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The purpose of this paper is to examine the rise in crossbred cow numbers in the US dairy herd. Methods used look at well managed herds to see if crossbreeding provides a management tool that producers are using to maintain profitability.

The authors estimate a Translog stochastic production frontier (SPF) for US dairy farms to examine the competitiveness of crossbred and non-crossbred dairy herds by system and region.

The bottom-line conclusion is that WM or highly efficient crossbred herds solidly compete on a financial basis with larger WM Western Holstein herds, the most technically efficient managed group, based on the SPF results in the authors’ study. The study finds that net return on assets for crossbred herds are not different from Western Holstein herds and that there is no significant difference in amount of milk per cow produced annually.

Because of a need to unmask the advantages of crossbreeding as a technology it was necessary to separate WM herds from poorly managed herds. That was done by frontier estimates that robustly ranked operation and corrected for endogeneity, tested for selectivity bias, and incorporated the NASS survey design.

For the first time, the 2010 Dairy Cost and Returns questionnaire version of the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (Dairy CAR) design allows researchers to expand survey observations to represent the vast majority of the US dairy farm population and to sort dairy farms into crossbred/non-crossbred herds.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the drivers of economic financial success of US cow-calf operations.

This research uses a system of equations (DuPont analysis) in conjunction with 2008 farm-level data from the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Resource Management Survey to evaluate the factors driving cow-calf profitability, namely net profit margins, asset turnover ratio, and asset-to-equity ratio.

The study finds that the main drivers of return on equity are region, number of harvested acres on the farm, diversification of the farm, operator off-farm work, spousal off-farm work, and adoption of technologies. Of these factors, those for which producers can make short-term adjustments include off-farm work decisions and adoption of technologies. Longer-term adjustments can be made for farm diversification.

To the authors’ knowledge, no existing research has used farm-level data across US production regions to examine the factors affecting returns to equity of US cow-calf operations. These research results may be used to identify strategies producers can use to improve their farm's economic viability, areas where extension services can assist farmers in making better financial decisions and economic factors that are likely to lead to structural changes in the beef industry.

Premised on the argument that cognition structures the way how individuals think and make decisions, the purpose of this paper is to test the interaction effect of cognition in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The study used cross-sectional research design and quantitative data were collected and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Baron and Kenny guidelines were adopted to test for existence of moderating effect of cognition in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda. Furthermore, ModGraph excel software was used to establish the magnitude of moderating effect of cognition in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The results revealed that cognition significantly moderate the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda. In addition, both cognition and financial literacy also have direct effects on financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda.

The study adopted cross-sectional research design and data were collected by use of only questionnaires. Future studies through longitudinal research design may be employed. Besides, further studies using interviews may be adopted. Furthermore, this study collected data from only tier 3 financial institutions, thus, ignoring the other financial institutions. Future studies could focus on financial institutions under the other tiers.

The findings from the study enlightens policy-makers, managers of financial institutions, and financial inclusion advocates on the importance of cognition in enhancing financial literacy among the poor, especially in rural Uganda. Cognition combined with financial literacy helps the poor to make wise financial decisions and choices toward consuming financial services and products provided by formal financial institutions. This leads to increased scope of financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda. Therefore, advocates of financial literacy should assess community cultural cognition and utilize them to design and fashion effective financial literacy interventions that can promote financial inclusion.

The study uses Baron and Kenny and ModGraph excel software to test for the interaction effect of cognition in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion of the poor in rural Uganda. While several studies exist worldwide on financial inclusion, this study is the first to test the interaction effect of cognition in the relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion of the poor in rural areas in a developing country context.

The aim of this study is to use a financial approach based on the Du Pont expansion to investigate the impact of demographics, specialization, tenure, vertical integration, farm type, and regional location on the three levers of performance (ROE) – namely, net profit margins, asset turnover ratio, and asset‐to‐equity ratio.

This research uses a system of equations in conjunction with 1996‐2009 farm‐level data from the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) to evaluate the factors driving farm‐level profitability, namely, net profit margins, asset turnover ratio, and asset‐to‐equity ratio. The methodology employed in this study corrects heterogeneity and uses repeated cross‐section estimation procedure to estimate the empirical models.

The study finds that key drivers of net profit margins are operator education, farm size and typology, specialization, and level of government payments. Key factors affecting the asset turnover ratio component of the Du Pont model include asset turnover ratio is driven by operator age, contracting, specialization, and receiving government payments. Finally, key factors affecting asset‐to‐equity ratio component of the Du Pont model are farm size, farm typology, contracting, and specialization drive asset‐to‐equity ratio.

Existing research does not examine the factors affecting returns to equity in faring at the farm‐level. Specifically, a micro‐level analysis of American farm's future structure and financial performance that accounts for the spatial and inter‐temporal dimensions of profitability has never been conducted.

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the patterns in the public discourse of successful chief executive officers (CEOs) in terms of performance, with the CEO's strengths and aspects to improve.

This paper aligns with the literature that appraises CEO public discourse and relevance. From the literature review, the strategic levers in CEO discourse toward high performance are identified. The CEO letters in the period 2017–2019 of the top 25 best performing CEOs (BPCs) according to Harvard Business Review ranking 2019 are qualitatively examined through a multiple close reading analytical technique and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) is applied to assess the patterns.

The paper delivers a three-dimensional model representing how the identified strategic levers are articulated by BPCs in the BPC's discourse following diverse patterns. This paper points out BPC's strengths, among them a high level of moral reasoning compared to previous studies and improvable areas such as the extended absence of autocritique at the firm and personal level or the lack of leverage on the need for agility and proactive adaption.

This paper contributes further CEO awareness of the strategic role of the discourse and offers clues to enhance CEO awareness, as well as criteria for boards of directors to appraise CEO discourse.

Adopting a novel approach, this paper addresses the strategic levers triggered by CEOs in their letters from a managerial implication perspective, providing relevant theoretical insight on how they are articulated.

The paper identifies a role for public relations in disaster management by analysing disaster and communication managers' understanding of community resilience and their use of communication in the context of two different cultural environments.

The research study comprised 51 in-depth qualitative interviews with disaster managers in Sri Lanka and New Zealand, which were thematically analysed using the software programme NVivo 10.

The study identified cultural differences in Sri Lanka and New Zealand that impact on how managers' communicate in natural disaster situations. The findings indicated that public relations’ understanding of communities’ cultures, their communication, networking and lobbying skills could further enhance the effectiveness of efforts to build community resilience to disasters.

Nations are complex multicultural realities; the findings cannot be generalized to make claims about how natural disasters are managed in different national contexts.

The paper identifies the unrealized potential of public relations’ expertise in communication, community relations, networking and lobbying to contribute to building community resilience to natural disasters.

By supporting efforts to build community resilience to disasters, public relations practitioners can contribute to social well-being in times of catastrophic natural disasters.

The paper adds an innovative perspective to public relations crisis literature by identifying the potential contribution of public relations’ concepts and practices to build community resilience to natural disasters. It demonstrates how sociocultural differences may affect disaster communication strategies.

Infrastructure projects are expected to deliver value to their stakeholders long after completion. Project value is multi-dimensional and subjective and evolves over the project lifecycle. How stakeholders frame the expected value is central to the public debate about proposed infrastructure projects and influences the financing decisions; however, this framing is inadequately understood. The purpose of this paper is to develop new knowledge for shaping infrastructure projects by identifying the ways in which stakeholders frame project value at the project front end.

Three transport infrastructure projects are compared in a qualitative, document-based study. The authors map the dimensions of value at the project front end and identify stakeholders’ approaches to lifecycle-oriented framing of value.

Financial, social and comparative values are dominant in the project front end. The authors frame value into positive and negative dimensions and identify four themes in the lifecycle-oriented framing of value, including uncertainties, timing of cost and benefit realization, project relations and external sponsorship.

The research is limited through the focus on transport infrastructure projects and project front end only, the selection of cases from a single country and the use of document-based data. The systematic analysis approach has yielded novel analytical frameworks that will be useful for further research.

This study identifies value dimensions that are specific to transport infrastructure projects and proposes a framework to assist stakeholders and project managers to better assess and negotiate value when designing their projects.

Regional and comparative values are revealed as novel aspects of value specific to infrastructure projects. The alternative lifecycle-oriented frames offer a new way to understand and structure the co-creation of value and shape negotiation for investment decisions in the project. A portfolio perspective to investment decision making is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to review the historical development of the models/dimensions of public relations. The extensive criticism of the models and dimensions is provided to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the concept.

The paper is based on a critical literature review to understand the roots of the models, their empirical tests, the modifications applied to the models over time, and finally the proposed shift from models to dimensions of public relations.

The study concludes that the attempt to translate the public relations models into the dimensions failed because of a variety of conceptual and methodological flaws. Yet, the idea of developing dimensions of public relations is a viable and practical step in advancing public relations research; however, such dimensions must be continuous, dichotomous and measurable.

Models of public relations first became a dominant theoretical perspective in public relations only to virtually disappear from the research agenda later. This paper calls the attention back to the models/dimensions to revive the research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for effective crisis response.

The methodology involves a qualitative examination of responses by companies that have been judged by analysts to be varyingly effective. Toyota, for instance, had a poor response to its product quality and recall crisis. Singapore Airlines on the other hand, is often cited as an exemplar for an effective response to the crash of its flight SQ 006 in Taiwan.

This research finds that organizations with a strong commitment to doing the right thing for stakeholders and a high readiness are most likely to effectively respond to crises. Organizations lacking in one of the two critical dimensions (commitment to stakeholders and/or readiness), on the other hand, are likely to have ineffective responses with possible post-crisis losses in competitive (e.g. market share) and financial (e.g. penalties) terms.

The case study methodology implies limitations about generalizability. The framework may also be less useful in crises where there is ambiguity about the genesis of the crisis and its implications, such as the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines’ MH 370 flight.

Since crises are commonplace and can impact any company, the framework can be useful for a wide range of companies.

The proposed framework fills a gap in the understanding about why some companies have effective responses to crises and others do not. Prior literature has often adopted narrower perspectives such as the skills and the personality of the CEO, pre-crisis drills and effective communication strategies post-crisis. This study argues that while these factors are important, they are not sufficiently strategic.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings on the mediating effect of social network in the relationship between institutional framework and financial inclusion in rural Uganda.

The study employs a cross-sectional research design to collect data used to test for mediation under this study. Structural equation model (SEM) through use of bootstrap in the Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) was adopted to establish the existence and type of mediation by social network in the relationship between institutional framework and financial inclusion.

Social network had a partial mediating effect in the relationship between institutional framework and financial inclusion. In addition, institutional framework through its regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars also exhibited a significant direct effect on financial inclusion. Besides, social network had a positive and significant effect on financial inclusion. This suggest that there exist both a direct effect of institutional framework on financial inclusion and an indirect effect of institutional framework through social network on financial inclusion.

While the sample for this study was big enough, it limited itself to only poor households in rural Uganda. Besides, the current study adopted cross-sectional design, thus, leaving out longitudinal design to investigate the characteristics in the sample over time.

The study makes significant empirical contribution and implications to financial inclusion policy makers on evidence of the critical role played by social network in indirectly enhancing the relationship between institutional framework and financial inclusion of the poor who are vulnerable to exclusion by main stream financial services’ providers.

The study recommends that social network, which acts as a conduit through which useful information flow and can be shared, plays a critical role in mediating the relationship between institutional framework and financial inclusion in rural Uganda. Therefore, the study contributes to existing body of literature by highlighting the mediating influence of social network in the relationship between institutional framework and financial inclusion, especially in rural Uganda.