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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of bank branch location on the likelihood of bank failure during the most recent financial crisis.

This paper estimates the probit regression to identify the causes of bank failures and attempts to determine the role of branch location in bank performance.

Using data from failed and surviving banks in Georgia and Florida, this paper finds that diversifying the balance sheet and operating in more competitive markets reduced failure rates, but branching intensity, measured by number of branches and distance of branches from the home office did not significantly reduce the probability of failure. This suggests that, at least in today ' s market, it is not important to bank stability to have a branching network a significant distance from the home office.

This paper carefully considers the role of branch location in the likelihood of bank failure during financial distress. As such, it contributes to the historical policy debate regarding regulation prohibiting or minimizing banks ' ability to branch. It also contributes to our understanding of how banks structure their branching networks in the contemporary banking environment.

This study aims to examine whether are there human resources (HR) practices that influence firm performance of companies operating in the Mediterranean region and, specifically, in Greece. Existing literature comes mostly from American studies, leaving a research gap what happens when HR practices are applied by companies in the Mediterranean region.

The author reviewed the existent literature and examined six HR practices, which were initially proposed by Pfeffer. Using a self‐reported questionnaire, the author surveyed managers in Greece. The author used univariate and hierarchical multiple regression models to analyse the data.

Analysis of data provides overall support for all HR practices except of job security. Selective hiring and compensation policy were significant predictors for all performance variables.

Results from studies on a specific industry may have limitations to generalising to other sectors of the economy. More research is necessary to examine HR practices not covered by this study.

This study has practical implications particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that proliferate in Mediterranean countries. SMEs often find it difficult to see all the connections between antecedents (such as recruiting, compensating and training personnel) and consequences (such as turnover, financial performance). This study shows that there are high‐performance workplace practices that clearly pay off and thus, it is worthy investing on them.

This research is valuable to Mediterranean companies by highlighting the role of practices such as selective hiring and compensation policy in order to increase the overall firm performance.

The Honors College program prepares leaders for the 21^st century to become forces for positive change through problem-solving, scholarship, service, teamwork, and leadership. Its structure involves nine sequenced courses familiarizing students with challenges facing communities. Courses are team-taught by professors in different disciplines to highlight the diversity in applying concepts across contexts. This paper offers an examination of the connections for cultivating self-awareness through team-teaching in the classroom and experiential learning.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of internationalization patterns among speciality food small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), investigating dimensions that may have a bearing on such patterns, using a series of case studies. In particular the investigation seeks to gain new insights about differences among companies in their internationalization patterns. These differences are examined in a framework which tries to relate three company‐level dimensions (market, technology and space) to internationalization patterns. The three dimensions are derived from the constructs developed by Storper and Salais, and Straete.

Two research questions (RQs) are formulated: Is there a relationship between the internationalization pace of speciality food SMEs and their technology, market, and space dimensions? Is there a relationship between the internationalization modes of speciality food SMEs and their technology, market, and space dimensions? A qualitative approach was adopted and cases from a broad dataset were used. The present research is an explorative research: it is intended to provide insights from which hypotheses might be developed.

This paper provides an empirical and conceptual contribution to the food internationalization debate. On the empirical side, it provides new evidence on speciality food internationalization, showing a rather diversified set of internationalization patterns, both in terms of pace and modes. On the conceptual side, it shows that the three dimensions of technology, market and space may help to enrich the comprehension of internationalization phenomena. While data collected seem not to provide insights from which hypotheses might be developed concerning RQ1, they seem on the contrary to provide useful insights concerning RQ2.

Limitations of the research generally relate to the use of a small sample. Future research should strive to obtain larger samples, develop a set of relevant finer‐grained hypotheses and test those using appropriate statistical techniques

Identifying the impact that the three dimensions might have on internationalization patterns and vice versa may help to focus on these specific elements when companies make their internationalization decisions. On the same line, public policy agencies could benefit from these first results for better clustering companies targeting their internationalization supporting initiatives.

The findings add to the limited body of knowledge on the key influences on internationalization patterns within the food sector.

Browsing a database of article abstracts is one way to select and buy relevant magazine articles online. Our research contributes to the design and development of text grammars for abstracting texts in unlimited subject domains. We developed a system that parses texts based on the text grammar of a specific text type and that extracts sentences and statements which are relevant for inclusion in the abstracts. The system employs knowledge of the discourse patterns that are typical of news stories. The results are encouraging and demonstrate the importance of discourse structures in text summarisation.

This study aims to analyse the conditional volatility of the Vietnam Index (Ho Chi Minh City) and the Hanoi Exchange Index (Hanoi) with a specific focus on their application to risk management tools such as Expected Shortfall (ES).

First, the author tests both indices for long memory in their returns and squared returns. Second, the author applies several generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models to account for asymmetry and long memory effects in conditional volatility. Finally, the author back tests the GARCH models’ forecasts for Value-at-Risk (VaR) and ES.

The author does not find long memory in returns, but does find long memory in the squared returns. The results suggest differences in both indices for the asymmetric impact of negative and positive news on volatility and the persistence of shocks (long memory). Long memory models perform best when estimating risk measures for both series.

Short-time horizons to estimate the variance should be avoided. A combination of long memory GARCH models with skewed Student’s t-distribution is recommended to forecast VaR and ES.

Up to now, no analysis has examined asymmetry and long memory effects jointly. Moreover, studies on Vietnamese stock market volatility do not take ES into consideration. This study attempts to overcome this gap. The author contributes by offering more insight into the Vietnamese stock market properties and shows the necessity of considering ES in risk management. The findings of this study are important to domestic and foreign practitioners, particularly for risk management, as well as banks and researchers investigating international markets.

This paper aims to provide insights into the development and management of a customer community, informing product innovation and engaging customers in co‐creation of a consumption experience.

A review of the state of current knowledge about co‐production, co‐creation and customer communities is followed by discussion of the case study methodology. The case history of a leading player in the UK and international “sportkiting” market focuses on product innovation and customer‐community development. Discussion reflects in more detail on the lessons from the case for application of the principles in practice.

The case company's innovative product development strategy provides the catalyst for co‐creation of a customer experience. Its marketing actions extend beyond product development and innovation to actively co‐creating experiences with customers, fostering a sense of community among users, facilitating communication within that community, acting on the feedback, and continuously developing and maintaining the community relationship.

The company's marketing strategy can be summed up as “customer community leadership”. This paradigm proposes a new role for businesses in sectors where there is a potential to develop and engage communities. It provides a context for the effective facilitation of customer knowledge management, within which marketing intelligence plays a significant role. The findings offer scope for further research into the nature of this phenomenon and its relevance to co‐creation in other industry sectors, and into numerous aspects of the processes and impacts associated with customer communities.

The case contributes to the literature of co‐creation, demonstrating how it has been achieved through a marketing strategy and marketing mix in a particular customer community.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of relationship marketing (RM) in a new technology-based firm (NTBF) and to illustrate how social embeddednesss benefits can be achieved by engaging in RM in a rural resource-constrained bilingual context.

A single in-depth case study of a NTBF operating in a rural bilingual context was explored over a five-year period. As part of the case study, participant observation was carried out and interviews with the novice entrepreneur, the firm’s employees and its customers were conducted.

Developing mutually beneficial relationships with customers and key partners can enable a novice entrepreneur with no prior business ownership and limited marketing experience to accumulate and mobilise resources in order to achieve credibility and business growth. By analysing information from the NTBF’s entrepreneur, customers and other actors, the authors build theory and present propositions relating to the RM process.

This case illustrates that RM can enhance the legitimacy of an inexperienced entrepreneur, and can enable a firm to address the liabilities of newness in a rural resource-constrained context. Entrepreneurs need to focus on relevant and specialised partnership and alliance relationships that can provide strategic resources for firm development. The bilingual influence has also been shown to aid the development of new relationships and thus ensuring social embeddedness.

The theoretical contribution of this study is to integrate insights from both RM and social embeddedness theories, and illustrate the extent to which a NTBF demonstrates social embeddedness benefits relating to customer retention and accumulation of strategic resources due to RM.

Next to organic food products, an assortment of ethical products is emerging in the supermarket that targets the large market segment of consumers that are open for ethical product choices but do not restrict themselves to them. The purpose of this paper is to examine the positioning strategies that marketers use to persuade consumers in this segment to buy animal-friendly products (AFPs).

The authors approach product positioning from a consumption values perspective from which they examine strategies that make animal welfare (AW) personally relevant to the buyer because they reinforce AW with suitable consumption value (functional, emotional, social, sensory, epistemic and/or ethical). Using data from 129 AFPs from a Dutch supermarket, the authors explore the positioning strategies of these products.

The results identified four different strategies used to position AFPs in a Dutch supermarket. They respectively call upon consumers’ emotions, functional or sensory perceptions, curiosity and sense of public welfare. The findings also show substantial category differences, with fresh products relying predominantly on emotional value and processed food on functional value.

This study is the first to empirically explore positioning strategies of AFPs on the basis of their consumption values. The study offers a novel perspective to understand how companies try to extend the market for AFPs, thus providing a basis for a new research agenda.