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The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature on angel investors. Research on angel investors is sparse because data are sparse. Most comprehensive studies of angel investors have focused on the USA and UK. In these studies, definitions of angel investors and estimates of returns on angel investments vary dramatically. What can one make of this wide range of reported returns?

The authors examine the literature and find that the calculations of reported results are vague.

Most researchers do not explicitly report if their estimates are equal-weighted or value-weighted, nor do they say whether the results are weighted by the duration of the investment. The authors show that the unit of analysis – investment, project or angel – affects interpretations.

Limitations on the comparability between various studies of angel investing returns leave the current literature incomplete. They also offer opportunities for future study in the area.

The authors are the first to examine the angel investing literature in a comprehensive fashion, comparing between various returns found across all major studies of the subject done to date.

This study aims to examine the quick service restaurant (QSR) differentiation in the minds of consumers, customers and non-customers and addresses the use of absolute measures. The study integrated competitive context and customer vs non-customer perceptions to better understand marketing strategies and the impact on customer value.

A conceptual framework is provided with marketing strategy, 7Ps, value positioning and outcomes. A survey instrument to assess perceptions of QSR marketing mix dimensions and leading QSR brands as referents was used. The study used exploratory factor analysis, ANOVA and logistic regression to address research questions.

The five QSR brands were differentiated by three marketing mix dimensions: quality, convenience and price. Subway and Starbucks customers perceived higher quality than McDonald’s and Burger King. Price separated Starbucks and McDonald’s customers. Overall, QSR customers perceived higher quality and convenience than non-customers. Age group was a predictor of customer membership of QSR overall and McDonald’s.

The study used participants in Germany and had more respondents identified as McDonald’s customers or referent.

The quality bundle represents unique resources for each QSR brand. Management teams should use a holistic mindset in considering the quality bundle reputation and how the various attributes support each other.

Consumers look to three factors for QSR rather than 7Ps: quality, convenience and price. Relative comparisons of perceptions among brands and between customers vs non-customers provided important contributions for QSR marketing mix factors.

This paper aims to identify inter‐linguistic and inter‐cultural commonalities and differences between web sites targeting, respectively, English and Chinese viewers, and to examine within‐language and within‐culture variations of web sites for viewers in Greater China.

Two comparisons were made: among the home and subsidiary web sites of the same corporation, McDonald's (www.mcdonalds.com), and across web sites of five corporations within the aviation industry.

Corporate identity and positioning, corporate culture and citizenship are projected differently on the McDonald's web sites for the Anglo‐American viewers and the Chinese viewers. Web sites written in the same language, Chinese, reveal within‐language and within‐culture variations in contents and style across different web sites in the fast food and aviation industries within Greater China.

A more extensive research on different industries can be conducted to validate the preliminary findings of this research. Relevant conceptual resources can then be developed to explain the inter‐linguistic and inter‐cultural differences.

Findings from this comparative analysis help raise the corporate communicators' awareness of inter‐linguistic and inter‐cultural as well as within‐language and within‐culture variations when drafting contents for web sites targeting viewers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Comparative studies of global web sites targeting viewers of, respectively, English and Chinese groups, and within‐language and within‐culture variations in Greater China are still limited. The findings from this research serve as a basis for future investigation for effective bilingual corporate communication from the linguistic and cultural perspectives.

Architectonics is proposed as a dialogic theory and method to research three discursive spheres: McDonald's corporation, McDonaldization, and McDonaldland.

Bakhtin proposed architectonics as a new method for the human sciences, one that interanimates cognitive with ethical and aesthetic systemness. This essay develops architectonics further, and applies it to the study of globalization and localization of the McDonald's and Wal‐Mart corporations, which now cohabits with each other in New Mexico (and elsewhere).

A general inquiry system is suggested as a framework to analyze the architectonics of other organizations, in future international studies.

Through the application of the notion of architectonics to the McDonald's and Wal‐Mart corporations the authors develop an innovative approach to understanding organizations.

Are nations successful because of their national characteristics or because of the characteristics of the companies located there? The subject is discussed in a new book review. Secondly, an article is reviewed, offering a number of research propositions, which ideally should be observed if an organisation is to gain competitive superiority and a third review focuses on marketing planning, in which theoretical planning tools are shown actually to work in practice (i.e. from concept to operation).

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

This paper aims to investigate the association between negative tone in annual report narratives and future performance in the UK context. Under the principle-based approach in the UK, managers tend to bias the tone of narrative reports upward, as the reporting regime is more flexible than the rule-based approach in the USA. Consequently, any negative disclosure not mandated by regulators conveys credible information about a firm’s prospects.

This paper uses a sample of UK FTSE all-share non-financial companies from 2010 to 2019. The authors use the textual-analysis approach based on Loughran and McDonald (2011)’s wordlist (LM) to measure the negative tone in UK annual reports.

The results show a significant negative association between negative tone and future performance. Moreover, our further analyses suggest that only the negativity in the executive section of the annual disclosures correlates significantly with future performance. In summary, this study suggests that negativity does matter under the principle-based approach and can be used as an indicator of future performance.

In contrast to the literature arguing that only positivity has the power to affect a firm’s outcomes under the principle-based approach, the authors provide new empirical evidence suggesting that negativity also matters within the UK context and can be used as an indicator for future performance. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify which section of the annual report is more informative about a firm’s future performance.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Strategic marketing planning has never been the simple, step‐by‐step approach described so prolifically in prescriptive texts and courses. Reviews strategic marketing planning in the context of different modes of strategic planning. Defines strategic marketing planning, examines its role in an organization, reviews some of the techniques used in the process and concludes by exploring some of the principal barriers which hamper the introduction of strategic marketing planning, or serve to reduce its effectiveness.