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The purpose of this research was to develop a scale to measure the football league brand associations such as the “UEFA Champions League” and to investigate their influence on brand loyalty.

A questionnaire was developed and tested through a pilot test (N = 120) and the final questionnaire was administered among Greek sport spectators (N = 460). The factor structure was tested through an exploratory factor analysis and a regression analysis was used to examine the predictability of fans' brand loyalty by the league brand association dimensions.

Six brand association factors were revealed through the exploratory factor analysis: elite management, entertainment, elite-sportsmanship participants, escape, elite refereeing and corporate identity. In addition, new brand associations and elements were found: elite refereeing which included fast football and the league anthem was found to coexist with logo. Elite management, entertainment, escape and corporate identity were found to influence brand loyalty variables.

The study revealed a useful tool to measure sport leagues' brand associations, to measure their influence on Greek fans' loyalty and build strong, unique and favourable consumer-based brand associations.

The paper contributes to the sports brand associations research by examining brand associations in the context of European leagues and elite-level football competitions. It also contributes by identifying and revealing new brand associations and new elements to co-exist with other already known sports brand associations. Finally, it examines the influence of the new brand-specific associations to the brand loyalty of the “UEFA Champions League” competition for Greek sport fans.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate regional impact of macroeconomic and regional policy impulses, using our newly developed multi-regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for three, structurally distinctive Polish macro-regions.

In this study, we build an interregional social accounting matrix for Poland and use it to develop a small scale, three-region CGE model, reflecting the size of regional economies and cross-regional differences in industrial structures, while also explicitly accounting for the dynamics of main economic relationships across regions, such as interregional flows in commodities, labor and capital. The model is subsequently use to simulate regional effects of various policy impulses.

We demonstrate important cross-regional differences in the transmission mechanism of macro-level policies, which either affect regional output and its individual components (as in the case of imposing shocks to VAT or PIT rates) or are limited to the components, while preserving a rather uniform impact on output (as in the case of imposing shocks to wages). Furthermore, we contribute to the regional policy equity-efficiency trade-off debate, by illustrating quantitatively how, due to structural differences, spatially targeted expenditure measures might promote either regional convergence or aggregate output growth at the country-level.

Prior to our study, regional CGE models have not been used to simulate spatial distribution of aggregate shocks in Poland or in any other CEE country. Another originality of our study lies in comprehensive evaluation of various policy impulses, from the perspective of their impact on the respective region, spillovers to the other regions and its overall, country-level effect.

ASTM D01.56 on Printing Inks, a subcommittee of standards‐writing Committee D‐1 on Paint and Related Coatings and Materials, has announced the approval of five standard test methods for the evaluation of printing inks and prints.

New facilities at Hoechst UK's northern headquarters of Holywell Green were officially opened by Donald Thompson MP on May 19, marking the completion of a major phase in a long‐term programme of reconstruction and redevelopment.

This study aims to investigate the effect of Australian construction firms' cooperative behavior on reverse logistics outsourcing performance (RLOP).

To achieve the aim, a questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from construction firms in Australia. Following this, the study used Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze 173 responses for testing seven hypotheses that are related to the positive effects of cooperative behavior on RLOP.

The results indicate that three dimensions of customer cooperative behavior (cooperation, commitment and planning) positively influence RLOP in different ways. Cooperation only directly affects RLOP while planning only has an indirect influence on RLOP. Commitment affects RLOP both directly and indirectly.

This is the first study examining empirically antecedents of RLOP in the construction industry. Additionally, it reveals the mediating role of cooperation. Cooperation fully mediates the relationship between planning and RLOP, and partially mediates the relationship between commitment and RLOP.

How should managers organize their R&D workforce in order to maximize the benefit of internal R&D and R&D outsourcing strategy? The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of R&D workforce diversity on firms’ performance when the firms use internal and external knowledge acquired from R&D outsourcing. Diversity of R&D employees as R&D workforce can enable firms to utilize the knowledge of internal R&D and internalize the external knowledge.

Panel data analysis with fixed effects is used. The authors conduct hierarchical multiple regression analyses to test the moderating effect of R&D workforce diversity with 10,401 data from Korean manufacturing firms.

This study finds out that age and education diversity of R&D workforce have positive moderating effects on the relationship between the R&D outsourcing and firm performance. In contrast, internal R&D is negatively associated with firm performance when the age diversity of R&D workforce increases. The results point to the significant role of R&D workforce diversity in R&D unit since firms often use both internal R&D and external R&D.

For practical implications to be more effective, CEOs and managers of firms should employ differentiated approaches to manage the diversity of R&D workforce based on whether they primarily focus on their internal R&D or utilize external R&D.

This research extends recent efforts to better understand the effect of organizational diversity on the firms’ performance when firms use internal R&D and R&D outsourcing strategy.

High performance computing (HPC) is used to solve complex calculations that personal computing devices are unable to handle. HPC offers the potential for small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to engage in product innovation, service improvement and the optimization of resource allocation (Borstnar and Ilijas, 2019). However, the expensive infrastructure, maintenance costs and resource knowledge gaps that accompany the use of HPC can make it inaccessible to SMEs. By moving HPC to the cloud, SMEs can gain access to the infrastructure without the requirement of owning or maintaining it, but they will need to accept the terms and conditions of the cloud contract. This paper aims to improve how SMEs access HPC through the cloud by providing insights into the terms and conditions of HPC cloud contracts.

This paper adopts a systematic literature review by implementing a four-step approach. A comprehensive search was undertaken and results synthesized to enable this paper’s objectives to be met.

This paper proposes that SMEs could gain competitive advantage(s) by understanding their own needs and improving their contract negotiation abilities, service management skills and risk management abilities before accepting the terms and conditions of the cloud contract. Furthermore, a checklist, service-level agreement, easily ignored elements and risk areas are presented as guidance for SMEs when reviewing their HPC cloud contract(s).

While HPC cloud contracts are a niche research topic, it is one of the key factors influencing the ability of SMEs to access HPC through the cloud. It is, however, by no means a level playfield with SMEs at a distinct disadvantage because of not influencing the writing up of the HPC cloud contract. The added value of the paper is that it contributes to our overall understanding of the terms and conditions of HPC cloud contracts.

Sheet metal forming is a process of shaping thin sheets of metal by applying pressure through male or female dies or both. In most of used sheet‐formating processes the metal is subjected to primarily tensile or compressive stresses or both. During the last three decades considerable advances have been made in the applications of numerical techniques, especially the finite element methods, to analyze physical phenomena in the field of structural, solid and fluid mechanics as well as to simulate various processes in engineering. These methods are useful because one can use them to find out facts or study the processes in a way that no other tool can accomplish. Finite element methods applied to sheet metal forming are the subjects of this paper. The reason for writing this bibliography is to save time for readers looking for information dealing with sheet metal forming, not having an access to large databases or willingness to spend own time with uncertain information retrieval. This paper is organized into two parts. In the first one, each topic is handled and current trends in the application of finite element techniques are briefly mentioned. The second part, an Appendix, lists papers published in the open literature. More than 900 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with subjects that were published in 1995‐2003 are listed.