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Located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, Eastern Truss Company produced trusses used in construction of both large warehouses and custom homes. This case presents the student with the opportunity to analyze the critical factors associated with the decision of whether Eastern should adopt a new production technology and whether cash flows from reduction of temporary workers will cover adoption coasts. The student must evaluate the decision to adopt the production technology through the lens of operations management tools. This case is appropriate for undergraduate business studies in the field of operations management.

Case study.

Undergraduate operations management.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on adoption of certified management standards, specifically public standards. Such standards play an increasingly important role in today’s business environment. However, to generate adoption benefits, they must be first widely accepted – a situation where they have become viewed as the de facto norms. For this state to occur early adopters play a critical role. Past research has argued that early adopters, in exchange for assuming more risk, are rewarded with higher economic returns. Yet, these findings are based on private, not public standards. With public standards, early adopters do not receive such benefits. There is evidence that public standards are becoming more important. This situation leads to a simple but important question addressed in this study – if early adopters assume the risks of embracing a new public standard without economic benefits, then what is their motivation? To resolve this question, this study draws on agency theory and prospect theory. The authors argue that early adopters embrace such standards because of their desire to minimize risk resulting from failure to support the goal at the heart of the public standards.

Data were obtained from the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) Partners Cost Benefit Survey and analyzed through structural equation modeling.

Early adopters of public standards are not driven by economic benefits but rather by the need to minimize their exposure to the risks associated with failing to satisfy the goals associated with a public standard. In other words, they were motivated by the need to minimize costs. In the case of C-TPAT, these costs are those of failing to provide or improve network security.

This study has shed new light on the standards adoption process by clarifying the specific motivations that drive early adoption of a public standard. In addition to identifying the loss aversion motives of early adopters and economic benefit motives of later adopters, the authors have also elaborated on the notion that standards have differing levels of precedence, particularly when comparing private with public standards.

In a world characterized by increasing demands for outcomes such as improved security and where governmental funding is falling, due to growing deficits and governments that are becoming more conservative, the authors expect the use of public standards to increase.

Different from prior research on private standard, the paper focuses on the organizations involved in the adoption and diffusion of a public standard, with special attention being devoted to the early adopters. The paper provides a theoretical explanation for the actions of early adopters of a public standard through the theoretical lens of prospect theory.

Consumers’ engagement with brands online is increasingly important for marketers for both promotion of their brand’s message and sales. The purpose of this paper is to examine if consumers’ brand schematicity, a generalized consumer disposition to process information using brand schema, influenced their proclivity to engage with brands online through consuming and co-creating brand-related content, and the influence of online brand engagement on actual purchase of brands.

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Study 1 shows that brand schematicity increases online brand consumption and online brand co-creation and Study 2 shows that this online brand engagement is not always beneficial to brands in terms of sales. Specifically, because of resource depletion, consumers who co-create brand content online may purchase brands less while those that consume online brand content purchase more brands.

There is a lack of previous research addressing individual differences in consumers’ online brand engagement that this paper investigates. Further, a generalized, dispositional variable such as brand schematicity has not been hitherto investigated in the context of consumers’ online behavior. Finally, this paper shows counter-intuitive effects of online brand engagement on brand purchase.

Social policy and professional practice across the island of Ireland is dominated by the WHO definition of elder abuse and national and professional interpretations of what constitutes elder abuse. Top-down, generalist knowledge of the abuse of older people have facilitated paternalistic and protectionist policies and services designed to protect older vulnerable adults across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, a qualitative study involving 58 older people in six focus groups held across Ireland highlights an alternative understanding of elder abuse grounded in the subjective experiences of older people across urban and rural communities on the island. Indigenous ways of knowing offer a broader and more inclusive understanding of the experience of elder abuse (Lafferty et al., 2012; Dow and Joosten, 2012) together with opportunities for the prevention of ageism and the empowering of older people across the jurisdictions.

A description of how elder abuse is defined at the global and national level is then compared with the findings of an all-Ireland study of older people's older conceptualisation of elder abuse (Begley et al., 2012) at the local level.

Understanding indigenous perceptions of elder abuse has significant implications for the delivery of cultural relevant social policy and professional practice across Ireland.

Given the exploratory nature of this study, there are significant methodological limitations to its replication, the representativeness of the participants involved and the generalisability of the findings.

However, this study provides unique insights about how some older people conceptualised elder abuse across different cultural and political contexts across Ireland as compared with national and global definitions.

The study on older people's conceptualisation of elder abuse was the first all-Ireland attempt to contribute to the body of knowledge on indigenous perspectives on elder abuse.

This paper seeks to present findings from the first all‐Ireland study that consulted older people on their perceptions of interventions and services to support people experiencing abuse.

Utilising a grounded theory approach, 58 people aged 65 years and over took part in focus groups across Ireland. Four peer‐researchers were also trained to assist in recruitment, data collection, analysis, and dissemination.

Participants identified preventative community‐based approaches and peer supports as important mechanisms to support people experiencing, and being at risk of, elder abuse. Choices regarding care provision and housing, as well as opportunities for engagement in community activities where they can discuss issues with others, were identified as ways to prevent abuse.

The development of elder abuse services has traditionally been defined from the perspective of policy makers and professionals. This study looked at the perspective of the end‐users of such services for the first time. The research also gave an active role to older people in the research process. The policy implication of the findings from this research is that enhanced attention and resources should be directed to community activities that enable older people to share their concerns informally thereby gaining confidence to seek more formal interventions when necessary.

Gives an in depth view of the strategies pursued by the world’s leading chief executive officers in an attempt to provide guidance to new chief executives of today. Considers the marketing strategies employed, together with the organizational structures used and looks at the universal concepts that can be applied to any product. Uses anecdotal evidence to formulate a number of theories which can be used to compare your company with the best in the world. Presents initial survival strategies and then looks at ways companies can broaden their boundaries through manipulation and choice. Covers a huge variety of case studies and examples together with a substantial question and answer section.