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“Toolkits” are decision‐making frameworks based on expert models. This paper outlines one toolkit, which provides support for practitioners involved in the process of embedding learning technology into their courses. Although the toolkit was created as a design tool, feedback from evaluations identified its value as a means of assessing quality. This paper outlines the background of the creation and scope of the toolkit, examines how it can be used to assess and enhance the quality of courses and concludes by summarising how toolkits can be used as part of quality procedures in other areas.

Generation Y (Gen Y) is the newest and largest generation entering the workforce. Gen Y may differ from previous generations in work‐related characteristics which may have recruitment and retention repercussions. Currently, limited theoretically‐based research exists regarding Gen Y's work expectations and goals in relation to undergraduate students and graduates. The aim of this paper is to attempt to address this gap in the research.

This study conducted a theoretically‐based investigation of the work expectations and goals of Generation Y and, in particular, student Gen Y versus working Gen Y individuals based within a framework incorporating both expectancy‐value and goal setting theories. n=398 provided useable data via an on‐line survey.

Overall, some support was found for predictions with career goals loading on a separate component to daily work expectations and significant differences between students and working Gen Y on career goals. No significant differences were found, however, between the two groups in daily work expectations.

Future research studies may benefit from adopting a theoretical framework which assesses both daily work expectations and career goals. At a practical level, based on the findings, some examples are provided of the means by which organisations may draw upon daily work expectations and career goals of importance to Gen Y and, in doing so, influence the likelihood that a Gen Y individual will join and remain at their particular organisation.

This research has demonstrated the utility of adopting a sound theoretical framework in furthering understanding about the motivations which influence an organisations’ ability to recruit and retain Gen Y.

When assistant principals experience positive mentoring and professional development, they can obtain valuable knowledge and leadership skills from these learning opportunities. To better understand the formal and informal mechanisms assistant principals use to expand their knowledge and skills, the purpose of this paper is to examine important advice mentors provided for them and the professional learning activities that prepare them for their school leadership roles.

Semi-structured interviews with 69 elementary, middle, and high school assistant principals were conducted. Questions focused on the advice mentors have provided and significant learning experiences that have aided in their growth as school leaders.

Results reveal that assistant principals greatly appreciate insights from mentors about how to enhance decision-making skills, improve people and communication skills, reflect on their personal qualities and capabilities, and clarify their values and beliefs. Their preferred means for professional growth is to work with former and current administrators they trust and respect.

This study goes beyond examining the structural and procedural aspects of mentoring by describing highly valued advice provided by mentors affecting assistant principals’ professional development and growth. For mentoring to be effective, this study suggests that mentors should provide opportunities for assistant principals to develop their decision-making, people, and communication skills as well to clarify their personal capabilities, values, and beliefs.

Martin Winterkorn had high aspirations for Volkswagen to become the world's leading automaker when he was promoted to CEO in 2007. Volkswagen lacked the technology needed to meet American emissions standards and fulfill their promise of a “clean” fuel efficient diesel engine. Instead, they chose to deceive the world, violating the law and the foundation the company's code of conduct was grounded in. This case provides an opportunity to explore corporate governance, ethical leadership, and the ethical and professional responsibilities that senior executives have to create and maintain an ethical culture. Examination of the details in the case uncover value conflicts. Examples of values included in IMA's Statement of Ethical Professional Practice are honesty, fairness, objectivity, and responsibility. IMA describes these as “overarching ethical principles.”

How to sort out the useful management techniques from the less useful is the problem facing modern day managers. Martin Oliver, director of the Lloyd Institute of Management, offers some advice.

This paper presents an empirical contribution to the literature on cluster evolution, highlighting the decline phase. The analysis focuses on the footwear sector in Rio Grande do Sul (RS) state, in southern Brazil, where an important footwear cluster is located, which was once considered one of the world's largest footwear clusters. The purpose of this study is to analyse the transformation of this footwear industrial sector since the beginning of the 2000s using several sectoral statistics.

This paper presents an empirical and longitudinal study that comprises the sourcing of 20 years of secondary data, based on official sources. The main data analysed were production, price, industrial structure, labour market and foreign market.

The main results indicated a significant reduction in production, export and employment. In addition, a precarization of the labour market was observed, with lower wage levels, even with an increase in the formal qualification of labour over time. The finding is that the RS footwear sector underwent a huge structural change and lost the status of a worldwide supercluster. This decline occurred due to two central factors: an external shock related to China's entry into the international and Brazilian domestic markets, accompanied by a slowdown in the Brazilian economy since 2015; and the difficulty of local firms responding to the new challenges.

Synthesizing the findings, it is understood that this paper contributes to registering the trajectory of decline over time of the footwear sector in RS. In this sector, the Sinos Valley cluster is located, historically known as a footwear producing and exporting supercluster. This cluster loses the characteristic of a “supercluster”, but it still remains an important footwear cluster in Brazil. Therefore, this study reinforces the existence of fragilities already pointed out by the literature in Schimtz (1999) and, more recently, in Schmidt (2020). The need to address a set of fragilities remains current, both at the micro- and meso-levels. This is key to reversing the decline trajectory of the cluster and the sector. Moreover, as recent studies on clusters point out, one still must think about the impact of another ongoing paradigmatic transformation concerning the use and development of Industry 4.0 technologies. Thus, the central challenge is to think about and implement new public and private policies. The historical, economic and social relevance of the sector and the cluster demand efforts to reverse the decline.

This study focuses to contribute to the discussion about the decline of the footwear production in the region by analysing secondary data regarding the industrial sector. This is an analysis at the meso-level (industry). The authors understand that the originality of the research lies in the longitudinal analysis for a recent period (past 20 years) that captures the greatest current crisis experienced by the region.

This study examines rainfall variability and its implications for wheat production risk in northeast Germany. The hedging effectiveness of rainfall options and the role of geographical basis risk are analyzed using a daily precipitation model. Simpler pricing methods such as the burn analysis and the index value simulation serve as benchmarks for comparison. It is found that the choice of statistical approach may lead to considerable differences in the estimation results. Daily precipitation models should be used with some caution in the context of derivative pricing because they tend to underestimate rainfall variability. This is unexpected, because daily simulation models are usually preferred in the context of temperature‐based weather indexes.

The authors want to study the connection between institutional theory and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the set of hotels with three, four and five star situated in Galicia (Spain) and in the Northern region of Portugal. The authors aim to see whether there is a contrast of isomorphic behaviour in the institutional context of both regions.

A quantitative study in which the authors apply the partial least square (PLS) technique, a methodology based on structural equations models using the software Visual-PLS. The authors intend to study the relationships between the pressures of institutional context and CSR practices, together with the relationship between legitimacy and these practices. The focus of the proposed model is based on the system theory.

The main findings of this research clearly show that hotels are incorporated into an institutional context marked by enforced and regulatory pressures.

The proposed research model can be replicated using other units of study, sectors, geographic areas, among others, due to the explanatory capacity of the theoretical framework used.

The originality of this work derives from the main contributions based on the theoretical framework (institutional theory and CSR), the object of study and geographical area (three, four and five star hotels located in Galicia and in the North of Portugal), the context (economic crisis), the field of study (private sphere) and the type of organizations (profit making).

This study aims to investigate the effect of customers’ multisensory service experience on customer satisfaction with cognitive effort and affective evaluations using big data and business intelligence techniques.

Online customer reviews for all New York City hotels were collected from Tripadvisor.com and analyzed through business intelligence and big data analytics techniques including data mining, text analytics, sentiment analysis and regression analysis.

The current study identifies the relationship between affective evaluations (i.e. positive affect and negative affect) and customer satisfaction. Research findings also find the negative effect of reviewer’s cognitive effort on satisfaction rating. More importantly, this study demonstrates the moderating role of multisensory experience as an innovative marketing tool on the relationship between affect/cognitive evaluation and customer satisfaction in the hospitality setting.

This study is the first study to explore the critical role of sensory marketing on hotel guest experience in the context of hotel customer experience and service innovation, based on big data and business intelligence techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons that urge US banks to securitize.

The authors apply a logistic regression model to a sample of 5,394 observations. The dependent variable takes 1 if the bank securitizes and 0 if not. The authors use also, a Heckman selection model to account for the potential dependence between the decision to securitize and the decision of which assets to securitize.

The results indicate that liquidity, credit risk transfer, regulatory capital arbitrage and profitability are the most important factors that drive securitization in the USA. Moreover, the nature of the asset securitized appears to be dependent on the objective that the bank pursues. For funding and capital arbitrage objectives, the bank needs to securitize its mortgage loans. However, for credit risk transfer purposes, it has to opt for a non mortgage securitization. The nature of the asset securitized can thus, be used as a signal for bank’s intentions to securitize.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the reasons that urge banks to securitize. It also presents, using a Heckman selection procedure, a detailed analysis that discriminates between different types of securitization.