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Kenyan khat arrives in the UK four days a week and much of it, having arrived at Heathrow from Nairobi and been cleared through customs, is delivered by van to a depot in Southall. There it is collected by distributors who speed it on to retailers. It is estimated that around seven tonnes of khat enters the UK each week.

The focus of this paper is the UN’s agency for the maritime affairs, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and more precisely its approach to maritime safety. Being the only international rule‐maker, the sole setter of maritime safety standards that apply universally, the IMO exhibits increased interest especially with regard to its organisational culture, the safety culture that constitutes its core mission. An examination of the evolution of IMO’s safety culture is in essence an examination of the international approach to disaster prevention and risk management in shipping and it is in fact the subject of our present study. Our investigation will reveal the various safety issues that have been treated by IMO as high agenda items in recent years, as well as the factors that can be regarded as instrumental in cultural change and, thus, in the evolution of IMO’s safety philosophy.

The focus of this paper is on the role of the United Nation’s Agency for the maritime affairs, i.e. the International Maritime Organisation, in the setting of quality and safety standards in shipping and the difficulties in establishing and implementing them. Being the only international rule‐maker, the sole setter of maritime safety standards that apply universally, the IMO exhibits increased interest with respect to its approach to safety and the promotion of quality in the shipping sector. The present paper examines the steps taken in the 1990s by the IMO for enhanced quality and safety standards and undertakes a critical review of the most important hindrances in their establishment and implementation. The investigation reveals the various safety issues that have been treated by IMO as high agenda items in recent years as well as a number of limitations for the IMO and problems with regard to the implementation process.

SpiceJet came out with Big Sale offer in January 2013 in which the company offered 10 lakh air tickets for Rs. 2013 to travellers in Indian domestic civil aviation market. The promotion, aimed at increasing passenger load factor, generated wide publicity due to unprecedented nature of offer in highly competitive market. The case traces the history of promotions conducted by SpiceJet and examines the different aspects of promotion which become crucial while planning for promotions in service industry.

Tracks the evolution of Internet interconnection and charging arrangements, drawing comparisons with telecommunication carriers’ arrangements. Focuses on how pricing arrangements could change ISP relationship’s nature from peer‐ to hierarchy‐based systems. Spotlights Internet basics and differences between telecoms and Internet pricing systems. Concludes that because of ISP, free riders and non‐explicit service subsidies, days are numbered.

The marketing literature indicates that a firm’s organizational culture plays a critical role in determining its market orientation (MO) and thereby the firm’s ability to successfully adapt to its environment to achieve superior business performance. However, our understanding of the organizational culture of market-oriented firms and its relationship with business performance remains limited in a number of important ways. Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm and the competing values theory perspective on organizational culture, our empirical study addresses important knowledge gaps concerning the relationship between firm MO culture, MO behaviors, innovation, customer satisfaction, and business performance.

We used a survey methodology with Clan Cultural Orientation, Adhocracy Cultural Orientation, Market Cultural Orientation, and Hierarchy Cultural Orientation Clan. Market Orientation Behaviors, Innovation, and Customer Satisfaction and CFROA _t (Net Operating Income + Depreciation and Amortization – Disposal of Assets)/Total Assets.

The overall fit of the first Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) containing the three MO behavior sub-scales, the four organizational culture scales, and the innovation and satisfaction performance measures was good with a χ ² = 760.89, 524 df, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.916 and RMSEA = 0.055. The overall fit of the second CFA containing the business strategy, bureaucracy, and customer expectations control variables was also good with a χ ² = 243.26, 156 df, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.937 and RMSEA = 0.061. We also subsequently ran a third CFA in which the MO behavior construct was modeled as a second-order factor comprising the three first-order sub-scales (generation of market intelligence, dissemination of market intelligence, and responsiveness to market intelligence) each of which in turn arose from the relevant survey indicants. This measurement model also fit well with the data with a χ ² = 84.06, 63 df, p < 0.039; CFI = 0.955 and RMSEA = 0.047. Regressions using seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) with control variables and with R ² values ranging from 0.28 to 0.54.

MO culture has an important direct effect on firms’ financial performance as well as an indirect effect via MO behaviors and innovations. Importantly, our findings suggest that MO culture facilitates value-creating behaviors above and beyond those identified in the marketing literature as MO behaviors. In contrast to a series of studies by Deshpandé and colleagues (1993, 1999, 2000, 2004), our empirical results suggest the value of the internally oriented Clan and to a lesser degree Hierarchy cultural orientations as well as the more externally oriented Adhocracy and Market cultural orientations. The benchmark ideal MO culture profile we identify is consistent with organization theory conceptualizations of strong balanced organizational cultures in which each of the four competing values orientations is simultaneously exhibited to a significant degree (e.g., Cameron & Freeman, 1991). Our findings indicate that the organizational culture domain of MO appears to be at least as important (if not more so) in explaining firm performance and suggest that researchers need to re-visit the conceptualization, and perhaps more importantly the operationalization, of MO as a central construct in strategic marketing thought.

In building an MO culture, an important first step is to assess the firm’s existing organizational culture profile (e.g., Goodman, Zammuto, & Gifford, 2001). Organization theory researchers have developed competing values theory-based organizational culture assessment tools that can provide managers with an easily accessible mechanism for accomplishing this (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The profile of the firm’s existing culture and the profile of the ideal culture for MO from our study can then be plotted on a “spider’s web” graphical representation (e.g., Hooijberg & Petrock, 1993). This aids the comparison of the firm’s existing cultural profile with the ideal MO profile, enabling managers to easily diagnose the areas, direction, and magnitude MO culture profile “gaps” in their firm (Cameron, 1997). Specific gap-closing plans and tactics for gaps on each of the four cultural orientations can then be identified as part of the development of a change management program designed to create an MO culture profile (e.g., Chang & Wiebe, 1996). Cameron and Quinn’s (1999) workbook provides managers with an excellent operational resource for planning and undertaking such gap-closing organizational culture change initiatives.

We analyze how institutional persistence unfolds. Building on an historical analysis of 3,307 bottle labels in the Bordeaux wine community, France, between 1924 and 2005, we find that the persistence of a chateau tradition requires considerable effort at maintenance. Instead of greater compression and taken-for-grantedness, we propose that expansion along multimodal carriers provides a marker of a deepening institutionalization. We underscore the role of community organizations in enabling a wine tradition to persist. The implications of our findings for institutional theory and multimodality research are discussed.

This paper examines the relationship between the procedural tax administration system and the characteristics of the decision-maker in the decision to comply with the tax code. Specifically, we examine the motor fuel tax system. The motor fuel tax system requires an organization to collect and remit taxes at both the federal and state levels. Using a path model, we find that the procedural complexity of the tax system contributes to an increase in tax non-compliance.