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During the 1990s, the rate of consolidation among agricultural cooperatives, including mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and joint ventures, increased significantly. While post‐merger performance has been examined extensively for investor‐owned firms, this has not been the case for agricultural cooperatives, primarily because these firms do not have an explicit profit motive or publicly traded stock. Results from a two‐stage econometric model reveal that a major motivation for cooperatives to engage in these activities is to circumvent capital constraints. Furthermore, the decision to merge and financial performance are jointly endogenous, with profitability positively influenced and sales growth negatively influenced by the likelihood of merger.

Proposes a general rationale for acting cautiously when marketing to children, and indicates some possibly inappropriate managerial attitudes: for instance that minors are basically small adults, that parents rather than companies should protect children in the marketplace, that all marketing is directed at adults, that certain practice are acceptable because they were done in the past, that managers were once children, and that the company’s practices must be acceptable if they are legal. Suggests ways that companies can remedy this: appoint an ethics officer and take ethics training seriously, avoid dubious products and marketing that support premature maturation and the end of childhood, accept an “in loco parentis” role with regard to children, and remain alert to new threats.

FOREWORD COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS and data leads to dross‐pollination in research, which can be as important as the bench work itself. Channels of communication are now highly developed and the growth of specialized symposia and conferences points to the continuing development of this important aspect of research. Those who move about meetings regularly can acquire a balanced understanding of what is going on in the many corners where research is being prosecuted. Those who make a habit of combing, methodically, the technical press can also arrive at some idea of the direction and speed of the currents flowing through a particular subject. There are, however, many technical men who find themselves too busy in their management sphere to keep abreast with either meetings or the scientific journals.

Tasks in automated manufacturing and assembly increasingly involve robot operations guided by vision systems. The traditional “look‐and‐move” approach to linking machine vision systems and robot manipulators which is generally used in these operations relies heavily on accurate camera to real‐world calibration processes and on highly accurate robot arms with well‐known kinematics. As a consequence, the cost of robot automation has not been justifiable in many applications. This article describes a novel real‐time vision control strategy giving “eye‐to‐hand co‐ordination” which offers good performance even in the presence of significant vision system miscalibrations and kinematic model parametric errors. This strategy offers the potential for low cost vision‐guided robots.

Concerns about underage drinking have led to calls for a UK ban on alcohol sponsorship of sport. Such a ban would have severe financial consequences for many sports, so should not be implemented without thorough consideration of its likely effectiveness. This study investigating the alcohol consumption intentions of 14 and 15 year olds showed that boys who were involved in sport were more likely both to drink alcohol and to get drunk, with awareness of sponsorship enhancing the likelihood of these behaviours. Girls involved in sport, however, showed more negative attitudes than their peers towards alcohol. It is argued that boys involved in sport are socialised into a traditional masculine alcohol and sports culture, which is reinforced by sponsorship. Evidence from studies on tobacco sponsorship suggests that health-related marketing communications and the use of low-alcohol or non-alcohol brands for sports sponsorship could be more effective than a ban in changing the culture.

Literature is replete with studies indicating the need to develop students’ language skills; however, little research has emphasized the importance of language proficiency in enhancing learning or performance in specific content-area courses. This study investigates whether a student’s English language proficiency can be associated with her performance in specific cognitive skills (knowledge, comprehension, application, and analysis) in an introductory accounting course. Data is summarized from students’ performance on their first financial accounting examination as well as from students’ academic history records as maintained by the university. A correlation analysis of the cognitive skills score with student language proficiency is used to identify initial relationships; and multiple regression analysis is subsequently used to identify interrelations between combined multiple dependent variables and the language proficiency variables. While the results show no association between TOEFL and overall performance, the mean of the English composition courses do show a significant association with knowledge and comprehension cognitive skills scores on the first financial accounting course. No associations are attached to the application and analysis cognitive skills. The results are meaningful to faculty in balancing language proficiency with quality instruction in content-area courses.

This study aims to assess the relationship between managerial entrenchment and the chance of fraud in financial statements, which are the only available source for shareholders’ decisions, so their accuracy and reliability are of great importance. Hence, the realization of contributing factors to preventing financial information distortion is vital. Moreover, managerial entrenchment on the chance of fraud in the company’s upcoming years has also been analyzed.

The factor analysis of five variables [chief executive officer (CEO) duality, managerial ownership, board independence, board compensation and CEO tenure] is used for management entrenchment. To examine the hypothesis testing, multivariate regressions, feasible general least squares regression and Logit model regression are used. The statistical sample under study in this paper includes 1,122 year-company observations during 2013–2018 and Beneish’s (1999) model is used for evaluating fraud.

The study results show a negative and significant relationship between management entrenchment and the chance of fraud in financial statements. That means managers with a higher degree of managerial entrenchment are more likely to create value and acquire wealth for the firm, and that causes them not to waste and waste the firm resources through enhancing the supervisory mechanisms. Moreover, the study results also show that improving and strengthening management entrenchment will lower the upcoming years’ fraud condition.

The current paper is the first time that the relationship between managerial entrenchment and financial statement fraud is assessed within a study. The results of the paper help the beneficiaries and shareholders realize different aspects of management entrenchment. That means managers’ power and authority can be used to make shareholders’ interests, but they can hinder misuse and fraud.

Using the National Football League (NFL) concussion crisis context, the purpose of this paper is to provide sports marketers with a strategic approach to sports crisis management through consideration of crisis media coverage and organizational reputation.

An online experiment assessed the impact of two crisis response strategies, fan involvement and exposure to crisis media coverage on emotional response, corporate message credibility, crisis perception and perceived corporate reputation.

The accident response strategy was associated with more favorable perceptions of the NFL and corporate message credibility. Sports fan involvement facilitated more favorable perceptions of the NFL’s reputation, while exposure to media coverage of the NFL’s crisis created negative perceptions of the NFL’s reputation. Exposure to media coverage of the NFL concussion crisis increased feelings of anger, which in turn decreased perceptions of corporate message credibility.

A limitation for this study is the specific crisis scenario that was used. The NFL concussion crisis is different from other crisis types in that it does not directly impact the audience’s well-being, but instead affects their perceptions of an iconic institution.

In light of study findings, it is suggested that sports marketers consider the following when dealing with crises: carefully determine proper framing methods when crafting a crisis response as different response types affect consumers in different ways; leverage public relations (PR) practices by engaging in media monitoring to inform an appropriate crisis response to control the narrative; and examine forces exernal of the organization that influence consumer emotions, paying special attention to feelings of anger as anger negatively impacts consumer perceptions of corporate credibility.

This paper addresses sports crisis strategy from both marketing and public relations perspectives. It describes how strategic efforts protect a sports organization’s reputation, thus increasing marketing effectiveness.

This paper aims to study a power management circuit for a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester. It presents how to accumulate energy and provide regulated DC voltage for practical applications.

Energy storage and extraction circuit are proposed. While the storage stage consists of a full wave rectifier and a storage capacitor, the extraction stage includes a voltage comparator and regulator, which may provide the load steady DC voltage when the voltage of the storage capacitor is higher than the threshold.

The numerical analysis and experimental results indicate that it takes a longer time to charge to a specified voltage for the greater storage capacitor and the net charge flowing into the storage capacitor during each period decreases when the voltage of the storage capacitor is higher. The higher threshold voltage of the capacitor has lower harvesting efficiency owing to the rate of charging of the storage capacitor slowing down over time.

Because of the chosen research method, the power management circuit is only suitable for the piezoelectric vibration energy harvester under resonant conditions.

This study includes practically useful applications for users to build a power management circuit for piezoelectric energy harvester.

This study presents results that the charging efficiency of the storage circuit is relative to the storage capacitor and the threshold voltage.