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Literature has seen a few famous salesmen suffering from burnout. Think of Willy Lomax’s famous disintegration in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or the tortured individuals in the work of David Mamet. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted as to why salespeople suffer from burnout, certainly outside the USA.

Collaboration in supply chain networks (SCN) becomes extremely important for manufacturers seeking a sustainable competitive advantage. Such competitiveness depends on the SCN resources a manufacturing firm can allocate, the capabilities to identify and deploy these network resources effectively, and practices and applications the firm arranges for these resources. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework that investigates the relationships between these network constructs and their influences on firm performance.

An extensive literature review of supply chain management was conducted to explicate why some manufacturers outperform others. A resource-based view, dynamic capability theory, and extended resource-based view were employed to develop a conceptual model that investigates relationships between the resources, capabilities, and practices of a SCN. The relationships were then examined to analyze their influences on firm performance. Several cases and practical examples were included in the study to give a better understanding of the conceptual research model. Various keywords were used in searching literature for the constructs of the research model. For example, “knowledge” and “supply chain network” were used to search the literature regarding the SCN intangible resources.

This study uses a conceptual model to identify SCN resources that are dispersed in the internal territory among different network members, SCN capabilities that are developed based on these network resources and lead to the firm’s competitive performance, and SCN practices used to acquire network resources and build network capabilities.

The conceptual model of SCN resources, capabilities, and practices needs further empirical validation.

The conceptual model provides a framework for managers to identify the critical resources, capabilities, and practices of a SCN that help a firm achieve sustainable competitive performance.

This research builds a comprehensive picture of relationships between a manufacturing firm’s strategic resources, capabilities, and practices in a SCN. It also provides a theoretical foundation for future research on developing instruments for resources, practices, and capabilities of a SCN and empirically testing the relationships among the appropriate constructs.

Modern interactionism asserts that both the P (person) and the E (environment or situation) should be considered simultaneously in predicting attitudes and behaviors. In this paper, we apply the interactionist view to salesforce research. Specifically, we use salesforce socialization as an example to illustrate how interactionist concepts from psychology can be effectively applied in salesforce research. The role of qualitative research in this context is explored.

This paper aims to empirically test individual, team and multi-level relationships among knowledge sharing (KS), leader–member exchange (LMX), employee creativity (EC) and team innovation (TI). The study tests how KS affects EC via LMX at lower and multi levels. At a higher level, how creativity affects TI is also tested.

Questionnaires were sent to 43 team leaders and 215 team members from the largest theme park in Taiwan, E-DA, who are engaged in offering creative and innovative customer services. Multilevel analysis was conducted based on the questionnaires received.

Major findings agree the contention that KS can improve EC via LMX at both employee and multi-level. The results also indicate that KS affects team creativity (TC) at the team level; however, TC and TI do not have a significant positive relationship.

The study examined how to enhance employees’ creativity from the individual and team levels in a theme park, an area with rare literature. The authors found that LMX is an important mediator between KS and EC. The mediated effect of KS on EC through LMX is higher in a cross level than individual level. In addition, a team’s KS has more effect on EC than the individual level.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

In 2008, Mind in Bexley received a research development grant from the Big Lottery Fund and a training grant from Bexley Care Trust to empower service users to participate and contribute to a pilot research project. The project aims were to work with, develop, train and support service users as researchers, in order to record the narratives of service users who have common experiences of mental health distress and treatment. The research development project set up an advisory group, created and developed a partnership with the University of Kent and provided workshops and training sessions to explore some of the principles of research and ethics. In addition, the group undertook a preliminary literature review, developed and refined a research questionnaire and piloted interviews with six service users. Many issues were raised and lessons learned during the planning and conduct of the project. This paper discusses the process and reflects on aspects of the project's design and delivery. In addition, this paper highlights some of the difficulties in undertaking service user research and suggests recommendations as to how to overcome some of these complex issues.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by The Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription for 1983 for VINE is £22 for UK subscribers and £25 for overseas subscribers. The first copy will be charged at normal rate, but all others will be supplied for only £12 per year UK and £14 per year overseas. VINE is available in either paper copy or microfiche and all back issues are available on microfiche.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

In 1986, Kent Library of Southeast Missouri State University received $250,000 from an alumna for the purpose of library collection building. After receiving the initial gift, university administrators pledged to add to this fund until it reached $1 million. This money supports the Kent Library Program Development Fund, also called the Tweedy Endowment, which provides a means of purchasing library materials through a competitive grant‐writing process open to all university faculty, including librarians. This article outlines the history of the fund, the competitive process, the distribution of money, and discusses the program’s success.