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This paper examines the opportunity cost of applying simple averages in formulating the Department of Defense (DoD) budget for foreign exchange rates. Using out-of-sample validation, we evaluate the status quo of a center-weighted average against a Random Walk model, ARIMA, forward rates, futures contracts, and a private firm's forecasts over two time periods extending from Fiscal Year (FY) 1991 to FY 2014. The results strongly indicate that four of the alternative methods outperform the status quo over the shorter time period, and three methods for both time periods. Furthermore, a non-parametric comparison of the median error demonstrates statistical similarities between the four alternative methods over the short term. Overall, the paper recommends using the futures option prices to decrease forecast error by 3.23% and avoiding a $34 million opportunity cost.

This instrumental case study sought to determine how collegiate-level students changed throughout a personal leadership development course. Document analysis of an archived course assignment was employed to analyze the students’ perceptions of their personal leadership development. Four themes emerged from the analysis: (a) self-evolution, (b) cognitive gain, (c) perceived self-awareness, and (d) framework confusion.

Images are playing an increasingly important role in organizational life. This trend has spawned interest in how organizations can improve and protect their images. Yet, in our eagerness to study image promotion and repair, organizational scholars have overlooked the practice of image spoiling. Image spoiling occurs when an organization uses words and other symbols to attack the image of another organization. One of the most pervasive forms of image spoiling is interorganizational defamation. The purpose of this study is to explore some of the dynamics of interorganizational defamation. Data was collected from 68 interorganizational defamation cases that were adjudicated in the U.S. federal or state courts between 1964 and 1998. A model of interorganizational defamation was inductively derived from the defamation cases using grounded theory as a qualitative methodology. The model identifies some of the strategies of interorganizational defamation and their methods of implementation.

We take an affect-based approach to theoretically introduce and explore the knowing-doing gap of leadership. We focus on the emotion of fear that managers may experience in the workplace, and how it may influence the transfer of their leadership knowledge into leadership action.

We use Affective Events Theory as our underlying theoretical lens, drawing on emotional, cognitive, and behavioral mechanisms to explain the role of fear in the widening and bridging of the knowing-doing gap of leadership.

We theoretically explore the interplay between leader fear, the leadership contexts, and the knowing-doing gap of leadership. From this, we develop a multidimensional theoretical framework on the influence of leader fear on the knowing-doing gap of leadership.

We highlight how fear and the knowing-doing gap of leadership may be influenced by and potentially impact on individual managers and their leadership contexts.

Our initial theoretical framework provides a starting point for understanding fear and the knowing-doing gap of leadership. It has implications for future research to enhance our understanding of the topic, and contributes toward existing approaches on leadership development as well as emotions and leadership.

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.

Citizens are substantial stakeholders in every e-government system, thus their willingness to use and ability to access the system are critical. Unequal access and information and communication technology usage, which is known as digital divide, however has been identified as one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government system. As digital divide inhibits citizen’s acceptance to e-government, it should be overcome despite the lack of deep theoretical understanding on this issue. This research aimed to investigate the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide.

The research problems were approached by applying two-stage sequential mixed method research approach comprising of both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first phase, an initial research model was proposed based on a literature review. Semi-structured interview with 12 users of e-government systems was then conducted to explore and enhance this initial research model. Data collected in this phase were analyzed with a two-stage content analysis approach and the initial model was then amended based on the findings. As a result, a comprehensive research model with 16 hypotheses was proposed for examination in the second phase.

In the second phase, quantitative method was applied. A questionnaire was developed based on findings in the first phase. A pilot study was conducted to refine the questionnaire, which was then distributed in a national survey resulting in 237 useable responses. Data collected in this phase were analyzed using Partial Least Square based Structural Equation Modeling.

The results of quantitative analysis confirmed 13 hypotheses. All direct influences of the variables of digital divide on e-government system success were supported. The mediating effects of trust in e-government in the relationship between capability divide and e-government system success as well as in the relationship between innovativeness divide and e-government system success were supported, but was rejected in the relationship between access divide and e-government system success. Furthermore, the results supported the moderating effects of demographic variables of age, residential place, and education.

This research has both theoretical and practical contributions. The study contributes to the developments of literature on digital divide and e-government by providing a more comprehensive framework, and also to the implementation of e-government by local governments and the improvement of e-government Readiness Index of Indonesia.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

The national society of professional engineers has said, “engineering has a direct and vital impact on the quality of life for all people.” The demand for career-ready engineering professionals has been a consistent, high priority area for the U.S. workforce for the last several decades. Specifically, this call expresses a desire for engineers that are deeply prepared in their technical areas, but also broadly capable as participatory leaders and team members. Thus, leadership-coupled professional competencies that enhance teamwork and problem solving are in high demand from the engineering industry. However, contemporary research suggests that postsecondary engineering programs do not adequately prepare graduates in these areas. This Delphi study identified the consensus perspective of an industry panel regarding the most valuable competencies within the organizational culture of engineering firms. After three iterative rounds, 14 leadership-coupled competencies were identified.

This study contributes to continuing work on the development of a conceptual framework to better understand sponsorship, consumer response towards sponsorship efforts, and the contribution of sponsorship to customer-based brand equity, by seeking to validate a set of consumer-related attitudes to sponsorship. In particular, the study focuses on establishing the properties of consumer-related attitudinal constructs in the context of sponsorship of an annual national sporting event, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union's National Provincial Championship. Such constructs and their embedded scales will enable sponsorship managers to assess and distinguish consumer reactions to the event itself, to the commercialisation of the event, and to identify the consumer behaviours likely to benefit the sponsor of the event.