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The purpose of this paper is to describe recent amendments to Rule 144 of the Securities Act of 1933 concerning holding periods and resale of privately placed securities.

The paper describes key changes with respect to shortened holding periods, elimination of most requirements for non‐affiliates, and relaxation of requirements for sale of debt securities.

The paper finds that the SEC has adopted significant amendments to Rule 144 that will increase the liquidity of privately placed securities and ease the burden on issuers caused by having to grant burdensome registration rights. The amendments shorten the holding periods before affiliates and non‐affiliates may sell restricted securities and otherwise loosen restrictions on the public resale of equity and debt securities acquired in private placements.

The paper is a useful guide to rule changes written by experienced securities lawyers.

This paper aims to explore the internal processes that can enable firms to identify and effectively respond to brand crises, with various groups coordinating and cooperating with each other, and also propose a guiding framework relevant for both managers and researchers.

A grounded theory methodology was adopted. Data collection included open-ended interviews with 13 executives representing the integrated marketing communications (IMC) function, the integrated corporate communications function and external agencies supporting firms while navigating crises.

Results revealed a three-stage process of internal coordination efforts during crises: sensing or scanning the environment and gathering insights regarding crises, informing or disseminating these insights throughout the organization to create transparency and responding or reacting to the event via a coordinated effort.

The framework does not directly incorporate input from consumers or customer contact employees, both of which may be relevant.

Findings offer direction for managers to establish processes that prepare for and potentially reduce crises’ negative consequences. In addition, this study reveals the importance of decision-makers being vigilant regarding social media’s influence on such a process.

The conceptual framework moves beyond previous brand crisis research, provides insight into the processes firms use to successfully manage crises and reveals the relevant factors related to internal coordination.

This study aims to conduct two experiments to provide insight into the impacts of Congressional party loyalty on negotiating flexibility. Constituent support, term limits and bipartisan roles were explored as possible moderators of polarization in American political negotiations.

Experiment 1 used a 2 (party loyalty: loyal/thoughtful) × 2 (constituent support: consistent/mixed districts) experimental design. In experiment 2, party loyalty was constant, and participants were assigned to one of four conditions created by a 2 (term limits: restricted/not restricted) × 2 (role: coordinator/whip) design. In both experiments, flexibility was measured as the percentage of movement on four key budget allocation issues. Participants were recruited using Prolific.

Experiment 1 demonstrated that loyalty produced less flexibility, particularly with regard to one’s own preferred issues. Constituent support did not influence flexibility. The second experiment found that absence of term limits and presence of bipartisan roles resulted in more movement on the other’s preferred issues.

While the authors’ manipulations have experimental validity, further field research is suggested to assess the fidelity of the authors’ simulation and the ecological validity of the experimental findings.

These findings extend the list of situational levers that impact negotiation flexibility. In particular, based on the authors’ findings, embedding bipartisan roles into traditional Congressional processes could help increase negotiating flexibility and cooperation.

Both the experimental task and variables manipulated in these experiments are embedded in a US Congressional context.

This paper aims to identify how integrated marketing communications (IMC) was applied to a major multi-cultural sporting event, the Asian Cup 2015, through event ambassadors integrating the Kliatchko (2008) four-pillars model of IMC.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 people involved with the event, with questions designed to ascertain ways in which the multicultural communication occurred.

The four-pillars model is applicable in this case. Interviews identified that while the cultural and football issues being faced by the organisers introduced many challenges, ambassador communication proved to be an extremely effective process of IMC. The integration of ambassador communications overcame many cultural barriers with respect to language, ticketing and communication, enabling engagement of communication channels.

This research addressed a specific multicultural event in one specific market. While providing insights into how this event managed its IMC programme, investigation into other events is required to identify whether similar results would apply.

The way in which the event incorporated community members into the IMC programme provides a strong opportunity to examine whether this approach could be applied by marketing managers more broadly.

An examination of the IMC conducted in conjunction with a major event has not featured previously, and the original way in which this event conducted its communications highlights aspects that are relevant to marketers in all organisations.

The research examined factors of academic studies as perceived by Jewish and Arab students in Israel, and changes in their implementation of activities in a multicultural context in the field of education, comparing between undergraduates studying for a BA in education and graduate students for MA in education and attending a course titled “Multiculturalism in the Global Era”.

The findings are derived from a questionnaire distributed to Arab and Jewish students (N = 434), studying together in the Faculty of Education of one academic college in Israel. In total, 251 of them were graduate students, and 183 who were undergraduates.

It was found that insofar as the students from either programme acquired knowledge and tools regarding multiculturalism, they reported (1) more positive attitudes regarding the “Other” group and regarding multiculturalism, (2) implementation of a larger number of activities relating to multiculturalism in the field of education, (3) Arab students performed more activities in multicultural contexts and (4) older students performed a larger number of activities in multicultural contexts. The research findings also indicated a direct relation between participation in the course and activities conducted in the field of education. In addition, students' acquiring of knowledge on multiculturalism mediated the relation between participation in the course and implementation of multicultural activities in the field of education.

The research stresses the importance of higher education institutions in promoting knowledge and practice of multiculturalism in Israeli society.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and cosmopolitanism (COS) may affect Asian consumers’ perceptions of out-group countries and their products, doing so by examining similar vs dissimilar countries across countries of origin. Given the strong inter-country rivalries that exist among Asian countries, the authors propose two alternative hypotheses, drawing from social identity theory and realistic group conflict theory.

To test the hypotheses, the authors examine consumer perceptions of both Western countries (dissimilar out-groups) and Asian countries (similar out-groups) within China (Study 1). In addition, the authors investigate how CET and COS affect consumer perceptions of Asian countries in Japan and in non-Asian dissimilar countries, and compare the effects between the two regions (Study 2).

The findings indicate that CET shows greater negative effects on perceptions of a country and its products, when the country is from a similar out-group than when it is from a dissimilar one. On the other hand, COS showed equally strong positive effects among consumers for both similar and dissimilar out-group countries.

The results suggest that Asian consumers feel a sense of intergroup rivalry with other Asian countries, and, as a result, exhibit a greater degree of ethnocentric biases toward these countries and their products than they do toward Western countries and products. Also, the results suggest that COS may transcend national differences and inter-country rivalries in consumer consumption tendencies.

The study examines inter-country similarities as a moderator of CET and COS effects, which has not been extensively researched in the past. In addition, the study discusses the concept of intergroup rivalry among neighboring countries and examines how it affects consumer perceptions of out-group countries and their products in Asia, where strong inter-country rivalries exist.

The purpose of this paper is to bring to light the double edges faced by individuals who have international and multicultural experiences. The implication is that these individuals encounter acculturation challenges, and also gain from their multiculturality. The authors adopt Berry’s (2011) integration and multiculturalism framework to analyze the experiences and challenges that multi-culturals face. This paper suggests ways to glean the silver lining within organizations to help manage and master multicultural experiences in the workplace to benefit both individuals and organizations.

The authors used empirical materials from expatriates who have worked across multiple cultural contexts. Based on these the authors present three examples to illustrate how expatriates and multicultural individuals place themselves in situations where they experience contact and challenges associated with adopting multiple cultures. The authors then analyze these examples to show how the experiences involve psychological-level integration challenges for Multi- and n-culturals.

The three multicultural expatriate examples suggest that individuals with international and multicultural experiences who are successful at managing their experiences develop cognitive and behavioral complexity. However, these individuals also face continuous acculturation including cognitive and ethno-cultural identity conflicts such as, rejection from multiple cultural perspectives because they continually cross-multiple cultural microcosms. Suggestions are presented to help maintain one’s sense of self-worth and minimizing ethno-cultural conflicts.

Notwithstanding the value of analyzing the examples of expatriate acculturation experiences, the limitation to the examples is that it is limited to the experience of three individuals. However, the examples were effective in raising points to discuss relevant challenges and/or the double-edged reality faced by boundary spanners, multi-, and n-culturals.

The paper presents possible ways multi- and n-culturals navigate through their multiculturalism, including suggestions to help individuals who struggle with their multiculturalism through mentoring.

The paper highlights the challenges of acculturation and suggests ways that individuals can overcome these challenges. It further suggests how organizations can take advantage of such individuals by utilizing existing personnel within the organization.

The paper is one of the few that acknowledge multiculturalism is highly challenging even for successful multi-culturals and n-culturals. Currently the literature is scant concerning how individuals can manage and master multicultural experiences in the workplace. The paper suggests a number of useful strategies for individuals and organizations to manage the challenges.

The authors have systematically reviewed 534 corporate social responsibility communication (CSRC) papers, updating the current debate about the ontological and epistemological paradigms that characterize the field, and providing evidence of the interactions between these paradigms and the related methodological choices. The purpose of this paper is to provide theoretical and methodological implications for future research in the CSRC research domain.

The authors used the Scopus database to search for titles, abstracts and related keywords with two queries sets relating to corporate social responsibility (e.g. corporate ethical, corporate environmental, social responsibility, corporate accountability) and CSRC (e.g. reporting, disclosure, dialogue, sensemaking). The authors identified 534 empirical papers (2000–2016), which the authors coded manually to identify the research methods and research designs (Creswell, 2013). The authors then developed an ad hoc dictionary whose keywords relate to the three primary CSRC approaches (instrumental, normative and constitutive). Using the software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, the authors undertook an automated content analysis in order to measure these approaches’ relative popularity and compare the methods employed in empirical research.

The authors found that the instrumental approach, which belongs to the functionalist paradigm, dominates the CSRC literature with its relative weight being constant over time. The normative approach also belongs to the functionalist paradigm, but plays a minor yet enduring role. The constitutive approach belongs to the interpretive paradigm and grew slightly over time, but still remains largely beyond the instrumental approach. In the instrumental approach, many papers report on descriptive empirical analyses. In the constitutive approach, theory-method relationships are in line with the various paradigmatic traits, while the normative approach presents critical issues. Regarding methodology, according to the findings, the literature review underlines three major limitations that characterize the existing empirical evidence and provides avenues for future research. While multi-paradigmatic research is promoted in the CRSC literature (Crane and Glozer, 2016; Morsing, 2017; Schoeneborn and Trittin, 2013), the authors found no empirical evidence.

This is the first paper to systematically review empirical research in the CSRC field and is also the first to address the relationship between research paradigms, theoretical approaches, and methods. Further, the authors suggest a novel way to develop systematic reviews (i.e. via quantitative, automated content analysis), which can now also be applied in other literature streams and in other contexts.

This study aims to propose a novel method based on model learning with sparsity inducing norms for estimating dynamic gravity terms of the serial manipulators. This method is realized by operating the robot, acquiring data and filtering the features in signal acquisition to adapt to the dynamic gravity parameters.

The core principle of the method is to analyze the dictionary composition of the basis function of the model based on the dynamic equation and the Jacobian matrix of an arm. According to the structure of the basis function and the sparsity of the features, combined with joint-angle and driving-torque data acquisition, the effective features of dynamic gravity parameters are screened out using L1-norm optimization and learning algorithms.

The theoretical analysis revealed that training data obtained based on joint angles and driving torques could rapidly update dynamic gravity parameters. The simulation experiment was carried out by using the publicly available robot model and compared with the previous disassembly method to evaluate the feasibility and performance. The real 7-degree of freedom (DOF) industrial manipulator was used to further discuss the effects of the feature selection. The results show that this estimation method can be fully operational and efficient in industrial applications.

This approach is applicable to most serial robots with multi-DOF and the dynamic gravity parameters of the robot are estimated through learning and optimization. The method does not require prior knowledge of the robot arm structure and only requires joint-angle and driving-torque data acquisition under low-speed motion. Furthermore, as it is a data-driven-based method, it can be applied to gravity parameters updating.

Different from previous general robot dynamic modelling methods, the sparsity of the analytical form of dynamic equations was exploited and model learning was formulated as a convex optimization problem to achieve effective gravity parameters screening. The novelty of this estimation approach is that the method does not only require any prior knowledge but also does not require a specifically designed trajectory. Thus, this method can avoid the laborious work of parameter calibration and the induced modelling errors. By using a data-driven learning approach, the new parameter updating process can be completed conveniently when the robot carries additional mass or the end-effector changes for different tasks.

This essay was written in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks by police in 2020 and the surge of social justice protests they helped to reignite.

This essay uses a metaphor that nearly everyone can understand to help build common understanding around the unique impact of police killings of Black people on other Black people.

This essay uses social psychological theory and our experiences as Black Americans and diversity scholars to illustrate why interracial conversations about police killings of Black people may not proceed as intended.

In the wake of growing social justice protests aimed at combating systemic racism in the US, many individuals and organizations are wrestling with determining how people can talk about race. This is uncharted territory for many, as sociological research shows that racioethnic integration has stalled or even regressed in schools, workplaces and social networks in the US This essay seeks to help readers move toward a common understanding to facilitate more empathetic interracial interactions involving Black people in the aftermath of these traumatic experiences.