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Building on an earlier publication in the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, the following article investigates the reasons for retailers’ involvement in town centre management (TCM) schemes in the UK. Findings are drawn from interviews with representatives of independent traders and national multiples, and a questionnaire survey of town centre managers. The article reveals several key reasons for retailers’ involvement in TCM and identifies some significant differences between independents and multiples in this respect. The findings show that the overriding motivation for the participation of retailers in TCM is their belief that it may benefit their business in some way. Equally importantly, the research identifies a number of reasons why retailers do not become involved in TCM schemes. The article concludes by showing that an understanding of the reasons for retailers’ involvement in TCM can play a significant role in attracting retail support for the concept.

This study aims to shed lights on the dynamics of involving and sharing knowledge with stakeholders in the process of new service development (NSD) over time.

The paper is based on a paradigmatic case focused on the development of the digital MBA program by the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano. Primary and secondary data have been largely collected and analyzed, involving multiple stakeholders of the development process.

This study describes how several stakeholders have been involved during the phase of the NSD process, showing two variables that ruled their involvement: the level of control exerted by the School on the stakeholders and the level of flexibility of the stakeholders.

This research offers insights to the understanding of the dynamics of involving and sharing knowledge with multiple-stakeholders in NSD. From a theoretical perspective, it contributes to stakeholder theory linking it with the service management literature, highlighting the role of cyclical fluctuations in the involvement activities.

This research offers insights to managers dealing with the development of new services, offering them a novel view on how various stakeholders may be involved over time, in different moment and in different ways, to properly enhance the development process thanks to their knowledge sharing.

This paper contributes to the service management literature emphasizing the role of multiple stakeholders while providing insights and suggestions to manage the complex relationships created by their involvement and their knowledge.

Conventional wisdom suggests that war in the host country makes it unattractive for foreign firms to invest. To see if this is true for US firms on the aggregate, this paper aims to examine the veracity of a “permanent war economy” hypothesis, that foreign direct investment (FDI) may, in fact, increase in the host country not despite, but because of, war, i.e. one that lends credence to the idea that, in the USA, “defense [has] become one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions rather than an exercise in response to one-off threats.”

The authors test the hypotheses using Generalized Method of Moments estimation, with Heckman Selection, on US FDI data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and war data from the Correlates of War2 Project, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program/International Peace Research Institute data set, the International Crisis Behavior Project and the Center for Systemic Peace Major Episodes of Political Violence data set. The final sample consists of 351 country-year observations in 55 host countries from 1982 to 2006.

The findings indicate that overall US FDI in a host country in a given year decreases if the host country is engaged in wars with multiple countries and if the US Government is involved in the war. Most notably, the results show that US involvement in multiple host country wars is actually correlated with increased US FDI into the host country, providing empirical support for the “permanent war economy” hypothesis.

While other studies have focused on war and FDI, the authors have sought to show the impact of the involvement of arguably the most influential country, i.e. the USA, in the sovereign matters of a focal host country. By studying FDI from the USA as a function of US involvement in wars overseas, over the years with the greatest use of private military companies by the USA and the largest portion of global FDI accounted for by the USA, this work motivates a research agenda on home-host-"other” relations in the context of war and FDI, with the “other” being the supranational “elephant in the room.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the capital investment process, guided by concepts from cognitive and social psychology. The intention is to gauge the extent to which managerial judgement can be detected by applying a psychological lens to the process. Initial fieldwork is subsequently reported on the extent to which managerial judgement is managed. Discovery of variations suggest an alternative perspective on understanding capital investment decisions (CIDs) that may be potentially worthwhile in understanding the long‐term success and survival of modern commercial enterprises.

Following a systematic review, employing the psychological concepts of heuristics, framing and concensus to prior case and fieldwork studies, the CID process in three companies engaged in new market/site development projects is reported. The participants initially responded to a survey and subsequently agreed to be interviewed about their processes and involvement.

The psychological concepts provided a satisfactory gauge of managerial judgement. The fieldwork revealed variety in the management of the CID process and the influence of managerial judgement.

There is an increasing call to examine the CID by case or fieldwork but, to date, the role managerial judgement plays has not been directly addressed. Applying psychological concepts to the CID process offers an opportunity to focus enquiries and improve understanding of corporate practices.

The relative reliance companies place on heuristics, framing and consensus within their specific organizational contexts ultimately may provide insights to the long‐term survival of companies.

The paper provides useful information on the cognitive and social psychology in the capital investment process.

While the concept of involvement has long intrigued marketing researchers, its application to the case of wine purchase behaviour has been limited. In particular, little is known of the wine consumer characteristics likely to influence their degree of product involvement. Furthermore, no reported research has attempted to assess the outcome of product involvement in relation to the different attributes relevant to consumer's choice of wine. This Australian study, based on more than 300 face‐to‐face interviews, aims to provide a clearer picture of the demographics of the involved wine consumer as well as to demonstrate that involvement matters considerably in determining the importance of some wine attributes over others.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a conceptual framework specifying the multidimensional role of involvement and perceived risk in brand extension domain.

A survey research design was applied to test the proposed hypotheses. Three hypothetical extensions of a real brand were selected. A total of 101 respondents participated in the study. Regression analyses was conducted to examine the role of involvement and perceived risk dimensions in brand extension evaluation.

Results indicate that consumers evaluate brand extension more favorably when it is highly relevant, more pleasurable, and associated with less risk probability. In addition, each facet of perceived risk, namely, financial, performance and psychological, are found to be equally important in making decisions about brand extension.

This paper contributes to the growing body of literature of brand extension. The study provides a new direction to brand managers and marketers to understand the full dynamics of the relationship of consumers with brand extensions. To get more benefit from brand extension strategies, managers should pay attention to involvement and perceived risk associated with extension categories.

This paper is unique in that it identifies the importance of multidimensional nature of involvement and perceived risk to study consumer evaluation of brand extension.

Expands on research which has demonstrated that employment has positive or neutral effects on women’s health. This pilot study examines whether these positive effects could also be found in employed mothers by comparing working mothers with non‐working mothers on measures of mental health, self‐esteem, and mother role satisfaction. Also this study assesses the stress experienced by these mothers and examines the coping strategies used by them. Of the 200 questionnaires distributed, 101 were returned giving a 50.5 per cent return rate of which 78 per cent were working mothers and 22 per cent non‐working mothers. The working mothers had better mental health and reported less depression than the non‐working mothers. The most frequently reported source of stress for working mothers was not having enough time to do everything, whereas for non‐working mothers lack of social life was a major stressor. The findings of this study support the expansion hypothesis, which emphasizes the benefits rather than the costs of multiple role involvement.

With the fast growth of the internet, the development of industry portals for SMEs is becoming an increasingly important issue of economic growth. However, designing and developing efficient portals is not easy, and how to evaluate industry portals' performance has not yet been convincingly demonstrated. To address this gap, this paper aims to propose a framework.

The framework uses the analytic hierarchical process and incorporates both experts' and users' judgments into the performance evaluation process. It also employs three different objectives for performance evaluation including data quality, technology acceptance, and knowledge distribution. An exemplary case is given to demonstrate the proposed framework by empirically assessing an industry portal project, developed by Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan.

The proposed framework can enable industry associations to become more familiar with the nature and scope of portal performance evaluation.

Develops a framework which addresses the practical aspect of portal evaluation in terms of multiple objectives and involvement.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: to contribute to the increasing global debate in organization theory about corporate ethics; to focus on the importance of measurement costs and its influence on organizational change in stakeholder systems; and to provide a framework for overcoming the inherent ambiguity and increased measurement costs associated with stakeholder business systems.

The approach is to analyze the importance of institutional certification and indirect measurement indicators, which are defined as indices to develop a dynamic framework capable of evaluating change in stakeholder business systems.

The stakeholder business system, a dominant system in continental European countries, as well as various countries in Asia, requires involvement by multiple actors, including financial markets, banks, employees, government.

Further research is necessary to analyze in more depth the way organization value can be measured and how stakeholders can interact with the organizations involved in external certification, in facilitating organizational change. There is also a need to further research the dynamics of the relationship between market, institutions and social structure in organizational change.

A general contribution of the paper is that it illustrates that all industries have “indices”, which are more tacit, implicit than the traditional, transparent market indicators and signals.

Measuring the performance of public participation is conducive to improving participation systems. However, such measurement, particularly in urban regeneration projects, is difficult because of the complex indicators and multiple stakeholders involved. The purpose of this paper is to measure the public participation level in urban regeneration projects in China.

This study adopts a perception difference-based method to measure the public participation level in urban regeneration projects in China. Specifically, an indicator system consisting of 12 indicators from three categories was first purposed. A perception difference-based method that integrates ANOVA test and Tukey test were then developed. The method was validated using five represented projects, and the results are interpreted based on a proposed measurement matrix.

Regardless of the type of indicator, the perception of the government aligns with the perception of private sector professions, however, deviates from the perception of citizens. By taking the mean score and the significance level among stakeholders of perception as two dimensions, different patterns of issues in the current participation practice in urban regeneration are manifested.

Theoretically, the proposed indicator system and perception difference-based method combined to provide a holistic view of public participation, which is verified to provide a better measurement. Practically, the authors’ methodology helps in revealing issues in current participation practice and further leading to designing coping strategies. Nonetheless, the proposed method requires further validation in participation practices in China and other countries.

By considering the perception mean and the significance level as two dimensions, a public participation measurement matrix is proposed. The performance in different indicators are classified into four stages accordingly, namely idling, starting, running-in and accelerating.