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In interpreting the role of disruptive technologies in the relative success and failure of firms, this paper uses Christensen’s principles to review the strategies of Amazon.com and Barnes & Nobel. The core argument of the paper is based on the assertion that firms that fail to recognize the uniqueness of a disruptive technology fall short of succeeding in their line of business. The argument is conducted by reviewing the various aspects of disruptive technology, as they relate to the business of selling books online. In a final synthesis, insights based on occurrences within the US e‐business context are presented.

To effectively develop privacy policies and practices for cloud computing, organizations need to define a set of guiding privacy objectives that can be applied across their organization. It is argued that it is important to understand individuals’ privacy values with respect to cloud computing to define cloud privacy objectives.

For the purpose of this study, the authors adopted Keeney’s (1994) value-focused thinking approach to identify privacy objectives with respect to cloud computing.

The results of this study identified the following six fundamental cloud privacy objectives: to increase trust with cloud provider, to maximize identity management controls, to maximize responsibility of information stewardship, to maximize individual’s understanding of cloud service functionality, to maximize protection of rights to privacy, and to maintain the integrity of data.

One limitation is generalizability of the cloud privacy objectives, and the second is research bias. As this study focused on cloud privacy, the authors felt that the research participants’ increased knowledge of technology usage, including that of cloud technology, was a benefit that outweighed risks associated with not having a random selection of the general population. The newness and unique qualities of privacy issues in cloud computing are better fitted to a qualitative study where issues can emerge naturally through a holistic approach opposed to trying to force fit an existing set of variables or constructs into the context of privacy and cloud computing.

The findings of this research study can be used to assist management in the process of formulating a cloud privacy policy, develop cloud privacy evaluation criteria as well as assist auditors in developing their privacy audit work plans.

Currently, there is little to no guidance in the literature or in practice as to what organizations need to do to ensure they protect their stakeholders privacy in a cloud computing environment. This study works at closing this knowledge gap by identifying cloud privacy objectives.

Since the 1960s, experts have predicted that we are on the verge of curing cancer. The purpose of this paper is to explore the obstacles to progress, and to propose policies that will lead more quickly to more success.

To speed future cures, we need to look at the traits, and methods of those innovative medical entrepreneurs who achieved breakthroughs in the past, and learn what institutions and policies enabled, or blocked, their progress.

Breakthrough innovators tend to be less-credentialed outsiders who “see what others do not see,” often by nimble and persistent pursuit of serendipitous discoveries or slow hunches. For example, Freireich and DeVita were less-credentialed outsiders. Freireich cured childhood leukemia and DeVita cured Hodgkin’s lymphoma, by pursuing nimble trial-and-error experimentation in their anti-cancer chemotherapy cocktails. Min Chiu Li pursued his slow hunch that his patients would benefit from longer chemotherapy than the mandated National Cancer Institute protocol allowed. He was fired, but his patients were cured. Today, FDA-mandated regulatory protocols, often defended as applications of the precautionary principle, greatly restrict innovative medical entrepreneurs, thereby delaying cancer cures and costing lives.

The paper proposes a new approach to medical innovation, allowing cancer researchers to engage in trial-and-error experiments that follow up on serendipitous discoveries and plausible hunches. The result will be more cures and longer lives.

Explores a number of the debates and justification used to support and advance non‐state governance of the Internet in the USA. Reviews public reports released leading up to the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Concludes that the scope herein is restricted to the jurisdictions and reasoning stated in the policy papers leading to the formation of the ICANN.

The foundation collection of the printed books now forming the Library of the British Museum was that of Sir Hans Sloane. This comprised about 40,000 volumes. To it was added in 1759 the Royal collection, begun in the time of Henry VII and inherited by George II from his predecessors on the throne.

This chapter examines the rise and fall of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations (Dunlop Commission) in the early 1990s. It uses the events surrounding the Commission to provide an insight into the dynamics of the struggle over federal labor law reform. The inability of the Dunlop Commission to get labor and management representatives to agree on proposals for labor law reform demonstrated, yet again, that employer opposition is the greatest obstacle to the protection of organizing rights and modernization of labor law. For the nation's major management associations, labor law reform is a life and death issue, and nothing is more important to them than defeating revisions to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) intended to strengthen organizing rights. The failure of labor law reform in the 1990s also demonstrated that the labor movement would never win reform by means of an “inside the beltway” legislative campaign – designed to push reform through the US Senate – because the principal employer organizations would always exercise more influence in Congress. Instead, unions must engage with public opinion, and convince union and nonunion members about the importance of reform. Thus far, however, they lack an effective language with which to do this.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the causes of the failure of the Larkin Company (Buffalo, NY), once one of the nation's largest mail‐order houses in the decades surrounding 1900.

Borrowing conceptual frameworks from both recent management and historical scholarship on organizational failure that integrates exogenous and endogenous factors, this study employs traditional historical methods to explain the causes of Larkin's failure. The main primary sources include the Larkin Company records, government documents, personal papers, trade journals, and other primary sources.

Begun as a modest soap manufacturer by John D. Larkin, in Buffalo, in 1875, the Larkin Company grew to become one of the largest mail‐order houses in the USA in the decades surrounding 1900 owing to its innovative direct marketing practices, called the “factory‐to‐family” plan, that relied on unpaid women to distribute its products. In 1918, anticipating the chain store boom, Larkin established two grocery store chains (other retail ventures followed). The company regularly lost money in these ventures and, combined with a shrinking mail‐order economy, struggled during the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually liquidated in 1941‐1942. A number of exogenous and endogenous factors, acting alone and in various combinations, proved too challenging to second‐ and third‐generation family members who ran the company after 1926.

This research paper tries to understand the decline of an important progressive firm during the interwar period. Whereas Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were able to make the transition from mail order to stores, Larkin Company failed to navigate this transition successfully. It also adds to the small but important literature in management and business history on organizational failure and may serve as a cautionary tale for family businesses.

While Hemingway noted that all stories end in death, this story begins with a death in the family. I recount my mother's (Ma's) death from a sociological point of view, making use of an autoethnographic perspective. Such a perspective encourages a frank portrayal of my involvement in the story as well as more detached reflection of various behaviors (enacted by Ma, her children, her grandchildren, and her friends). I also focus on Ma as a child of the Depression, a young adult during World War II, and a casualty of a middle class lifestyle. Her death, while unwanted, allowed her to create and construct authentic encounters with her children, grandchildren, and friends – encounters that she had avoided while living the middle class life. Her story allows me to reflect on her death as encouraging an authentic understanding of my emotions.

The campaign for striker replacement legislation, which began in the late 1980s and had effectively ended by the mid-1990s, was the most important political battle over labor legislation since the defeat of the Labor Law Reform Bill in 1978. Striker replacement was the AFL-CIO’s top legislative priority in the early 1990s and, coming quickly after the passage of NAFTA, which labor had opposed, the defeat of its campaign solidified organized labor’s reputation for failure in legislative battles. As yet, however, the political campaign for striker replacement legislation has attracted surprisingly little attention from industrial relations scholars.