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Games have been successfully used in educational settings for many years. Still, it is not known in detail which factors influence the use and effectiveness of educational games. The game environment, its technology, and other game mechanics are factors directly linked to the game itself. The player's experience with the subject of the game and/or games in general, his or her motivation and expectations towards the gaming experience influence the outcome of a game-based learning experience. Some of the personal aspects, like age, were already addressed in earlier research. Cultural and gender differences though, were not a main object of study in educational gaming so far. This study started from certain assumptions about differences in game play, related to players' cultural backgrounds and gender. Literature suggests that gender plays a role when it comes to game performance. This paper introduces outcomes of a study with a so-called Microgame, a brief game used to raise the awareness of interdependent planning operations. It shows that in this game, gender and culture make a difference in relation to the learning experience of the players, measured by game performance.

This paper addresses the notion of electronic economics by examining financial technology (fintech) firms' performance and corporate governance quality, using data from the United States. The findings support our maintained assumption that due to the economics of electronic platforms perused by financial technology firms, these firms outperform firms from other industries (non-Fintech). The final sample comprises 1,712 company-year observations between 2010 and 2019 (pre-COVID-19). The evidence suggests that our corporate governance quality index, developed from Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (www.oecd.org/corporate/corporate-governance-factbook.htm, 2019) guidelines, accurately captures corporate governance quality in the United States, principally due to the inclusion of an anti-bribery policy indicator, in the index. The results suggest that this evidence is not merely an artefact due to the corporate governance quality index potentially capturing priced risk factors. Our findings reveal that fintech firms have superior corporate governance quality than non-fintech and that fintech firms place more reliance on internal versus external corporate governance mechanisms, vis-a-vis companies in other industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a corporate orientation strategy facilitates the integration of Total Quality Management practices as well as entrepreneurial orientation enables the improvement of corporate social responsibility practices. Finally, whether total quality management improves measures of implemented social responsibility. Design - The research carried out was explanatory and transversal. Methodology/Approach - A 44-item survey on a five-point Likert scale was administered to 155 hotels threestars and above in the United States of America. Results were obtained from the application of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using Adanco software. Findings - The results indicate that entrepreneurial orientation has a positive influence on the establishment of total quality management and social responsibility processes; likewise, there is a very strong connection between these two variables. Originality of the research - The originality of this paper stands out because it simultaneously relates three variables relevant to the hotel sector. These variables are applied in different intensities, so that the results allow visualizing the way in which each of them takes place. Likewise, the study contributes to enhance empirical evidence and verify the different theoretical frameworks developed so far. For management, this means that companies will have to develop methods to measure and qualify each of the processes carried out. The result will enable them to select the processes that contribute most to the establishment of EO, TQM and CSR. In this way, resources will be saved that could be used in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic group research originated in the 1970s and a number of notable studies centered on the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Results were, however, conflicting. This paper explores the nature of strategic groups in the U.K. pharmaceutical industry. The study confirms the presence of between six and eight strategic groups across the period studied, 1998–2002. The study also demonstrates a statistically significant relationship between these strategic groups and performance using three performance measures. The paper then compares strategic groups with competitive groups and concludes that the distinction is important and may explain the contradictory findings in earlier strategic group research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant literature on divestment has repeatedly found that firms are likely to divest their poorly performing operations. In this paper, I consider how product market relatedness and geographic market differences in growth, policy stability, and exchange rate volatility can moderate the negative relationship between performance and divestment. Results from a comprehensive panel of U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) reveal that conventional arguments about poor performance hold for both related and unrelated firm operations in countries characterized by low growth, policy stability, and exchange rate stability. However, the results also show that there are significant differences across the divestment decisions of firms for their related and unrelated foreign operations in countries characterized by high growth, policy instability, and exchange rate volatility. Although poor performance has been called the most significant predictor of divestment, this paper considers how interactions across multilevel factors influence the divestment decisions of firms and reveals how U.S. MNCs respond to both product and geographic market characteristics when making divestment decisions for their foreign operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the unique functions of corporate headquarters in diversified firms and reports on a survey of the structure and staffing of more than 600 headquarters in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Chile. It explores the extent to which corporate headquarters are contingent on size of the company, corporate strategy (corporate portfolio and corporate structure and policies), and governance system (ownership and regulation, and country of origin). The results confirm that factors in each of these areas are important determinants of the size and structure of headquarters. Performance data suggest that these findings are not merely descriptive but that corporate headquarters should be designed to fit the corporate strategy. Although the results are capable of alternative interpretations, analysis provides no support for the view that ‘lean and mean’ headquarters lead to better performance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates content-based predictions of transaction cost economics with process-based predictions of organizational change to understand adaptation to deregulation in the for-hire trucking industry. We predict and find that firms whose governance of a core transaction is poor (according to transaction cost reasoning) will realize lower profits than their better-aligned counterparts and that these firms will attempt to adapt so as to better align their transactions. Results show that several organizational features affect the rate of adaptation: (1) firms with large investments in specialized assets adapt less readily than firms that rely on generic assets, (2) firms with unions adapt less readily than firms without unions, (3) firms that must replace employee drivers with owner-operators adapt less readily than firms that must replace owner-operators with employee drivers, and (4) entrants adapt more quickly than incumbent carriers. There is evidence of institutional isomorphism in that although carriers move systematically to reduce misalignment, they do so less assiduously when this will make their governance of drivers look less like that of nearby, similar carriers. Finally, our results indicate that firms that ultimately exited adapted more quickly than firms that survived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between firm performance and the proportion of shares owned by directors for a sample of small and medium sized companies in the US. The paper also examines, however, the impact of organizational form on firm performance. The results suggest that, in contrast to the majority of large firm studies on the subject, a curvilinear relationship is found to exist between firm performance and the percentage of equity held by the board of directors. The return on assets of firms is found to increase as director ownership increases up to a maximum at 68.2% of ownership, after which it then decreases as director ownership approaches 100% of equity. In addition, the results suggest that finns whose directors are more highly renumerals and who hold directorships in other companies are significantly more profitable. Furthermore, firms in which the owners perceive present management practices to be lacking in structure are found to have significantly lower performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the theory of professional competence in teaching of mathematics developed through a cross-cultural examination of teaching practices of mathematics teachers recommended as competent by their principals in two selected high-achieving high schools of India and the United States. A detailed study of teacher cases from both of the research settings yielded a rich conceptualization of the relationship between teachers' professional knowledge base and professional competence in the teaching of mathematics. The substantive theory explains the processes of both the development and the display of professional competence and enables predictions of the ways teachers would most likely utilize to meet the performance expectations of their work environments. The study makes a unique contribution to the field of teacher education and views professional competence as a dynamic interplay of various components of teachers' professional knowledge base activated in actual teaching situations in the context of the classroom, school, and wider social culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents discussion regarding understanding of economics by the whole population. American Economic Association has organized a meeting concerning this issue. According to the author, the far-reaching significance of this development is still only dimly realized. The authors of these three stimulating and instructive papers have referred repeatedly to the National Task Force on Economic Education. members of the American Economic Association realize how much the economics profession owes to the Committee for Economic Development and the Joint Council on Economic Education for initiating this frontal attack on economic ignorance, for putting this Association in the forefront in this nation-wide effort, and for giving the economics profession full academic freedom, for the content of these several programs. Although it is only right that the economists themselves should receive full credit for their professional performances. But without the stimulation, encouragement, and financial support from National Task Force report, Material Evaluation Committee report, and television series it would not have been possible to discuss the merits and limitations of the report of the National Task Force here.

This article uses data from a field study of five large U.S. restaurant chains to model how chains use a plural form--simultaneous use of company and franchise units--to maintain uniformity and achieve system wide adaptation to changing markets. From interview and observational data, I identify organizational structure, control systems, career paths, and strategy-making processes as four means through which the combination of company and franchise units helps chains achieve their objectives. The paper shows how the control and innovation processes provided by this plural form ameliorate some of the weaknesses and leverage some of the strengths of the company and franchise arrangements, enhancing the performance of the chain overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the theoretical and empirical relationship of training and individualism-collectivism to self-efficacy (a person's estimate of his or her ability to perform a task) and performance in studies of managers from Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China, and the United States. A laboratory experiment and a six-month field experiment were used to test hypotheses predicting that for individualists, self-focused training would have a stronger impact on self-efficacy and performance than would group-focused training and, for collectivists, group-focused training would have a stronger impact on self-efficacy and performance than would individual-focused training. The results show consistent support for the hypotheses at both a cultural and an individual level of analysis. A general model of self-efficacy and culture in an organizational environment is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategy-by-doing perspective argues that firms operating in highly dynamic environments can benefit from taking strategic actions in lieu of advance planning because such actions have learning effects that help the firm keep pace with changes in the environment. The implicit assumption is that strategy by doing is effective in dynamic environments but likely not in stable environments. This study challenges this notion and expands the purview of the strategy-by-doing perspective. We first argue that strategy by doing is generally an effective strategy due to the organizational learning it facilitates. We next discuss how environmental dynamism is multidimensional, encompassing both market and technological dynamism. The positive effects of strategy by doing on product-market performance are amplified in highly dynamic environments that feature high levels of both market and technological dynamism. We go on to argue that stable environments are also suitable for strategy by doing, where it can facilitate opportunity creation. However, strategy by doing may hinder performance in mixed environments where one form of dynamism is present and the other is not. Focusing on strategy by doing in the form of product changes, our analysis of 4,000 firms over a period of 20 years shows support for our arguments about environmental contingencies affecting the relationship between strategy by doing and performance. We discuss how these findings have implications for theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Building on new venture internationalization, agency, and signaling theories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the level of firm internationalization and initial public offering (IPO) performance. Further, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the moderating role of firm ownership structure on this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – The data set for this study is composed of 298 firms that made IPOs in years 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2002 in the US stock exchanges. The study utilizes hierarchical ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses to test its hypotheses. The model developed in this study identified IPO firm ownership structure as the moderator variable, IPO firm internationalization as the predictor variable, and underpricing as the criterion variable. This paper utilized robust regression modeling analyses available in Stata to analyze the data and test their hypotheses. Findings – Results based on data collected from 298 IPO firms suggest that firm internationalization has a positive impact on IPO underpricing. Results also report that the relationship between firm internationalization and IPO underpricing is moderated by CEO and blockholder ownership, with the relationship being stronger in IPO firms with higher levels of CEO and blockholder ownership. Originality/value – The current paper examines the impact of an IPO firm's internationalization prior to its going public on the subsequent performance of the IPO. In doing so, this paper seeks to help in resolving some of the apparent theoretical and empirical contradictions identified in literature. In addition, the introduction of IPO ownership structure as a moderator variable in the relationship between IPO firm internationalization and performance extends the applicability of agency theory to IPO firms and ensures a multi-theoretic, finer-grained conceptualization of this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relation between the foreign ownership and firm performance. The study was conducted for the companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange, in the first, second and third categories. The financial companies and the credit institutions were excluded from the sample. The final sample included 63 companies. Return on Assets and Return on Equity are used for measuring the financial and economic performance of the firm. The foreign ownership is measured by the percentage of shares held by foreign investors. Econometric tools like linear regression analysis are used for analysis. The results of the study suggest that there is no significant link between firm performance and the existence of foreign capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the debate concerning the relationship between politics and business conduct by investigating the influence of the institutional context on leveraged buyout investments. We propose that the formal and informal institution context in 'red' states (those dominated by the U.S. Republican Party) is more aligned with the principal strategies through which leveraged buyout investors create value than such a context is in 'blue' states (those dominated by the Democratic Party). Therefore, according to institutional theory, one would expect, ceteris paribus, a higher likelihood of buyout transactions in red states and vice versa. We analyze a sample of 10,746 U.S. buyout investments in 4,633 distinct target companies made by 2,396 different funds managed by 1,300 private equity firms from 1980 to 2003. The results indicate strong evidence of a positive association between a more aligned institutional context and both the volume of buyout activity and different measures of performance for these buyouts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have been conducted analyzing factors affecting the demand for Major League Baseball (MLB) games. This paper revisits the factors affecting the long-run demand for attendance, employing an unbalanced panel technique for all home games played over the period from 1979 to 2004 seasons for the 12 non-expansion, non-adjustment teams from MLB. Combining both teams and every home game played during 1979-2004 seasons, dimensions provide better understanding of long-run demand for attendance. The study finds that time factors, fan interest, city characteristics, team's performance, and fan's attendance behavior have strong influences on the game attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the results of an examination of precipitation forecasts for 1--30-day leads from global models run at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) during November 2007--February 2008 are presented. The performance of the model precipitation forecasts are examined in global and regional contexts, and results of a case study of precipitation variations that are associated with a moderate to strong Madden--Julian oscillation (MJO) event are presented. The precipitation forecasts from the ECMWF and NCEP operational prediction models have nearly identical temporal correlation with observed precipitation at forecast leads from 2 to 9 days over the Northern Hemisphere during the cool season, despite the higher resolution of the ECMWF operational model, while the ECMWF operational model forecasts are slightly better in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere during the warm season. The ECMWF Re-Analysis Interim (ERA-Interim) precipitation forecasts perform only slightly worse than the NCEP operational model, while NCEP''s Climate Forecast System low-resolution coupled model forecasts perform the worst among the four models. In terms of bias, the ECMWF operational model performs the best among the four model forecasts that were examined, particularly with respect to the ITCZ regions in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Local temporal correlations that were computed on daily precipitation totals for day-2 forecasts against observations indicate that the operational models at ECMWF and NCEP perform the best during the 4-month study period, and that all of the models have low to insignificant correlations over land and over much of the tropics. They perform the best in subtropical and extratropical oceanic regions. Also presented are results that show that striking improvements have been made over the past two decades in the ability of the models to represent precipitation variations that are associated with MJO. The model precipitation forecasts exhibit the ability to characterize the evolution of precipitation variations during a moderate--strong period of MJO conditions for forecast leads as long as 10 days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent ethical misconduct in American business has resulted in volumes of written commentary, various legislative responses, as well as litigation by those identified as victims. While legislators, judges, juries, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pursue an increasing number of cases, there is little attention devoted to understanding what drives executives and other leaders to behave in ways that violate the ethical and legal standards of business in the United States. This understanding is a prerequisite to selecting leaders and designing interventions that prevent future misconduct. Understanding leadership’s nature and functioning is one key to understanding the ethical behavior of an organization as a system and of the people who lead the organization. Two models or frameworks provide the foundation for this paper. The first is a model of leadership competencies. This model identifies five key areas of competence related to overall, long-term leadership success. The second model targets leadership effectiveness. This model has three components – motivational patterns, decision criteria, and competencies. Using the Leadership Effectiveness Model to frame the discussion, the authors describe the nature and importance of the models, with particular focus on motivational patterns. Research suggests these patterns often account for 40–60% of overall leadership effectiveness. This article defines motivational patterns and describes key patterns that may impact ethical behavior of leaders. The article concludes with a discussion of how to use data on motivational patterns in leadership selection, development, and evaluation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — The internet has become a ubiquitous technology for business and it possesses the potential to make the concept of value chain into a more attainable reality. The purpose of this paper is to conjecture that the way the internet is utilized and the extent to which the internet impacts business performance vary from country to country. The paper aims to compare two countries regarding the pattern of internet utilization, the impact of the internet on organizational performance, and the readiness for the internet from the value chain perspective. Design/methodology/approach — A survey study was conducted with CIOs and IS directors in the USA and South Korea. A research instrument was developed by adopting and revising two existing instruments on IT value chain and on business internet practices. Findings — The findings suggest that the two countries are more similar in the way they utilize the internet than anticipated despite discernable differences observed in some areas of internet utilization. The study also provides an empirical evidence for the connection between the organization's readiness for the internet and the impact of the internet on organizational performance. Research limitations/implications — Varying sampling and data collection processes between the two countries may have introduced unintended bias to the study. Practical implications — The findings of the study provide empirical evidence that the internet has become a truly global business tool that makes the concept of value chain an achievable reality. Originality/value — This comparative study makes a unique contribution for both academicians and practitioners to gain a better understanding how the internet is adopted and utilized in different countries and to chart a course to capitalize on the technology from a value chain perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and to what extent does regulation matter in shaping corporate behavior? How important is it compared to other incentives and mechanisms of social control, and how does it interact with those mechanisms? How might we explain variation in corporate responses to law and other external pressures? This article addresses these questions through an study of environmental performance in 14 pulp and paper manufacturing mills in Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Georgia in the United States. Over the last three decades, we find tightening regulatory requirements and intensifying political pressures have brought about large improvements and considerable convergence in environmental performance by pulp manufacturers, most of which have gone “beyond compliance” in several ways. But regulation does not account for remaining differences in environmental performance across facilities. Rather, “social license” pressures (particularly from local communities and environmental activists) and corporate environmental management style prod some firms toward better performance compliance than others. At the same time, economic pressures impose limits on “beyond performance” investments. In producing large gains in environmental performance, however, regulation still matters greatly, but less as a system of hierarchically imposed, uniformly enforced rules than as a coordinative mechanism, routinely interacting with market pressures, local and national environmental activists, and the culture of corporate management in generating environmental improvement while narrowing the spread between corporate leaders and laggards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current efforts for tenure reform, particularly post-tenure review, must be examined carefully to make sure that they do not violate the assumption that undergirds the idea of the professions. Whether it be accountancy, law, medicine, or other professions, possession of the appropriate licensure/degree normally conveys a "rebuttable presumption of an individual's professional excellence." Within this framework, however, review for cause has long been an acceptable means of reviewing a faculty member's proper fulfillment of duties. In recent times, however, some colleges and universities—faced with a public dissatisfied with higher education's costs and outcomes—have turned to a review of faculty, absent cause, in order to address questions of productivity. A major part of the current debate over such a post-tenure review is the form that it should take. The question asked by this paper is whether the standard of peer review—the fundamental defense of the integrity of any profession—can be shown to be a satisfactory answer to the concerns of higher education's publics. We cite leading management writers and current management practice in sup support of the standard of peer review in reforming tenure practices. We then suggest some guidelines for pursuing post-tenure review as tenure reform within such a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New forms of assessment are sweeping the country. This article reports findings from one of the first projects to develop and field-test performance-based assessments for teachers, Stanford University's Teacher Assessment Project. The authors analyze the responses of two high school history teachers on three performance assessments of teaching: (a) Evaluation of Student Papers, in which teachers read and responded to a set of student essays; Co) Use of Documentary Materials, in which teachers planned a clam activity using primary sources; and (c) Textbook Analysis, in which teachers evaluated a selection from a widely used U.S. history textbook. Differences emerged in the teachers' conceptions of their roles and responsibilities, their images of student ability and motivation, their views on student learning, and their subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge. The authors discuss what performance assessments can tell us about pedagogical knowledge and reasoning, and explore the implications of this work for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the current vision of the profession of social work embodied in its great and little traditions. It advocates incorporating the great and little traditions of our profession in the conceptualization of the educational continuum. It advocates use of a competence-oriented model to define outcomes for each level of the continuum and to design educational programs to meet those outcomes. Finally, it advocates blending the great and little traditions of the profession in the educational designs developed at each level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Electrical performance of ITER CS prototype joints. • Detailed destructive examination of ITER prototype joints: twin – box and coaxial. • Explanation of the difference in performance based on the destructive examinations. The ITER Magnet System will be the largest and most challenging integrated superconducting magnet system ever built. For the Central Solenoid (CS), cable – in – conduit - conductors (CICCs) of nearly one kilometre length are produced, but still, it will be necessary to connect several lengths together to wind the gigantic 110 tonnes coils. The creation of these superconducting joints is one of the most delicate parts of the assembly. There are three types of ITER CS joints: splice joints, coaxial joints and twin – box joints. US ITER, the ITER Domestic Agency of the USA produced a prototype containing all three types of joints. The goal is to test the performance of the joints in the SULTAN facility of the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), capable of reproducing close – to – service conditions: high magnetic field (up to 11 T background field), high current (up to 100 kA) and high mass flow rate of supercritical helium for cooling. The paper describes the results of a comprehensive examination campaign aimed at understanding the relation between fabrication and performance of the CS prototype joints. The test campaign combines advanced image analysis for the assessment of the void fraction of the conductors with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) to evaluate the quality of the contact between the strands and the sleeve / sole of the joints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence about the relation between organizational age and failure is mixed, and theoretical explanations are conflicting. We show that a simple model of organizational evolution can explain the main patterns of age dependence and reconcile the apparently conflicting theoretical predictions. In our framework, the predicted pattern of age dependence depends crucially on the quality of organizational performance immediately after founding and its subsequent evolution, which in turn depends on the intensity of competition. In developing our theory, we clarify issues of levels of analysis as well as the relations between organizational fitness, endowment, organizational capital, and the hazard of failure. We show that once organizational learning is considered, founding conditions affect the fate of organizations in ways more complex than previously acknowledged. We illustrate how the predictions of our theory can be tested empirically and evaluate the effect of aging on the mortality hazards of American microbreweries and brewpubs by estimating the parameters of a random walk with time-varying drift. We also make some conjectures about expected patterns in other empirical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the agency view of corporate governance, we propose that technology-intensive firms use both outcome and behavior-based performance criteria for rewarding CEOs. Using a sample of 206 firms from 12 U.S. manufacturing industries, we find that as technological intensity increases CEO bonuses are more closely linked to financial results and that total CEO incentives are associated with two indicators of desirable innovation behaviors: invention resonance and science harvesting. Invention resonance refers to the impact a firm's inventions have on other firms' inventions, while science harvesting reflects a firm's commitment to scientific research. As technological intensity increases, aligning bonus with financial results, total incentives with invention resonance, and total incentives with science harvesting predict firm market performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the religious dimension of the Sicilian mafia. The Sicilian mafia, known as Cosa Nostra, has consistently demonstrated the capacity to combine tradition with innovation. It adapts to changing circumstances, modifying its modus operandi accordingly, while maintaining seemingly consistent 'moral' codes, ritual practices and a strong reified collective identity. Religion, in particular, appears to be a central component of mafia identity. Instances of this apparently paradoxical phenomenon range from the altars frequently found in the hideouts of mafiosi, to the mafia's ambiguous relationship with clergymen, and to the religious symbols utilised during the ceremony of initiation. Applying theories of ritual and performance to the study of the mafia role in religious festivals, this article examines the effects of the role played by mafiosi in local religious festivals on their individual and collective identity, as well as on the social structure of the group as a whole. Specific attention will be dedicated to how --and whether--these practices have been affected by the recent significant successes in judicial investigations into the mafia, the hardening in the civil society's attitude toward organized crime syndicates, and the progressively firmer stand by the Church against the mafia. The data for analysis are derived from judicial papers, police reports and video footage, together with relevant secondary literature on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate performance outcomes of strategic sourcing, specifically examining how strategic sourcing affects buyer-supplier relationship, supplier evaluation, and sourcing performance from the buying firm's perspective in the context of the US textile and apparel industry. Design/methodology/approach – This study provides an empirical investigation of a theory-based model integrating the resource-based view and the relational view of strategic management. The model is tested using data from 180 US textile and apparel firms by structural equation modeling. Findings – The survey results indicate that strategic sourcing significantly impacts buyer-supplier relationships, supplier evaluation, and sourcing performance of buying companies. The study also shows that supplier evaluation significantly influences buyer-supplier relationship. Research limitations/implications – Given that the data are from a specific industry, the generalizability of current findings to other industries may require additional investigation. Practical implications – Sourcing becomes a key strategic consideration for textile and apparel firms to sustain or improve their competitiveness. Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature by developing a research model based on a multi-theoretical perspective and conducting a large-scale empirical survey in the textile and apparel industry and analyzing the model by structural equation modeling. The dynamic textile and apparel industry is a classical representation of global supply chain, characterized by the industry's significant contribution to the world economy and international trade, the extremely worldwide spread supply network, and the tremendous competition in global market. Examining strategic sourcing's influences in this important industry provides many valuable implications for industrial practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between supply chain performance and renewable energies has been widely identified as a critical research topic by practitioners, international organizations, and academics. It is essential to explore the articles that have been published by scholars regarding their main concerns, the methodologies used, the renewable energies that have been focused on, and the performance indicators that have been used in the optimization of renewable energies supply chains. This paper delivers a comprehensive bibliometric analysis that provides a better understanding not previously fully evaluated by earlier studies in the field of supply chain performance and renewable energies. The goal of this research is: 1) to recognize the scholarly production; 2) the most productive authors; 3) the most productive journals; 4) the most cited articles; and 5) the most productive countries. The analysis begins by identifying studies published during the period between 2005 and the middle of 2018, which are then reduced in number to those authored by influential investigators. Also discussed are the gaps in knowledge about literature and bibliometric analysis. The findings provide a potential roadmap for researchers who intend to undertake research in this field. • The number of publications in supply chain performance and renewable energies has been increasing, in the last few years. • The topic of supply chain performance and renewable energies has been explored most deeply in the USA, Italy, and the UK. • The most-cited articles are related to the spatial distribution of bioenergy production units and process network. • The renewable energies most focused are bioethanol, biofuels, biomass, bio-oil gasifier. • The Biomass and Bioenergy journal is the most-cited journal in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper contributes to the emerging debate about offshoring of support functions in international business research. We analyze the success of offshoring activities and focus on the time a firm takes to achieve its expected cost savings and its targeted service level. • We hypothesize that firm-specific offshoring experience, publicly available knowledge on offshoring, path dependencies, cultural distances, and the chosen governance mode influence the success of offshoring activities. • An analysis of detailed data about 525 offshoring implementations of US and German firms confirms the anticipated relationships and provides further crucial insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies linking grit-defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals-to performance are beset by contradictory evidence. As a result, commentators have increasingly declared that grit has limited effects. We propose that this inconsistent evidence has occurred because prior research has emphasized perseverance and ignored, both theoretically and empirically, the critical role of passion, which we define as a strong feeling toward a personally important value/preference that motivates intentions and behaviors to express that value/preference. We suggest that combining the grit scale- which only captures perseverance-with a measure that assesses whether individuals attain desired levels of passion will predict performance. We first metaanalyzed 127 studies (n = 45,485) that used the grit scale and assessed performance, and found that effect sizes are larger in studies where participants were more passionate for the performance domain. Second, in a survey of employees matched to supervisor-rated job performance (n = 422), we found that the combination of perseverance, measured through the grit scale, and passion attainment, measured through a new scale, predicted higher performance. A final study measured perseverance and passion attainment in a sample of students (n = 248) and linked these to their grade-point average (GPA), finding that the combination of perseverance and passion attainment predicted higher GPAs in part through increased immersion. The present results help resolve the mixed evidence of grit's relationship with performance by highlighting the important role that passion plays in predicting performance. By adequately measuring both perseverance and passion, the present research uncovers grit's true predictive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of executive compensation policy and organizational structure on the performance of 439 large U.S. corporations between 1981 and 1985. Companies with long-term incentive plans enjoyed significantly greater increases in ROE (return on equity) than did companies without such plans, and by 1985 long-term incentive plans had been nearly universally adopted by large corporations. Corporate success was not significantly related to be level of, or degree of equity in, executive pay, or to the steepness of pay differentials across executive ranks; it was, however, positively related to the extent of hierarchical structure, which appears to have been the primary mechanism for sorting individuals by human capital endowments and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the concept of quality, in general and the manner in which it is perceived in education. For the educational process, quality is not produced exclusively by school, as a provider of educational services, but by the beneficiaries and the purchasers of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on performance measurement and reporting which include the study on evaluating performance of public maintenance of streets, sidewalks and parks in San Francisco, California, the data on New York City's efforts to improve accountability by government operations, and the preview of the results-based performance management systems installed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This paper reviews studies of buyer–supplier relationships published in four prominent U.S.-based academic journals between 1986 and 2005. Our review revealed that the focus of academic researchers on types of value being extracted from buyer–supplier relationships changed between 1986 and 2005, as did their interest in the buyer mechanisms implemented to create value in these relationships. Although emphasis has changed over time, we found that scholars have primarily investigated four types of value derived from buyer–suppler relationships: operational performance improvements, integration-based improvements, supplier capability-based improvements and financial performance outcomes. The review also noted that researchers considered more buyer–supplier mutual efforts since 1996 than the earlier decade, but the number of studies investigating buyer practices has declined as a percentage of total publications. We conclude with a discussion of the review's implications for future research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cheerleading occupies a contested space in American culture and a key point of controversy is whether it ought to be considered a sport. Drawing on interviews with college cheerleaders on coed squads, as well as five years of fieldwork in various cheerleading sites, this paper examines the debate over cheerleading and sport in terms of its gender politics. The bid for sport status on the part of cheerleaders revolves around the desire for respect more than official recognition by athletic organizations; cheerleaders recognize the prestige associated with sport, a function of its historic association with hegemonic masculinity, and they claim that prestige for cheerleading by highlighting its recent transformation into a more athletic, competitive activity that is no longer "just for girls." However, the support function of college cheerleading, combined with its "feminine" performance demands, make the bid for sport status controversial. Male cheerleaders in particular distance themselves from the feminine elements of cheerleading because they want to avoid being perceived as gay. The gender politics at work here illustrate both the elasticity of gender categories and the limits of that elasticity, as gendered boundaries are drawn and redrawn between what gets to count as sport and what does not, and as cheerleading simultaneously challenges and reinforces the notion of sport as a male preserve. Because masculinity and femininity are performed side-by-side in coed cheerleading, this research underscores the importance of relational analyses for examining and critiquing the construction of gender and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to determine the basis for the assumed relationship between accountability and performance that pervades much of contemporary administrative reform efforts, this paper applies a "social mechanisms" approach to elaborate the factors that might be involved in account giving and various forms of administrative performance. This search for mechanisms indicates that the relationship is paradoxical and either spurious or so contingent as to raise questions regarding administrative reforms based on it. Various theoretical approaches for dealing with the relationship are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several articles have been written during the past few years examining performance improvement paths and various forms of efficiency frontiers in operations strategy. These articles focus primarily on defining and describing these frontiers and raise questions concerning how to improve operations. In this paper, we provide one of the first empirical studies aimed at validating these earlier studies. Using a database on the 10 largest U.S. airlines for a period of 11 years, we test and validate some of the models presented in the operations literature. The 10 major airlines are separated into 2 groups for analysis: geographic specialists and geographic generalists. Our analysis shows that better performing airlines (in terms of cost-quality position) in both groups confirm the predictions of the sand cone model when operating further away from their asset frontiers, although trade-offs do occur when operating close to asset frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While researchers have explored the relationship between market orientation and firm performance in commercial organizations, such studies in non-profit organizations are scarce. This paper uses a structural equation mode! to show the impact of market orientation on the performance of nonprofit organizations. To conduct the study, the authors employed the Kohli, Jaworski and Kumar (1993) market-orientation scale (MARKOR). Data for this study was collected by mail survey. One thousand market orientation surveys were sent to the executive directors of non-profit organizations across the U.S. One hundred forty-eight non- profit agencies responded to the survey, representing 14.8% response rate. The performance criterion was based on the self-stated funding activities for the non-profit organizations collected in this sample. Results indicated that the Kohli, Jaworski and Kumar (1993) market-orientation scale provided a good measure of market orientation in non-profit organizations. The model of the relationship between market orientation and the performance of a non-profit organization supported the theory. The managerial implications are discussed for non-profit organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major goal of educational accountability systems is to improve the academic performance of low-performing students. This research paper studies the administrative data from North Carolina and explores the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school-based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low-performing students face in retaining and attracting high-quality teachers. In such schools, the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence on teacher turnover are clear but the extent to which that higher turnover has translated into a decline in the average qualifications of the teachers in the low-performing schools, is less clear.

The focus of this paper is on three major questions: (1) what is the theoretical rationale for the strategic group concept?; (2) does strategic group membership have performance implications?; and (3) are strategic groups and membership in strategic groups stable characteristics of industries? A statistical procedure is proposed to longitudinally identify strategic groups. The empirical setting is the U.S. pharmaceutical industry over the period 1963-82. While performance differences are found in terms of market share, profitability differences between groups are not observed. Neither are differences found in terms of risk and risk-adjusted performance. These results are attributed to the existence of performance variation within each strategic group. A dynamic model of competitive repositioning is proposed which helps integrate the findings from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]