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Forbes magazine had dubbed Carmike Cinemas “the Wal‐Mart of theater chains.” Founded in 1982, the Columbus GA‐based chain of 1,400 screens pursues a strategy strikingly similar to that of Wal‐Mart Stores, Inc. The company buys or builds theaters in small to mid‐sized cities (populations of 200,000 or less) where purchase prices are low and competition is scarce. This unusual approach to the movie retailing business has led to phenomenal growth and strong profitability at a time when other chains are scrambling to sell off theaters and repay debts.

The purpose of this paper is to use social exchange theory (SET) to examine a model where supportive and unsupportive manager behaviors (SMB and UMB) interact to predict employees’ engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intention.

A cross-sectional online survey collected data from 252 UK-based employees of a global data management company.

Factor analysis confirmed manager behaviors to consist of two constructs: supportive and unsupportive behaviors. Structural equation modeling indicated SMB predicted job satisfaction and turnover intentions, but not engagement. Job satisfaction, but not engagement, mediated the SMB-turnover intention relationship. UMB only predicted job dissatisfaction. Neither job satisfaction nor engagement mediated the UMB-turnover intention relationship. UMB undermined the positive relationship between SMB and turnover intention.

The behaviors assessed can be integrated into various stages of a manager’s development process to serve as guidelines of good practice. Crucially, findings suggest managers can exhibit both supportive and unsupportive behaviors, and that consistency in behaviors is important. The study also provides evidence that supportive managers can help reduce turnover intention through job satisfaction.

SET was used as a framework for SMB, UMB and engagement. To the authors’ knowledge this is the first study to examine the interaction between SMB and UMB.

The purpose of the authors’ research study is to identify the impact of life cycle stage on firm acquisitions.

The authors use a series of empirical databases to identify characteristics of acquirers and their targets. The authors then use logistic regressions and joint tests to identify significant differences between declining and non-declining acquirers.

The authors find that declining acquirers are more likely to pursue diversifying acquisitions and to pay for the acquisition with stock considerations. Acquisitions by declining acquirers result in positive abnormal returns initially, but post-acquisition returns are negative.

The authors’ primary limitation is their data, which only includes public acquirers and targets, and runs from January 1, 1988 to December 31, 2010.

The authors’ research suggests that regulators, stakeholders and prospective stakeholders should consider the life cycle stage of an acquiring firm in setting expectations about motivations for and likely performance subsequent to the acquisition.

The authors’ paper is the first to consider the effect of firm life cycle stage on the motivation and subsequent success of an acquisition. Given the tremendous impact to shareholders of such significant transactions, understanding the acquisition process more completely is important to capital markets participants.

In this chapter, the author argues that Austrians are perhaps uniquely placed to be effective practitioners of causal inference techniques on observational data. This is because, while the methods are easy to implement, their validity and value lies in a detailed, “analytical/historical” narrative to accompany the findings. This is true for several reasons. (1) all the models have identifying assumptions (e.g., no spillovers and parallel trends) that are best addressed by an exposition of the institutional/economic/historical milieu in place before and after the treatment under study; (2) determination of external validity also requires detailed institutional and historical knowledge; and (3) researchers often want to know the mechanisms producing the reduced form result that comes out of most causal inference studies. Here again, institutional and historical learning is crucial. My conclusion is that Austrians should add the tools of causal inference with observational data to their arsenal of analysis. This would be good both for their publication prospects and for the profession at large.

Rooted in adult fear, adult authority aims to protect and control youth (Gannon, 2008; Valentine, 1997). Continuously negotiating for freedom, youth search for adult-free public spaces and are therefore extremely attracted to social networking sites (boyd, 2007, 2014). However, a significant portion of youth now includes adult authorities within their Facebook networks (Madden et al., 2013). Thus, this study explores how youth navigate familial- and educational-adult authorities across social networking sites in relation to their local peer culture.

Through semi-structured interviews, including youth-centered and participant-driven social media tours, 82 youth from the Northeast region of the United States of America (9–17 years of age; 43 females and 39 males) shared their lived experiences and perspectives about social media during the summer of 2013.

In their everyday lives, youth are subjected to the normative expectations emerging from peer culture, school, and family life. Within these different and at times conflicting normative schemas, youth’s social media use is subject to adult authority. In response, youth develop intricate ways to navigate adult authority across social networking sites.

Adult fear is powerful, but fragile to youth’s interpretation; networked publics are now regulated and youth’s ability to navigate then is based on their social location; and youth’s social media use must be contextualized to be holistically understood.

A discipline is bound by some combination of a shared subject matter, shared theory, and shared technique. Yet modern economics is seemingly without limit to its domain. As a discipline without a shared subject matter, what is the binding force of economics today? The authors combine topic modeling and text analysis to analyze different approaches to inquiry within the discipline of economics. The authors find that the importance of theory has declined as economics has increasingly become defined by its empirical techniques. The authors question whether this trajectory is stable in the long run as the binding force of the discipline.

This paper was written for a special issue of Kybernetes devoted to cybernetics and design. It aims to focus on case studies that are both informed by cybernetic and systems thinking and constitute a form of second‐order design praxis.

The case studies exemplify reflective practice as well as reporting outcomes, in terms of new understandings, from an action research process.

The paper describes what was involved in course design, from a cybernetic perspective, to effect systemic environmental decision making as well as developing and enacting a model for doing systemic inquiry (SI), which enabled situation‐improving actions to be realised in a complex, organisational setting. The paper lays out the theoretical and ethical case for understanding first‐and second‐order designing as a duality rather than a dualism.

There is a danger that readers from an alternative epistemological position will judge the paper in terms of knowledge claims relevant only to their own epistemological position.

The main outcomes suggested by this paper concern the possibility of transforming the current mainstream identity of educators, project managers and researchers to a position that offers more choices through both epistemological awareness (and pluralism) and the design of learning systems, including SI, as second‐order devices.

The case studies are based on both novel settings and theories in action; the concept of the learning systems as both a design and systemic practice as well as an epistemological device is novel. The paper is potentially of relevance to any practitioner wishing to use systems or cybernetic thinking. It is likely to be of particular relevance to education policy makers and public sector governance.

Existing scholarship indicates that more research is needed to explore beneficial spillovers from public entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in that literature by examining a case of public entrepreneurship by a corporation. While political engagement by private firms frequently reduces to rent-seeking, this paper explores an instance in which public entrepreneurship by a private firm lead to beneficial spillovers – specifically, positive externalities resulting from the engagement of Cummins Engine Company with city government in Columbus, Indiana. In the case study, these spillovers consist of improved infrastructure, altered norms, and the reintroduction of economic calculation.

This case study uses publications in popular outlets, newspapers, and historical documents to understand the relationship between Cummins Engine Company and its local government.

Contrary to the presumption that public engagement by private firms necessarily reduces to rent-seeking, the activities of the Cummins Engine Company lead to beneficial public spillovers by way of improved infrastructure and norms, as well as by restoring a degree of economic calculation to the production of public buildings in Columbus, Indiana.

The authors illustrate the precise mechanisms that generate the potential spillovers from public entrepreneurship that Klein et al. (2010) explore theoretically.