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The purpose of this study is to contrast athlete endorsement vs athlete sponsorship from a power imbalance perspective when a scandal strikes the athlete.

A first study was conducted with a probabilistic sample of 252 adult consumers where the type of brand–athlete relationship (endorsement or sponsorship) and the level of congruence between the two entities (low or high) were manipulated in a mixed experimental design. A second study with a probabilistic sample of 118 adult consumers was conducted to demonstrate that consumers perceive that the balance of power between the brand and the athlete is not the same in endorsement and sponsorship situations.

The results of the first study showed that when an athlete is in the midst of a scandal, the negative impact on the associated brand is stronger in the case of an endorsement than in the case of a sponsorship. However, this occurs only when the brand–athlete relationship is congruent. The results of the second study showed that the athlete’s power relative to the brand is greater in an endorsement than in a sponsorship context.

The findings suggest that a company that worries about the possibility that the athlete with whom it wants to build a relationship be eventually associated with some negative event (e.g. a scandal) should consider sponsorship rather than endorsement as a strategy.

This study is the first to compare the athlete endorsement and sponsorship strategies in general and the first to put forward the notion of power imbalance in brand–athlete partnerships, its impact on how the two entities are represented in consumers’ memory networks and the consequences on brand attitude when the athlete is associated with a negative event.

In this paper, we describe the recent approaches taken by Loughborough University to provide a quality‐based system for the effective deployment of computer‐assisted assessment (CAA). Specific attention is given to the development of the interdependent roles of two support services. The central CAA unit focuses mainly on providing and improving a quality delivery system, ensuring that the quality threshold is exceeded, and monitors future directions in the field of CAA. The Engineering Teaching and Learning Support Centre (Eng. TLSC) was set up to provide learning and teaching support for engineering academic staff, which includes the development of software and learning technology through provision of free time for the implementation of small projects. We examine the interaction and the synergy of these two services in achieving quality implementation into the curriculum.

Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have been argued to play an important role in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the mechanisms through which CCIs contribute to the attainment of SDGs remain underexplored. In this study, the authors adopt a network perspective to examine how the structure of a local CCI network relates to its local sustainability performance. By examining a database of 210,182 networked firms out of 1.34 million CCI firms across 294 cities in China, the authors conclude that both the scale and the density of a local CCI network improve the city’s performance in terms of attaining SDGs 8–12. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and propose future research avenues in international business.

This paper explores the emergence and coordination of synchrony in networked groups like those that develop integrated product platforms in collaborative ecosystems. While synchronized actions are an important objective for many groups, interorganizational network theory has yet to explore synchrony in depth perhaps because it does not fit the typical diffusion models this research relies upon. By adding organizationally realistic features – sparse network structure and intentional coordination – to the firefly model from theoretical biology, I take some first steps in understanding synchrony in organizational groups. Like diffusion, synchrony is more effective in denser networks, but unlike diffusion clustering decelerates synchrony’s emergence. Coordination by a few group members accelerates group-wide synchrony, and benefits the coordinating organizations with a higher likelihood that it converges to the coordinating organization’s preferred rhythm. This likelihood of convergence to an organization’s preferred rhythm – what I term synchrony performance – increases in denser networks, but is not dependent on tie strength and clustering.

Destinations have in the scholarly literature been labeled as communities of interdependent organizations that collectively coproduce a variety of products and services. The paradigm comes close to describing destinations as firms which are embedded in interfirm networks. Recent studies provide crucial insights into an understanding of destinations' orchestration and structuration as coproducing interfirm networks. However, systematic knowledge about how these systems evolve and develop is lacking. This chapter addresses this issue and elaborates how the concepts of scale-free and small-world networks together can explain the process of destination evolution. The discussion also suggests how such theorizing can spur avenues for future research.

In the context of a retailer with an international supply network, this paper develops theories of (a) how both stability and strong ties in an international supply network combine to yield a resource base that enables the development of flexible relationships with suppliers, (b) how stability and relationship flexibility in the international supply network of a retail reseller may in turn be driven both by the international diversity and by the density of the retailer’s supply network in a product category, and (c) how both the international diversity and the density of a retailer’s supply network may directly affect the likelihood of a retailer developing flexible relationships with its supplier. In doing so, this paper develops and presents six hypotheses and discusses some approaches to measurement of the underlying constructs and testing the hypothesized effects.

Organizations are embedded in multiple interdependent networks comprising different types of relationships, which are managed by different functional units inside each organization. We define tie transfer across networks as the influence of relationships in one network on relationships in another. We argue that the probability of tie transfer will depend on the differences in context in which relationships are formed in two networks, on the past dynamics of relationships in a network into which the tie transfer takes place and on the relative salience of different networks. Our paper develops these conjectures into a relational multiplexity perspective.