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As founders of First Interstate BancSystem, which held $8.6 billion in assets and had recently become a public company, and Padlock Ranch, which had over 11,000 head of cattle, the Scott family had to think carefully about business and family governance. Now entering its fifth generation, the family had over 80 shareholders across the US. In early 2016, the nine-member Scott Family Council (FC) and other family and business leaders considered the effectiveness of the Family Governance Leadership Development Initiative launched two years earlier. The initiative's aim was to ensure a pipeline of capable family leaders for the business boards, two foundation boards, and FC.

Seven family members had self-nominated for governance roles in mid-2015. As part of the development initiative, each was undergoing a leadership development process that included rigorous assessment and creation of a comprehensive development plan. As the nominees made their way through the process and other family members considered nominating themselves for future development, questions remained around several interrelated areas, including how to foster family engagement with governance roles while guarding against damaging competition among members; how to manage possible conflicts of interest around dual employee and governance roles; and how to extend the development process to governance for the foundations and FC. The FC considered how best to answer these and other questions, and whether the answers indicated the need to modify the fledgling initiative.

This case illustrates the challenges multigenerational family-owned enterprises face in developing governance leaders within the family. It serves as a good example of governance for a large group of cousins within a multienterprise portfolio. Students can learn and apply insights from this valuable illustration of family values, vision, and mission statement.

Corruption and dishonesty in the political and bureaucratic realms have impeded the ability of local governments to provide services and social justice in Nepali society. In light of this, the purpose of this research is to answer the key research question: what are the possibilities and limitations of local government in implementing constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to transform local communities?

This study gathered qualitative data from 14 local governments in seven provinces. A total of 56 in-depth interviews were held with elected representatives, political parties, and government officials at both the national and local levels. Both open-ended and open-structured questionnaires were employed for the interviews.

The results indicate that capacity is a major constraint for local governments, which should be addressed to achieve successful local governance, inclusive citizen engagement, and strong technical, administrative and fiscal capabilities. Lack of local autonomy, political conflict and social class differences, external engagement, and conservative hierarchic government bureaucracy are major hurdles to growing capacity.

This paper analyses the capacity of newly restructured local governments through qualitative approach. It attempts to understand to what extent the Nepali local governments are capable in delivering the services at the local level as closest unit of the citizens.

This study aims to review major themes and findings of research into financial management of family business and to suggest new directions for future research.

This is a perspective article beginning with literature review to summarize prior research and to identify main findings and issues. The paper then develops themes, questions and opportunities for future research.

This paper presents a summary of principal research streams in the financial management of family business. Prior research has found significant differences in financial performance, in financial policies and in ownership and governance structures and behavior. These research findings vary by industry, by country and by stage of economic development. While extensions of these streams will add additional richness to the author’s understanding of finance in family business, recent innovations in the role and organization of the firm and in access to key resources suggest promising new research paths. There are also important lessons from financial practices in family business that have broader applicability.

This is a perspective article suggesting that many financial and governance issues central to family business have broader applicability to nonfamily business. Substantial value can be added by applying these learnings to a broader corporate finance context. Innovations in financing, governance and organizational design are transforming financial management in family business. In addition, changes in markets and industries create new opportunities for financing family business and for new strategic opportunities.

Oklahoma has seen rapid growth in the development of wind energy over the past decade. Residents are concerned about the negative impacts of turbines such as noise or their appearance. This has raised concerns about property values. Thus, this paper aims to examine and quantify the overall impact of wind turbines upon real estate prices in Western Oklahoma.

Sales prices and the history of approximately 23,000 residential real estate records for both platted and unplatted properties in five counties were examined prior to the announcement of construction, after announcement and after construction. A hedonic analysis was undertaken to examine the real estate prices of the properties near wind farms.

While there may be isolated instances of lower property values for homes near wind turbines, results show no significant decreases in property values over homes near wind farms in the study area. Similar results are found for the unplatted properties.

This paper highlights that in spite of mixed attitudes toward wind farms and misconceptions regarding the link between turbines and property values, Oklahoma’s growing wind industry can continue to thrive without negatively impacting nearby home and land values and prices.

Although there have been numerous studies examining the relationship between wind turbine locations and real estate prices, no study has combined the large quantity of records (over 23,000) as well as both platted and unplatted locations.

In a rapidly changing business environment, the need to constantly adapt is deemed essential to maintain competitive advantage. This requires an optimum balance of quantitative and qualitative measures to monitor progress and performance. This paper provides a framework of thought process that will guide practitioners in developing better qualitative measures and seeks to answer three essential questions: thought process 1 – what is the nature of reality? Provides the answer to the question, can the phenomenon be realistically measured? Thought process 2 – what are the processes used for constructing the measure? Provides answer to the question, are the processes appropriate and sufficiently influential? Thought process 3 – what usefulness and power does this measure provide? Provides answer to the question, is it powerful in a practical environment? The framework was applied to measurement in learning organization contexts and ten models were reviewed. Conclusions cover deficiencies in the models and suggestions on how they might be improved.

The paper aims to rethink empirical models and theory used in explaining banks and financial institutions (FIs) and to enhance the process of theory construction. This is a provisional response to Colander et al. (2009) and Gendron and Smith-Lacroix’s (2013) call for a new approach to developing theory for finance and FIs.

An embryonic “behavioural theory of the financial firm” (BTFF) is outlined based on field research about banks and FI firms and relevant literature. The paper explores “conceptual connections” between BTFF and traditional finance theory ideas of financial intermediation. It does not seek to “integrate” finance theory and alternative theory in “meta theory” and has a more modest aim to improve theory content through “connections”.

The “conceptual connections” provide a means to develop ideas proposed by Scholtens and van Wensveen (2003). They are part of a “house with windows” intended to provide systematic means to “take data from the outside world” whilst continuously recognising “the complexities of the context” (Keasey and Hudson, 2007) to both challenge and build the core ideas of FT.

The BTFF is a means to create “conversations” between academics, practitioners and regulators to aid theory construction. This can overcome the limitations of such an embryonic theory.

The ideas developed create new opportunities to develop finance theory, propose changes in banks and FIs and suggest changes in the focus of regulation.

Regulators can use the expanded conceptual framework to encourage theory development and to enhance accountability of banks and FIs to citizens.

The literary world is an elitist enclave, where anti‐marketing rhetoric is regularly encountered. This paper aims to show that the book trade has always been hard‐nosed and commercially driven.

This paper is less a review of the literature, or a theoretical treatise, than a selective revelation of the commercial realities of the book business.

The paper shows that the cultural industries in general and the book business in particular were crucibles of marketing practice long before learned scholars started taking notice. It highlights the importance of luck, perseverance and, not least, marketing nous in the “manufacture” of international bestsellers.

By highlighting humankind's deep‐seated love of narrative – its clear preference for fiction over fact – this paper suggests that marketing scholars should reconsider their preferred mode of research representation. Hard facts are all very well, but they are less palatable than good stories, well told.

The paper makes no claim to originality. It recovers what we already know but appear to have forgotten in our non‐stop pursuit of scientific respectability.