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The relationship between organisation structure and strategic planning has been discussed by numerous authors. However, empirical studies of this relationship remain scarce. This article examines the interrelationship between strategic plan intensity and organisation structural factors through an empirical analysis to provide additional insights into this important relationship. Strategic plan intensity is defined as the degree to which an organisation uses a strategic plan to guide the actions and decisions of organisation members.

Studies concerning Soviet taxation demonstrate a diversity of opinions on the nature of turnover taxes. Four major views on the subject have emerged: (1) turnover taxes are simply a sales (excise) tax on articles' of consumption sold to the Soviet consumer; (2) not all turnover taxes are a sales tax, some of them are a substitute for rent on production of certain industrial materials; (3) in addition to being a sales (excise) tax on consumer goods and rent on some industrial materials, there exists a third type of turnover tax which is levied on agricultural production of the peasantry; (4) turnover taxes are a portion of the surplus product produced in industry and agriculture.

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationships between a hotel’s design quality and the property’s business performance.

Hotel guests’ assessments of the design quality of hotels that they recently visited are tested using the design quality indicator (DQI). Business performance is measured using indexed values for each property’s occupancy, average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR). The data are analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and a variation of a hedonic pricing model.

Factor analysis reduced the DQI instrument to 19 measurement items. Factors that measure navigability and signage positively impact occupancy index. Factors that measure flexible space usage negatively impact the RevPAR and ADR indices. Factors that reflect aesthetic constructs, including Urban & Social Integration and Character & Form, positively impact the RevPAR and ADR indices.

The study examines a nationwide sample of guests from two full-service brands of a single multi-brand hotel company. The study provides a parsimonious, validated design measurement instrument and a revised hedonic pricing analysis.

Hoteliers can use this technique to assist with resource allocation decisions. Aesthetic elements, including the building’s Urban & Social Integration with its surroundings and its Character & Form, lead to higher ADR and RevPAR performance. Managers should ensure a coherent layout and good signage program to drive occupancy.

This study offers a technique to measure design quality and a new method of performing a hedonic pricing analysis.

Roles of academic libraries have recently been regularly discussed among Library and Information Science (LIS) scientists and practitioners. A shift of roles induced by various factors forces academic libraries to reconsider their operational guidelines and plan future scenarios. This article provides an analysis of the framing of roles assumed by academic libraries and identifies key factors and agents that influence the process. Research consisted of an analysis of official strategic documents of Lithuanian state-owned universities that are of great importance to the strategic development of academic libraries and the anchoring of their roles. Applying Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) discourse theory and the concepts of new institutionalism as a theoretical approach, key factors and agents influential to the role of academic libraries were identified. Modernity, market, and quality as three interrelated discourses highlight the proposition that modernity is inseparable from the development of information technologies and infrastructure and that various professional networks in the library environment act as powerful institutional agents. Practices of market law application in universities have influence on the institutional logic of libraries which increasingly relies on the criteria of efficiency and rationality.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the law relating to different types of guarantee schemes and the circumstances in which they are used to safeguard against default risks in international commercial practice. Different types of guarantee schemes are used in different contexts, often depending on which types and the purpose they have been sought.

The paper was undertaken by evaluating secondary data sources, empirical examples and case law to underscore the pitfalls commercial parties need to always bear in mind with regard to guarantees and factoring and their usage in international commercial practice.

The paper articulates the law relating to different types of guarantees and how they are harnessed to provide security against default risks in international commercial practice. By the very nature of guarantees, they tend to be in high demand in times of economic uncertainties when banks and other financial institutions find it less prudent to lend to borrowers without ensuring some form of security against potential defaults.

There are many different types of guarantee schemes clients can always opt for, but some of them are never written about as much. There is therefore limited data available to inform policy decisions by those who seek to use them. Lack of adequate information on any financial produces, leave alone guarantees, is not good for businesses and the public in terms of how to safeguard against risks inherent in usage and practice of guarantees. In this similar respect, there were not enough data available to evaluate the varied context in which guarantees are used.

There are limited data available on guarantees, and because they are speciality products, the way they are used in practice can never be overlooked. It was necessary to publish this paper not only to address the foregoing need but also to discuss different types of guarantees and enhance understanding on their usage and practice. The paper articulates the law relating to guarantees and what guarantors need to always bear in mind before they accept to sign contracts of guarantees.

Guarantees are important for markets to operate efficiently. Their usage and practice has wide implications for various stakeholders such as banks, businesses, economies, governments and people, especially where contracts relating to them are not constituted and executed properly. Defaults on borrowed loans can lead banks not to lend money to businesses and subsequently choke them of a source on which many depend.

This is the first paper that articulates the close relationship between guarantees, factoring and trusts. The paper has articulated the varied contexts in which each of the foregoing speciality products is harnessed in practice. Although this paper was written largely by reviewing and internalizing secondary data sources, it was done in a distinctive way to underscore the objectives it was written to achieve.

DURING some comments on the brain drain last month it was remarked that work study technologists stood on the periphery. Suddenly they have been moved right to the centre as the result of a communication from Dr. Robert N. Lehrer. He is among the six American work study experts best known to the profession in this country, ranking with Barnes and Mundel as having contributed much to a right appreciation of the subject's value and its techniques.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the objectives, priorities and criteria of digitization. It also analyses the open access initiatives adopted by the special libraries in National Capital Region of India. The paper further examines the motivating factors of using digital resources.

The research paper is based on primary survey of librarians and users of special libraries. Weighted index has been used to analyse the factors of digitization while factor analysis is used to study the open access initiatives adopted by the libraries.

Based on the primary goal of libraries, i.e. to increase their global visibility and the ultimate purpose of such digital projects is to provide greater access to their collections to promote research activities. The paper summarizes that increased accessibility is the most preferred objective; content value is most preferred criterion for digitization. The paper further identifies factors that motivated users to use digital resources.

The availability of digital literature not only helps the local users but provides access to their resources and thus increases the visibility of these libraries globally. The revelation of special libraries to undertake such ventures is not only helpful to establish better information availability and visibility but also to maximize its value and worthiness.

Most existing studies remain on the level of collecting data and interpreting specific cases on digital conversion but this paper not only interprets the reasons of digitization but also investigates reasons of user needs by factorizing them. This paper examines the objectives, criteria and prioritization of material for digitization. It further identifies the factors motivating users to access these digital resources.

The purpose of this paper was to present the stages of the Brazilian startups' organizational life cycle (OLC), identifying and describing the main factors related to the entrepreneurial and organizational perspectives, as well as the factors related to external relationship agents and the associated risks at each OLC stage. In addition, the variables that comprised the three perspectives above were used for a descriptive reading of the evolutionary process from the perspective of intellectual capital during the stages.

The type of research used was quantitative with a descriptive character. For data collection, the authors have used the survey method and two complementary questionnaires were used as research tools. The measurement scale used in these instruments was the 11-point Likert scale. In total, 100 Brazilian startups registered in the STARTUPBASE and residents in São Paulo comprised the sample of this research. For the data processing, it was used the exploratory factor analysis techniques, to identify the analysis factors, and the cluster analysis, to identify the OLC stages.

Based on the results obtained, four stages were identified and described to build the OLC model of this research: Stage I – conception and development; Stage II – organization and traction; Stage III – growth and scale; and Stage IV – consolidation and transition. In addition, the authors described the main lines of evidence found at each stage.

This research contributes to academic studies of the OLC in startups and the evolution of risks that originate from the relationship between external agents in the business environment and startups. Thus, a management map is built, which helps entrepreneurs and managers construct these businesses since such a management map allows identifying the risks and challenges that a startup needs to overcome to grow and develop.

The originality of this research lies in the adaptation of the OLC approach, which is widely used in studies analyzing the growth and development of mature organizations. The authors used this adaptation to analyze the growth and development of startups in Brazil. In addition, the identification and analysis of external agents that make up the business environment, as well as the analysis of the risks, originated from the relationships between the startup and these agents, brought original and essential results and discussions, both for OLC studies and for risk analysis studies in startups.

Modern scholars of the history of economic thought recognise that John Bates Clark’s earlier works bear far less formal abstraction and, instead, fervently appeal for economic reforms that are inspired by Protestant ethics and German Historicism. After the violent Haymarket incident in Chicago in 1886, Clark is assumed to have entirely dismissed his preoccupation with social reforms and ethics. We provide a counterpoint to this common understanding by finding out that Clark’s originally ethical impetus persists throughout his writings beyond Haymarket. The striking parallelism of his earlier ideas on moral progress and the role of Protestant ethics herein and his later model of natural evolution and entrepreneurial change allow us to characterise Clark’s economics as persistently reformative in character. Further, his application of marginalism must not be understood as purely deductive analysis. Instead, it shows the ideal of an economy that performs analogously to a coherent organism. Clark’s theory of value and distribution is found to build substantially on his reformative claim that the American economy should be founded on a principle of equal and voluntary exchange. This republican idea of the economy is integrated into an ontological reflection of the very preconditions of social wealth.

In the global construction industry, experience gained in various countries is a major source of competitive advantage. By transferring the knowledge gained in previous projects using an effective knowledge management strategy, they can increase their competitiveness by adopting best practices and by not repeating the same mistakes under similar conditions. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how similar countries can be clustered to facilitate learning in global markets.

Initially, country factors that can affect success in international projects and can be used to assess the similarity of markets were identified by an extensive literature review and prioritised by a web-based questionnaire. A country evaluation form was prepared to collect country-specific data to be used in the cluster analysis of 39 countries where the Turkish contractors have been frequently working since the last 45 years. Cluster analysis was performed with SPSS 23.0.

Three country clusters were obtained and validated. Ultimately, how obtained country clusters may be used to facilitate learning from international construction projects was demonstrated by using an illustrative example.

The findings depend on the experience and perspective of Turkish contractors doing business abroad. Thus, the identified clusters are not generic. Moreover, country clusters were not identified considering only the country factors such as economy, culture, politics, etc.; thus, countries in the same cluster do not necessarily represent “similar” countries in terms of macro-factors. Clusters were identified so that the lessons learned can be effectively transferred within the same cluster considering construction and project-related factors as well as country-related factors. Although the findings cannot be generalised and clusters are not static, it is believed that the methodology used in this research is repeatable for different countries considering different timeframes.

Theoretical contributions include the identification of factors that can be used for similarity assessment of countries for transferring lessons learned as well as a methodology for clustering. Findings may also have a practical value for the Turkish contractors.