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The major purpose of this paper is to investigate antecedents, outcomes and processes of business portfolio transformations, including diversifying, refocusing and repositioning portfolio restructurings.

The paper conducts a longitudinal study on the process of business portfolio transformations among the largest 100 European and 100 North American firms during the period of 1998-2010. A newly developed metric is applied that allows a business portfolio transformation to be identified and quantified and process-related research to be conducted.

The study confirms and expands prior literature that postulates that poor performance and over-diversification are key motivations for portfolio restructuring. However, the majority of transformations were not successful, with firm performance further deteriorating in the course of the transformation. The analysis of the transformation process itself reveals that the average transformation took 2.6 years and changed the portfolio composition by 42 per cent. Most transformations are conducted rather continuously over the transformation period and rely heavily on divestitures and acquisitions.

Managers should not to be too optimistic when they consider a major business portfolio restructuring. In particular, diversifying or repositioning transformations have a low success rate, while refocusing transformations are most successful on average. The study of the process of portfolio transformations offers some advice to increase the odds of a successful restructuring.

This longitudinal analysis represents the first study of the process of portfolio transformation by applying a newly developed transformation metric. By uncovering the process characteristics of portfolio transformations among the largest European and North American firms, it provides insights on the occurrence, typical magnitude, duration and order of acquisitions and divestitures of large portfolio transformations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the changes in child protection policy and practice in England over the last 30 years, in particular to critically analyse the nature and impact of the “refocusing” initiative of the mid-1990s.

Policy analysis.

While the period from the mid-1990s until 2008 can be seen to show how policy and practice attempted to build on a number of the central principles of the “refocusing” initiative, the period since 2008 has been very different. Following the huge social reaction to the death of Peter Connelly, policy and practice moved in directions quite contra to the “refocusing” initiative’s aims and aspirations such that we can identify a refocusing of “refocusing”. Such developments were given a major impetus with the election of the Coalition government in 2010 and have been reinforced further following the election of the Conservative government in May 2015.

The paper places the changes in child protection policy and practice in England in their political and economic contexts and makes explicit how the changes impact on the role and responsibilities of professionals, particularly social workers.

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of the work of management accountants in the context of a shared services centre.

A single case study method is used and data are collected via semi-structured interviews and internal documents. The empirical materials are analysed from the theoretical perspective of dirty work, incorporating aspects from practice theory.

Findings suggest that management accountants working in a shared services centre develop their occupational esteem by refocusing and reframing strategies. Through these strategies, management accountants can decrease the perceived “dirtiness” associated with their work.

The study sheds light on the under-researched topic of management accountants’ work within a shared services centre. Moreover, it offers the metaphor of liminal work to characterise how management accountants develop their occupational esteem in circumstances where gaining efficiency is the main objective.

This study investigates the effects of corporate restructuring – scale and scope, on the financial performance and long‐term competitiveness during the 1980s in a data set of 107 manufacturing firms. Hypotheses were tested using Ordinary‐leastsquare (OLS) Regression model. Overall, this study found that: (1) corporate restructuring scope is inversely associated with firms’ performance, as expected; (2) the effects of restructuring scope on changes in competitiveness offer partial support for our hypotheses; (3) there was no support for the hypothesized relationships between restructuring scale and performance, and between restructuring scale and changes in competitiveness. Implications for future research in corporate restructuring are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to study the rhetoric of goodwill impairment, more specifically rhetoric, as it is constructed in the form of accounts (i.e. statements that explain unanticipated or untoward behavior). The authors argue that goodwill impairment is not only a technical matter but also a rhetorical practice by means of which external scrutiny is responded to.

The data corpus consists of explanations provided by corporations regarding impairment of goodwill. Data were collected from annual reports from companies quoted on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm, Sweden. The impairment explanations were analyzed according to a taxonomy of account types. The explanations were subjected to close reading to discern the potential rhetorical functions of the different accounts.

Seven account types are identified and discussed, namely, excuse, justification, refocusing, concession, mystification, silence and wordification.

There is a need for further research that explores the process of authorship (i.e. writing, editing, negotiating and revising) through which the texts of financial communication are produced.

The findings have implications for the future formulations of standards regarding qualitative explanations in financial reporting in general and explanations of goodwill impairment in particular.

The paper contributes to the knowledge about the use of natural language and rhetoric in financial communication.

There are many opportunities for corporations to reinvigorate their profitability through a refocusing of their strategies, reorganization of their managerial and supervisory structures, or divestiture. This article discusses how to assess the need for such restructurings and how to determine the best course of action for increasing future corporate profitability.

This paper aims to assess the psychological impact of home confinement in Tunisian medical students and analyze the relationship between psychopathology and cognitive emotion regulation strategies.

In total, 251 medical students who have been in home confinement accepted to participate in an online questionnaire survey. They completed depression, anxiety and stress scale, beck hopelessness scale and cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire.

Moderate to extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress were reported by 57.4%, 51.0% and 31.4% of medical students, respectively. Based on the cut-off value of nine, 31.1% of the participants showed high levels of hopelessness. Hierarchical regression analysis identified four cognitive emotion regulation strategies as significant independent contributors to psychopathology above and beyond home confinement related variables. Self-blame positively predicted stress. Catastrophizing positively predicted anxiety and hopelessness. Refocusing on planning negatively predicted anxiety. Positive reappraisal negatively predicted hopelessness.

Cognitive emotion regulation strategies may constitute a valuable target of preventive and interventional measures to improve medical students’ mental health.

A unique feature of this study is the demonstration of the important role played by cognitive emotion regulation strategies in predicting anxiety, stress and hopelessness in medical students. In the context of mandatory home confinement, these cognitive strategies were significant predictors of psychopathology above and beyond home confinement related variables.

This paper aims to examine the moderating role of positive and negative strategies of emotion regulation on the relationship between risk aversion and brand sensitivity.

By conducting a survey, this study has collected a total of 405 responses and the data have been examined with structural equation modeling.

The study has demonstrated that some strategies of emotion regulation have a significant moderating effect, and they can down-regulate the effect of risk aversion on brand sensitivity. These strategies are positive refocusing, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, acceptance and rumination.

Future studies should consider a broader range of respondents to validate the results. Moreover, the role of emotion regulation in the relationships among repurchase intention, customer loyalty and customer compliant could be examined. Further research could also focus on the relationship between risk aversion and brand sensitivity with regard to different types of buying situations and consumers’ types.

The findings demonstrate a substantial implication regarding emotion regulation and brand management. Positive strategies of emotion regulation make risk-averse people less likely to pay attention to brands and lead them to be less brand-sensitive. New companies and businesses could use these findings to make consumers regulate their emotions positively.

This research provides novel findings about the influence of consumers’ emotion regulation on brand sensitivity. People who use positive strategies of emotion regulation tend to dampen the effect of their risk aversion on brand sensitivity and will become less sensitive to the brand.