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Many studies of the budgetary process focus on the national government while ignoring the state budgetary process and state budgetary actors. Executive budget analysts and legislative budget analysts are important gatekeepers in the budgetary process. These actors were surveyed to ascertain what influences their decisions and to determine what responsibilities are included in their job duties. The results show that many similarities exist between executive budget analysts and legislative budget analysts. Legislative budget analysts are more involved in the budgetary process than many believe. Consequently, they play important “gatekeeping” roles in the budgetary process.

The objective of the study is to identify the themes of “family friendly practices” and to perform a literature review. The research aims to identify the emerging trends in the area of “family friendly practices” by carrying out an exhaustive literature review.

The study synthesizes the literature between the years 2010 and 2019. First of all, 150 research articles were identified by keyword search, bibliography and citation search, out of which 57 research articles were selected on the basis of the most sound theoretical background and maximum literature contribution. The citation analysis method was performed on these studies in order to study the journals, authors by using Google Scholar, ResearchGate, the international database Science Citation Index and SCImago Journal Ranking.

The author citation count shows that the research topic is still getting recognition and the research in this area is increasing. The finding of the research is that the current research in family-friendly practices has focused mainly on seven topics: availability and usability of family-friendly policy, job satisfaction, organizational performance, supervisor or manager support, work–life conflict, employee turnover employee retention and women’s employment.

The study may provide valuable inputs to the HRD practitioners, managers, research scholars, to understand the recent trends in the field of family-friendly policy. As per the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study on family-friendly practices using citation analysis.

This case focuses on Cisco Systems' innovative probe-and-learn approach to using social media to launch its ASR 1000 Series Edge Router. The company had decided to eschew traditional print and TV media in marketing the new product and had decided instead to focus its efforts entirely on digital marketing and social media to attract the attention of its target market. The case discusses Cisco's bold plan to launch the ASR 1000 Series “virtually, visually, and virally” and the digital tactics employed by the Cisco Systems marketing team to accomplish this ambitious goal. Business marketers normally adopt a more serious and traditional approach to marketing its products but in this case Cisco had decided to buck that trend by exploring digital tools and social gaming avenues which its target client—the technical community—were increasingly frequenting. Cisco's challenge lay in whether this new approach and resultant value proposition would resonate with its technical audience and give the ASR 1000 Router the kind of publicity it needed to have. The case is set at a time when social media was burgeoning as a promising way to engage consumers more deeply with brands and products, but marketers were still experimenting with the tools and tactics of social media for marketing.

Understand the relevance of social media for product launches as a function of contextual factors such as nature of product, media habits, and company credibility. Learn about the applicability of social media for business marketers in terms of its uniqueness, advantages and challenges. Recognize the relationship between campaign objectives and the value proposition for the product. Understand the evolution of social media marketing from a probe-and-learn approach to a strategy-driven process. The initial test and learn approach must be enhanced and become more strategic in the future.

To discuss the concept of phantom reality.

When one begins to look at the phenomenon of phantoms, one comes across different sections, which are referred to in expressions such as phantom limb pain, phantom circuits or phantom pregnancy. When are these phantoms? What are they all about? In which contexts are these expressions used? Do they have similarities or aspects in common? How can we deal with them and which reality do they belong to?

Even if we consider these questions as undecidable ones in the sense of Heinz von Foerster, more differentiated answers can be given on the basis of Nelson Goodman's and Catherine Z. Elgin's concept of variations.

The paper offers ideas for dialogue and orientation in the area of conflict of phantom and reality.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the classic Delphi method can be adapted and structured to ensure that specific research questions are clearly addressed.

As part of a larger mixed method project, a modified Delphi study was undertaken to explore factors influencing publication and non-publication of mental health nursing research.

This paper reports brief findings from the Delphi study. However, its main focus is the methodological issues arising from the Delphi method.

The paper argues that the classic Delphi method can be adapted and structured to ensure that specific research questions are able to be clearly answered. The adaptations are pragmatic in approach and in keeping with the general principles underpinning the Delphi method, while successfully addressing the problems of attrition and previous criticism of homogenous panels.

This paper offers some practical solutions to issue arising from undertaking research using the Delphi method.

After a successful run for many years as a resilient consumer electronics giant, Best Buy was under intense pressure at the end of 2014. Even as competitors like Circuit City melted away, Best Buy had been able to withstand the onslaught of online behemoth Amazon and discount retailers like Target and Walmart. However, its competitive position was threatened as online shopping became more popular, particularly among millennial customers.

With a new leadership team, Best Buy had recently undertaken bold initiatives to expand and refine its online presence and position itself for success. These initiatives had produced encouraging results, but Best Buy needed to do more to stem the loss of market share to Amazon and to become more relevant to millennial customers. To address these challenges, Best Buy approached the Kellogg School of Management to solicit ideas from student teams by sponsoring a Business Challenge competition. The teams came up with several strategic initiatives. Best Buy needed to evaluate these initiatives on two criteria: First, how well did these initiatives leverage Best Buy's privileged physical assets (stores, salespeople, and Geek Squad services staff) to create a winning customer experience? Second, how effective would these initiatives be in attracting and retaining millennial customers?

Aims to test to determine whether the selection of the historical return time interval (monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual) used for calculating real estate investment trust (REIT) returns has a significant effect on optimal portfolio allocations.

Using a mean‐variance utility function, optimal allocations to portfolios of stocks, bonds, bills, and REITs across different levels of assumed investor risk aversion are calculated. The average historical returns, standard deviations, and correlations (assuming different time intervals) of the various asset classes are used as mean‐variance inputs. Results are also compared using more recent data, since 1988, with, data from the full REIT history, which goes back to 1972.

Using the more recent REIT datarather than the full dataset results in optimal allocations to REITs that are considerably higher. Likewise, using monthly and quarterly returns tends to understate the variability of REITs and leads to higher portfolio allocations.

The results of this study are based on the limited historical return data that are currently available for REITs. The results of future time periods may not prove to be consistent with the findings.

Numerous research papers arbitrarily decide to employ monthly or quarterly returns in their analyses to increase the number of REIT observations they have available. These shorter interval returns are generally annualized. This paper addresses the consequences of those decisions.

It has been shown that the decision to use return estimation intervals shorter than a year does have dramatic consequences on the results obtained and, therefore, must be carefully considered and justified.

With corporations reinventing and changing themselves with increasing frequency and speed, what is the real estate industry doing to enable that change? This paper presents the perspectives of a corporate tenant, a developer and an interior designer to answer the question of what some companies are doing to make workspace more flexible and to shorten the cycle time for the processes by which workspace is constructed, procured and fitted‐out for new occupancy. The following questions will be answered ‐ In the low vacancy market prevalent in so many parts of the United States, what strategies are corporate real estate executives in high‐growth companies using to acquire space fast? ‐ What trends are emerging in the industry to streamline the processes to build, acquire, fit‐out and manage space? ‐ How is the industry changing its product to ensure that the space that is delivered can meet a variety of users and uses as occupants churn through the space in unforeseen ways?

There are striking similarities between publicly-held government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and investor-owned public utilities. Each firm enjoys large scale economies that give a significant competitive advantage over other companies, possesses a dominant market position that it may be able to exploit to earn profits above competitive levels, and has a strong incentive to enter new markets when the life cycle of its core markets constrain its ability to increase profits. The recent behavior of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac indicates that the government must impose more stringent economic regulation on those GSEs in order to be sure that they achieve their public purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how teachers’ generational interpretative frameworks influence their career experiences and to demonstrate how these generational differences impact the power of professional capital to improve teaching and learning.

The paper utilizes data from a multi-year, mixed methods study of mid-career teachers in Massachusetts. Data in this paper come from semi-structured interviews with 12 Generation X teachers (born 1961-1980).

Generation X teachers have a unique self-image, self-esteem, task perception, job motivation, and future perspective that form their generational interpretative framework. This framework is different from that of the prior generation.

These generational differences have implications for how Generation X teachers view professionalism and autonomy and how they see their careers over time. Drawing upon Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012) suggestions for school leaders, three implications are highlighted. First, a model of professional capital that incorporates teachers’ generational differences must be aware of how teachers view their work before engaging in changing it. This implication ties directly into the second, which is that leaders must know their teachers and understand the culture in which they work. Together, these two implications suggest that implementing a model of professional capital is not enough; it must begin with deliberate thought as to who the teachers are who are being asked to change. Finally, to secure leadership stability and sustainability, leaders must respect generational differences that influence teachers’ desires to move, or not move, into formal leadership roles.