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Delivering premium services and quality products are critical strategies for success in manufacturing. Continuous improvement (CI), as an underlying foundation for quality management, is an ongoing effort allowing manufacturing companies to see beyond the present to create a bright future. We propose a novel integrated fuzzy framework for analyzing the barriers to the implementation of CI in manufacturing companies.

We use the fuzzy failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and a fuzzy Shannon's entropy to identify and weigh the most significant barriers. We then use fuzzy multi-objective optimization based on ratio analysis (MOORA), the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and fuzzy simple additive weighting (SAW) methods for prioritizing and ranking the barriers with each method. Finally, we aggregate these results with Copeland's method and extract the main CI implementation barriers in manufacturing.

We show “low cooperation and integration of the team in CI activities” is the most important barrier in CI implementation. Other important barriers are “limited management support in CI activities,” “low employee involvement in CI activities,” “weak communication system in the organization,” and “lack of knowledge in the organization to implement CI projects.”

We initially identify the barriers to the implementation of CI through rigorous literature review and then apply a unique integrated fuzzy approach to identify the most important barriers based on the opinions of industry experts and academics.

The purpose of this paper is to show that forgotten classics, such as Melvin T. Copeland’s (1924) Principles of Merchandising, can still teach lessons to students of the history of marketing thought.

The method involved using various key words on several internet search engines. The extensive internet search produced more than a dozen contemporaneous reviews and commentaries. Additionally, there was an intensive search through the histories of marketing thought literature. The extensive and intensive searches allowed a meta-analysis reexamining Copeland’s principles in light of future historical developments from the mid-1920s to the 21st century.

Historically, Copeland’s principles established the commodity school of marketing thought. (One of the three traditional approaches to understanding marketing taught to generations of students from the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s.) Although the traditional approaches/schools have long gone out of favor, Copeland’s classification of consumer and industrial (business) goods (products and services) have stood the test of time and are still in use 100 years later. Long overlooked, Copeland’s (1924) Principles of Merchandising also anticipated the marketing management/strategy as well as the consumer/buyer behavior schools of marketing thought, dominant in the discipline since the 1960s, for which he has seldom – if ever – been acknowledged.

Historical research is limited because some relevant source material may no longer exist or may have been overlooked.

There have been no reviews of Copeland’s principles in almost a century, and no published meta-analysis of this forgotten classic exists. New discoveries reveal the value in studying marketing history and the history of marketing thought. For marketing as a social science to progress, it is invaluable to understand how ideas originated, were improved and integrated into larger conceptualizations, classification schema and theories over time.

Several recent statistical analyses provide overwhelming evidence for substantial injustice in immigration court decisions. Writers also explored the data for evidence of bias. Several ended with recommendations for more legal training for judges and more professional appellate review. These recommendations assume that the problem is in the interpretation of the law and conduct of the trial. My own experience has been that there is actually a greater problem in the interpretation of facts, at several levels. Courts provide for translators, but merely verbal translation is not enough. Cultural translation is required. In this chapter I illustrate what cultural translation is with instances from five different asylum cases that I have been involved in as an expert witness. I conclude with recommendations to support better use of this kind of information.

This paper is an initial attempt to discuss the American institutionalist movement as it changed and developed after 1945. Institutionalism in the inter-war period was a relatively coherent movement held together by a set of general methodological, theoretical, and ideological commitments (Rutherford, 2011). Although institutionalism always had its critics, it came under increased attack in the 1940s, and faced challenges from Keynesian economics, a revived neoclassicism, econometrics, and from new methodological approaches derived from various versions of positivism. The institutionalist response to these criticisms, and particularly the criticism that institutionalism “lacked theory,” is to be found in a variety of attempts to redefine institutionalism in new theoretical or methodological terms. Perhaps the most important of these is to be found in Clarence Ayres’ The Theory of Economic Progress (1944), although there were many others. These developments were accompanied by a significant amount of debate, disagreement, and uncertainty over future directions. Some of this is reflected in the early history of The Association for Evolutionary Economics.

Over the past 30 years, increasing use of technology has created a global business environment leading to the changed role of a professional accountant. In response, accounting organizations and employers have demanded professionals who are creative and innovative, with strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills, yet accounting firms and prior research continue to identify creativity as one of the most important yet most lacking traits of their newly hired employees. This study experimentally examines whether accounting students are indeed less creative than other students, a potential cause for differences in creativity, and a potential intervention to enhance creativity. Our results indicate that, on average, accounting students are not less creative than other students, but rather when performing an accounting task, they are initially less creative, suggesting that the accounting context may be partially contributing to the perceived lack of creativity. However, providing accounting students with process-oriented feedback significantly improves their future creativity, as differences between accounting and non-accounting students are eliminated. The authors contribute to the accounting and creativity literature and discuss implications for accounting education and the profession.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the suitability of Greece as a possible market for truffles. Primary data were collected and analysed in a systematic and detailed way to highlight the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of this prospective market development.

A multi-stage survey was conducted using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The data obtained were analysed using the SWOT analysis method.

The survey highlighted the market characteristics of truffles in Greece. These were sorted into four categories: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks. Results show that truffles have an attractive mix of qualities; however, issues such as the lack of intermediary and customer knowledge and the limited communication of their benefits need to be overcome.

Findings showed that the use of SWOT analysis in specialized food products provides marketers and professionals’ insight and guidance into designing their marketing activities.

Truffles production or trading requires strong commitment by professionals who want to succeed in this market field.

Truffles market growth could contribute to the social welfare through the creation of supplemental income, the cultivation of arid fields and the conservation of natural resources due to their environmentally friendly manner of production.

For the first time, SWOT analysis is used to investigate the factors that shape the market of specialized products in the food sector.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate four of Alderson's key concepts to show how they explain mass customization and extend traditional consumer goods classifications. The four concepts are: heterogeneous markets, transvections, the principle of postponement, and routinized transactions.

In this exploratory paper, Alderson's main concepts are compared and contrasted with today's marketing phenomena and are used for updating traditional consumer goods categorizations.

The main concepts of Aldersonian theory discussed in the paper – heterogeneous markets, transvections, postponement and routinized transactions – are a remarkably good fit with today's “mass customization” and logically lead to an enhanced of definition of consumer goods classifications.

This is a conceptual paper meant to emphasize the apparent explanatory power of Alderson's concepts to today's marketing phenomena. Formal propositions have not been developed and tested.

Traditional classifications of goods no longer accurately explain marketing phenomena arising from the growth of the internet and mass customization. Alderson's concepts provide an effective framework for explaining current phenomena and extending outmoded models.

The four main Alderson concepts evaluated in this paper have not been emphasized as a group before, nor have they been utilized to help explain mass customization and extend traditional consumer goods classifications.

In response to the National Leadership Education Agenda, this application brief furthers priority one, addressing the teaching, learning, and curriculum development of leadership education. The ability of students to demonstrate leadership outcome mastery in areas of communication, self-awareness, interpersonal interactions, and civic responsibility (Seemiller, 2014), is valued across disciplines. Socratic Circles provide a structured discussion learning strategy based on Socratic pedagogy (Copeland, 2005), beneficial to the practice of leadership outcomes. Discussed are descriptions of implementation methods; outcomes related to Seemiller’s (2014) Student Leadership Competencies; and practitioner reflections of the use of Socratic Circles in college level leadership courses.

The concept of digital badges (DBs) as a form of microcredentialing has gained considerable traction in higher education and workplace settings in recent years. This scoping review aims to map the empirical research conducted on DBs in higher education and workplace settings.

The design of this study is a scoping literature review. This scoping review adopts the five-stage scoping framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005).

Based upon our review of the 45 studies that comprised this scoping review of the empirical literature on DBs, we advance a typology that segments the empirical research based on whether DBs are used as pedagogical tools (PTs) or microcredentials. The authors found some confusion regarding nomenclature, numerous theories offered to explain DBs and divergent findings that suggest room for further exploration of this relatively new phenomenon.

This scoping review of the literature helps make sense of the emerging research landscape on DBs. The findings suggest that using DBs as a PT or as a microcredential has implications for a wide range of stakeholders regarding promoting lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling the workforce. With the financial constraints facing higher education in a postpandemic environment, understanding the impact of DBs is needed before making an investment in this arena.