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The Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12) that aims at ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns is dependent on efficient and effective transport infrastructure. But many new transport infrastructure projects are delayed due to complex conflicts between multiple stakeholders with different stakes. This chapter illustrates how a multi-stakeholder participation process based on systems thinking can be used to generate a shared mental model of stakeholders in conflict. Using the systems thinking and modelling methodology, the complex problem situation is first structured by identifying and analysing the stakeholders. Then a participative approach is employed to develop a systems model that captures the underlying structure responsible for the problem situation. Finally, three strategic interventions are formulated by the stakeholders to improve the system behaviour in the long term. In this chapter, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using structured interviews, focus groups and secondary sources. Using a New Zealand transport infrastructure project, the chapter shows that effective multi-stakeholder participation, capable of leading to some form of multi-stakeholder partnership, can help reduce delays in a transport infrastructure project. Practically, the chapter provides a framework that can reach an accommodation between conflicting stakeholders. Overall, this chapter contributes New Zealand–based empirical research to the literature on multi-stakeholder participation for achieving SDG 12 within the context of Agenda 2030.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

This chapter documents the contributions in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing–buying literature that focus on implemented strategies in specific contexts. Research on implemented strategies often includes thick descriptions of how things actually get done over a period of weeks, months, or years including how decision makers make sense of situations, go about processing information, make choices, interact with other decision makers, participate in specific actions, and interpret events and outcomes. Research on implemented strategies favors “direct research” (Mintzberg, 1979) that includes multiple face-to-face interviews of the same and different participants in B2B processes over the course of days, week, months, or years. Direct research is inherently inductive theory-building and case-based data driven in its theory-empirical approach. Direct research includes applying a number of possible research methods and results in a number of advances in B2B implemented-strategy-in-context theory.

Private equity has acquired multiple large nursing home chains within the past few years; by 2007, it owned 6 of the 10 largest chains. Despite widespread public and policy interest, evidence on the purported impact of private equity on nursing home performance is limited. In our review, we begin by briefly reviewing the organizational and environmental changes in the nursing home industry that facilitated private equity investments. We offer a conceptual framework to hypothesize the relationship between private equity ownership and nursing home performance. Finally, we offer a research agenda focused on the important parameters of nursing home performance: financial performance, and quality of care.

This chapter provides a study of how gambling companies use the cultural and social capital of Newcastle United Football Club, in the English Premier League, to establish a connection with the club's fans to promote gambling. Newcastle United had two gambling sponsors during the period of this study, from 2017 to 2020, including a front of shirt sponsor, FUN88, an online gambling brand with a large following in Asia. Data were gathered from a range of sources, including from the social media platform, Twitter, to identify the methods the company used to engage fans and to encourage betting on the outcome of matches. The data from the study were explored thematically to describe the relationship developed between the football club and its principal gambling sponsor in order to drive business for the latter with the club's followers. The findings showed how FUN88 evoked Newcastle United's cultural tradition to promote gambling and generate business globally whilst the club actively promoted their ‘primary partner’ through its media channels. The lure of free match tickets was used to encourage fan engagement. Corporate practices promote the consumption of unhealthy commodities through their marketing whilst consumers (fans) are responsibilised for any harms engendered by their gambling practices. The ubiquity of gambling brands has enabled gambling to become a normalised part of football culture. The findings from this study show how FUN88 has used all elements of the sponsorship assemblage to create an emotional connection whilst engaging with Newcastle United's fans to increase consumption of its products.

The current study aimed to explore the extent of accounting graduates’ abilities (AGAs) in Jordan to use modern information technology systems (MITSs) to make optimal financial decisions (OFDs). To carry out this study, the descriptive analytical approach was used to collect and analyze data. Accordingly, an electronic questionnaire was designed and distributed to 5,000 students in 30 universities in Jordan. However, only 1,067 questionnaires were valid for analysis, which constituted the sample of study. To test the research hypotheses, the descriptive analysis and multivariate regression test were used. The results indicated that the majority of accounting graduates (AGs) in Jordanian universities (JUs) do not realize the importance role of MITSs to make OFDs. In addition, the biggest challenge face AGs in JUs is the weakness of current accounting curricula in JUs in terms of not including materials related to MITSs and the role of these systems in performing accounting tasks. Finally, the study found that the current abilities of AGs in JUs moderate negatively and significantly the positive relationship between the use of MITSs and making OFDs. Accordingly, the study recommended that JUs work on developing accounting curricula through including modern courses related to the use of MITSs in performing accounting tasks.

Chapter 2 describes how behavioral science research methods that management and marketing scholars apply in studying processes involving decisions and organizational outcomes relate to three principal research objectives: fulfilling generality of findings, achieving accuracy of process actions and outcomes, and capturing complexity of nuances and conditions. The chapter's unique contribution is in advocating and describing the possibilities of researchers replacing Thorngate's (1976) “postulate of commensurate complexity” — it is impossible for a theory of social behavior to be simultaneously general, accurate, and simple and as a result organizational theorists inevitably have to make tradeoffs in their theory development — with a new postulate of disproportionate achievement. This new postulate proposes the possibilities and advocates the building and testing of useful process models that achieve all three principal research objectives. Rather than assuming the stance that a researcher must make tradeoffs that permit achieving any two, but not all three, principal research objectives as, Weick (1979) clock analogy shows, this chapter advocates embracing a property space (a three-dimensional box rather than a clock) view of research objectives and research methods. Tradeoffs need not be made; having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too is possible. The chapter includes a brief review of principal criticisms that case study researchers often express of surveys of respondents using fixed-point surveys. Likewise, the chapter reviews principal criticisms of case study research studies that researchers who favor the use of fixed-point surveys express.