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The complexity and competitiveness of global business is increasingly being managed by international strategic alliances. As a result, the two central tenets of market‐based‐capitalism, that competitive market forces ensure optimum innovation‐led growth and that individual firms can best accomplish this by competition rather than cooperation, are being re‐examined. These tenets directed management in an elaborate process of alliances control, which is now giving way to a system of control based on trust. The economic model explaining the formation of alliances and the research on joint venture alliances are discussed. This is followed by a discussion of trust and a process‐approach to trust development. Finally, a case methodology to examine evolving IJV relationships is proposed.

The unanticipated disruption caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic led to the extensive use of flexible working arrangements. In such a boundaryless work environment, however there are significant concerns, especially around inclusivity and discrimination. Given the increasing concerns surrounding hybrid and remote work settings, the authors investigated whether the extent of working in substantially flexible working arrangements relates to employees’ perceived ostracism and inequality, distinguishing between working from home, in a hybrid mode or from the office. In addition, the authors theorised that in flexible working arrangements, high-quality leader relationships, such as leader–member exchange (LMX) and servant leadership are likely to reduce perceptions of ostracism and inequality. Based on a survey of 161 professionals, who worked to varying degrees in flexible working arrangements, the authors found that employees who worked extensively in a hybrid mode were less likely to report experiences of ostracism and inequality in comparison to employees who worked mainly from home or in an office. Furthermore, a moderation analysis showed that the effects of LMX and servant leadership on perceptions of ostracism and inequality were much stronger for individuals who work in hybrid working arrangements than those who work at the office or from home. This research makes an important contribution to our understanding of how different degrees of flexible working arrangements affect employees by demonstrating the role of high-quality leader relationships in reducing perceptions of ostracism and inequality at different degrees of work flexibility.

This paper analyzes the impact of economic downturns on the revenue and expense sides of city financing for the period 2003 to 2009 using a convenience sample of the audited end of year financial reports for thirty midsized US cities. The analysis focuses on whether and how quickly and how extensively revenue and spending directions from past years are altered by recessions. A seven year series of Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) data serves to explore whether citiesʼ revenues and spending, especially the traditional property tax and core functions such as public safety and infrastructure withstood the brief 2001 and the persistent 2007 recessions? The findings point to consumption (spending) over stability (revenue minus expense) for the recession of 2007, particularly in 2008 and 2009.

Autonomy has long been established as a critical component of professional work. Traditionally, autonomy has been examined as the extent to which an individual or a professional group controls the decisions and knowledge used in their work. Yet, this framework does not capture the additional work activities that professionals are increasingly expected to perform. Therefore, this chapter argues for theoretically expanding our understanding of professional autonomy by bringing in the concept of articulation work. Using the case of healthcare organisational change, this study assesses how shifts in work practices impact autonomy. Data come from longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit as it underwent significant structural changes. Findings show that professionals were forced to change articulation work strategies in response to new organisational structures. This included changes in the way professionals monitored, assessed, coordinated and collaborated around patient care. Furthermore, these shifts in articulation work held important implications for both workplace and professional autonomy, as professionals responded to changes in their work conditions.

Marketing and brand managers are under more pressure than ever before to demonstrate the impact of the managers' strategies and actions on company value, especially in an emerging market. In this context, the authors investigate the relationship between brand equity and company performance using the rankings of most valued brands from Brand Finance (BF), Brand Analytics (BZ) and Interbrand (IB).

The authors use used a panel from the period between 1990 and 2018 (29 years), consisting of a sample of 689 companies with shares traded in an emerging market representing 7,970 observations with unbalanced data. The authors applied a dynamic Differences-in-Differences Ordinary Last Squares (DID OLS) method.

The main finding of this study is that brands ranked as valuable significantly increased the brands' companies' intangible assets, return on assets, free cash flow (FCF) and market value.

The present study helps brand and marketing managers show to chief executive officers (CEOs) and shareholders the importance of brand development. In addition, valuable brand companies of an emerging market may represent an interesting opportunity for market investors.

This study contributes to the marketing literature, addressing the fields of marketing and finance, by analyzing the performance of companies separately over a long period, with different metrics, an unconventional model in the marketing area and different rankings of valuable brand names.

The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient prediction model using vital signs and standard medical score systems, which predicts the clinical severity level of the patient in advance based on the quick sequential organ failure assessment (qSOFA) medical score method.

To predict the clinical severity level of the patient in advance, the authors have formulated a training dataset that is constructed based on the qSOFA medical score method. Further, along with the multiple vital signs, different standard medical scores and their correlation features are used to build and improve the accuracy of the prediction model. It is made sure that the constructed training set is suitable for the severity level prediction because the formulated dataset has different clusters each corresponding to different severity levels according to qSOFA score.

From the experimental result, it is found that the inclusion of the standard medical scores and their correlation along with multiple vital signs improves the accuracy of the clinical severity level prediction model. In addition, the authors showed that the training dataset formulated from the temporal data (which includes vital signs and medical scores) based on the qSOFA medical scoring system has the clusters which correspond to each severity level in qSOFA score. Finally, it is found that RAndom k-labELsets multi-label classification performs better prediction of severity level compared to neural network-based multi-label classification.

This paper helps in identifying patient' clinical status.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This chapter explores the perceptions that custodians of African cultures such as parents, grand-parents, village chiefs, and other community leaders hold regarding what higher education institutions ought to achieve for their children, and the extent to which these final ends are being, or can be, achieved through teaching and learning in cyberspace. Using the African context of Botswana as a reference point, the chapter situates learning and teaching practices online in the context of culture. After exploring the literature on cultural worldviews, African expectations of higher education, and online pedagogy and technology, the chapter documents the understandings and perceptions of the final ends that higher education institutions ought to pursue held by 39 village chiefs, community leaders, and parents from different cultural groups and communities. Evidence from phenomenological interviews revealed that Africans held that Afro-communal purposes for higher education in which promoting virtue, supporting culture, facilitating cooperation, and contributing to socio-economic development were seen as the paramount final ends for higher education institutions. The findings support Metz’s (2019) theoretical model of the ends of African higher education institutions. The chapter argues that, for online pedagogy in African universities and colleges to be successful, it should be grounded in collectivism where emphasis is given to the use of synchronous communication systems for the delivery of learning experiences, pedagogical practices are framed within community of practice, students are exposed to education for morality to foster a deeper sense of being real humans, and a socio-economic development agenda is emphasised.