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This study is based on the earlier work of Iannaccone and Lutz, Kirkendall and Le Doux and Burlingame and uses socio‐economic data obtained from 77 school districts in Massachusetts through the period 1963–1972. The study examines a series of hypotheses related to the “gap” that may develop between community demand and school board response. Some of the findings are (i) the Iannaccone‐Lutz model of school board member incumbent defeat is valid and the “gap” between community demands and the school board's response is an important factor in the operational model; (ii) the school board's response to community's demands (tax rate) is an important variable in determining the “gap” resulting in incumbent defeat and in predicting the variance in this political phenomenon in school districts; (iii) socio‐economic‐political indicators of school district change selected by Kirkendall are related to school board member incumbent defeat.

This research replicated earlier research done in non‐partisan school district elections, concerning the effect of school board member incumbent defeat on non‐voluntary superintendent turnover. In earlier research incumbent defeat was related to involuntary superintendent turnover at the .001 level. It was felt that the partisan (Democratic‐Republican) nature of school board elections in Pennsylvania might change the nature of this relationship and offer some insight into the effect of partisan politics on the local politics of education. Based on the research reported in this article it does not appear that partisan elections have the predicted influence on the politics of local school districts. No partisan predictors supplied a more significant relationship with non‐voluntary superintendent turnover than the general category of incumbent defeat regardless of partisan relationships.

The paradigm of the Chinese Box Puzzle served as the analytic framework for this study of school board member recruitment. It directed attention to the process of selection and elimination that narrows the population of a school system to the very few who are elected to the school board. In terms of the paradigm, between the largest box — the many who are governed — and the smallest box — the few who govern — are intermediate boxes that identify the social and political processes that successively narrow the population. The study did not advance specific hypotheses, but rather sought to trace the collective careers of sixty school board members and to draw implications from the modal patterns. The essential finding, that the recruitment process propels into office school board members who are different in many respects from those whom they represent, has important implications for educational governance.

Cost transparency is of central importance to reach a consensus between supply chain partners. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the instrument of cost analysis which supports the link between buyers and suppliers.

Based on a detailed literature review in the area of cost analysis and purchasing, intelligent decision support systems for cost estimation are identified. Subsequently, expert interviews are conducted to determine the application possibilities for managers. The application potential is derived from the synthesis of motivation, identified applications and challenges in the industry. Management recommendations are to be derived by bringing together scientific and practical approaches in the industry.

On the one hand, the results of this study show that machine learning (ML) is a complex technology that poses many challenges for cost and purchasing managers. On the other hand, ML methods, especially in combination with expert knowledge and other analytical methods, offer immense added value for cost analysis in purchasing.

Digital transformation allows to facilitate the cost calculation process in purchasing decisions. In this context, the application of ML approaches has gained increased attention. While such approaches can lead to high cost reductions on the side of both suppliers and buyers, an intelligent cost analysis is very demanding.

After a brief glance at the global labour market after the financial meltdown the paper aims to explain some general mechanisms of short‐time work in Germany. Furthermore it seeks to present an overview of the costs of short‐time work for the establishments with respect to the latest labour market reforms in Germany. In the multivariate analyses with the IAB Establishment Panel the paper aims to identify the determinants of short‐time work and its intensity in Germany. Thus it's goal is to contribute to the discussion of the modified and amended legislative framework for short‐time work.

The microeconometric analysis is based on data from the IAB Establishment Panel, a representative survey of the labour demand in Germany. With data from the survey waves 2008‐2010 the probability of the use of short‐time work with probit regression models and its intensity with truncated regression models are explained.

The manufacturing industry as a German key industry was more affected than other sectors and suffered even harder. Despite the fact that the German labour administration has successfully reduced the bureaucracy of short‐time work, the programme is still rather adopted by bigger establishments. German establishments have utilized their flexibility reserves and complementary short‐time work to protect their core staff during the crisis. There is also some empirical evidence that the establishments tried to avoid brain drains. With the first signs of a recovery of the economy at the beginning of 2010 the establishments benefitted a lot from that strategy as they were instantly able to satisfy increasing demands in their markets again. Empirical evidence is also found that establishments made more intensive use of short‐time work the harder they were suffering from the crisis.

For the first time the latest data from the survey wave 2010 of the IAB Establishment Panel is used and compared with the 2009 survey wave. The structure of the panel questionnaire allows the implementation of some specific questions concerning the use of short‐time work. The IAB Establishment Panel has a sample size of approximately 16,000 cases.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate legal effects on social sustainability practices at buying firms. The US Dodd-Frank Act has forced listed companies to determine the degree to which their products contain conflict minerals (CM). The research question this study seeks to answer is the following: which factors influence a company’s ability to determine the provenance of its inputs?

The study examines secondary data in the form of CM reports of 50 US listed firms for two consecutive years using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach.

This study identifies different configurations of stakeholder salience and firm resources that lead individual companies to achieve high levels of traceability. Findings show that firms’ CM governance mechanisms are a key determinant in the firms’ capacity to meet regulatory traceability requirements. Further, the authors find that both the presence and absence of specific stakeholder pressures and firm resources can lead to traceability. Findings also suggest that firms can achieve traceability without any pressure from stakeholders.

The study investigates the practices of individual firms that are subject to the Dodd-Frank Act, rather than adopting a supply chain-wide perspective. Further, proxies had to be used to measure several constructs because of reliance on firms’ reporting, which implies that the study did not account for certain behavioral factors that influence traceability.

This study provides managers of both resource-rich and less resource-rich firms with possible pathways for achieving CM traceability.

The study contributes to the field of sustainability by providing exploratory insights into the antecedents of traceability and deriving theoretical propositions to guide further research. The authors apply fsQCA to investigate secondary data over multiple years, thus using a novel configurational methodology.

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 this paper, the main objective will be to discuss the factors which can influence the usage of risk reducing strategies found in the literature over the past 30 years. Some of the factors which have relatively consistent effects include age, socio‐economic group, education while other factors show complex effect e.g. self‐confidence, loss‐type and product risk. On the whole, the literature on risk reduction and how it is affected is unable to provide would‐be researchers with clear guidance for questionnaire construction and research design.

This paper takes a critical look on the received paradigm and points out that its fundamental problems are methodological in nature. The epistemological basis of inductivism and the reductionist agenda underlying the psychologistic individualism which form the core of the neoclassical methodology, for instance, do not lend themselves to the achievement of ethical endogeneity. It then presents an ethico‐economic paradigm based on the Islamic principles and argues that such a paradigm not only offers an alternate characterization of the learning process and a richer preference structure but also ensures its ethical endogeneity.

This article presents an approach for measuring consumer preferences in developing countries. The role of marketing research in developing countries and the salient factors which have an impact on how marketing research should be conducted in these countries are briefly discussed. The popular preference measurement procedures developed in the advanced nations are briefly reviewed and found to be unsuitable for use in developing countries. Hence, an alternative approach is proposed which reduces the data collection demands imposed on the respondents. It makes use of pictorial or visual stimuli and requires input from the respondents using a simple binary scale. An empirical investigation illustrating the proposed approach is reported. The convergent validity of the proposed procedure is assessed and found to be highly satisfactory.