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This study aims to investigate how Germans' misperceptions of the nature of entrepreneurship influence their attitudes towards entrepreneurial failure.

Adopting a multivariate regression analysis, the study used data collected from a commercial online market research panel (N = 2,027) reflecting the overall German working population. Attitudinal items on business failure were used to measure the study variables. The study controlled for age, education, employment status, gender, income, whether the respondent knows a failed entrepreneur and the German federal state in which the respondent resides.

The findings suggest that reservations about failed entrepreneurs become stronger as misperceptions of the nature of entrepreneurship worsen. The results also show that failure reservations vary regionally over the 16 German federal states.

Nationwide efforts regarding the stimulation of entrepreneurship and the acceptance of entrepreneurial failure are insufficient for removing failure reservations, as they neglect regional cultural differences. The results suggest that it is not enough just to invest in efforts to create a failure-friendly culture, and that a better general education about the realities of entrepreneurship is a prerequisite.

The study generates insights into how the overall population in an innovation-driven economy perceives entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial failure. Moreover, the work delves into the reasons why parts of German society reject failed entrepreneurs. Hence, this study can aid the drafting of effective policy initiatives at the regional and national levels.

The research first and uniquely explores the antecedent relationship among three highly studied environmental forces – competitive intensity (CI), market turbulence (MT) and technological turbulence (TT) – in a service context. Next, given the importance of services to the USA and global gross domestic product (GDP) and the unique characteristics of services versus product firms, the research examines the impact of environmental forces on innovation speed capability, a less studied but critical enabler of service innovation. Finally, this study aims to suggest the importance of the sequential relationship between two dynamic capabilities – innovation speed and operational flexibility – to realize advantage.

This study surveyed 264 US service firms in a business to business context and tested this research model using structural equation modeling.

The results yielded three major conclusions: in a service context when examining the relationship among the three environmental forces, CI appears to have the driving influence on MT and TT, MT, however, was the only environmental force that this study found to bare positive and significant direct influence on innovation speed. Looking at the zero-order effect of MT and TT on innovation speed this study found each to be positive and significant suggesting a negative suppression effect and innovation speed’s influence on performance relative to competitors is fully mediated by operational flexibility.

The paper contributes to context, as service firms represent the majority of the USA and global GDP. This study extends the literature on the highly studied environmental forces (MT, TT and CI) by examining how they influence each other in an antecedent role and in service context. This study extends service literature by going beyond the influence of environmental forces on innovation to examine the dynamic capability of innovation speed, suggested as uniquely important to service context and distinct from the more highly studied innovation construct. The study also extends prior research in the manufacturing (product) context that suggests the importance of sequential congruence between two critical dynamic capabilities – innovation speed and operational flexibility – necessary to deliver competitive advantage.

The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the history and development of transaction log analysis (TLA) in library and information science research. Organizing a literature review of the first twenty‐five years of TLA poses some challenges and requires some decisions. The primary organizing principle could be a strict chronology of the published research, the research questions addressed, the automated information retrieval (IR) systems that generated the data, the results gained, or even the researchers themselves. The group of active transaction log analyzers remains fairly small in number, and researchers who use transaction logs tend to use this method more than once, so tracing the development and refinement of individuals' uses of the methodology could provide insight into the progress of the method as a whole. For example, if we examine how researchers like W. David Penniman, John Tolle, Christine Borgman, Ray Larson, and Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu have modified their own understandings and applications of the method over time, we may get an accurate sense of the development of all applications.

Design thinking has become something of a buzz word in innovation discussions and has recently also invested occupied education spaces. In this chapter we briefly compare design thinking to problem-based learning (PBL) and enquiry-based learning (EBL) approaches to problem solving in education before focusing on the approach itself and current debates about its meaning and significance. This chapter focuses particular attention on the problem finding aspect of design thinking and its integration of creative methods for solving a range of tame to wicked problems in a variety of spaces. We ground our analysis in three environments of design thinking and five specific cases of application across education sectors from primary through to university. The examples focus on the generative potential of design thinking for all students and especially those from non-design disciplines. It is this capacity of design thinking to complement existing pedagogies and provide inspiration for change and innovation that is the strength of the model.

In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient themselves, so they can interact appropriately? Do participants’ practical navigation techniques have unintended consequences? To address these two questions, the authors draw on an ethnography of US youth programs whose sponsors required multiple, conflicting logics, speed, and precise documentation. The authors develop a concept, navigation techniques: participants’ shared unspoken methods of orienting themselves and appearing to meet demands from multiple logics, in institutionally complex projects that require frequent documentation. These techniques’ often have unintended consequences.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Reports on findings from a research project, which has been examining the development of the New Public Management (NPM), a managerial reform movement for change in public sectors worldwide, and reports on a series of semi‐structured interviews with academics in Sweden and England as elements of NPM are introduced into the daily routines of university work. The findings suggest that, despite evidence of common elements of the NPM appearing in Higher Education in the two countries in question, as well as many similarities of experience and response among those subjected to change, there are differences ‐ with academics in England reporting longer hours and increased monitoring of their work than their Swedish counterparts. The article explores the nature of these similarities and differences.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

In the epigraph of the paper, Aristotle reminds us that confusion and inconsistency arise when people attach more than one meaning to any particular term (“name”). It seems that Aristotle could not have better described the situation with the connotation of Jewishness in the contemporary world.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology that is based on the concept of environmental comfort and can serve as a tool that can help companies and employees to implement Kaizen projects. This methodology focuses on the worker’s participation in analyzing and developing improvements related to their workplace.

This research is focused on the development of a methodology that encourages worker participation in improvement activities, through the analysis of their working conditions. For this purpose, the proposed methodology was developed in accordance with the dimensions of workplace comfort proposed by Vischer. The employees start working on the analysis of problems and their solutions through the logical framework approach, as it is a tool that encourages worker participation and consensus. The developed methodology was applied in a company, with three different groups of people, which enabled the authors to test its utility.

The findings reveal that the proposed methodology is effective in initiating workers in the path of Kaizen. The employees who applied this methodology were able to propose improvement actions that addressed the problems and opportunities that they had previously detected. Moreover, the questionnaire that was used to validate the methodology and was administered to employees shows that the methodology is useful in preparing them for adopting continuous improvement (CI) programs.

The methodology presented in this paper has been applied and evaluated by a small number of employees. These limitations suggest future research recommendations.

This participatory methodology could be used by different types of companies to initiate employees on the path of CI, even if they are not familiar with improvement programs or methodologies. In addition, its use could improve the capabilities of employees in areas such as participatory analysis, problem identification and proposal of objectives. These capabilities are necessary in any Kaizen project. As a result of the application of this methodology, the companies could obtain a list of areas of improvement related to their work and propose actions to work on.

The paper presents the use of environmental comfort in the workplace as the first step in accomplishing a Kaizen project, with a focus on the employee involvement and consensus.