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The retail furniture business, which should be an exciting fashion industry, is stuck in a rut, according to our contributor. It badly needs a new approach to design and merchandising; the opportunities are there, but retailers seem nervous of grasping them. The second part of this feature describes how Coles of Bilston turned their discount warehouse into a shopping pleasure.

If there was one sure thing that emerged from a Financial Times conference, held in London in October, on retail financial services, it is that the whole sector is in a state of considerable flux, and faces the need for fundamental change. EFTPoS, debit cards, the role of the building societies, and home shopping were some of the items discussed.

Teleshopping is attracting increased interest because retailers see it as a way of improving customer services. In France, Minitel has done much to prove the demand and potential for teleshopping La Redoute, France's largest mail order company, started using the Minitel system for teleshopping in the mid‐1980s, and the percentage of orders has built up steadily. These were some of the topics dealt with at a two‐day conference, held in London in January, on the theme of “Electronic Marketing in Retailing.” the conference was organised by Spectra Services.

Benefits arising from the intelligent application of Direct Product Profitability (DPP) to the Boots operation have been substantial. They are using the system in at least a dozen ways; they are constantly making new discoveries about products, finding out where the profit comes from, and identifying loss‐making ranges.

Hope rather than despair — rosy potential rather than gloomy possibility — was the message that came through from the “Shopping 2000” conference organised jointly by retail property developers Donaldsons and the Henley Centre for Forecasting, and held in London in January. The conference looked at a number of likely scenarios, based on Henley Centre predictions. A lot can happen in twelve years — after all, it was only 10 years or so ago that major retailers were “piling it high and selling it cheap”. Today's changing society is going to bring about corresponding changes — many for the better — in the retail picture.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a game-like decision tool – “Greatest Good Donations Calculator (GGDC)”, which has been collaboratively developed by scholars from the University of Rhode Island and the USAID Center for International Disaster Information.

The study is grounded in two streams of research – human learning through games and systems dynamics literature. The problem of “unsolicited in-kind donations” is discussed followed by the development of the GGDC.

The GGDC is a game-like decision tool that informs users on some of the complexities associated with humanitarian supply chains, and the ineffective nature of unsolicited in-kind donations compared to monetary contributions when sent in response to international disasters.

The GGDC could be made more interactive and playable that could improve user engagement. The GGDC’s value to the humanitarian community and public could also be measured in other ways, such as surveys and A/B split tests after a major donation campaign.

Games, simulations and game-like tools could successfully be used to educate donors about smart compassion.

Humanitarian researchers and scholars should consider more games to motivate/drive social change in the humanitarian world.

This is the first paper to introduce the GGDC to the humanitarian logistics community with detailed content about positioning the study in the academic literature, and stages of development. Scholars, searching to adopt games or developing new games for the humanitarian world may find the information valuable. The GGDC is a unique example of federal government – academia collaboration in raising public awareness of the unsolicited good donations problem.

The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory analysis of campus community member (i.e. students, faculty, staff) definitions of sustainability, their perceptions of select elements of sustainability culture and the relationship between the two.

Researchers implemented a cross-sectional design where participants from two higher education institutions in the USA completed an online survey. The 352 respondents from James Madison University and 349 respondents from Wofford College included students, faculty and staff members. Descriptive statistics were used to examine patterns in the quantitative data, and an inductive theme approach was used to analyze the qualitative data.

This study provides evidence that sustainability is often viewed from an environmental lens, and personal definitions of sustainability may impact perceptions of campus sustainability culture elements. Generally, the highest rated elements of culture examined (i.e. university actions, signs and symbols and institutional commitments) were all aligned with the environment dimension of sustainability and consistent across sustainability definitions. However, respondents with a more integrative definition of sustainability expected to see elements of culture that aligned with the social dimension of sustainability at a considerably higher rate than the respondents who reported more narrow definitions of sustainability.

Lack of generalizability, low response rates and self-selection bias are some of the limitations of the study.

Personal definitions of sustainability may impact campus community member perceptions of sustainability culture and progress on their campuses. Practitioners may use this study to inform development of more effective strategies for creating and assessing the culture of sustainability that colleges and universities are pursuing.

The empirical analysis of campus community members on two very different campus communities responds to Owens and Legere (2015) who argue for further studies to understand the concept of sustainability at other higher education institutions that are at different stages of pursuing sustainability. This paper links research about sustainability definitions to the emergent research on campus sustainability culture, filling a gap between these two areas.

To analyze the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Liu v. SEC, where the Court confronted the issue of whether the SEC can obtain disgorgement in federal district court proceedings.

This paper provides an overview of the authors’ prior work analyzing courts’ treatment of SEC disgorgement and a summary of the background and opinion in Liu v. SEC. This article then focuses on the practical implications of Liu on SEC disgorgement by considering questions left open by the decision.

The Court in Liu held that the SEC is authorized to seek disgorgement as “equitable relief” as long as it “does not exceed a wrongdoer’s net profits and is awarded for victims.” But the Court left many unanswered questions, such as whether disgorged funds must always be returned to investors for disgorgement to be a permissible equitable remedy, whether the SEC can obtain joint-and-several disgorgement liability from unrelated co-defendants, what “legitimate expenses” should be deducted in disgorgement calculations, and to what extent the SEC can seek disgorgement in cases when victims are difficult to identify.

Original, practical guidance from experienced lawyers in financial services regulatory and enforcement practices, many of whom have previously worked in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the growing interest in oracy and to propose the pedagogy of process drama as an ideal model for the dialogic classroom.

This paper takes the form of an explanatory case study where the author draws on a successful drama/oracy project in a primary school in Brisbane, Australia, to illustrate the connections between Alexander’s five indicators of a dialogic classroom and the process drama in which the students participated.

The application of this process drama as pedagogy for the teaching and learning of oracy has contributed positively to students’ oral communication skills and intercultural awareness. In addition, parents provide positive feedback about student engagement in school and developing self-confidence because “they have something to say”.

There was no formal pre-post test for the oral communication skills on this study, instead the researchers developed a draft “oracy” checklist which deserves further interrogation and development.

There are implications for the use of process drama as a means of creating and sustaining the dialogic classroom. Teacher professional development would be required to assist the planning and delivery of dramas that allow for the deep and complex learning evidenced in this study.

This is an ideal vehicle for assisting in the development of empathy, collaboration, emotional intelligence and intercultural understanding.

This is an example of an extremely high-quality curriculum plan and implementation. The importance of engaging in implicit and explicit instruction of oral communication for the twenty-first century should not be underestimated. The process drama allows oral language to be foregrounded, with additional learning opportunities from a range of other learning areas, brought together in a coherent and complex model of practice.