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The purpose of this paper is to celebrate the manifold contributions made by Michael Thomas, marketing professor extraordinary.

This paper is an exercise in autobiographical memory, coupled with the subjective personal introspective procedures advocated by many leading marketing scholars, most notably, Steven Gould and Morris Holbrook.

The paper shows that ornithology is an apt metaphor – analogy, rather – for Professor Thomas's many and varied contributions to marketing thought.

The paper comes closer than most to defining the quintessential Michael Thomas.

Autistic young people have health and care needs that may benefit from a multi-agency intervention. The “Current View” tool is routinely used in England to profile the needs of young people referred to mental health services. This study aims to examine associations between comorbidities and complex needs in autistic and non-autistic young people to assess the multifaceted needs of autistic young people.

A cohort study was conducted using data from the electronic patient record, comparing autistic and non-autistic young people to see which items in the four “Current View” tool categories were associated with autistic young people.

Issues associated with autistic young people were: “community issues”, “attainment issues” and “deemed child in need” (all p < 0.001). Autistic young people scored significantly more items (p < 0.05) in the categories complexity/contextual/educational factors. Comorbidities associated with autistic young people included anxiety, “behavioural difficulties”, “peer relationship difficulties” and “self-care issues” (all p < 0.001). There was an association with increased comorbidities and complexity factors in autistic young people which suggests increased support from agencies may be beneficial.

Few studies have used data in the “Current View” tool to assess young people referred to services. More use could be made of this data for planning and delivering services.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the financial decision-making process of farmers and to highlight the potential role that improved farm financial management (FFM) could play in developing sustainable farm enterprises.

This paper adopts a qualitative approach with 27 semi-structured interviews exploring farmers’ financial decision-making processes. Subsequently, the interview findings were presented to a focus group. Sensemaking theory is adopted as a theoretical lens to develop the empirical findings.

The evidence highlights that FFM has a dual role to play in farmer decision-making. Some FFM activities may act as a cue, which triggers a sensebreaking activity, causing the farmer to enter a process of sensemaking whilst some/other FFM activities are drawn upon to provide a sensegiving role in the sensemaking process. The role of FFM in farmer decision-making is strongly influenced by the decision type (strategic or operational) being undertaken and the farm type (dairy, tillage or beef) in operation.

The literature suggests that the majority of farmers spend little time on financial management. However, there are farmers who have quite a high level of engagement in FFM activities, when undertaking strategic farm expansion decisions. Those FFM activities help them to navigate through operational decision-making and to make sense of their strategic decision-making.

There is extensive empirical literature that has sought to establish the prevalence of, and risk factors for, loneliness and social isolation in later life. Traditional empirical gerontological approaches have characterised loneliness as a linear experience that is both pathological and easily relieved with external intervention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of qualitative interview data to reveal the possible complexities in understanding loneliness, including conceptual considerations for the dynamic and multi-dimensional aspects of loneliness.

The authors draw on two different studies where the purpose was to qualitatively examine the meaning of loneliness in the lives of older people and how they understood loneliness in the context of their daily life (n=37).

Interviews with “lonely” older people revealed that loneliness is a complex and dynamic experience. The authors also identified a range of internal and external factors that contribute to vulnerability for loneliness as well as resources to alleviate it.

The dynamic and multi-dimensional characteristics of loneliness in older people may help explain why community-based interventions to diminish it may be so challenging.

What is the problem? Asbestos exposure may well be the number one occupational and environmental health problem in the United Kingdom today. Actions for compensation regarding consequences of asbestos exposure have affected thousands of individuals and major companies and have shaken the insurance industry. For many years, how‐ever, there has also been increasing concern over the potential for asbestos exposure in public buildings, including schools and office buildings.

Inspired by new findings on and perceptions of risk governance, such as the necessity of taking a broader perspective in coping with risks in companies and working together in interactive groups with various stakeholders to deal with complex risks in the modern world, the purpose of this paper is looking for new ways to deal with financial risks. Current methods dealing with those risks are confronted with the problems of being primarily based on past data and experience, neglecting the need for objectivity, focusing on the short-term future and disregarding the interconnectedness of different financial risk categories.

A literature review of risk governance, financial risk management and open foresight was executed to conceptualize solutions to the mentioned-above problems.

Collaborative financial risk assessment (CFRA) is a promising approach in financial risk governance with respect to overcoming said problems. It is a method of risk identification and assessment, which combines aspects of “open foresight” and the financial risk management and governance literature. CFRA is characterized as bringing together members of different companies in trying to detect weak signals and trends to gain knowledge about the future, which helps companies to reduce financial risks and increase the chance of gaining economic value. By overcoming organizational boundaries, individual companies may gain the knowledge they would probably not have without CFRA and achieve a competitive advantage.

A conceptual paper like the one at hand wants empirical proof. Therefore, the authors developed a research agenda in the form of five propositions for further research.

This paper discusses the existing problems of financial risk identification and assessment methods. It contributes to the existing literature by proposing CFRA as a solution to those problems and adding a new perspective to financial risk governance.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a data mining model for performing sentiment analysis on open-ended qualitative LibQUAL+ comments, providing a further method for year-to-year comparison of user satisfaction, both of the library as a whole and individual topics.

A training set of 514 comments, selected at random from five LibQUAL+ survey responses, was manually reviewed and labeled as having a positive or negative sentiment. Using the open-source RapidMiner data mining platform, those comments provided the framework for creating library-specific positive and negative word vectors to power the sentiment analysis model. A further process was created to help isolate individual topics within the larger comments, allowing for more nuanced sentiment analysis.

Applied to LibQUAL+ comments for a Canadian mid-sized academic research library, the model suggested a fairly even distribution of positive and negative sentiment in overall comments. When filtering comments into affect of service, information control and library as place, the three dimensions’ relative polarity mirrored the results of the quantitative LibQUAL+ questions, with highest scores for affect of service and lowest for library as place.

The sentiment analysis model provides a complementary tool to the LibQUAL+ quantitative results, allowing for simple, time-efficient, year-to-year analysis of open-ended comments. Furthermore, the process provides the means to isolate specific topics based on specified keywords, allowing individual institutions to tailor results for more in-depth analysis.

To best account for library-specific terminology and phrasing, the sentiment model was created using LibQUAL+ open-ended comments as the foundation for the sentiment model’s classification process. The process also allows individual topics, chosen to meet individual library needs, to be isolated and independently analyzed, providing more precise examination.

To reflect on the stewardship of Marketing Intelligence & Planning (MIP) over the past 25 years with special attention to the purpose and mission of the journal.

A viewpoint contribution from the past, present and future editors of MIP, with considerations of the journal's focus, scope and rationale.

The requirement for academic research in marketing to be relevant to the practise of marketing is just as great as it was when the journal was founded.

Considered advice for contributing authors – especially those at or near the beginning of their academic careers.

Bootstrapping is a practitioner-based term adopted in entrepreneurship to describe the techniques employed in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to minimise the need for external funding by securing resources at little or no cost and applying strategies to effectively use resources. Working capital management (WCM) is a term used in financial management to define a set of practices used to manage business resources, including cash management. This paper explores the overlap and divergence between these two disciplinary distinct concepts.

A dual methodology is employed. First, the usage of the two terms in prior literature is analysed and synthesised. Second, the study uses factor analysis to explore how bootstrapping practices described by owners of 167 established MSMEs relate to the components of WCM in financial management.

The factor analysis identifies two main bootstrapping practices employed by MSMEs: (1) delaying payments and owner-related bootstrapping and (2) customer-related bootstrapping. Delaying payments is an integral practice in trade payables management and customer-related bootstrapping includes practices that are integral to trade receivables management. Therefore, links between bootstrapping practices and WCM practices are firmly established.

The study is not without limitations. Based on cross-sectional evidence for established firms in Ireland only, future studies could explore cross-country longitudinal panel data to fully examine life cycle and sectoral effects, as well as other external shocks (for example, COVID-19) on bootstrapping and WCM practices. This study does not explain why some factors (for example, joint utilisation and inventory management) are present in some bootstrapping studies and not in others; further case study research might help explain this. Finally, changes in the business environment facing start-ups and established enterprise, including increased digitalisation, online trading, self-employment, remote hub working and sustainability, offer new avenues for bootstrapping research.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore the conceptual and empirical links between bootstrapping and WCM. This study will enable researchers and practitioners in these two distinct disciplines to learn from each other. Accounting researchers and practitioners can broaden their understanding of how WCM “works” in MSME settings. Similarly, entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners can deepen their understanding of how bootstrapping can be adopted by businesses to manage resources effectively.