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In the post‐Enron era, investor relations vaults to the top of the corporate agenda, as companies must begin to rebuild investor confidence. While companies sift through the many questions investors are raising and the numerous proposals for change, proactive companies have the chance to distinguish themselves and create a competitive advantage. As the marketplace calls for faster, more transparent, more‐easily‐understandable financial data, the same investors punishing companies may well reward those that provide innovative answers to their needs. How did things get so bad? In response to a turbulent, hyper‐sensitive stock market, what are companies doing to restore confidence? What are the take‐away lessons for investor relations?

Effective teaching, while supplemented by best practice methods and assessments, is rooted in accurate, age-appropriate, and engaging content. As a foundation for history content, elementary educators rely strongly on textbooks and children’s literature, both fiction and non-fiction. While many researchers have examined the historical accuracy of textbook content, few have rigorously scrutinized the historical accuracy of children’s literature. Those projects that carried out such examination were more descriptive than comprehensive due to significantly smaller data pools. I investigate how children’s non-fiction and fiction books depict and historicize a meaningful and frequently taught history topic: Christopher Columbus’s accomplishments and misdeeds. Results from a comprehensive content analysis indicate that children’s books are engaging curricular supplements with age-appropriate readability yet frequently misrepresent history in eight consequential ways. Demonstrating a substantive disconnect between experts’ understandings of Columbus, these discouraging findings are due to the ways in which authors of children’s books recurrently omit relevant and contentious historical content in order to construct interesting, personalized narratives.

The total or integrated approach to physical distribution places an emphasis upon integrating those activities which are involved either directly or indirectly with the provision of customer service. As such, it contrasts with the traditional approach to physical distribution which emphasises the separate individual activities and the cost minimisation of such individual activities, while ignoring the interaction between the activities and their impact on revenue. While the total distribution concept has seemingly gained wide acceptance, Ray, Gattorna and Allen claim that the reason why it is rarely implemented is “lack of adequate cost data”. This view is shared by Shirley who states “particularly needed are new ways of thinking about distribution costs; to consider their interdependence and contribution to profit”. This monograph attempts to respond to this need by providing a consideration of the Mission Approach to Physical Distribution, and how physical distribution accounting systems may utilise this approach to provide information not only on the costs but also on the revenue aspects of providing varying levels of customer service.

The winter 1991 issue of Reference Services Review featured an annotated bibliography of literature on Christopher Columbus from 1970 to 1989. That literature covered such topics as Columbus' ancestry, heraldry, and the locations of both his American landfall and burial site. This annotated checklist focuses mainly on Columbus' legacy, on works that offer a dissenting point of view from most previous writings about Columbus (and on works that react to the dissenters), on material written by Native American and other non‐European authors, and on materials published by small and noncommercial presses.

Current English health policy is focused on strengthening the ‘demand-side’ of the health care system. Recent reforms are designed to significantly enhance the capability and status of the organisations responsible for commissioning health care services and, in so doing, to address some of the perceived problems of a historically provider/supplierled health system. In this context, commissioning organisations are being encouraged to draw on concepts and processes derived from commercial procurement and supply chain management (SCM) as they develop their expertise. While the application of such principles in the health sector is not new, existing work in the UK has not often considered the role of health care purchasers in the management of health service supply-chains. This paper describes the status of commissioning in the NHS, briefly reviews the procurement and SCM literature and begins to explore the links between them. It lays the foundations for further work which will test the extent to which lessons can be extracted in principle from the procurement literature and applied in practice by health care commissioners.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify work-to-family profiles in working mothers, test whether profiles differ between sole and partnered mothers, and examine whether the work-to-family profiles are associated with burnout.

Data on work-to-family conflict (WFC), work-to-family enrichment (WFE), burnout, and relevant socio-demographic covariates were collected via a self-report online survey. Latent profile analysis on WFC and WFE items was used to identify profiles in 179-sole and 857-partnered mothers in paid employment. Regression analyses were performed to examine whether profiles were associated with burnout.

Five distinct work-to-family profiles were identified: Harmful, Negative Active, Active, Beneficial, and Fulfilled. Profile membership differed significantly between sole and partnered mothers, with sole mothers more likely to be in the harmful profile. The five profiles had differing implications for burnout.

WFC and WFE can co-occur, and have differing implications for health and well-being. It is important to consider both WFC and WFE when addressing employee burnout. Furthermore, sole mothers may need greater assistance in reducing WFC and increasing WFE in order to minimize burnout.

This study contributes to existing research by demonstrating differences in work-to-family profiles between sole and partnered mothers, and highlights the need for future research on diverse family types.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the supply chain management (SCM) skills that support the sensing and seizing of opportunities in a changing business environment.

Based on the previous literature on the T-shaped model of SCM skills, data were collected through a mail survey among Australian business executives. The resultant skill sets are grouped along factors that support the sensing vs seizing of opportunities.

Interestingly from an SCM perspective, functional logistics-related skills are important to maintain competitiveness but are not the ones contributing to a firm’s ability to sense opportunities and threats, and to seize opportunities in a changing business environment. The authors, therefore, support the notion that supply chain managers should be managers first. Factual SCM knowledge is the solid basis, but otherwise only an entry requirement in this field.

Problem-solving skills, along with forecasting and customer/supplier relationship management, stand out as important components that support the ability of supply chain managers to sense and shape opportunities and threats in a turbulent business environment. This focus would tend to suggest the importance of supply chain integration and collaboration as management approaches. Other SCM skills from warehousing and inventory management to transportation and purchasing are more prevalent for maintaining competitiveness.

The results of the survey and the consequential analysis indicate that the content of tertiary-level educational programmes should be significantly reviewed to deliver two distinct (but partially overlapping) streams that focus on the generalist and functionalist managers who must work together in the management of the increasingly global and complex supply chains.

Functional skills often form the basis of training and education programmes for supply chain managers. Whilst these form the solid foundation for their jobs, they are entry requirements at best. In a changing business environment, other skills are needed for success. Given that turbulence is becoming the norm rather than the exception, this finding necessitates rethinking in training and education programmes, as well as in the recruitment of supply chain managers.

Testing the T-shaped model of SCM skills from a dynamic capabilities perspective, the results of the factor analysis lead to a regrouping of skill sets in terms of sensing and seizing opportunities in a turbulent business environment.

This paper shows how the perceptions of people regarding five dimensions of workplace spirituality (team’s sense of community, alignment with organizational values, sense of contribution to society, enjoyment at work, and opportunities for inner life) predict affective, normative, and continuance commitment, as well as self‐reported individual performance. One sample in Portugal and another in Brazil were collected. The findings show that employees’ perceptions of workplace spirituality predict significant variance of commitment and individual performance in both samples. The empirical evidence suggests that workplace spirituality is a pertinent construct for researchers and an important concern to be taken into account by managers.

This study examines how managers' human capital, time spent with employees and employees' human capital can influence employees' career advancement. While research tends to find a positive relationship between human capital and career advancement, less attention is paid the effect of managers' human capital on employee careers. A combination of human capital and social capital theories is used to develop hypotheses.

A five-year sample of American football players selected in the National Football League (NFL) draft is used to test the hypotheses. Archival data for human capital, social capital and career success measures are used, and OLS regression analyses test the hypotheses.

The authors find employees with higher levels of human capital experience greater career advancement. Managers' human capital moderates this relationship and the length of time worked together by the employee–manager dyad. The relationship between employees' human capital and career advancement is strengthened when managers have high levels of human capital.

The results of this study indicate that individuals with higher levels of human capital and social capital have greater career success. When individuals have higher levels of human capital it is important for them to determine how long they should work for a particular manager before advancing in their careers. Individuals with higher levels of human capital may need lees time working for a manager than those with lower levels of human capital before advancing in their careers.

This study contributes to careers and human resource management research by examining the moderating impact that manager human capital and time employees spend with a manager have on the relationship between employee human capital and employee career advancement.