of an increasingly market-oriented economy. These educational policy changes are inextricably linked to China's increasing interest and participation in the global community abroad and the social-economic transformation and somewhat loosened political environment at home. With the special emphasis on policy change and its subsequent impact on different aspects of education at various levels of educational institutions, particularly in areas of educational financing and curriculum reform, this volume attempts to bridge the dichotomy between critics and advocates of Chinese educational transformations, recognize the importance and impact that educational policy in China has not only on one of the largest national populations in the world, but also on other (and often competing) country's systems and provide relevant scholarship to inform policy and practice.

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According to Peter Drucker the most important challenge of management in the 21st century will be to increase knowledge worker productivity substantially. This book presents tried and tested methods, and concrete suggestions to analyse and design effective knowledge work. Each topic is accompanied by a self diagnosis allowing the reader to assess their own situation. The authors include case studies to provide inspiration as to the 'next practices' for shaping the future of knowledge work. Amongst others, the book addresses the following questions: What is knowledge work? What are strategies and methods for increasing productivity, quality, effectiveness and value of knowledge work? Can knowledge workers be managed, and if yes, how? How should ICT support be selected and utilised to best effect? What are adequate methods for measuring performance of knowledge workers? This book bridges the gap between research and practice, presenting the current state of management concepts and research on knowledge work, and providing many best practice examples, and will appeal to management educators, students, trainers, HR professionals, consultants, and knowledge workers themselves.

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This 15-chapter volume provides the latest research insights from the international business field on entrepreneurship in the global firm. The first section of the book addresses entrepreneurship challenges in smaller, internationalizing companies. The second section analyses a variety of entrepreneurship problems in large, established multinational enterprises, with a focus on subsidiary entrepreneurial initiatives. The third section discusses entrepreneurial activity impacts, both within the firm and in the broader external networks and clusters within which the multinational enterprise is embedded. This collection provides a unique, comprehensive perspective on the wide variety of conceptual and managerial issues that arise as a result of entrepreneurial action in firms operating in the global economy. It is a must read for scholars and managers alike, who face the need for continuous change in dynamic international business environments.

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Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts examines the complex, often controversial issues impacting those who live on the margins of society in our densely populated cities. It describes and analyzes the living conditions of marginalized persons in cities and neighborhoods throughout the world and the consequential impact on their future social mobility. Chapters focus on key issues that include immigration, educational under-achievement, urban renewal, public health, immigration, homelessness, environmental issues, race, segregation, and the marginality of urban youth and economically disadvantaged groups. This volume is packed with research compiled by an international array of scholars and intellectuals from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, economics, political science, psychology, education, public health, law, criminology, history, urban studies, geography and demography, and urban planning. From the first chapter to the last, this immensely insightful anthology richly details and informs us about the human condition, from multidisciplinary perspectives, about urban life in global contexts.

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Nearly all business-to-business firms interact and have contractual relationships with upstream, downstream and parallel operating enterprises. How firms design and implement these relationships effectively, overcome poorly performing network linkages, and manage change in interfirm networks are the major topics that Volume 17 covers. The three papers in Volume 17 report new theory and in-depth descriptions of interfirm network behavior. Each paper includes extensive reviews of the relevant literature on interfirm network behavior as well as data analysis using empirical positivistic and/or case study research methods. More than 150 figures and tables support the discussion of findings.

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This volume draws together contemporary topics, themes and methodologies in the field of sustainability reporting and assurance to reveal how sustainability information is actually used, interpreted and processed by internal and external users. The volume covers the following topics: 1 value relevance of sustainability information; 2 methodology and performance of Socially Responsible Investment funds; 3 the current regulatory environment for both professional and legislative corporate sustainability reporting, and the case for more comprehensive systematic regulation 4 the role and effectiveness of shareholder activism in promoting improved sustainability practices among corporations; 5 accounting challenges of the carbon economy in developed and developing nations; 6 developing a theoretical framework for understanding the links between sustainability strategy, accounting and communication; 7 recent empirical evidence on how organisations collect, measure and integrate sustainability information for internal decision-making tasks; 8 understanding how to rank and rate the quality of corporate reporting from a sustainability perspective; 9 audit and assurance of sustainability information.

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This is the seventh volume in the series, "Advances in Learning and Behavioural Disabilities". It includes such topics as: study times in good and poor comprehenders; diagnostic spelling analysis; spatial learning and instruction of children with learning difficulties; and, ageing and prospective memory.

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Accurate and useful assessment of tourism market opportunities, network behavior, and tourism destination management performance requires solid foundations in performance evaluation theory as well as applying metrics covering both sensemaking contexts and outcomes. "Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research" seeks to advance knowledge and sense-making skills in interpreting cultural, organizational, and personal influences relating to tourism and hospitality behaviors. The ten papers in this volume make explicit current tourism assessment practices and look at how such assessments are being conducted and how to go about accomplishing prescribing and applying advanced assessment metrics. With a multi-regional focus that includes Asia, Europe, and North American this volume examines a variety of topics including: using importance-performance analysis to discern cultural differences in image perceptions with application to international visitors to Mauritius; network analysis methods for modelling tourism inter-organizational systems; and, tools for overcoming continuing bad performance in tourism destination management.

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This book documents a radical shift in thinking from focusing on the school as the place where curriculum is made to realizing the ways children and families are engaged as curriculum makers in homes, in communities, and in the spaces in-between, outside of school. The narrative inquiry framing this book investigates the tensions experienced by teachers, children and families as they make curriculum attentive to lives. It draws on a research project involving multiperspectival narrative inquiries spanning four research sites and traces the tensions experienced by children, families and teachers in multiple curriculum making sites and some of the profound identity making and assessment making implications that become visible. Its attention to the relational in narrative inquiry is focused on tensions that shape lives and, as well, the unfolding of narrative inquiries. This informative book has a wide reaching audience of educational researchers, teacher educators, research methodologists, particularly those interested in narrative inquiry, curriculum scholars, graduate students, university faculty, teachers, administrators and parents alike.

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This 12th edition of "Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms" contains a stimulating collection of original papers spanning a wide variety of topics. Part 1 of the volume contains three papers on the subject of job design and organizational performance, covering the determinants of multiskilling from a theoretical perspective and also the empirical effect of multiskilling and teams on financial performance. Part 2 of the volume concerns compensation, worker attitudes, and productivity. Papers in this section cover the effect of rules and costs on employer-provided health insurance, majority ownership and executive compensation, worker attitudes towards different forms of employee ownership and variable pay, and an analysis of performance-related pay, unions, and productivity in Italy. Part 3 contains three studies of worker cooperatives and nonprofit organizations in Italy, Spain, and Uruguay. This volume concludes with a debate on free trade and the ecological effects of alternative socio-economic systems.

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Islamic Economics and Finance: An Epistemological Inquiry is a scholarly work on the foundations of the role that the moral and ethical law plays on human enterprise comprising economics, finance, society and science. Divided into three parts, theoretical, empirical and application, the study covers a vast area of socio-scientific investigation and is extensively comparative in perspective. Its methodology is a mix of a textual, analytical, diagrammatic, mathematical and applied nature spanning various problems of Islamic economics, finance, society and science within a general-system worldview of unity of knowledge. This book presents multidimensional general-system conception, construction, formalism, application and inference as empirically viable and explainable and uses the language of philosophy of science and applied mathematical models alongside policy analysis. At a time when an epistemological study of the foundations of Islamic economics, finance, society and science is receiving crucial attention worldwide this text is equally accessible to the informed reader and the specialized one.

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Volume 6 of "Advances in Global Leadership" includes timely and impactful chapters on various concepts and processes associated with leading across cultures and other boundaries. In these times of accelerating complexity and global inter-connectedness, a deeper understanding of the multiple contextual, organizational, and individual variables and processes associated effective international leadership is ever more important. This Volume, drawing on authors from many different cultures and contexts, contributes to bridging and integrating conceptual and practitioner perspectives in pursuing this deeper understanding. Volume 6 includes chapters on: global mindset; leading innovation across cultures; virtual team leadership; leading sustainability; leader and expert selection; organizational culture across cultures and contexts; the future of corporate leadership development processes and practices; proactive leadership; and, coaching. Academics, management and leadership development professionals, consultants, coaches, leaders and would-be-leaders will be informed by the chapters in this Volume.

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Since the IEA's first international studies on mathematics and science achievement in the late 1960s, the availability and use of international achievement studies around the world has exploded. The most widely adopted studies, PISA and TIMSS, are now administered regularly and include participating countries from every region around the world. These international studies, now include cross-national studies of multiple subject areas, teachers and teaching, and a developing focus on higher education. This information has been used to make decisions about resource distribution both within and across national educational systems, but some of the most productive uses of TIMSS and PISA data by policymakers have been to create agendas for innovation and equity in national educational systems. The chapters in this volume will: discuss the uses of international achievement study results as a tool for national progress as well as an obstacle, provide recommendations for ways that international achievement data can be used in real-world policymaking situations, and also discuss what the future of international achievement studies holds.

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The 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union is a time to reflect and call attention to the educational transformations in post-socialist nations of Southeast/Central Europe and the former Soviet Union and in educational systems around the world. While the educational landscape changed most obviously in the former socialist countries and aligned nations, the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union was felt in nations worldwide. This volume will provide a comparative account of the meanings and processes of post-socialist transformations in education by exploring recent theories, concepts, and debates on post-socialism and globalization in national, regional, and international contexts. Of particular interest is a critical examination of post-socialist transformations and the evolution of educational change globally since 1991. Understanding these complex developments since 1991 is critical to the study of education around the world in the new millennium.

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"The New Technology-Based Firms in the New Millenium" series provides up to date research on a variety of aspects of High Technology Small Firm formation and growth (HTSFs) from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives and from national contexts throughout the world. This edited book series reflects on and shapes currently popular national government policies insofar as they relate to HTSFs. It is the only international publication specifically dealing with HTSF formation and growth and it uniquely provides an uninterrupted record of research in this area since 1993. This latest volume is a collection of the best papers presented at the HTSF Conference held in the United Kingdom at Manchester Business School in June 2007. Three major themes have emerged. Six particularly strong chapters of this volume are devoted to the critical problems of HTSF financing, comprising two contributions from the United Kingdom and individual chapters from Sweden, the Irish Republic, Italy, and Belgium. A further four papers are concerned with aspects of strategic development in HTSFs, and a final group of three papers deal with HTSF marketing problems, often in a 'born global' strategic context.

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Large law firms have become a dominant feature of the legal landscape in the United States and elsewhere. This volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society examines the situation of large law firms. The articles collected here address the following questions: How has the large law firm altered, or adapted to, the ideals/ideology of the legal profession? How do law firms function as organizations? What happens to firms when they globalize their practices? What is the situation of scholarship on large law firms? Has the firm been incorporated into boarder interdisciplinary configurations? What, if any, new paradigms of study of firms are on the horizon?

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"The Advances in Library Administration and Organization Series" provides a body of research literature that contributes to the base of organizational theory upon which library administrators rely. Its mix of contributions to the literature of library administration and organization is both diverse and eclectic. This volume of the series covers a variety of topics relating to the management of academic, and public and school libraries.

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"Advances in Business and Management Forecasting" is a blind refereed serial publication published on an annual basis. The objective of this research annual is to present state-of-the-art studies in the application of forecasting methodologies to such areas as sales, marketing, and strategic decision making (an accurate, robust forecast is critical to effective decision making). It is the hope and direction of the research annual to become an applications and practitioner-oriented publication. The topics of this title will normally include sales and marketing, forecasting, new product forecasting, judgmentally-based forecasting, the application of surveys to forecasting, forecasting for strategic business decisions, improvements in forecasting accuracy, and sales response models. It is both the hope and direction of the editorial board to stimulate the interest of the practitioners of forecasting to methods and techniques that are relevant. In Volume 7, there are sections devoted to financial applications of forecasting, as well as marketing demand applications. There are, also, sections on forecasting methodologies and evaluation, as well as on other application areas of forecasting.

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This volume contains nine papers that address cutting edge challenges in organizational change, report the results of change-related research, and advocate methodological advances in the field. Papers by noted international authors such as Ed Lawler & Chris Worley, Hillary Bradbury, Benyamin Lichtenstein, John Carrol & Peter Senge, Rob Sloyan & Jim Ludema, and David Coghlan make for fascinating reading and set an ambitious agenda for future scholarship. These and other authors in the volume touch on enduring issues such as trust, sustainability, collaboration, but also totally new concepts such as breaking out of strategic lock-in and constructing work that is meaningful for younger generations of workers in a 'web 2.0 world'. Reports of research in this volume are gathered from finance firms and hospitals, sustainability consortiums and religious institutions. The findings of these studies report on factors critical to the success of mergers, compare the comparative effectiveness of different types of large group interventions, and uncover keys to sustaining the effects of interventions intended to create high performance systems.

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"Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research" publishes high-quality research encompassing all areas of accounting that incorporates theory from, and contributes knowledge and understanding to applied psychology, sociology, management science, and behavioral economics. Research published in this series encompasses all areas of accounting and covers a broad range of issues that affect the users, preparers and assurers of accounting information. Of particular interest are studies that advance and/or develop theory and studies that address contemporary issues affecting accounting information use and the actors in the surrounding environment. Understanding how accounting information affects each of these actors and their decisions and how accounting re-shapes society are critical. Similarly, the surrounding environment is critical as the social context influences accounting as well as the means for supporting information production and dissemination, that is, technology. This volume focuses primarily on this latter aspect and includes studies that examine both the short-term implications of technology use on individuals and the long-term implications of technology on organizational evolution.

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This volume contains 14 original chapters focusing on various aspects of economic organization and behaviour, mostly based on empirical fieldwork conducted by the authors themselves. It is a well-balanced collection of chapters on economic issues studied anthropologically, not only in its geographical and theoretical focus but also in showcasing work by established and emerging researchers. "Chapters on Africa" take a close look at urban food provisioning in Cameroon and an investigation into entrepreneurial activities in the rapidly-changing economy of Cairo. Other chapters examine places and cultures in Central Asia - property rights and state power in Kazakhstan, and animal markets in Kashgar, Western China. The buying and selling activities of ethnic groups within larger societies such as Latin Americans in the USA and Gabor Roma in Romania are highlighted. Concerning North America are chapters on the trans-Atlantic (and global) art market, and on oil drilling in Canada, while in Latin America, income disparities and inequalities in Brazil, development in Colombia, and kin-like compadrazgo networks in Mexico are analyzed. Historical Western Europe and pre-historical Ecuador are also covered.

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In 2001, we gathered a group of researchers in Nice, France to focus discussion on performance measurement and management control. Following the success of that conference, we held subsequent conferences in 2003, 2005, and 2007. This volume contains some of the exemplary papers that were presented at the most recent conference. The conference has grown in number of participants, quality of presentations, and reputation and this year attracted leading researchers in the field from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Though the conference has been generally focused on performance measurement and management control and has included presentations on many facets of the topic, each year we have also focused on a particular theme of current interest. This year's theme was directed at measuring and rewarding performance. This includes evaluating and rewarding the performance of organizations, units, teams, and individuals. It includes empirical, analytical and experimental research. In addition to the three plenary sessions, this volume also includes some of the other excellent papers presented at the conference. The contents of this book represent a collection of leading research in management control and performance measurement and provide a significant contribution to the growing literature in the area. This collection of papers also covers a representative set of topics, research settings, and research methods. We are hopeful that this book will continue the search for additional understanding and development in performance measurement and management control, and provide guidance for both academic researchers and managers as they work toward improving organizations.

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This volume provides useful answers to the following questions: how do tourists go about seeking high novelty and yet return to the same destination year-after-year? How do some firms in the same industry end up embracing industrial tourism while other firms reject such business models? What simple and complex heuristics do freely-independent-travelers apply pre-trip and during the trip in deciding where to go and what to do? What metrics are useful for measuring the impact of activity-focused tourism on the well-being of regional areas? How do executive leadership styles affect employee satisfaction in international tourist hotels? What action and outcome metrics are useful for measuring performance management auditing and destination marketing organization planning and implementing?In terms of the first question, research on tourists' risk-handling behavior provides a useful framework for explaining their novelty seeking proneness. The first paper of the volume provides a complete research report on how tourists' risk-handling behavior explains contingencies in novelty seeking regarding repeat visits to a given destination. How executives process industrial tourism models depends on whether or not they view such enterprise development as a core or peripheral business. The second paper provides thick descriptions of alternative process approaches whilst the third reports a mixed-methods (interpretative and positivistic) research design to provide a thorough report on FITs' (fully independent travellers') pre-trip and trip thinking and doing behavior. This research approach shows how FITs take advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions, and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.The fourth paper applies the fields of travel research and community economic development (CED) within an ethnographic and survey research study on mural tourism which shows how tourism business models can be successful for nurturing CED. The following paper provides both evidence on how leadership styles affect the success of international hotel operations as well as templates on how to measure both leadership styles and subsequent impacts on hotel operations. The final paper includes a longitudinal case study of management performance audits of a government destination marketing organization (DMO) to illustrate the use of templates for measuring both auditor and DMO executives behavior and performance outcomes. As such, this paper concludes what is a diverse and engaging volume of "Advances in Culture Tourism and Hospitality Research".

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"Advances in Hospitality and Leisure", a peer-review serial published annually, delivers refreshing insights of a host of scientific studies pertaining to hospitality, leisure, and tourism while providing a forum to stimulate discussions on contemporary issues and emerging trends essential to theory advancement as well as professional practices from a global perspective. The main focus of this series is to divulge the innovative methods of inquiry so as to inspire new research topics that are vital and have been in large neglected. The series attempts to address the needs of the populace willing to disseminating seminal ideas, concepts and theories derived from scholarly investigations. Potential readers may retrieve useful texts helping outline new research agendas, suggest viable topics for a dissertation work, and augment the knowledge of the new subjects of learning.

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The competitive forces generated by globalization act to promote the cross-national diffusion of human resource management 'best practices'. In particular, high performance work practices have come to be viewed as the standard as companies in many parts of the world have endeavored to 'Americanize' their employment and management systems. Yet cultural, institutional, and ideological forces continue to offer resistance to the global convergence of HR practices. This volume contains papers from authors in Europe, Asia, Africa, and US who explore diffusion in a variety of national contexts. Different methodologies and perspectives provide a range of interpretations regarding diffusion and convergence.

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How can the existence of elites be compatible with democratic governance? Any democratic society is inevitably confronted by this basic question. This book reviews existing research on elites and their interactions with those around them. How the recruitment to elites changes in the long run according to class and gender is one of the core themes of the present volume. Other topics explored include the relationship between elites and the population, collective action and elite cohesion, and elites and democracy. The approach is multinational, with examples provided from countries around the world. This is a valuable book for social science students and researchers of many disciplines, including sociology, political science and psychology. It offers a review on historical and current research on elites in society and includes an extensive discussion of class and gender. Examples from countries in different parts of the world allow for international insights.

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Whereas most of the leadership literature has focused on direct, interpersonal leadership, few researchers have examined indirect leadership or the leadership of organizations. Of course, direct, personal leadership plays an important role at all levels of the organization. However, we focus here on how leaders use strategy, structures, and systems to create the conditions that stimulate others to meaningfully contribute to the overarching goals of the organization. We therefore explore the role of the strategic leader as an architect.In this role as strategic architect, we examine how top-level leaders create organizations wherein leadership is developed, knowledge is created and disseminated, meaning is shaped and shared, and where the vision cascades to all corners of the organization. We also explore the darker side of leader discretion to show the deleterious consequences of leader power. Finally, we examine the complex nature of organizations and the roles of leaders in adapting the organization to the environment in which it operates. The six major sections in this book coincide with these aspects of the leaders architectural focus. The first chapter in each section provides a short theoretical introduction. Following the theory chapters are application chapters, highlighting the practical implications of the theory with real-life examples.The sixth section explores the relationship between complexity theory and strategic leadership. It examines indirect leadership - the leadership OF organizations. It explores how leaders exercise leadership indirectly through structures, processes and systems that stimulate others to contribute to organizational goals. It contains six major sections: leadership development, knowledge management, influencing and shaping meaning, leader discretion, vision cascading, and complexity theory and the networked organization.

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The cultural industries have been considered unique and out of the mainstream, not a subject for developing general theory, and therefore relatively understudied by organizational scholars. We argue it is no longer the case that cultural industries are so unique representing small markets and industries of little matter to research in the sociology of organizations. Cultural industries are now one of the fastest growing and most vital sectors in the U.S. and global economies (U.S. Census Reports, 2000). This growth is fueled in large part by the nature of the symbolic, creative, and knowledge-based assets of cultural industries. In this volume, the manuscripts recognize that the functions of the symbolic, creative, and knowledge-based assets of cultural industries are also characteristic of the professional services and other industries as well. The manuscripts illustrate how the boundaries become blurred between cultural and other related industries that also rest upon the endeavors of and knowledge of creative workers. These dynamic interactions in the commercial landscape between the cultural, professional services, and other industries provide a richer context for the authors in this volume to examine changes in a specific market or industry, and also to advance our understanding of the institutional transformation of organizations.

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Transactions often differ on important dimensions from spot exchanges on perfect neo-classical markets. Information is seldom complete and instantaneous exchange is just as rare as full competition. The authors in this volume extend the standard economic model stressing the proposition that the social context is an important determinant of the governance of transactions. To foster the development of a body of cumulative knowledge in the new economic sociology, this approach is consistently applied to a diversity of topics including purchase relations, strategic alliances, and relations among lawyers and clients as well as employers and employees. This volume is divided in three parts. The first part surveys purposive behaviour models in research on governance as well as theoretical work extending these models. The contributions in the second and third part all have an empirical component and deal with governance in the various phases of exchange relations: search and selection, negotiating and contracting, contract execution and performance, and conflict regulation. The second part focuses on governance in markets, while the third part discusses governance in organizations.

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