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The purpose of this paper is to explore the interdependence between donor countries’ health aid expenditures. The specific form of interdependence considered is the leader effect, whereby an influential country has a positive leverage effect on other donor countries’ aid expenditure. The opposite case of a free-rider effect, whereby a single donor country has a negative leverage effect on its peers, is also considered.

Focusing on the identification of the leader effect avoids the estimation bias present in the identification of the peer group effect, due to endogenous social effect. The empirical analysis focuses on Development Assistance for Health provided by 20 OECD countries over the period of 1990-2009. Aid commitment and aid disbursement are distinguished.

When aid dynamics, country heterogeneity, and endogeneity are accounted for, there is no evidence that the biggest donor – the USA, or the most generous donors – Norway and Sweden, exhibit any leverage effects on other donor countries’ aid expenditures.

This is the first paper to examine the leader and free-rider effects in health aid provision as previous studies focus on peer effects. Any evidence of leader or free-rider effects (or the lack of it) adds to the understanding of international political economy especially in the area of foreign aid provision.

The purpose of this article is to broaden our understanding of the relationship between footholds and feints, particularly within a context of judo strategy, and propose a framework whereby organizational decision makers might differentiate foothold attacks from strategic feints as competitive moves.

The paper used utilized an inductive approach to framework development using an in-depth case study for contextual explanation of firm rivalry between Nectar and Coca Cola in the Balkans region. To identify the framework dimensions, the paper integrated real options reasoning with game-theoretic and competitive dynamics perspectives. It also used a market multiples approach to conduct a retrospective valuation analysis to support our framework.

The examination of the competitive interplay between Nectar and Coke in the Balkans region provides meaningful intimation of the linkages between foothold moves, feints, and judo strategy techniques. Based on insights from the case, we develop a framework for practical differentiation of foothold attacks from feints.

A limiting factor is that only a case approach to framework development was used. However, we accept that the framework dimensions could have been identified using other methods. Another limiting factor is that our analysis only considered foothold moves for the geographic markets, but not for product markets.

The paper offers management practitioners an operative framework for differentiating foothold attacks from strategic feints.

This unique contribution is the development of an operable framework for practical differentiation of competitive foothold attacks from feints. The extant literature offers no guidance as to how one might differentiate a true foothold attack from a feint. The ability to do so from a competitive standpoint could prove profound for firm success.

It is a comforting aspect of the business world that the race is not inevitably won by the biggest and meanest kids on the block. Smaller organizations can often compete with and even outwit their larger counterparts through smart strategy. It is this approach that enabled a comparatively small player, Palm Computing (now Palm Inc.) to get the better of Microsoft for five years. Palm achieved this through intuitive use of what David B. Yoffie and Mary Kwak call a judo strategy: preventing opponents from playing to their full strengths.

Proper performance measurement is an important issue in library operational management. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) model is applied to evaluate the relative operational efficiency of 25 U.S. private research-university library members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Operations of each library decision-making unit are considered as a production process using four resource input and four service output variables. The model results are analyzed and compared with the efficient group and a peer group by using a t-test. The model provides decision-makers with more accurate information to implement better library services with appropriate resource allocation.

This research examines antecedents to consumer adoption of a popular form of online entertainment - fantasy sports leagues. Employing Davis' (1989) Technology Acceptance Model as a theoretical framework, the study found that attitude toward the televised sport (American professional football), perceived ease of using in relation to fantasy sports websites, perceived knowledge of the sport and subjective norms all played a role in explaining participants' attitudes and behavioural intentions towards playing fantasy football.

Although current literature offers support for understanding sport consumer behavior from psychological and sociological perspectives, there is a lack of research that examines the effect of one’s emotional response to team outcomes on subsequent economic decisions. The purpose of this paper is to bridge this gap by studying how emotional responses to sport events moderate a typical endowment bias in the secondary ticket market.

This research comprised a 3×2×2 between-participants design with emotional state (positive, negative, and neutral), role (seller, buyer), and fan identification (high, low) as the three factors. Prospect theory and social identity theory guided hypothesis development whereby it was proposed that, depending on the affective response of study participants to positive, negative, or neutral publicity concerning the team, team identification would impact the transaction function (buyers vs sellers) on price values for tickets to a future event.

Findings revealed an interaction effect of emotions and team identification on the endowment effect to the extent that bargaining gaps between sellers and buyers increased or decreased depending on mood states and levels of identification with the team.

This study adds to the literature on emotions and the key role they play in effecting pricing decisions and consumer behavior, especially given fan identification is such a significant area of study with numerous implications for sport business and management.

We present a peer-to-peer teaching approach designed to prepare introductory accounting students to address ethical challenges they will face in the workplace. We describe the motivation, processes, and resources used, introduce an effectiveness measure and discuss refinements so that other universities may adopt the innovation.

Upper division Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) accounting honor society members, with faculty guidance, create and deliver workshops in the 200-level introductory accounting sequence using the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. GVV provides tools to move from recognition to action when confronted with a values conflict. The BAP members had completed the GVV exercises and casework in their upper division accounting courses. Now as peer coaches, they guide sophomore-level business students through the GVV curriculum to prepare them to act on their values when challenged.

Post-training perceptions express consistent beliefs that the introductory accounting students’ skills and abilities had improved with the training. Additionally, introductory accounting students’ descriptions of how they would address values conflicts based on what they learned in the training reflects development of personalized specific approaches.

GVV provides students with an action-based ethics toolkit to build upon as they move forward academically and professionally. The peer-to-peer innovation builds stronger mentor and mentee ties and introduces the business program’s ethical culture to sophomore-level business students.

The innovation won the 2014 Beta Alpha Psi Ethics Award sponsored by Grant Thornton and reflects the first use of a peer-to-peer approach with GVV in a university setting.

A dual transportation analysis is considered as a strategic matter for plant facility expansion/contraction decision making in manufacturing operations. The primal-dual problem is presented in a generalized mathematical form. A practical technique of generating the dual solution is illustrated with a plant facility expansion/contraction example as a tutorial. Demand forecasting is performed based on the time series data with seasonal variation adjustments. The dual solution helps facilitate operations decision making by providing useful information.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue of Management Decision and discuss the key question “Should sport be taken seriously?”.

The themes of the special issue are discussed and each paper is introduced.

Sport should be taken seriously because it has a significance beyond the field of play. It has become a commodified activity which creates and consumes wealth and can be used as a context for management research.

Rarely before has sport been taken seriously in a management research context. This guest editorial and the special issue that follows it begin that debate.

An appropriate assessment of sustainability in venture business is an important managerial and investment decision making. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is utilized for sustainability assessment for venture business firms’ performance. Venture business firms are primary decision-making units (DMUs). Required information for this study is collected from Korea Listed Companies Association (KLCA) database. The proposed DEA model incorporates multiple inputs and outputs to assess the relative operational efficiency of the DMUs, identifying the best performance group among the peer venture business firms. The proposed model provides decision-makers with more accurate information for strategic insights to make better investment decisions in the competitive business environment.