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Landscapes bear potential as heritage resources, unifying natural and cultural history that can be experienced today in special preserved areas. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Geoarchaeological investigation 2006-2011 explored this potential at the Ritidian Unit of Guam National Wildlife Refuge.

As experienced today, the Ritidian landscape heritage embodies the complex outcomes of a 3,500-year record of ecology and evolution.

A long-term perspective of unified natural-cultural history will increase scientific accuracy and enhance visitor experience of landscapes of heritage resources.

Sustainable development of landscape heritage can occur most successfully in cases of thorough research in areas of protected and managed ecosystems with reasonable public access.

The detailed results in this case may serve as a model example for other studies and programmes developing landscapes as heritage resources.

Urban Affordable Housing (UAH) Inc. was a real estate asset management syndication firm that sponsored affordable housing to low-income families and seniors across the USA. The case examines the firm’s management of an internal information technology (IT) change initiative. The case follows the firm’s recently hired IT manager, Anthony Bryant, as he works to change a culture while acquiring resources and acceptance for the project he was hired to oversee. Bryant deals with numerous changing priorities, inadequate sponsorship, resistance from various levels, and a dearth of resources as he struggles to get the organization to complete an overdue database conversion.

This case is based upon the firsthand experiences of the lead author over a seven-year period while working at UAH. Measures have been taken to disguise the firm’s identity, including using a pseudonym, fictitious names for firm employees, a fictitious location, and the alteration of key dates. Key elements of the case have been constructed around semi-structured interviews and the review of archival documentation. Most quotes are verbatim in an attempt to preserve their authenticity, and were drawn from the semi-structured interviews and from historical accounts of actual occurrences and conversations.

The UAH case is multi-faceted, as it can be used in a number of environments amid a business school curriculum. A primary use is likely in a course revolving around organizational change and development. It might also be featured as part of the organizational change component in a course on organizational behavior, used to illustrate and analyze organizational culture and change leadership. Furthermore, the case could be used for change-related topics in management information systems or project management courses. The authors suggest the case be assigned at the graduate level, though it could also be suitable for an advanced undergraduate class.

Critical knowledge for successfully analyzing this case includes the following concepts: the change process (Lewin, 1951); leading change (Kotter, 1996); resistance to change (Kegan and Lahey, 2001); and communicating change (Armenakis and Harris, 2002).

Our study explores friction costs in terms of competition and market structure, considering factors such as market share, industry leverage levels, industry hedging levels, number of peers, and the geographic concentration that influences reinsurance purchase in the Property and Casualty insurance industry in China. Financial factors that influence the hedging level are also included. The data are hand collected from 2008 to 2015 from the Chinese Insurance Yearbook. Using panel data analysis techniques, the results are interesting. The capital structure shows a significant negative relationship with the hedging level. Group has a negative relationship with reinsurance purchases. Assets exhibit a negative relationship with hedging levels. The hedging level has a negative relation with the individual hedging level. Insurers have less incentive to hedge because it provides less resource than leverage. The study also robustly investigates the strategic risk management separately by the financial crises.

The development of the recovery approach must mean a fundamental change in how mental health services see service users, for as the Social Perspectives Network paper rhetorically asks, ‘Whose Recovery is it?’, it is, of course, the service users' (Social Perspectives Network, 2007). The recent influential Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health report, suggests that professionals need to move from a position of ‘being on top, to being on tap’ (Shepherd et al, 2008). Service users need to take a more central role in the whole recovery debate. One of the ways that this aim can be realised is by looking at ‘recovery heroes’. These are individuals whose journey of recovery can inspire both other service users and professionals alike.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an important yet underexplored research question in the literature: What determines the length of contract governing buyer–supplier relationships during market transitions? The length of contract is a solid indicator of the comprehensiveness of a contract. By integrating transaction costs economics, the embeddedness perspective and the institution-based view, the paper develops a model that incorporates specific investments and perceived opportunism, strategies to select suppliers and buyer firms’ confidence in the institutional environment. It further posits how buyer firms’ dependence on suppliers moderates these relationships.

Data were collected nationwide via face-to-face interviews with 328 executives in 164 Chinese firms who shared information pertaining to 774 buyer–supplier contracts. A fine-grained mixed-empirical method was designed to test the proposed hypotheses, to confirm the reliability and to generalize the research findings.

All the proposed factors significantly influence the length of the contract. Results obtained through a moderated mediating model suggest that buyers with supplier-specific investments and that choose market-based selection relative to a relationship-based tend to perceive more opportunism in buyer–supplier relationships, which will lead to shortening the length of the contract. However, the buyer’s perception of opportunism will decrease when buyers perceive higher levels of confidence in their legal institutions.

The study discusses several practical implications for B2B managers who typically involve in interfirm exchanges as well as for emerging economies’ institutions.

Leveraging theoretical insights from transaction cost economics, the institution-based view and buyer–supplier relationships literature, this empirical study adds unique contributions to B2B research in general and emerging economies’ institutional literature in particular.

The 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision accomplished more than the national legalization of same-sex marriage; it also laid bare a deep rift among US Supreme Court justices over the question of whether and how religious objections to same-sex marriage should be accommodated in this new era of marriage equality. This chapter will explore the rift revealed in Obergefell between the Court’s differing conceptions of religious free exercise and will highlight the ways in which this legal dispute was translated into a forceful mode of conservative religious activism in the buildup to the groundbreaking 2016 election.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which traditional marketing theory and practice can be applied in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and consider how owner-managers perceive their own role in marketing within a small business setting.

–A qualitative exploratory approach using semi-structured in-depth interviews amongst owner-managers of SMEs in the UK.

SME marketing is effective in that it embraces some relevant concepts of traditional marketing, tailors activities to match its customers and adds its own unique attribute of self-branding as bestowed by the SME owner-manager.

The study was limited to the UK and to a small sample of SMEs and as such the findings are not necessarily generalisable.

A “4Ps” model for SME self-branding is proposed, which encompasses the attributes of personal branding, (co)production, perseverance and practice.

To investigate the higher‐level skills needs and learning provisions for small medium social enterprises (SMSEs) in Northwest England in order to support strategies for lifelong learning and organizational development.

The study involved the development of “Balance”, a tool based on an adapted form of Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard (1996) performance measurement and management tool, integrating the notion of incremental learning development, and utilizing Kolb and Fry’s (1975) organizational learning cycle. Discusses the findings of piloting the tool in 30 social enterprises to make a case for an alternative approach to business analysis, where a qualitative approach is put forward.

The results indicated that the Balance tool provided SMSEs with an easy to use diagnostic tool for collating managers’ subjective opinions in order to simplify the analysis process and provide a reference point for discussing management skills needs. Reveals that there is a spectrum of social enterprise with the “need” or “social” driven organization at one end and the more “enterprise” driven organization at the other. Concludes that the “social” led business tends to focus on an informal, organic organizational system, utilising a loose business framework purely as a means to meeting the social/environment need, while the “enterprise” led business focuses on a structured business organizational system, embracing business logic and businesslike methods and discourse to meet the social/environment/business need.

Builds on research which was published in the previous issue of this journal (“Business practices in social enterprises”, Social Enterprise Journal, Volume 2 Number 1 2006) and outlines the current understandings and shortcomings of SMSE management knowledge.