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Atlantic Basin Refining, Inc. (ABR), a Virgin Islands company located on the island of St Croix, reached a tentative agreement with Hess and Petroleos de Venezuela SA to purchase the two companies’ joint venture, Hovensa, LLC in November 2014. Hovensa operated the large St Croix oil refinery that had been closed since 2012, but the deal required approval by the Virgin Islands Senate. Although reopening the large refinery would generate a significant boost to the local economy, past operating losses, and financial and legal issues associated with Hovensa, raised concerns about the feasibility of ABR’s proposal. The case is set in late 2014 as the government is working to ensure that the decision to allow ABR to purchase the refinery reflects the long-term interests of the Virgin Islands.

The case was researched using secondary data and all materials are available to the public. This was necessary due to the ongoing legal battle concerning the refinery’s sale. No disguises of people or entities were used. Frequently cited sources include government and court records, newspaper articles, and internet sources.

The case is most appropriate for undergraduate courses in management or finance where capital budgeting decisions are analyzed.

The case draws on literature related to capital budgeting and management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of congruity and endorsement on consumer attitudes toward sports website advertisements (Aad), the advertising brand (Abr), and consumers’ future intentions (FI).

The current study followed a 2×3 between-subjects experimental design. Sports celebrity (or the presence or absence of a sports celebrity in a banner ad) and the level of congruity between the website and banner ad (high congruity – soccer, medium congruity – snowboard, and low congruity – computer) were the primary independent variables. Data were collected in two stages. An initial pilot study (n=40) established the reliability and validity of the scaled measures guiding this test. The second phase of data collection, the main study, was conducted over a five-day period. A random assignment of treatment conditions (i.e. exposure to one of six banner ad manipulations) was followed by a series of short surveys designed to measure the dependent variables of subjects’ cognitive ad responses (i.e. Aad, Abr, and FI).

The results indicated that participants who viewed the ad with the endorsement showed a more positive Aad than those who viewed the ad without it. The participants with a high congruity condition reported a more positive Abr and higher FI than those with low or medium congruity.

This study extends the application of congruity theory to banner advertisements, thereby aiding our understanding of consumers’ perceptions of advertising.

Investments in information technology (IT) are large and growing and require management attention. This study investigated processes associated with IT benefit management (ITBM) to realise benefits during the development of a new system, to retrofit ITBM processes against an existing system, and to review ITBM processes against an existing system without retrofitting. The case study approach was used to ameliorate the shortage of qualitative research in IT value. The study identified key processes required during IT benefit realisation, changes in processes during retrofitting and strong and weak processes during review. All three approaches were found to be operational effective with the review approach having some strategic effectiveness. Operational effectiveness ensured that social subsystem costs and benefits and complementary assets were identified. To make the review approach more strategically effective requires definitive IT goals to be set. The application of the “3Rs” during case analyses enabled success factors for ITBM to be identified.

This paper aims to examine the role of technology-enabled leadership (TEL) in achieving performance-enhancement outcomes. This empirical investigation is from a dynamic capabilities perspective.

A conceptual framework presents a general model with an overarching dynamic capabilities theory. The research model defines key variables – macroeconomic turbulence (MET), TEL, analytics-based responsiveness (ABR), knowledge-driven innovation (KDI) and performance enhancement outcomes (PEOs). Empirical tests of eight hypotheses are conducted using an original survey instrument based on the respondents (n = 203).

In response to MET, TEL is crucial in implementing ABR in strategic planning aspects and KDI in operational dimensions. In turn, ABR and KDI are key mediating variables that achieve a desirable level of PEOs.

Despite the limitations associated with survey-based research, the findings suggest robust analytical results. For example, the alternative model suggests that MET negatively moderates the positive impact of TEL on ABR, while KDI positively moderates the positive impact of ABR on PEOs.

Outstanding firms demonstrate both TEL and data-savvy decision-making processes. Knowledge-intensive innovation allows firms to achieve multiple performance outcomes that help firms survive and thrive in challenging market environments.

There has been a growing concern about how firms use customers’ data in choosing their business practices. Customers are concerned about privacy and data security issues if firms misuse the data while pursuing profit-based goals. However, this empirical investigation confirms that business analytics improve firm performance (e.g. firm productivity enhancements), ultimately benefiting the customers. Providing relevant data to firms has potentially positively enhanced customer services and thus benefits societal well-being.

Using an original survey instrument, this research empirically tests a research model that defines the complex paths between TEL and competitive performance outcomes.

This chapter reflectively explores the idea of doing art-based research (ABR) through poetic methods for studying the experience of learning in higher education. Taking some literature on faculty development to exemplify different ways of experiencing learning, this chapter serves as a counterpoint to researching experiences of learning from a phenomenological approach. The fundamental reasoning for this is that the basic epistemological assumptions in phenomenology would limit our understanding of experiences of learning and thus, other methodological options would be worth exploring. To that end, this chapter elaborates on the relationship between knowledge production, speech and experience, all circling around the notions of research method and construction. Here, the aim is to reflect upon an understanding of research that is aligned with a dialogical and relational conceptualization of the experience of learning. Finally, an argument will be outlined that suggests conducting research as an experience. Taking from Dewey, Kvale, Law, Scheurich, Talmy and others, this exploration will present the idea of studying the experiences of learning by way of producing/devising experiences through arts. With the notion of art as experience from Dewey, the argument goes to ABR in a general sense, and poetry in particular, as a sound and coherent alternative way of researching learning as an experience. Thus, this chapter explores the possible theoretical-methodological contributions of thinking about and doing research understood as an experience through art.

Antibiotic resistance (ABR) has now become a major global public health issue. New legislation has recently been introduced in Northern Ireland from April 2017, requiring domestic households to recycle all domestic food waste items. Resulting increases in the volume of such waste which is collected by the local council has driven technologies for the safe recycling of such material including commercial composting. Little is known about the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) profile of such composted food waste materials and hence the purpose of this paper is to characterise total AMR in bacteria isolated from such composted domestic food waste and to consider the potential public health consequences of such material.

Finished compost containing food waste material was obtained in the Spring 2017 from a local authority recycling amenity site, which freely distributes such material to the public. Total culturable populations of bacteria were isolated from the composted material and antibiotic susceptibility to six classes of antibiotics, namely florfenicol, fluoroquinolone, aminoglycoside, lincosamide, tetracycline and β-lactam was examined.

ABR was greatest for lincomycin > tobramycin > minocycline/amoxycillin > ciprofloxacin > florfenicol. In this study, there was one compost, which showed complete resistance to all antibiotics tested. No compost displayed complete antibiotic sensitivity. Two composts were considered pan-resistant, whilst four were considered multi-resistant.

This study showed that the total ABR profile of food waste compost is significant, with bacterial populations within the compost having ABR to several classes of antibiotics, which are important and sometimes critical to human health. The application of such materials to enrich and fertilise garden soils in significant volumes inadvertently allows for the artifical and man-made transfer of AMR bacteria and their genes to new environments, which have been hitherto niave to the presence of such AMR properties. The application of such compost horticulturally to enrich soils used to cultivate flowers, fruits and vegetables may have important consequences for human and animal health. Urgent work is now needed to quantify the fate of such antibiotic resistant bacteria from compost to their new environment and risk assessments made to estimate the carriage through to human health.

The present study proposes action-breakdown-repair (ABR) as a pedagogical model and 3D virtual worlds as technology, to bridge the gap between curricular goals and students out of school technology experiences, referred to as the educational gap.

A qualitative study combining design-based research (DBR) and a case study was used with video observation as a data collection method. ABR is demonstrated by an empirical analysis of learning activities with ©Minecraft (hereafter MC) and ©Second Life^TM (hereafter SL) used in two teacher education programs.

Teachers and students could use the technology with some initial training. Experience in gameplay, collaboration and problem solving eased the transitioning into curricular activities. The teachers integrated domain knowledge by giving students tasks that involved the creation of domain-specific artifacts and role-play scenarios. In total, two dilemmas of educational gap closing were found and discussed: learning domain knowledge vs learning technology and breakdown in action vs breakdown in understanding.

Automated feedback (critiquing) adapted to students' individual needs while building and role-playing in MC or SL to off-load some of the teachers’ work in scaffolding design activities in the classroom is a direction for further work.

The model can provide guidance for teachers and other stakeholders who are in the process of integrating creative technologies like visual programming, design environments and collaboration tools in K-12 education.

A novelty of the present research is treating ABR as a pedagogical model and closing the educational gap.

Purpose – The relation between research and development (R&D) expenditures and bondholder wealth is examined.

Methodology/approach – A sample of firms that increase R&D expenditures is partitioned into two subsamples: firms with high default risk versus firms with low default risk. For each subsample, we examine the effect of R&D increases on bond returns and default risks.

Findings – For firms with high default risk, R&D increases have a negative impact on bond returns and default risk. Further, there is a wealth transfer from bondholders to stockholders surrounding R&D increases. Neither of these results is found for firms with low default risk.

Research limitations/implications – The present study highlights the importance of assessing firm's existing default risk to understand the effects that R&D expenditures have on bondholders.

Social implications – The study reveals a potential social welfare and economic cost, as it reveals that stockholders may be able to gain wealth at the expense of bondholders.

Originality/value – The study provides important insights to bondholders on how firms’ investment policies, such as R&D expenditures, may affect their wealth.

European Union (EU) member states are dedicated to a set of sustainable development goals, among them to: (1) promote well-being for all at all the ages and (2) achieve gender equality. This chapter uses the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology that enables comprehensive measurement of intergenerational transfers, both public and private, and differences in the gender equality promotion among the countries. Our analysis is based on the fully comparable NTA results for 25 EU countries from 2010. The authors perform cluster analysis based on five indicators, measuring the importance of different types of age reallocations and the differences in gender equality promotion among the EU countries. Since the economic life cycle (showing the level of dependency) and its financing strongly depend on country-specific institutional and cultural settings, the authors link their results with the typical welfare regimes’ typology. The authors end up with three different groups of countries showing a clear north–south division of countries.

In this chapter, we analyzed the effects of internationalization on innovation, productivity, and firm performance among multinational pharmaceutical companies as representatives of a global knowledge-based industry. The empirical analysis used multiple stepwise regressions based on a sample of 149 firms headquartered in Europe and the US. The results indicate that innovation outcomes are positively correlated to the number of foreign subsidiaries (scope internationalization), whereas surprisingly, formal research and development (R&D) does not seem to directly influence innovation. This suggests that the firms benefit from local overseas subsidiaries to create and implement new innovative offerings. The number of foreign subsidiaries has a U-shaped relationship to patent productivity suggesting that firms can gain advantages by locating cost-intensive activities in low-cost countries and critical tasks in advanced market locations. Firm performance has a U-shaped relationship to sales abroad (scale internationalization) and the relationship is further enhanced by a high focus on R&D. This suggests that sales abroad enable scale economies, where R&D improves quality and relevance of products and thereby boosts performance. Finally, to validate the findings we conducted two semi-structured interviews with representative industry experts and gained further insights for an extended interpretation of results.