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This paper aims to propose a new benchmarking framework that uses a series of existing intuitive and analytical methods to systematically capture both objective data and subjective beliefs and preferences from a group of decision makers (DMs).

The proposed framework combines the excellence model developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management with the Rembrandt method, the entropy concept, the weighted‐sum approach, and the theory of the displaced ideal. Hard data and personal judgments are synthesized to evaluate a set of business units (BUs) with two overall performance scores plotted in a four quadrant model.

The two performance scores are used to benchmark the performance of the BUs in accordance with their Euclidean distance from the “ideal” BU. Quadrants are used to classify the BUs as efficacious, productive ineffectual, proficient unproductive, and inefficacious. The efficacious BUs, referred to as “excellent”, fall in the competency zone and have the shortest Euclidean distance from the ideal BU relative to their peers.

The benchmarking framework presented in this study has some obvious attractive features. First, the generic nature of the framework allows for the subjective and objective evaluation of a finite number of BUs by a group of DMs. Second, the information requirements of the framework are stratified hierarchically allowing DMs to focus on a small area of the large problem. Third, the framework does not dispel subjectivity; it calibrates the subjective weights with the objective weights determined through the entropy concept.

Presents a model that minimizes an aggregate measure of waiting times and queue lengths for a collection of workstations. Shows that the naïve allocation of arrivals among workstations in proportion to their processing times does not result in an optimized system. Uses the Lagrange multiplier in determining the proportional distribution rate that minimizes waiting times and queue lengths in a collection of workstations. Finally, shows the effectiveness of this model through analytical methods and computer simulation applied to a series of sample cases and an application problem.

The increasing frequency with which the business environment demands strategic change elevates the role played by performance measures in assessing alternative business strategies. Traditional accounting measures of performance have long been criticized for their inadequacy in guiding strategic decisions. Two alternative measures of business performance, EVA (eco‐nomic value added) and MVA (market value added) have been attracting much attention of late. According to a recent article in Fortune, EVA is employed by a large number of firms, including Coca‐Cola, AT&T, Quaker Oats, Eli Lilly, Georgia Pacific, and Tenneco. Unlike traditional accounting measures of performance, EVA attempts to measure the value that firms create or destroy by subtracting a capital charge from the returns they generate on invested capital. In addition to their use as performance measures, EVA and MVA are recommended by some as metrics for executive compensation plans and the development of corporate strategies.

The 2008 Crash (the Crash) has been attributed to the dominance of financialized corporate governance, particularly an increased shareholder value rhetoric. Following the Crash, this extreme narrative is understood to have become less financialized through increasingly favouring stakeholders. The purpose of this research is to investigate this often-accepted view using field theory, wherein managers' biases in the value-creating process result from an interconnected, dynamic, multi-actor discourse.

Various domains across the UK’s corporate governance environment, from the perspective of field theory, generate the complex discourse: corporate and regulatory domains, stakeholder organizations such as the press and think tanks. Domain-specific corpora, representative of this multi-actor field, were constructed, with financialization analysed by assessing managers’ altering biases concerning the relative importance of shareholders and stakeholders (amongst other factors like time horizon) to value creation.

Highlights of the multiple findings include the following: corporate narrative about value creation became less financialized following the Crash, yet favouring shareholders, while the multi-actor discourse for the UK economy as a whole became slightly more financialized.

Analysing a multi-actor discourse is complex. And this, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is the first study of its kind, and only made possible with the original methodology of narrative staining. The approach, while having particular relevance to field theory, is applicable to many other narrative-based research scenarios.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the behaviors, attitudes, and levels of understanding among faculty, staff, and students in efforts to design programs aimed at reducing energy use in University of Michigan (UM) buildings.

A multi‐method approach is used in five diverse pilot buildings including focus groups, behavioral observations, environmental measures, and web surveys. The analyses consider differences between buildings and between the three population groups.

Among the findings, UM staff are most concerned about conserving energy in UM buildings while students are the least concerned. A significant proportion of survey respondents are not aware of past university efforts to conserve energy; among those who are aware, many felt that university efforts are inadequate. The observations and self‐reports reveal an abundance of energy‐consuming equipment in offices, and lights and computers are often left on when work spaces and conference rooms are unoccupied. Furthermore, occupants tend to wear heavy clothing during warm weather months indicating excessively low building temperatures. Finally, most occupants are willing to accept higher building temperatures during warm weather months and lower temperatures during cold weather months.

There has been limited work in institutional/organizational settings that considers occupant behavior as a factor in designing programs to conserve energy. The research uses a multi‐method approach to understand what people do, think, and have vis‐à‐vis energy use and conservation. Additionally, the researchers – working with university officials – have designed programs aimed at changing the behaviors of building occupants. These programs have been implemented in the five pilot buildings; plans are currently underway to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs.

Uses an innovative approach to analyze the long‐standing claim that companies exist to maximize shareholder value. Five statements supporting this claim are tested using mathematical logic. Each one is found to be false. The community of business theorists, consultants, academics, and management practitioners that espouse shareholder value as the singular purpose of business are thus shown, from this perspective, to be wrong.

The purpose of this paper is to provide information about past and present efforts undertaken at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) to reduce its carbon footprint and to institute a campus culture centered on the principles of environmental sustainability. Provide some recommendations to other institutions of higher education interested in reducing their own carbon footprint.

This manuscript will first discuss past attempts at implementing ecologically sustainable practices at CCSU. Then, it will speak about current successes and close with a discussion about future goals for the university.

Instituting carbon neutrality and sustainability programs at institutes of higher education requires support from the faculty, administration, students, and facilities management staff.

The information in this paper will provide useful information to other institutions of higher education that are seeking to institute carbon reduction and sustainability programs.

This paper is original in that it provides details about CCSU's carbon neutrality efforts and recently initiated sustainability program that only someone intimately involved would know. Its value lies in helping others know of methods that have been successful in reducing a campus' carbon footprint.

This chapter makes a case for a decolonial, intersectional approach to narrative criminology. It argues that in growing contexts of deepening inequalities, research approaches that humanise people on the margins and that explicitly centre questions of social justice are ever more urgent. This chapter explicates a decolonial, intersectional narrative analysis, working with the data generated in interviews with women sex workers on their experiences of violence outlining how a decolonial, intersectional, narrative analysis may be accomplished to analyse the intersections of power at material, representational and structural levels. The chapter illustrates the importance of an intersectional feminist lens for amplifying the complexity of women sex workers' experiences of gendered violence and for understanding the multiple forms of material, symbolic and institutionalised subordination they experience in increasingly unequal and oppressive contexts. It ends by considering the contributions decolonial, intersectional feminist work can offer narrative criminology, especially the emerging field of narrative victimology.

This paper tests the mimicking propositions from signalling theory as they relate to stated firm objectives and firm performance. We classify the corporate objectives of a large sample of firms and evaluate firm performance relative to these objectives. We find that poorly performing firms more frequently cite shareholder wealth maximization as their primary objective than do better performing firms. There is no evidence that firms citing a shareholder wealth maximization objective perform any better than firms with alternative objectives. Similar evidence is found for other common corporate objectives. Overall, our results are consistent with signalling theory in that non‐enforceable signals, such as proclamations of corporate objectives, are not credible signals for investors.