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This study examines computer usage patterns in the U.S. construction industry. One hundred and seven subjects, consisting of managers at different managerial levels and professional support staff, participated in this study. This study shows that the subjects exhibit significant differences with regard to their extent of use, nature of use, and degree of satisfaction with decision support systems. Implications of these findings to decision support systems design and effective utilization are discussed.

The ability to make quantum leaps in changing organizations is becoming a survival need for both managers and their organizations. Managers are needed who can build networks to funnel diverse views upward from the lower levels where the need for change is often first detected. Describes how a multipart “Influence Development Programme” was devised and attended by 53 deans of business schools – it being recognized that to be effective, deans, as much as managers in business, need to be able to influence others both within and outside their work environment.

Focuses on the lessons learned by a CEO during a long career of successfully managing several different large organizations during major “turnarounds”. The lessons are on the barriers faced to implementing changes, why the changes were needed, what approaches were used to build support for change, and how the changes were maintained.

Identifies seven major errors found frequently in teambuilding programmes. Each of the errors, all management failures, are illustrated by real life episodes. Guidelines are presented for overcoming each of these deadly sins: malselection, impatience, deception, aimlessness, powerlessness, inhibited communications, and competitive mania.

This study aims to examine the quick service restaurant (QSR) differentiation in the minds of consumers, customers and non-customers and addresses the use of absolute measures. The study integrated competitive context and customer vs non-customer perceptions to better understand marketing strategies and the impact on customer value.

A conceptual framework is provided with marketing strategy, 7Ps, value positioning and outcomes. A survey instrument to assess perceptions of QSR marketing mix dimensions and leading QSR brands as referents was used. The study used exploratory factor analysis, ANOVA and logistic regression to address research questions.

The five QSR brands were differentiated by three marketing mix dimensions: quality, convenience and price. Subway and Starbucks customers perceived higher quality than McDonald’s and Burger King. Price separated Starbucks and McDonald’s customers. Overall, QSR customers perceived higher quality and convenience than non-customers. Age group was a predictor of customer membership of QSR overall and McDonald’s.

The study used participants in Germany and had more respondents identified as McDonald’s customers or referent.

The quality bundle represents unique resources for each QSR brand. Management teams should use a holistic mindset in considering the quality bundle reputation and how the various attributes support each other.

Consumers look to three factors for QSR rather than 7Ps: quality, convenience and price. Relative comparisons of perceptions among brands and between customers vs non-customers provided important contributions for QSR marketing mix factors.

Purpose – The introductory chapter to this special issue highlights contemporary scholarship on networks, work, and inequality.Methodology – We review the last decade of research on this topic, identifying four key areas investigation: (1) networks and hiring, (2) networks and the labor process, (3) networks and outcomes at work, and (4) networks and institutional dynamics.Findings – Social networks play an important role in understanding the mechanisms by which and the conditions under which economic inequality is reproduced across gender, race, and social class distinctions. Throughout the review, we point to numerous opportunities for future research to enhance our understanding of these social processes.

To provide an overview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) new self-reporting and cooperation program.

Summarizes the key features of the CFTC’s new cooperation program and the CFTC’s statement of its purpose in enacting the program; provides the authors’ views on the likely implications of the program for CFTC enforcement actions.

Whether the CFTC’s self-reporting and cooperation program will be a useful tool for deterring misconduct remains to be seen as the CFTC begins to implement it, but there are indications that it may encourage cooperation. If properly implemented, the program has the potential to benefit the CFTC and regulated parties significantly.

Practical insights on a new CFTC policy from experienced civil enforcement lawyers.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

Architectonics is proposed as a dialogic theory and method to research three discursive spheres: McDonald's corporation, McDonaldization, and McDonaldland.

Bakhtin proposed architectonics as a new method for the human sciences, one that interanimates cognitive with ethical and aesthetic systemness. This essay develops architectonics further, and applies it to the study of globalization and localization of the McDonald's and Wal‐Mart corporations, which now cohabits with each other in New Mexico (and elsewhere).

A general inquiry system is suggested as a framework to analyze the architectonics of other organizations, in future international studies.

Through the application of the notion of architectonics to the McDonald's and Wal‐Mart corporations the authors develop an innovative approach to understanding organizations.