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Jim Keyes, CEO of Dallas-based Blockbuster Inc., was facing the biggest challenge of his career. In March 2010 Keyes was meeting with Hollywood studios in an effort to negotiate better terms for the $1 billion worth of merchandise Blockbuster had purchased the year before. In recent years, Blockbuster's share of the video rental market had been sharply decreasing in the face of competitors such as the low-cost, convenient Redbox vending machines and mail-order and video-on-demand service Netflix. While Blockbuster's market capitalization had dropped 47 percent to $62 million in 2009, Netflix's had shot up 55 percent to $3.9 billion that year. The only hope for Blockbuster, as Keyes saw it, was to shift its business model from primarily brick-and-mortar physical DVD rentals to increased digital and mail-order video delivery. In Keyes's favor, the studios were more than willing to provide him with that help. Hollywood wanted to see Blockbuster win the video-rental wars. Consumers still made frequent purchases of DVDs at its store—purchases which were much more profitable for studios than the rentals that remained Blockbuster's primary business. Blockbuster had made efforts at making its business model more nimble, but the results had been disappointing, and its debt continued to skyrocket. By the end of 2009, the company's debt had climbed to $856 million, its share of the $6.5 billion video rental business had fallen to 27 percent, and its revenues had tumbled 23 percent to $4.1 billion.

The objective of this case is to discuss how different business models and supply chain structures impact the financials of the firms in the DVD rental business. In particular, the goal is to convey that the characteristics of the movie (recent/big hit or old/eclectic) affect whether it is best rented from a centralized or decentralized model. In addition, as streaming gains market share, the impact will be different for movie types and business models.

Since the 1950s, the unifying epistemological perspective in American public administration has been logical positivism, most notably as defined and promoted by Herbert Simon. In recent years, logical positivism has been under attack for limiting inappropriately the scope of inquiry within the field, forcing it to ignore important, value‐laden issues critical to government and the public sector. The willingness to address value‐laden issues was at the core of what was to become the field of public administration in the early twentieth‐century. This article examines the philosophical roots of logical positivist movement, its dramatic effects upon public administration, and the subsequent counter attacks on the movement. The article concludes that although logical positivism’s attack on public administration initially weakened the field, as a result practitioners and scholars were eventually to demand increased rigor and higher standards of inquiry for research in the field.

Beginning in the late 1940s, classical Public Administration was challenged by the works of Herbert Simon and the movement he started, logical positivism. Although only writing in the field for a few years, Simon shifted the locus and focus of the field so dramatically, for a time it almost disappeared from view. This article examines Simonʼns legacy, first by exploring its philosophical antecedents and its later epistemological progeny. The article concludes with an assessment of how the field of Public Administration responded to Simonʼns challenge in the late twentieth century and now, early in the twenty first century.

This paper considers the changes in the nature of the public house sector in the UK.

Profiles the changing nature of the public house sector using published reports and current literature. Comments on the emerging trends and the impacts that they are having on the UK public house sector.

Reveals that many of the old‐style licensees have not been able to adapt to new trading circumstances and are preparing to leave the industry.

Indicates that pub‐owning companies need to recruit a different type of lessee or tenant in the future, characterized by a dynamic sales presence, able to continually generate incremental improvements in pub income.

Reviews the changing characteristics of the UK public house sector.

The study aims to assess the moderating role of celebrity characteristics in the relationship between celebrity endorsement and telecommunication companies’ reputation.

Analysis of results was based on 700 customers in the telecommunication sector. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to check for validity and reliability of the observed items. A hierarchical regression model was estimated to test the various hypotheses set for the study.

The study finds that celebrity endorsement in itself had no significant effect on the reputation of telecommunication companies. Celebrity attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness had a direct effect (positive) on the reputation of telecommunication companies and positively moderated the effect of celebrity endorsement on telecommunication company reputation. Celebrity expertise had no direct effect on telecommunication company reputation but positively moderated the effect of celebrity endorsement and telecommunication company reputation.

This study was purely quantitative. Future study could consider a mixed approach and include senior management members of the telecom firms for an in-depth interview.

In signing on celebrities as brand ambassadors, management must pay particular attention to celebrity attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness. This would be more rewarding to the firms.

The study adds to the little empirical knowledge available on celebrity endorsement in sub-Saharan Africa and telecommunication sector in particular.

Managers in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) carry responsibility for achieving government targets on the provision of quality care and service to patients. The demands on managers to achieve these targets is significant in itself, but are often multiplied because of having to cope with the conflicting pressures of an organisation that operates with a ‘business’ focus, yet is essentially a caring body that is service‐oriented at heart. These two areas of business and service are not naturally compatible and can create tension. Leaders are expected to bridge the two with ease, with little preparation on how to cope with the conflict that these two paradigms can create.This paper, detailing the authors' work with managers in an NHS acute trust, provides unique insights into ways of dealing with the tensions and challenges that leaders experience. The authors argue that a holistic approach to leadership is required to enable this tension to be managed effectively, which considers the physical, mental and spiritual. Of these three elements it is the spiritual dimension that is the most contentious, difficult and most often avoided aspect to leadership and the authors also found this in their work with this NHS acute trust. The paper introduces a model that highlights the three elements to the holistic approach, and goes on to use it in an analysis of the situation faced by managers. The analysis highlights the importance of balance and need for including more consideration of the spiritual dimension in leaders' activities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine financial management in the Pre‐Reformation church in Aberdeen, Scotland during the bishopric of Bishop William Elphinstone (1488‐1514).

The paper employs a combination of literature‐based analysis, archival research and the use of biographies in order to examine aspects of financial management within the Pre‐Reformation church in Aberdeen, Scotland.

There is evidence that accounting for assets and income was mobilised in order to achieve social aims. Recording mechanisms give visibility to the church's remuneration and governance strategy. Together, these examples show that there was no evidence of a sacred/secular divide in this context.

Archives may be incomplete but can give insight into financial management in historical context and aspects of the sacred/secular divide.

This paper aids understanding of visibility and governance possibilities afforded by accounting that has been mobilised in an historic setting in order to achieve social aims.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.