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The purpose of this paper is to propose an evidence-based environmental scanning model that will provide a methodological framework for conducting community-engaged and community-focused research, with a particular emphasis on northern communities in Canada.

The study has adopted a multifaceted environmental scanning approach to understand the Inuvialuit Settlement Region communities. The research design is informed by various environmental models as discussed in literature from a broad range of domains such as business, library and information science (LIS), and a sophisticated multimethod data gathering approach that included field trips, observations, surveys, as well as informal methods of community engagement.

The paper proposes an environmental scan model as a novel approach to community-focused digital library (DL) development. The paper identifies both macro- and micro-environmental landscapes as applicable to the development of a DL for communities in Canada’s North. The macro-environmental landscapes include: geographical, historical and sociocultural, political and regulatory, economic, technological, competition, and human resource. The micro-environmental landscapes include: stakeholder and community, linguistic, information resource, and ownership.

The environmental scanning model and its key components presented in this paper provide a novel and concrete example of a project that aims to organize information for increased access and to create value through the design and implementation of an infrastructure for a cultural heritage DL. The environmental scan model will also contribute to both research and practice in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), particularly in the area of DL development for rural, remote, and indigenous communities.

The purpose of this paper demonstrate the strong branding correlation between tourism and the landscape, and show that good design can have a positive influence on both.

The relationship between a tourist destination's brand and its landscape is first established. Then the positive and negative correlations between a tourist destination's brand and its landscapes is examined, through realized examples. Finally, good practice is presented in the form of three main levels of study and planning, through case studies of the government-commissioned or internationally recognised work by our office.

There are specific cases of strong correlation between the image and brand of tourist destinations and their landscapes. This is especially true of Mediterranean destinations. Tourism not only uses the qualities of local landscapes but also strongly influences them. The economy of many Mediterranean regions depends on tourism, so a sustainable approach is required for a new equilibrium between tourism and the landscape. In some areas negative correlations have been identified and dealt with by local governments, while in other destinations positive correlations have been successfully exploited. Certain destinations go further: they create or add to positive landscapes.

The relationship of a tourist destination's brand to its landscape is often taken for granted. This paper shows the correlation between brand and landscape, especially in Mediterranean destinations, and provides original examples of good practice in landscape design and management.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast “doing more” and “knowing more” corporations. The paper sheds light on what makes a corporation competitive in the marketplace.

The paper discusses the concept of “doing more”, as exemplified in practice by Microsoft under the leadership of Steve Ballmer. The paper relies on recent debates on Microsoft to make its point.

Based on a survey of the current literature on Microsoft and its CEO, the paper demonstrates that only corporations that are innovative and shape the competition landscape are able to make a difference in the marketplace and significantly alter the competition equation.

The paper reflects on the state of Microsoft and what has led to its inability to recognize key shifts in technology and customers' expectations. The paper sets the stage for a better understanding of corporations that are about “doing more” and those which focus on reinventing themselves and their industry by being about “knowing more”.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the long‐term impact of the current financial and economic crisis on competition in the European Union (EU) banking sector.

The article first discusses the long term role of competition in the banking sector, commenting on policy developments prior to the crisis. Then the impact of the crisis is discussed focusing on two main areas of policy state: aids and bank regulation and supervision. The article culminates with the conclusions.

The main findings about state aids are that the efforts of the Commission to ensure that aided companies would not use the government support to distort competition seem to be working. However, given that the full impact on competition of these aids may take years to be felt, the Commission should be prepared to take action where necessary to ensure that competition will be protected. The provision of state aids could not have been avoided due to the grave systemic risks associated with bank failures. In respect of regulation and supervision, the article concluded that there is a lot of work to be done in this area to ensure that mistakes that led to the crisis will not be repeated but also that there is need for the Commission to ensure that the reforms to the regulatory and supervisory architecture do not occur at the expense of competition.

The article contains proposals about policy adjustments, thus contributing to the ongoing debate about the role of competition policy in the efforts to address the impact of the crisis.

This paper aims to draw attention to a broad range of experimental institutional initiatives which operate in the absence of a global antitrust regime. The purpose of this paper is to offer food for thought to scholars in other fields of international trade law facing challenges from divergent national regimes.

Taking inspiration from political science literature on institutions, this paper crafts a broad analytical lens which captures various organisational forms (including networks), codes (including soft law) and culture (including epistemic communities). The strength and shortcomings of traditional “bricks and mortar” institutions such as the European Union (EU) and General Agreement Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organisation are first examined. Then, the innovative global network of International Competition Network (ICN) is analysed.

It highlights the value of the global antitrust epistemic community in providing a conducive environment for extensive recourse to “soft law”. Examples from the EU and the ICN include measures which find expression in enforcement tools and networks. These initiatives can be seen as experimental responses to the challenges of divergent national antitrust regimes.

It is desktop research rather than empirical field work.

To raise awareness outside the antitrust scholarly community of the variety of experimental institutional initiatives which have evolved, often on a soft law basis, in response to the challenges experienced by national enforcement agencies and businesses operating in the absence of a global antitrust regime.

It offers some personal reflections on the ICN from the author’s experience as a non-governmental advisor. It draws attention to the ICN’s underappreciated range of educational materials which are freely available on its website to everyone. It submits that the ICN template offers interesting ideas for other fields of international trade law where a global regime is unrealisable. The ICN is a voluntary virtual network of agencies collaborating to agree ways to reduce clashes among national regimes. Its goal of voluntary convergence is portrayed as standardisation rather than as absolute congruence. Even if standardisation of norms/processes is too ambitious a goal in other fields of international trade law, the ICN model still offers inspiration as an epistemic community within an inclusive and dynamic forum for encouraging debate and creating a culture of learning opportunities where familiarity and trust is fostered.

This study provides a bibliometric analysis of bank efficiency and competition over the past years (from 1993 to 2022) to (1) discover the past and current state of knowledge on bank competition and efficiency, (2) identify leading and authoritative journals and scholars who made significant contributions to the distribution of knowledge and impact, (3) identify nations that made a significant contribution and impact to the literature and (4) identify the structure of collaboration that exists between scholars in the areas of bank competition and efficiency and key thematic areas.

A total number of 868 documents made up of articles, reviews, book chapters, book and conference papers from the Scopus database were gathered. This study used a bibliometric analytic approach.

The number of documents on bank competitiveness and efficiency has increased significantly, as have their total publications, citations and national output. Additionally, the most esteemed and prestigious academic journals of eminent academics who have had a significant impact on the dissemination of knowledge on bank efficiency and competition literature champion papers on banking efficiency and competition. In terms of citation performance and collaborative efforts, the United States tops the developed countries, led by China, which is also the most productive. Additionally, single-country publications predominate in the literature, with China ranking first among the top five countries with corresponding authors. While the Lerner index, H-statistic, concentration index and market power were used to measure bank competitive behaviour, the data envelopment analysis approach predominates efficiency estimation techniques that are linked to cost, profit or revenue, scale, technical and productivity indexes.

This study is one of the first to offer bibliometric evidence of both bank competition and efficiency. It also offers proof of the distribution of knowledge and intellectual structure of the concepts and concerns in bank competition and efficiency.

Business wargames represent an alternative approach to challenge organisations to uncover internal capabilities through competitive actions designed to counteract external threats and address strategic mismatches. Internal capabilities uncovered as a result of actions taken during a competitive wargame aims to replicate market conditions found in competitive industries. These outcomes are difficult to achieve using many popular strategy design methods. The purpose of this study is to examine the use of war game-style activities in formulating corporate strategy that incorporate the natural behaviors of the leadership team in creating strategic plans.

Using a case study from the banc assurance industry, the authors review a wargame process composed of two competing teams; the banc assurance organisation and an unincorporated joint venture between a banking institution and an insurance company. The goal of each entity was to develop strategy to improve both customer satisfaction and market share at the expense of each other given a finite set of resources. Success was judged using a simple set of metrics defined by both a consumer team and an independent umpire.

Consumers of financial services are price sensitive and highly brand loyal. Unwillingness to switch brands to a prevailing competitor or other emerging (Fintech) institution persists to a threshold of a price and/or value differential of 15 to 20 per cent. The results highlight potential deficiencies in the proposed banc assurance strategy through the observation of customer behaviours and inefficient resource use.

The wargame approach conducted in a realistic landscape revealed internal capabilities not otherwise evident. The impact of authentic human behaviours in setting business strategy was captured which is very difficult to replicate using more formal scenario analysis and planning.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of competition in the Malaysian Islamic banking industry and the market structure of the industry by focusing on the particular impact created by the entrance of fully fledged foreign Islamic banks plus the introduction of Islamic subsidiaries of existing conventional banks in the country (domestic and foreign ownership).

Using a sample of 16 Islamic banks in the country that operated between 2008 and 2015, this paper measures the competition among the Islamic banks using the Panzar-Rosse Model and by looking at the market structure of the industry using the k-bank concentration ratio and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.

The study found that between 2008 and 2015, the Malaysian Islamic banking industry operated in monopolistic competition conditions with a moderately concentrated market structure. The introduction of foreign Islamic banks caused the market structure to become more competitive and less concentrated by comparing the results that include foreign Islamic banks against the results generated with a subsample of domestic Islamic banks only. Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM’s) financial reform and the liberalisation of the financial system were proven to induce competition making the financial system more resilient, competitive and dynamic. The Islamic banks have recorded consistently increased annual performance with the under-performing Islamic banks catching up on the top performers.

Very few research studies have focused on the market structure and competition of the Islamic banking industry in Malaysia, especially using recent financial data; this study will contribute to filling the existing gap.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the competitive position of Italian roasting firms in the international market, thus developing a multidimensional framework for measuring industry export competitiveness.

Considering that the objective is to evaluate the export competitiveness of Italian roasting firms, the author chooses “positive” and “ex-post” indicators, combined in a multidimensional and a multivariable framework. The two dimensions of competitiveness implemented are competitive performance and competitive potential; the author used four indices to evaluate the first dimension (export market share, net export share, net export index, revealed comparative advantage) and three indices for the second dimension (unit export price, relative quality index, relative export growth).

The evolution of the international context, with the emergence of new competitors and the spread of coffee consumption worldwide, creates new opportunities but also new challenges for Italian companies. In fact, both competitive performance and competitive potential have been worsening since the second half of the early twenty-first century because of the lack of innovation. A mix of external and internal factors explain this lack.

In order to recover their international competitiveness, firms should leverage on the combination of “traditional elements”–such as Made in Italy effect and the rich technical know-how, depending on their long tradition in the espresso coffee market niche–with “innovative elements,” depending on new marketing skills and competences; these new elements could be developed internally or, most fruitfully, acquired externally, through collaboration with other firms. In this way, Italian businesses could improve the relative quality perceptions of their offering.

Coffee roasting industry in Italy is a significant component of the Italian economic system and it contributes to the development of the Made in Italy abroad. Therefore, an improvement of its export competitiveness could be beneficial to the whole domestic market.

This paper constitutes the first attempt to study the evolution of the coffee industry in regards to the international competitive landscape. This is quite surprising, considering that coffee is one of the main segments of the food and beverage industry; it is the second most important commodity exchanged worldwide after oil and the third most popular beverage after water, tea and carbonated beverages. Then, the analysis of export competitiveness is developed combing two main research streams: the industrial organization literature and the strategic management literature. Moreover, this paper offers a methodological framework useful to measure export competitiveness also in other industries and countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the robustness of web co‐link analysis for business intelligence.

The method is tested in two different Chinese industries, the electronics/IT industry and the chemical industry. Web co‐link data are collected in two different time periods from a different search engine in each period. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is used to map the co‐link data into business competition positions.

Web co‐link analysis is fairly robust in that the mapping results reflect fairly well the business competition landscape for both industries and in both time periods. The mapping results are better when the data collection is restricted to Chinese language webpages only. The study also finds that the Chinese webpages are very consumer‐oriented, a phenomenon that is not seen in previous studies of international companies.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the robustness and applicability of the co‐link analysis method. The method is useful for business intelligence and can also be applied to the non‐business environment. The paper also contributes to the understanding of a specific Chinese web phenomenon.