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Community coalitions are an important part of the public milieu and subject to similar external pressures as other publicly funded organizations – including changes in required strategic orientation. Many US government agencies that fund efforts such as community-based social marketing initiatives have shifted their funding agenda from program development to policy development. The Florida Prevention Research Center at the University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida, USA) created community-based prevention marketing (CBPM) for policy development framework to teach community coalitions how to apply social marketing to policy development. This paper aims to explicate the framework’s theory of change.

The research question was: “How does implementing the CBPM for Policy Development framework improve coalition performance over time?” The authors implemented a case study design, with the “case” being a normative community coalition. The study adhered to a well-developed series of steps for system dynamics modeling.

Results from computer model simulations show that gains in community coalition performance depend on a coalition’s initial culture and initial efficiency, and that only the most efficient coalitions’ performance might improve from implementing the CBPM framework.

Practical implications for CBPM’s developers and users are discussed, namely, the importance of managing the early expectations of academic-community partnerships seeking to shift their orientation from downstream (e.g. program development) to upstream social marketing strategies (e.g. policy change).

The purpose of this paper is to show how non-linear causal modelling knowledge, already accumulated by other disciplines, is central to unravelling wicked problem scoping and definition in social marketing.

The paper is an illustrative case study approach, highlighting three real-world exemplars of causal modelling for wicked problem definition.

The findings show how the traditional linear research methods of social marketing are not sensitive enough to the dynamics and complexities of wicked problems. A shift to non-linear causal modelling techniques and methods, using interaction as the unit of analysis, provides insight and understanding into the chains of causal dependencies underlying social marketing problems.

This research extends the application of systems thinking in social marketing through the illustration of three non-linear causal modelling techniques, namely, collective intelligence, fuzzy cognitive mapping and system dynamics modelling. Each technique has the capacity to visualise structural and behavioural properties of complex systems and identify the central interactions driving behaviour.

Non-linear causal modelling methods provide a robust platform for practical manifestations of collaborative-based strategic projects in social marketing, when used with participatory research, suitable for micro, meso, macro or systems wide interventions.

The paper identifies non-linear causality as central to wicked problem scoping identification, documentation and analysis in social marketing. This paper advances multi-causal knowledge in the social marketing paradigm by using fuzzy, collective and interpretative methods as a bridge between linear and non-linear causality in wicked problem research.

Excellent companies in the automative finance industry are considered so because of, among other things, their financial strength. In order for these companies to have achieved such status there have been strategies successfully executed by a committed workforce. Policies and procedures have been put in place in each company that ensures that employees are afforded certain basic benefits that protect their livelihood and others that reach beyond to create a more attractive environment that will help guarantee a long relationship between company and employee. The employee benefits of Toyota Motor Credit Corporation, Ford Motor Credit and Nissan Motors Acceptance Corporation are explored here in an effort to illustrate why these companies have succeeded, why some have succeeded more than others and, very importantly, how these companies are affected by the benefits that are put in place as a means of achieving long term success.

The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding his pioneering efforts in the industrial robot industry and the commercialization and challenges of bringing robotic inventions to market. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Brian Carlisle, President and Co-founder of Precise Automation, a robot manufacturer that specializes in collaborative robots. Carlisle discusses the highlights of his 40-year career that led to groundbreaking innovations in small parts assembly and handling robots, along with some of the challenges. He also shares his thoughts on the future of the industry.

Brian Carlisle received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. After Stanford, Carlisle and colleague Dr Bruce Shimano worked for Vicarm, a three-person company started by robotics pioneer Victor Scheinman. Vicarm was sold to Unimation and Carlisle became Unimation’s Director of R&D where he and his team developed the PUMA™ series of electric robots and grew sales from $0 to $40m in five years. In 1983, Carlisle and Shimano co-founded Adept Technology and as its CEO for 20 years, Carlisle grew Adept to over $100m in robot sales. In 2004, Carlisle co-founded with Shimano, Precise Automation, and is the President and CEO.

Brian Carlisle is a pioneer of the small parts assembly and handling robot. He was one of the key members of the team that developed the PUMA™ robot for Unimation. The PUMA™ robot was the watershed product that launched the assembly robot business in the USA and Europe. At Adept, he led the design of the first Direct Drive SCARA Robot and under his helm, Precise Automation introduced the first commercially available collaborative robots. Carlisle was President of the Robotic Industries Association for three years, is the recipient of the Joseph Engelberger Award for Leadership in Robotics, and an elected IEEE Fellow. He has served on the Board of the National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturing, the Boards of the National Center for Manufacturing Science, the Automation Forum of NEMA and is a founding member of the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative. He holds multiple patents for robot designs.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role that collector identity salience and collecting behaviors have on life satisfaction. The authors also investigate the role that dispositional motivations play in strengthening an individual’s collector identity salience.

An online panel management system was used to recruit and compensate a diverse sample of 215 US consumer collectors. The structural model was tested with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

A partial least squares structural equation model of data collected from a survey of US consumer collectors reveals that creative choice counter conformity and mortality legacy positively enhance collector identity salience, whereas materialism has no effect. Despite not affecting collector identity salience, materialism is found to negatively affect life satisfaction. Crucially, collector identity salience is found to positively affect collector engagement, which, in turn, enhances life satisfaction.

This research contributes to consumer behavior literature in three distinct ways. First, the authors build upon extant literature which has revealed creative choice counter conformity and mortality legacy as underlying dispositional motivations that contribute to collector identity salience. Second, while materialism has been tied to collecting behaviors via conceptual studies, the authors also examine the broader impact of materialism on an individual’s life satisfaction. Finally, the authors explore how collector identity salience and collector engagement contribute to satisfaction with life.

Part I: Introduction This seems an interesting and exciting time to be thinking about and discussing the role and impact of science. The good luck is mine because when I agreed to contribute this small paper, I had no idea that current events would conspire in the way they have.

Part I The International Conference on “Epistemological Foundations of Social Theory” was an intriguing step in the project of establishing a new ‘ethico‐economic’ paradigm. The conviction that a ‘value‐free’ economics is no longer adequate for understanding or living within the world we inhabit, motivated participants: the vision of such an economics is failing fast because it is rooted in a divorce between economics and the enriching influences of the other social sciences, philosophy and religion. And this divorce means economics works with a distorted representation of human nature, and consequently inhibits the achievement of social justice. Discussion and debate at the Conference clarified and explored that conviction, showing it to be a reasoned premise for an argument rather than an assumption. Successfully articulating the argument for an alternate vision of ethico‐economics, is, however, no easy task.

To succeed in the rapidly evolving experience economy executives must think differently about how they create economic value for their customers.

Five value-creating opportunities are likely to drive further progress in the dynamic experience economy: customizing goods; enhancing services; charging for experiences; fusing digital technology with reality; and transformative experiences, a promising frontier.

For leaders, five insights about the value-creating opportunities are key to achieving success via state-of-the-art experience staging, and they provide tested guidelines for managing in the experience economy, now and into the future.

A huge first step in staging more engaging experiences is embracing the principle that work is theatre. So businesses should ask: What acts of theatre would turn our workers' functional activities into memorable events?

Three key lessons: innovation to create high-quality experiences that customers will pay for is even more important than goods or service innovation. When you customize an experience, you automatically turn it into a transformation. Companies enabling transformations should charge not merely for time but for the change resulting from that time.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a selection of poetry titles from the Poets House Showcase of 2006.

This article provides reviews of selected titles from the 2006 Poets House Showcase.

This review represents a wide‐ranging selection of contemporary poetry collections and anthologies.

This list documents the tremendous range of poetry publishing from commercial, independent and university presses, as well as letterpress chapbooks, art books and CDs.