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This paper examines the evolution of two separate fields, which are essentially concerned with the same issues but are framed by different academic and professional disciplines and practice. It appears that public affairs management researchers often fail to take into account parallel literature from the discipline of public relations — even when purporting to offer an interdisciplinary approach. Equally, the public relations literature frequently fails to speak the language of business management and narrowly defines such key business activities as marketing, policy and strategy. In this paper, the authors present evidence prescribing the differing evolution of public affairs and public relations. They compare and contrast public affairs and public relations in terms of their definitions, scholarship, survey evidence, leading writers, academic and professional associations and educational programme content. They conclude by offering several suggestions for closing the gap between the two areas.

The paper seeks to show how the increasingly popular use of data and information acquired from open sources (OS) impacts competitive and marketing intelligence (C/MI). It describes the current state of the art in analysis efforts of open source intelligence (OSINT) in business/commercial enterprises, examines the planning and execution challenges organizations are experiencing associated with effectively using and fusing OSINT in C/MI decision‐making processes, and provides guidelines associated with the successful use of OSINT.

This is a descriptive, conceptual paper that utilizes and develops arguments based on the search of three unclassified bodies of literature in competitive and marketing intelligence, intelligence processing and marketing analysis.

Open sources are useful in marketing analyses because they can be easily accessible, inexpensive, quickly accessed and voluminous in availability. There are several conceptual and practical challenges the analyst faces in employing them. These can be addressed through awareness of these issues as well as a willingness to invest resources into studying how to improve the data gathering/analysis interface.

Marketing analysts increasingly rely on open sources of data in developing plans, strategy and tactics. This article provides a description of the challenges they face in utilizing this data, as well as provides a discussion of the effective practices that some organizations have demonstrated in applying and fusing open sources in their C/MI analysis process.

There are very few papers published focusing on applying OSINT in enterprises for competitive and marketing intelligence purposes. More uniquely, this paper is written from the perspective of the marketing analyst and how they use open source data in the competitive and marketing sense‐making process and not the perspective of individuals specialized in gathering these data.

The paper seeks to address the viability of planning and executing the integration of four often independent marketing information management techniques, i.e. competitive intelligence (CI), customer relationship management (CRM), data mining (DM) and market research (MR).

The research presented is a longitudinal, exploratory and descriptive case study, covering a three‐year period during a critical development phase of a medium‐size, national employer association which sought to improve the quality of marketing‐based insights to its strategic planning capability as well as improve economic outcomes.

It is possible to achieve profitable and capability enhancing integration of diverse marketing information management techniques. Successful integration and the use of a highly focused cross‐functional team generated better market strategies and bottom line benefits.

The need to generate greater insight from popular marketing information management and planning techniques is routinely experienced by marketing and other executive decision makers. This article provides a multi‐year roadmap of the successful execution of technique integration, including identifying barriers that arose as well as suggesting solutions for achieving progress.

There are very few case studies published that demonstrate the successful evolution and integration of CI, CRM, DM and MR into the enterprise's strategy‐making process. The unique element of this example is that it was achieved within the context of a medium‐sized, national, not‐for‐profit employer association.

This paper examines the growth of the public relations (PR) discipline in the UK with reference to some of the possible business drivers behind growth and the changing strategic role of communications in companies. Some of the factors at play are discussed, with particular reference to corporate social responsibility, transparency, stakeholder relationships and reputation management and the role of PR in creating the “employer brand” for those companies competing for the scare resource of new corporate talent. The paper also discusses the role of PR education in the UK in preparing aspirants to the profession for the working life of a PR practitioner and considers the expectations of companies for strategic PR management and whether the supply of practitioners meets the need and demand. Finally, the author draws upon experience in having undertaken a course of further formal PR education at Masters degree level and comments on the practical and strategic communications benefits to be gained from framing experience of PR in action within the growing body of PR and communications theory encountered during academic study.

The aim of the paper is twofold: to question the current use of the extant competitive strategy frameworks imported from the context of the business firm; and to call for innovative frameworks that are more faithful to the nature, purpose, and needs of business schools.

An extensive literature review is undertaken in the field of business school competitive strategy. This literature is then evaluated to see how sensitive it is to the specific context of the business school. Inferences are then drawn and the paper is structured to make the case for the need to rethink the current approach to business school strategy.

The application of the current dominant approach in the competitive strategy literature, which prioritizes value capture over value creation, is questionable in the context of business school strategy. There are deep and multiple differences between business firms and business schools. These differences call for shifting the focus toward value creation and emphasizing the social mission of business schools.

The paper focuses only on undergraduate education. Extending the argument to include other activities of business schools requires further research.

Business school strategy researchers and practitioners are encouraged to alter their current approach to be less occupied with competition and more concerned with value creation for students, stakeholders, and society at large.

The paper represents an early call for strategists and researchers to rethink their current dominant approach of applying the extant business strategy literature to business schools. It makes the case for the necessity of taking into account the deep and multiple differences between business firms and business schools.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how foreign and domestic investors differ in their beliefs about the relative merits of a firm's political connections.

These differences are employed to explain cross-sectional variation in the previously documented premium in A-share prices relative to otherwise equivalent foreign currency denominated B-shares for Chinese firms.

Chinese domestic individual investors were excluded from owning B-shares of Chinese firms prior to February 20, 2001. The authors find that firms with more political connections have higher premiums and a smaller reduction in premiums associated with this event.

This is consistent with domestic block holders deriving additional benefits from politically connected firms.

The findings also have important policy implications by showing that government can have a strong effect on the economy even without applying macro-policy tools.

Government ownership in listed companies can result in discrepancies among classes of investors with respect to their valuations. Furthermore, the prohibition of short sales prevents arbitrage from correcting this bias, and eventually the role of the market in allocating resources efficiently is undermined.

The authors investigate the role of political connections as implied by the proportion of state ownership in explaining the A-share premium. Unlike previous studies that associate state ownership with political risk, the paper relates state ownership to political connections that are particularly beneficial to domestic large block shareholders. This interpretation is consistent with the findings and with previous literature on state ownership and political connections of Chinese firms.

The purpose of this study is to identify the importance of hotel attributes for pre-senior and senior tourists when selecting a hotel.

Three market segments (German, Dutch and British) were selected as the sample of the research. The Callan and Bowman’s (2000) scale was employed and data obtained from 13 five star hotels in Antalya, Turkey.

Results of the study showed that “value for money” and “availability of organized entertainment in the hotel” were important attributes for senior British tourists when compared to other participants. Dutch senior tourists attached more importance to food service attributes (“small food portions” and “special dietary menus”) than did the other respondents.

Research results confirmed the importance of staff attributes (“politeness of staff” and “friendliness of staff”) for customer satisfaction. This finding highlights the need for training programmes targeting hospitality employees, with a specific focus on meeting customers’ demands for receiving friendly and polite service.

The present study intends to contribute to the literature on senior tourist market by identifying the importance of hotel attributes for three market segments (Germany, England and The Netherlands).

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework for developing standards for knowledge management education programs from primary through tertiary levels. The lack of standards for knowledge management education is a significant challenge for the advancement of the field, for the sustainability of institutional programs, the future competencies of knowledge workers and the effective growth of knowledge organizations.

The research adopts and adapts the framework and methodology used to establish educational standards in computer science. The framework is presented as a focal point for discussion across the profession. Nine strands are derived from historical treatment of the discipline. Seven levels of learning are identified. Learning goals and objectives are developed for each level.

The research suggests that a lifelong learning model is definable for the field of knowledge management, just as it has been for other disciplines. The progressive learning model may produce high school graduates who are better prepared for knowledge work, a larger population of knowledge practitioners and professionals prepared to support and lead knowledge organizations and increased quantities and improved quality of knowledge management research. Finally, the progressive learning model may generate a new and increased demand for lifelong learning opportunities in the field of knowledge management.

The research is intended as a focal point for discussion and review by knowledge management professionals and particularly educators around the globe. The research represents an important stage of development, but adoption is the final stage of this research.

While this research draws upon established theories and practices in the field, and learning frameworks from other domains, the context and the research results are unique.

Economic hardship and crime is always a debatable issue in the political economy literature. Some authors define poverty leads to crime some are completely opposite. The purpose of this paper is to find out the impact of poverty on crime in the USA.

Using time series data of USA over the period from 1965 to 2016, this study applies autoregressive distributed lag approach to identify the effect of poverty on crime.

The outcomes confirm a positive co-integrating relationship between poverty and property crime. It can be argued that poverty ultimately leads property crime in long run in the USA. However, unemployment and GDP exhibit neither long-run nor short-run relationship with property crime and they are not cointegrated for the calculated period.

The subject of this paper helps to explain and analyze the nexus between poverty and crime in the USA.

Government and policymakers should focus more on poverty rather than unemployment alone to control property crime.

This study attempts to identify the consequences of economic hardship and poverty on the crime in the advanced economy like USA.

This paper sets out to document a review of environmental collaborations in the Australian building and construction industry and to identify a number of motivations that appear to drive particular environmental groups and building and construction companies to collaborate on specific projects.

The research involves a series of in‐depth interviews with individuals from building and construction companies and from environmental groups, and utilises a number of theoretical perspectives to explain the various perspectives being adopted by the interviewees.

The results indicate that corporate managers seek to collaborate with environmental groups as a result of pressures exerted by particular stakeholder groups, particularly government, and by the desire to be aligned with an organisation that has “green credentials” – something that is valuable in enhancing the reputation and legitimacy of the company and the related building project. There was also a related financial motivation for collaborating. The representatives from the environmental groups indicated that motivations for collaboration included developing a project that could be used as a vehicle for “educating” the public, generating positive environmental outcomes, complying with the expectations of their constituents, and setting an example for other building and construction companies to follow.

Little research has been done in the area of environmental collaborations. In this study, environmental collaborations were considered as a vehicle for both the environmental groups and the companies to further meet their organisational objectives and were generally considered as successful initiatives from each organisation's perspective.