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Reviews a case study of three New Zealand banks that argues for a correlation between employees' commitment to the CRM initiative and the positive outcomes of a bank's performance.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is featuring in more and more business strategies as a catalyst for change. Aimed at improving relationships with the end user, CRM projects tend to involve sales, marketing and technology teams and come with the expectation that internal processes will change. But though the numbers of executives interested in such projects has rocketed since the 1990s, the number of them who manage CRM implementation effectively is considerably less. For while every effort to predict strategic and procedural change is made, the effect of CRM on the individual member staff is frequently overlooked. This is often a fatal oversight.

Makes claims about the effect of investment in change management in CRM and points out opportunity for further study.

Gives insight into an under‐researched area of CRM.

Although organizational change is inevitable with customer relationship management (CRM) implementation, very little is known about how this change affect employees, and how their actions in turn influence the success of CRM projects. The purpose of this study is to address this void in the current CRM literature.

Using an exploratory approach, 13 in‐depth interviews were conducted with bank managers and staff of three banks to provide preliminary support for the conceptual framework.

The three banks approached their CRM projects with very different results. Two banks achieved less success from their CRM implementation as a result of too little focus being placed on managing CRM‐induced change and people. Only one bank focused a large part of its CRM budget on change management and the organizational factors critical to the implementation. Results demonstrate a possible correlation between employees' commitment to the CRM initiative and the positive outcomes of a bank's performance.

This paper lays down the foundation for more thorough studies on employees' affective commitment to change in the CRM context. Empirical research will be needed to verify the conceptual model presented.

The importance of identifying and securing employees' affective commitment to CRM‐induced change to ensure the successful roll out of a CRM implementation is highlighted.

Initial evidence is gained of the importance of employee commitment to CRM induced change for successful CRM implementation. A total of six organizational drivers are identified which assist in gaining employee commitment to CRM induced change.

Using Japan REITs stock data, this paper examines the risk‐return relations conditional on up and down markets periods. The results show that beta is significantly and positively (negatively) related to realized returns in up (down) markets before and after controlling for extra risk factors. The same conditional results are found for unsystematic risk and total risk, providing evidence that investors do not hold well‐diversified portfolios. Though skewness is significantly priced, the coefficients are unexpectedly positive (negative) in up (down) markets, indicating that investors dislike positively skewed portfolios and would ask for compensation if they are required to hold them during up markets. One possible reason is that the investors have a poor concept of skewness and/or they are too aggressive during bullish markets and so they ignore the benefit of positive skewness. Subsidiary results highlight that there is no seasonal effect in the conditional relation between beta/unsystematic risk/total risk/skewness and returns. This study is the first comprehensive study of the risk‐return relations in Japan REITs market, which provides out‐of‐sample evidence relative to earlier tests on Asian and international stock markets. The findings give important insights and provide useful guidance on investing in Japan REITs market.

This chapter seeks to place the Paris agreement on anthropogenic greenhouse gases (COP21) in a wider picture on how the global solar photovoltaic (PV) market has been created and shaped over decades. The chapter discusses the role of solar PV actors, as well as other actors in the market-shaping process. The aim is to show how the COP21 can be interpreted in a wider historical perspective.

The chapter builds on expert interviews conducted after the COP21, as well as secondary data on historical studies on evolution of solar energy markets in various countries.

Although scientists and entrepreneurs have been important in creating and shaping the global solar PV market, it is noted that other actors have also had an influence on the market development. Particularly, politicians are seen as playing a crucial role through legislation and funding. Unfortunately for the solar PV market, support has fluctuated over time. The COP21 provides a clear pathway for positive support, and it is expected to bind governments for pro-solar politics even during low prices of fossil fuels and economic downturn.

The chapter provides an overview of what has happened in the history of global solar PV market. It gives reasoning as to why the COP21 is important in securing support for the solar PV market. Thus, it can provide reasoning as to why the COP21 can make a difference.

This is the first academic study that portrays the COP21 against historical evolution of the global solar PV market.

The papers in this issue were given at the 25th Annual Conference, held at Bristol University from 22nd to 25th September, 1950. Some 230 delegates from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and Europe were welcomed to dinner on Friday evening by Sir Philip Morris, C.B.E., M.A., Vice‐Chancellor of the University, and Lady Morris. No papers were given on Friday evening, Mr. J. E. Wright arranging an informal dance after dinner.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Technological advances and new business models have contributed to the usage of self-service technology (SST) by firms. As SST continues to create organizational efficiencies, firms have jumped on the bandwagon without considering their own readiness to use SST. To date, there has been no systematic attempt to develop a valid scale of firm SST readiness and assess its influence on firm performance. The purpose of this paper is to present and validate a multidimensional firm SST readiness scale.

A series of studies was conducted for the development and validation of the firm SST readiness scale. Study 1 included generating items from semi-structured interviews with managers and an extensive literature review. Study 2 comprised item reduction and identifying the dimensionality of the scale through exploratory factor analysis (n=177 participants from service organizations). The reliability and validity of the scale were tested in Study 3 by performing confirmatory factor analysis using data obtained from managers of service organizations in the USA (n=257). Study 4 measured the predictive validity of the firm SST readiness instrument using several structural models.

This paper proposes a new multidimensional construct labelled “firm SST readiness”, consisting of four dimensions: managerial acquiescence, customer alignment, employee engagement, and channel integration. The predictive validity of the new scale on two key firm outcome variables: customer value and firm performance is also demonstrated.

This is the first study to provide a comprehensive, psychometrically sound, and operationally valid measure of firm SST readiness.

The objective was to evaluate the effect of banana peel into cake (a bakery product that may add bananas) and panettone (a product that never is added to bananas) formulations on consumers' acceptance and perceived attributes and the effect on the technological properties of the product.

Bakery products were produced with banana peel in the formulation and control samples without residue. Volunteers scored their acceptance and checked all attributes applied to the four samples in the blind and informed tests. The texture, color, proximate composition and bake properties were measured.

The acceptance of both cakes, with and without banana peel, was not affected when consumers were informed that there was a residue in both cakes. Relative risk indicated that information had no influence on acceptance. Panettone with banana pulp showed a reduction in acceptance when volunteers were informed of the presence of banana peel. Risk analysis showed a significant relative risk of product rejection when consumers were aware of information. The addition of banana peel enhanced panettone chewiness and crumb hardness, reduced bake loss of cakes, reduced the volume of both products and changed some color parameters of both products.

Banana peel is a source of functional compounds, but it is not clear how consumers react when informed that the food presents it.

Advances in Econometrics is a series of research volumes first published in 1982 by JAI Press. The authors present an update to the history of the Advances in Econometrics series. The initial history, published in 2012 for the 30th Anniversary Volume, describes key events in the history of the series and provides information about key authors and contributors to Advances in Econometrics. The authors update the original history and discuss significant changes that have occurred since 2012. These changes include the addition of five new Senior Co-Editors, seven new AIE Fellows, an expansion of the AIE conferences throughout the United States and abroad, and the increase in the number of citations for the series from 7,473 in 2012 to over 25,000 by 2022.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model of engagement, appropriated from social media marketing, as a sense-making framework to understand engagement as a measurable process through the development of engagement profiles. To explore its potential application to education the paper follows previous work with Personalised Learning strategies to place emphasis on the promotion of the learner voice – their ability to influence decisions affecting them and their community.

This paper will position engagement as a sociocultural process and adopt an Activity Theory based methodology demonstrated through a desk analysis of VLE data from a further education college.

The analysis suggests that the approach can yield insights that may be elusive in traditional measures reinforcing the overall conceptual proposal for a multi-method approach to profiling learner engagement.

The paper has focused on presentation and exploration of the conceptual approach, which has limited the scope to broaden the discussion of the desk analysis and wider findings that this approach reveals.

It is intended that the approach offers a generalizable model that can be adopted by institutions planning to measure engagement or develop learner activity profiles. Several areas of immediate potential are identified throughout the paper.

This paper contributes a multi-method approach to engagement as argued for in recent engagement literature. This should offer institutions a way to realise value from emerging ideas within related domains of Learning Design and Learning Analytics.