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One of the compelling current concerns being addressed by business firms in the United States is the attraction and assimilation of black candidates into employment by the firms and the subsequent progression of these candidates through the managerial ranks of the organisation. While most observers would agree that many black people have benefitted from the enactment and enforcement of national equal employment opportunity legislation, the question of the extent to which black business professionals have advanced to upper management positions continues to be subject to much public debate.

The extent of congruence between managerial values and organisational goals is addressed from the perspective of assessing whether there is sufficient managerial commitment to allow for effective implementation of competitivefirm strategy. A group of production managers is compared with a group of quality control managers, using a hierarchical model reflecting decision‐process goal constraints. Study results reveal that the goal hierarchies of production managers differ significantly from quality control managers. Given the role demands of each manager group, the congruence levels between managerial values and organisational goals are sufficient to satisfy organisational accountability. Several implications for strategic planning are presented.

Evolving production technologies are altering the cost structures on which many supporting inventory ordering systems are based; for example, fixed costs compared with variable costs are increasing significantly. Unfortunately, many inventory ordering formulations consider only the variable portions of inventory ordering costs and inventory holding costs. To address this deficiency, departs from traditional categorizations and offers an inventory classification schema based on the functional roles served by the inventory items. Functional roles of inventory include transition, buffer, investment, maintenance, supplies and dead stock. Extending the schema, assesses the implications each functional role has for inventory cost containment, emphasizing the impact of evolving production technologies on inventory ordering policies and their relevance to functional roles.

OCCASIONALLY some writer is inspired to make the declaration that reference work as understood in America does not exist in Great Britain, or, even more definitely, is not known there. We rejoice at any advance our American friends make, but our enthusiasts for American methods must not undervalue the homeland. In the pages that follow some aspects of reference work receive attention, and the inference to be drawn may be that, if we have not specialized this department of work to the extent that transatlantic libraries have done, if in some smaller places it hardly exists “as the community's study, archive department and bureau of information,” yet in our larger cities and in many lesser places much work is done.

Many social services departments have successfully developed services which meet older people's physical survival needs so that they can continue living in their own homes despite serious disabilities. An emerging priority is to support the morale and quality of life of the same individuals.Assisted by the Social Policy Research Unit (SPRU), a team of social services managers conducted a programme of interviews designed to obtain the views of very old, frail home care clients about their services and their lives in general. A few interviewees expressed very low morale and this seemed to reduce substantially their ratings of satisfaction with the help they received. While it is well established that disability and isolation are linked to depression in older people, it is rare that service providers systematically address these problems. Some practical strategies for this purpose are proposed as a result of this survey.

Immigrants are a part of America’s founding and history. Until this study, it was unclear how immigrants have been historically portrayed in youth American trade books. Utilizing a discourse analysis approach, this study offered a critical and comparative examination of the portrayal of first-generation immigrants, the authors’ perspectives, and the historical evolution of American trade books written during two peak United States immigration eras (1880-1930s and 1980-2010s). After examining 98 books written over 100 years, findings indicated in both peak immigration eras, immigrants faced similar problems; first-generation immigrants were insensitively criticized and viewed as subpar individuals by Americans. As a whole, books were mostly tales of assimilation and mistreatment in the United States. Since youths’ ideas of people and cultural groups are formed by what they learn from not only social interaction but also the media, it is important for books to provide meaningful representations of immigrants.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the service management literature by identifying the possible relationship between customer value seen from the customer perspective and from the firm perspective, and its potential influence on the value created for the service customer. The authors have not found any papers which focus on the relationship between these different perspectives of customer value, and the aim is to fill this gap in the literature.

The paper proposes that a relationship between the different perspectives exists and attempts to create an integrated vision of customer value.

The proposed model shows that it is the relationship between customer value from the customer ' s point of view and customer value from the firm ' s point of view that really creates value.

The paper can influence the current service management of firms with regard to customer value creation in several ways.

From the existing literature, it is deduced that customer value can be seen as perceived value (the customer perspective) or as value creation and appropriation (the firm perspective). The paper proposes that these three types of value are equivalent in an important level and should always be interrelated.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors leading to the consumer's propensity to abandon the shopping cart at the transaction completion stage.

Data were collected using a self‐administered survey distributed through the internet. The sample consisted of consumers who shopped online at least once during the preceding one‐year period.

The results indicate that perceived transaction inconvenience is the major predictor of shopping cart abandonment. The other predictors are perceived risk and perceived waiting time. Positive relationship was found between perceived transaction inconvenience, perceived risk and propensity to abandon the shopping cart. It was also found that propensity to abandon the shopping cart is negatively associated with the perception of waiting time.

The paper provides transaction completion stage specific guidance to the managers operating in an online environment to prevent shopping cart abandonment at the transaction completion stage. Specifically, the findings suggest that marketers must pay attention to the perception of risk and transaction inconvenience; otherwise they risk losing consumers during the final stage of transaction.

The paper examines the unexplored area of consumer behavior at the final stages of transaction culmination and, hence, is an initial step toward filling that gap.

Scholars of leadership education have recently called for more “practice fields” that combine leadership experience with deliberate instruction, reflection, and feedback. The value of experience and reflection toward leadership development is widely espoused; yet, few studies assess best practices for their integration within leadership education. Through an assessment of a curricular-based peer mentor program, this article offers a potential model for a successful leadership practice field. Based on an analysis of student feedback, several features of the program are noted for their correlation with leadership learning and developmental gains.

Customer value has recently become a primary focus among many strategy researchers and practitioners as an essential element of a firm's competitive strategy. Many firms are engaged in some form of customer value analysis (CVA), which involves a structural analysis of the antecedent factors of perceived value (i.e. perceived quality and perceived price) to assess their relative importance in the perceptions of their buyers. Previous CVA research has focused upon using aggregate market or market segment level analyses. The purpose of this paper is to expose the limitations of implementing CVA on either an aggregate or market segment level basis, and propose an alternative individual level approach.

The paper develops an extended hierarchical Bayesian approach for cross‐sectional data with one observation per response unit, which allows for estimation at the individual firm level to make CVA more useful. This paper demonstrates the utility of the proposed Bayesian methodology involving a CVA study conducted for a large electric utility company. It also compares the empirical results from aggregate, market segment, and the proposed individual level analyses, and show how traditional approaches mask underlying price and quality importance.

Marketing and management strategy researchers need to exhibit care when conducting such CVA analyses as underlying heterogeneity can be masked when aggregate market or segment level analyses are conducted.

This paper provides a new hierarchical Bayes recursive simultaneous model formulation for CVA analyses to provide individual level insights with cross‐sectional data.