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It seems that the only constant of this rapid‐changing world is the “change” itself – whether it is from the organization itself or from its outer environment. From multinational corporation managers to local franchise investors, abilities to cope with changes are definitely essential. The purpose of this paper is to provide no magic but a framework that helps decision makers watch their steps while making strategic plans.

Working from the perspective of the resource‐based view (RBV) for sustained competitive advantage, the paper looks into the decision‐making process by considering constraints and illusions. The journey of deviation from the ideal goal starts when the decision maker is attracted by a maze of illusions. The paper illustrates the phenomena of escalation of commitment in static and in deterioration‐in‐motion.

For the recovery from an errant path, awareness is of the essence and a constant awareness of the organization's chances and pitfalls would be the only way to regain competitive advantage.

By bringing together the concept of the RBV of competitive advantages and the phenomena of escalation of commitment, the paper provides a concise framework and illustration that is easy to be reminded of for organization decision makers who are constantly facing challenges in this ever‐changing world.

It was only after considerable pressure had been brought to bear by the various health authorities of the country that the Government, in July, 1899, appointed a Departmental Committee to consider the subject of the use of preservatives and colouring matters in food, and it is now some months ago that the full report of the Committee was published, containing certain recommendations of the utmost importance for the consideration of the authorities. Up to the present time nothing further has been heard of the matter, and in answer to a question recently put to the President of the Local Government Board by the Mayor of Kensington, Sir SEYMOUR KING, as to whether the Board intends to take steps by the introduction of a Bill, or otherwise, for giving effect at an early date to the recommendations contained in the report of the Committee, the President stated that the report was “still under consideration,” and that he could make no statement at present as to the course which the Government would take.

How analysts make recommendations to the budget director and governor depends partly on the nature of the state budget office (SBO). This paper contrasts the development of a budget recommendation in an office with a strong policy orientation with recommendations fashioned in an office with a strong control orientation. One important difference is that control oriented analysts focus almost exclusively on the technical and legal facets of budget problems, whereas their policy oriented counterparts spend considerable time on the social, legal, and political (SLP) facets. The SLP framework enables the policyoriented analysts to apply economic rationality to evaluate requests and make recommendations that are consonant with the governor’s policy agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between friendship and betrayal. Both are perceived to involve dynamics that can have a major impact in organizations, but both have tended to be under researched.

The paper brings together ideas from psychoanalysis (object relations theory), archetypal psychology, and the history of ideas (the friendship tradition). It also uses a case study to explore how the emerging framework applies in reality.

The exploration led to the conclusion that betrayal may have its roots at the same deep level of the psyche as friendship and they may, therefore, be equally fundamental developmentally.

The paper opens up an important area for further study and application. It is intended to give status to two experiences that are of great importance to managers and managed, leaders and led, consultants and students.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reflect upon what the global therapeutic community (TC) movement has learnt from coronavirus and to consider how TCs will continue to adapt and evolve in a post-pandemic climate.

This is a viewpoint paper based on the authors’ participation in an international learning event whereby speakers from TCs from around the world spoke about how they adapted their services to overcome adversity.

The findings are usefully thought out as shelter, creativity, reintegration and employment, technology and roots. Based on the material discussed in the learning event, it would seem that the global TC movement has engaged in a process of looking to the past to move forward by drawing upon founding principles and prescriptions of the TC tradition, rooted in humanistic and indeed humanitarian responses to staff, client and sociocultural needs.

According to the author, this paper is one of the first attempts to capture how TCs from across the globe have responded to the threat of coronavirus.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of including letter repetition commonly found within social media text and its impact in determining the sentiment scores for two major airlines in Malaysia.

A Sentiment Intensity Calculator (SentI-Cal) was developed by assigning individual weights to each letter repetition, and tested it using data collected from official Facebook pages of the airlines.

Evaluation metrics indicate that SentI-Cal outperforms the baseline tool Semantic Orientation Calculator (SO-CAL), with an accuracy of 90.7 percent compared to 58.33 percent for SO-CAL.

A more accurate sentiment score allows airline services to easily obtain a better understanding of the sentiments of their customers, hence providing opportunities in improving their airline services.

Proposed mechanism calculates sentiment intensity of social media text by assigning individual weightage to each repeated letter and exclamation mark thus producing a more accurate sentiment score.

Job-related social networking websites (e.g. LinkedIn) are often used in the recruitment process because the profiles contain valuable information such as education level and work experience. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether people can accurately infer a profile owner’s self-rated personality traits based on the profile on a job-related social networking site.

In two studies, raters inferred personality traits (the Big Five and self-presentation) from LinkedIn profiles (total n=275). The authors related those inferences to self-rated personality by the profile owner to test if the inferences were accurate.

Using information gained from a LinkedIn profile allowed for better inferences of extraversion and self-presentation of the profile owner (r’s of 0.24-0.29).

When using a LinkedIn profile to estimate trait extraversion or self-presentation, one becomes 1.5 times as likely to actually select the person with higher trait extraversion compared to the person with lower trait extraversion.

Although prior research tested whether profiles of social networking sites (such as Facebook) can be used to accurately infer self-rated personality, this was not yet tested for job-related social networking sites (such as LinkedIn). The results indicate that profiles at job-related social networks, in spite of containing only relatively standardized information, “leak” information about the owner’s personality.

The paper contributes to the debate on a general theory of markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a market practice model based on social practice theories, and explore new ways of describing market boundaries.

A conceptual analysis of contemporary marketing directions and market theorizations provides a basis for defining markets and market boundaries in terms of social practices and their performances by market actors.

Based on the market performances held in place by institutional practices that define, contextualize and stabilize a market, this paper defines market boundaries by nine specific categories of practices, described here as parameters.

This is a conceptual paper. Future research using empirical evidence derived from situated investigations should endeavor to refine the model and practices that define market boundaries.

The paper provides a new conceptualization of markets and market boundaries from the social practice perspective, and advances contemporary market theorizing that puts services at the center of exchange. The paper offers managerial implications by describing alternative means for analyzing markets and developing corresponding competitive strategies. Furthermore, the conception of market boundaries as nine parameters provides insights beyond the geographic and price boundaries typically used to describe market limits and exchange processes when developing policy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the fundamental underpinnings of product modularity and how these can be adapted to construction and its specificities (e.g. one-off products delivered by temporary supply chains) to create a model to design modular buildings.

This research adopts a design science research approach. Explanation I (substantive theory devising based on the analysis of an artefact ‒ a low-income housing project) is used, followed by Solution Incubation (a model to implement product modularity in buildings design).

The model allows product modularity to be implemented at distinct levels (i.e. building, systems and components) at a single stage (building design), different from manufacturing where each level is considered at a distinct stage. This is in line with the project investigated: modularity was considered for house layouts, roof types and gable formats.

The model provides a hands-on tool for practitioners to design modular buildings. The low-income project is also extensively detailed: three-dimensional models, floor plans and conceptual diagrams (outlining how fundamental underpinnings were applied at each level) are presented. There is a lack of comprehensive accounts such as the one presented here to demonstrate the application of product modularity in real-world projects.

This paper identifies and adapts the fundamental underpinnings of product modularity to construction, and it details how these were applied to a low-income housing design at distinct levels. Based on these two endeavours, a model to implement product modularity in buildings design is proposed.