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A family business founded by Chinese immigrants grew into a $133 million toy and costume maker by exploiting seasonal niche segments in the highly competitive, global toy industry. Sales of traditional toys stagnated when replaced by game consoles and electronic toys. Unable to compete in high tech toys, MegaToys moved instead toward seasonal products. In 2007, brothers Peter and Charlie Woo were about to pitch what they hoped would be $63 million in Easter basket sales to Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart took the full order, it would come to represent over half of MegaToys' revenue.

The company was faced with the dilemma of how to grow, and at what pace. Charlie Woo knew that MegaToys could continue to grow as long as it was able to satisfy Wal-Mart's demands. Peter Woo wondered if this was the smartest way to grow the business. “Growth is a good thing as long as you don't sell your shirt to get it,” he noted. Should MegaToys continue to increase its sales to Wal-Mart, or would dependence on Wal-Mart eventually threaten the firm's success? Were there other, untapped opportunities for MegaToys that were well aligned with its strengths, resources, and capabilities?

Describes the manufacturing strategy implications of a two‐industry study of manufacturing practices. A research team administered questionnaires to managers in the machine tools and textiles industries in China, Japan, Korea, the USA and Western Europe. Highlights of the results include the superior Japanese delivery speed and the extensive use of information systems in the USA. An overview of the relative industrial strengths of each country provides a setting to discuss manufacturing strategy. Each national industry is then classified according to the Hayes and Wheelwright stages of manufacturing competitiveness.

The purpose of the present study, which is part of a larger cross‐cultural study, is to examine two potential antecedents of entrepreneurial intent (EI): proactive personality (PP) and entrepreneurial self‐efficacy (ESE). Specifically, the study is interested in empirically testing the mechanism (mediation/moderation) by which ESE affected the relationship between PP/EI.

For testing the mediation and moderation hypotheses the study used structural equation modeling and moderated regression analyses respectively.

The authors found that PP has a robust relationship with the three different manifestations of EI – general, high growth, and lifestyle. Furthermore, ESE not only mediated the relationship between PP and all the three forms of EI but also moderated the relationship between PP and high growth EI as well as PP and lifestyle EI.

The authors studied intent, not behavior, with the understanding that cognitive intent is a powerful predictor of later behavior. Future research can replicate this study using entrepreneurial behavior instead of intent. Implications for education and future research are discussed.

The results of the study can be used and applied to both pedagogic and business settings in the field of entrepreneurship.

The present study not only provides evidence for the robust relationship between EI and PP but provides insight into the mechanism by which ESE affects EI/PP relationship.

Accumulators are cutting‐edge stock derivative investments that have been the subject of much controversy in Hong Kong over the past year. Accumulators are exotic options composed of a full year of daily long up‐and‐out call options and short up‐and‐out put options. Because accumulators are so new, the understanding of accumulators is currently very limited. This paper attempts to characterize and understand the properties of this fairly unknown and new stock derivative investment.

The study analyzed and characterized accumulators based on observations from past history of 11 stocks of the Hang Seng Index. Using historical stock data covering from January 3, 2006, and onward, the profit and loss for each accumulator contract was calculated.

Through the research it is understood that the profit and loss of accumulator contracts depends primarily on the following factors: knockout percentage, discount percentage, variability of the underlying stock, and the overall market trends, among other factors.

This pioneer simulation is an empirical exploratory post factum study that gives researchers and practitioners further insight how to formulate a risk neutral pricing model for accumulators in the future.

Sustainable features are gradually becoming important considerations by commercial real estate users. This is because of their considered impact in reducing operating costs and potential at reducing the negative impacts of buildings on human health and the natural environment. This chapter sought to examine the demands for sustainable features by users of commercial real estate like offices in Lagos State, Nigeria. It also evaluated the factors influencing demand for them to achieve value for money and enhance real estate investment decisions. The quantitative research methodology was adopted, and primary data were collected via questionnaires distributed to 134 purposively selected estate surveying firms in the study area. Ninety-five representing (70.9%) were returned and found useable and were analysed with the aid of descriptive statistics of percentages, mean and relative willingness index. The study found that power/energy-saving features are in high demand as alternatives to the epileptic nature of power supply in the country. The study recommended the need for the government to encourage the adoption and incorporation of locally made sustainable features in commercial real estate and to subsidise them for use in the Lagos commercial real estate market. Thus, it is concluded that with the right environment created by policy makers, sustainable features in buildings have huge potentials to contribute to prevent environmental problems in an emerging commercial real estate market like Nigeria.

To advance marketing research and practice, this study aims to examine the application of the innovative, mobile-applicable neuroimaging method – mobile functional near-infrared spectroscopy (mfNIRS) – in the field of marketing research, providing comprehensive guidelines and practical recommendations.

A general review and investigation of when and how to use mfNIRS in business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing settings is used to illustrate the utility of mfNIRS.

The research findings help prospective marketing and consumer neuroscience researchers to structure mfNIRS experiments, perform the analysis and interpret the obtained mfNIRS data.

The application of mfNIRS offers opportunities for marketing research that allow the exploration of neural processes and associated behaviour of customers in naturalistic settings.

The application of mfNIRS as a neuroimaging method enables the investigation of unconscious neural processes that control customer behaviour and can act as process variables for companies.

This is one of the first studies to provide comprehensive guidelines and applied practical recommendations concerning when and how to apply mfNIRS in marketing research.

This study aims to address the challenge of sustainability in Catholic schools quantitatively, even more so knowing that there are few systematized and quantitatively elaborated approaches that help to determine their sustainability dimensions. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the structural relationships of organizational sustainability in primary and secondary religious schools in Latin America based on the substantive functions of the school, such as care, upbringing and education from an organizational approach.

Deductive reasoning was used. In the preliminary phase, data were extracted from 420 educational leaders of primary and secondary schools in Latin America from the Lasallian Network, leading a school population of 200,500 students and impacting 166 schools; these previous results were again contrasted with the forthcoming literature with research from the Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain, to achieve the sustainability framework, which has an endogenous variable called the school organizational sustainability framework.

The results reveal four dimensions of the first-order structural model: management, association, communication, well-being and curriculum, And eight second-order dimensions: governance, communication, resources, secular association, secular partnership, health, social commitment, and campus operation. The investigation results show that secular association and well-being are two dimensions that are constituted as the main elements of a sustainability framework for this type of organization.

The Catholic school has specific dimensions that need to be cared for with special attention, such as association, which comes from the laity and comes from the experience of the religious. In addition to this vital dimension, well-being, constituted as care for the people of the community, as care for all, is connatural to the religious school. Still, it is constituted by an edge that completes it, and that is the concern for the well-being of those outside regarding social justice. A limitation in the pretension of totality is that the study is conducted in a small portion of Catholic schools in Latin America.

A practical impact in the schools investigated is to present this sustainability framework as a reference to incorporate these dimensions as a strategy to bet on sustainability. Although the realities and contexts of the Latin American school are very different, some factors can impact low-income schools and schools with more significant financial resources if they are strengthened and worked on with dedication. In addition, this framework can lead to roads and the construction of indicators within the school, which can measure the sustainable commitment of the whole school. Finally, a clear finding of the framework is the need for good governance processes related to leadership and leaders' commitment to school-wide sustainability.

The present study impacts the depth that the proposal of the global educational pact can reach in the reality of Catholic schools in Latin America. The seriousness with which its leaders take the issue of sustainability from this perspective can contribute to the sustainability of life itself.

The originality of this research is that it constitutes the first Sustainability framework in Latin America in Catholic schools from an organizational approach.

The semiconductor market exceeded US$250 billion worldwide in 2010 and has had a double‐digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the last 20 years. As it is located far upstream of the electronic product market, the semiconductor industry has suffered severely from the “bullwhip” effect. Therefore, effective e‐based supply chain management (e‐SCM) has become imperative for the efficient operation of semiconductor manufacturing (SM) companies. The purpose of this research is to define and analyze the key success factors (KSF) for e‐SCM system implementation in the semiconductor industry.

A hierarchy of KSFs is defined first by a combination of a literature review and a focus group discussion with experts who successfully implemented an inter‐organizational e‐SCM project. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is then employed to rank the importance of these identified KSFs. To confirm the research result and further explore the managerial implications, a second in‐depth interview with the e‐SCM project executives is conducted.

The KSF hierarchy is constructed with two levels: a top‐level consisting of four dimensions and a detailed‐level consisting of 15 individual factors. The research shows that, in the top‐level, strategy is the most critically successful dimension followed by process, organization, and technical; whereas in the detailed‐level, the top management commitment, clear project goal and business requirements, and business process re‐engineering are the top three critical successful factors.

Research surveys and interviews were conducted with two leading companies: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and ASE; they are the largest front‐end and back‐end SM companies in the world, respectively. Although the data collected was primarily based on the experience of one successful e‐SCM project, the significant roles of these two companies and compelling contribution made by the e‐SCM project leading to the research resulted in valuable guidelines for the companies in the semiconductor industry and a useful reference for companies in other manufacturing industries.

e‐SCM system has a high failure rate and there is little literature discussing the KSF of e‐SCM implementation from a holistic view for certain industries. This paper not only provides a structured and comprehensive list of KSFs but also illustrates the application of the most critical factors by examples. In addition to the contributions made to industries, the research results can also serve as a foundation for related academic research when comparing the KSFs of implementing e‐SCM by different industries.