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Most investors and business leaders understand that the internet has created a few high‐profile success but many more start‐up businesses that have destroyed rather than created value. As a result, many executives have dampened expectations for the transformational potential of internet‐based commerce, and have cut back investments accordingly. In this column, Stuart Jackson makes the observation that while many internet start‐ups have crashed, most of the biggest e‐commerce successes have come from established companies with a loyal base of customers who have added internet capabilities to supplement traditional channels. Traditional retailers and B2B businesses who have yet to grasp the full potential of the internet have untapped opportunities to create what might be called “net shareholder value” by using the Internet to supplement existing channels. The author proposes four key strategies for companies considering going down this path.

In this article, Jackson considers a number of the assumptions that were used to justify massive (and in many cases, outlandish) valuations of Internet businesses in the late 1990s. Jackson then evaluates the extent to which each of these has been proven true in the light of recent history. The author then draws lessons that can be applied broadly across any business considering e‐commerce strategies to supplement existing channels to market.

Companies should not think of e‐commerce as a separate business from traditional channels. E‐commerce and off‐line businesses selling the same products are competing in the same strategic market segment. Competitive advantage will go to those who can achieve overall scale benefits (taking account of customer acquisition costs as well as physical infrastructure and operating overheads) superior to the competition. In most situations, the best way to achieve this will be through an integrated offering leveraging multiple channels.

By looking in detail at e‐commerce successes and failures and the reasons behind those, this article provides valuable lessons for companies in how to increase competitive advantage and create shareholder value by leveraging the Internet for their business.

March 24, 1970 Damages — Personal injuries — Assessment — Brucellosis — Contracted from drinking infected milk — Depression and psychological inertia in addition to physical symptoms — Award of special damages for loss of earnings too high — Award of general damages for pain and suffering too low — Global award a fair and proper sum — Whether Court of Appeal will interfere — Observations as to proper approach when considering appeals on quantum.

The purpose of the paper is to describe how the understanding of the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and organizational effectiveness (OE) has evolved during the past three decades and to provide examples how firms are using HRM to improve their OE today by addressing several challenges that result from a broader stakeholder model.

This paper reviews the past and current work on the relationship between HRM and OE.

This findings indicate that the relationship between HRM and OE is very different when comparing the past with the current work on the relationship between HRM and OE. A major reason for this is the current work on OE uses the multiple stakeholder model that accounts for many more stakeholders than the past work.

Human resource (HR) professionals have the opportunity to demonstrate many ways by which HRM can influence OE, and not just solely on the basis of firm profitability. Thus the use of the multiple stakeholder model today offers the HR professional and the HR profession many more opportunities to demonstrate their importance and impact.

A systematic review and comparison of the past and current relationship between HRM and OE using the multiple stakeholder model have not been using both the viewpoints of both academics and practitioners.

Successful growth strategy has a lot to do with careful preparation to identify attractive markets and new sources of customer value and competitive advantage. If the plan for achieving growth includes acquisitions, then we also have to consider company valuations and the availability of suitable acquisition targets. A challenge for many companies is knowing when and how much to adapt their strategy in the light of specific acquisition opportunities that become available. If a poorly‐performing competitor becomes available at a modest price should we try to adapt our strategy to take advantage of the opportunity? If the price for an attractive acquisition is bid up beyond expectations should we walk away or try to find a way to pay what the market says the company is worth? In this article, Stuart Jackson shows how successful acquirers combine both strategic discipline and a willingness to react quickly to market opportunities, an approach he calls strategic opportunism.

In this article, Jackson draws lessons from leading private equity investment groups, some of whom excel at this approach. To illustrate his points, Jackson uses the example of Snapple Beverage Corporation, a company that has been acquired four times since 1992, twice by private equity investors Thomas H. Lee and Triarc, and twice by corporate owners Quaker Oats and Cadbury Schweppes. Each owner brought different organizational priorities and different capabilities to add value to the business.

There is a huge disparity of returns for companies investing in the same business during different periods. The clear implication is that for a successful growth strategy involving acquisitions, companies need to get both the strategy and the timing right. This may require adjusting the strategy in light of opportunities that arise, and taking steps to align organization priorities and incentives.

By comparing the very different acquisition approaches of corporate and private equity investors, the article provides valuable insight into how private equity investors are often able to deliver strong performance even without the benefit of substantial synergies, while corporate acquisitions often fail to deliver attractive shareholder returns.

The relationship between sex and tourism remains ambiguous in the tourism literature. Few studies have examined the underlying motivations behind sex-driven travel, and little is known about factors inhibiting tourists' procurement of commercial sex when traveling. Therefore, this study explored male Chinese tourists' perceived constraints during decision-making and developed a comprehensive scale to assess constraints to commercial sex consumption overseas.

Data were obtained from male Chinese tourists purchasing commercial sex while traveling overseas. This study involved a four-stage process as recommended by Churchill (1979) for scale development research. In Stage 1, preliminary items were generated through a comprehensive review of the constraints literature and in-depth interviews with 16 sex tourists, which generated an initial 26 items. During the second stage to purify the measurement items, six items were eliminated, resulting in 20 items. Stage 3 involved exploratory factor analysis (N = 275) to extract the scale's underlying factor structure. Results revealed a five-factor structure with sufficient evidence of internal reliability given Cronbach's alpha coefficients between 0.722 and 0.843. The final stage included confirmatory factor analysis (N = 259) to verify the scale's reliability and validity.

Ultimately, 20 items were developed to measure sex tourists' perceived constraints toward engaging in commercial sex services overseas based on five factors: structural constraints, intrapersonal constraints, interpersonal constraints, value conflicts and service supply–related constraints.

This study advances the scope of sex tourism research by verifying how these five constraints are independent, generalized and can influence the procurement of sexual services overseas. This study is the first in sex tourism research to explore the difficulties facing sex tourists. Results offer marketers important insight on how to better address these constraints while providing a safe and legal sex tourism experience.

Most business leaders buy into the logic of differentiating their products from those of competitors, and of offering more complete solutions to customer needs. But what if you find that other competitors with stripped‐down offerings are gaining share? Does that mean you should abandon efforts at differentiation and switch to a simplified, low‐cost product? If so, what should you do about customers who say they like the more complete, higher‐value offering? In this column, Stuart Jackson considers a number of examples where companies have disaggregated their service offering to create a menu of options that appeal to a wide range of customers. The author then proposes four key questions for companies considering going down this path.

In this article, Jackson considers service disaggregation strategies for companies in a number of different industries, including retailing, airlines and software. Jackson then draws lessons that can be applied broadly across any business considering tiered levels of services and pricing as a new source of profitable growth.

Most companies want to offer more complete solutions to customer needs with all sorts of added features “built‐in”. This makes sense only as long as the large majority of customers really value all these features. If not, companies should examine ways to disaggregate their service offerings and broaden the range of their customer appeal.

By looking in detail at when taking away product features or charging more for specific services does or does not make sense, this article provides valuable insights into how to understand and predict when changes in service offerings will support increased competitive advantage and value creation.

The strategic human resource management (SHRM) emerged in the middle of the 1980s and is currently seen as a relevant research and practical field in the area of business administration (Kaufman, 2015). Its academic relevance has been receiving international attention due to the importance of the strategic performance of human resource management (HRM) (Jackson, Schuler, & Jiang, 2014). It is possible to define SHRM as a vertical connection between HRM practices and international strategy and horizontally as the congruence among the several human resource practices (Wright & McMahan, 1992).

Taking into consideration the emerging research gaps in the area, the necessity to bring to attention the implementation of policies and strategic practices of human resource management became prominent. Our study characterizes the national scenario regarding this specific research theme. For such, we developed a bibliometric review of national journals in the area of business administration with level Qualis B2 [1] or above, described the institutionalization of the research in Brazil and established a sociogram with research relationship networks in the country.

Between 1997 and 2017, only 19 articles on the implementation of SHRM were published in the 32 journals researched. The characterization of the studies indicates a predominance of qualitative articles, which adopt as methodological approach the case study, and most of them use interviews and content analysis as techniques of data collection and analysis, respectively. The use of such investigation tools is in line with the nature of the phenomenon studied. The scenario indicates that the implementation of SHRM is still a developing theme in Brazil.

There is a lack of studies that combine the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches and focus on public organizations. Besides, the results indicate the need to diversify the methodological approaches used. Regarding the institutionalization of research in Brazil, it is possible to notice the growth of research groups investigating SHRM, even though their only focus does not rely on implementation. The academic production regarding the theme is regionally located in the state of São Paulo, even though academic production is also to be found in a decentralized way in the country, with rare networks.

This way, the main contribution of this article is the accomplishment of the first bibliometric review regarding the implementation of SHRM in Brazil, showing the scientific community that the theme still presents a gap to be explored in national studies and showing human resource professionals and the society that the transformational switch of human management to organizational outcomes – despite prolific in the academia – still has not been realized in practice.

In the articles analyzed, the most common finding was that the effective implementation of SHRM and strategic practices of HR, such as the competency management, still deserves attention of the academia through the accomplishment of deeper qualitative studies that exhibit not only interfering factors but also the initiatives that must be adopted by the organization to favor the implementation process.

The interventions occurred in an organization can or cannot stem from an articulated HR strategy. Some policies can be implemented without a previous explicit planning, and other planned strategies may never even be effectively implemented (Truss & Gratton, 1994). As reported by Kaufman (2015), some critical success factors to a large-scale organizational change – which is necessary for the effective adoption of strategic HR models – are the commitment of leaderships and a carefully planned and managed implementation. For such, it is necessary to manage programmed organizational changes properly and to act promptly on the cultural pressure perceived by all levels of the organization (Guest, 1987). Such premises are associated with the SHRM perspective proposed by Wright and Snell (1998), in which the authors claim that the main role of HR is to implement organizational strategies. Lengnick-Hall et al. (2009) present a research agenda that highlights the need to give more emphasis on issues related to the implementation of strategic human resource management, specifically regarding the vertical and horizontal alignment of HR systems.

The purpose of this paper is to show that most retail and franchise businesses have the goal of rapidly expanding to create a nationwide or even international network of outlets. Achieving that goal requires more than just having an appealing offering that works in one city. Business leaders need to determine a pathway to national presence that takes account of the geographic scale economics for their particular business. Some businesses will benefit from rapidly going national with simultaneous growth in many regions of the country. Others will benefit from a much more measured approach, building strong scale advantages in one region before expanding into the next. In this column, Stuart Jackson considers examples of both business types and offers lessons to help companies decide which type of growth strategy is right for them.

In this article, Jackson considers the expansion strategies of two different retail businesses, Starbucks coffee shops and Staples office supply stores. Jackson looks at how each business expanded and considers their different sources of competitive advantage and scale economics versus competitors. He then draws lessons that can be applied broadly across multi‐site businesses.

Just because you have the ultimate goal of being a nationwide or global player in your industry does not mean that the best way to get there is to open outlets as fast as possible across the country. Companies that take care to build competitive advantage at each stage of their expansion will enjoy higher profitability, even if growth may be slower at times. The pay‐off is that they will have the resources to sustain continued growth into new markets and win the struggle to create value for investors.

By looking in detail at local and national benefits of scale in the retail industry, the article provides valuable insights into how to understand and predict which geographic growth strategies will maximize long term success and value creation.

Manufacturers and product suppliers with a strong market share in their selected segments often enjoy good profitability but find it hard to achieve strong growth without diversifying into new product segments where their established competitive advantage may no longer apply. One tactic to overcome this problem is for companies to expand the functionality of their offering to provide a more complete solution to customers' needs. In this column, Stuart Jackson considers a range of examples where companies that started with an emphasis on manufacturing or distributing product have successfully broadened their offering to include a range complementary services. The author then proposes four key questions for companies considering going down this path.

In this article, Jackson considers service expansion strategies for companies in a number of different industries, including medical products, retailing, printing and photocopying, package shipping, processed foods and IT. Jackson then draws lessons that can be applied broadly across any business considering value added services as a way to provide new sources of profitable growth.

Just because you have exhausted opportunities to gain market share in your selected industry segment does not mean you need to diversify into unrelated markets in order to tap new sources of growth. Adding new services that provide a more complete solution to customers' needs can be a way to add new revenues from your existing customer base while at the same time cementing a deeper relationship with customers that can differentiate your firm from competitors. However, this path is not for everyone and may only make sense if the opportunity meets certain key criteria relating to customer needs, competitors and management capabilities.

By looking in detail at when value added services do or do not make sense, this article provides valuable insights into how to understand and predict when new service offerings will support increased competitive advantage and value creation.