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This paper aims to give readers some ideas about how to create a motivating work environment. A motivating environment will lead to increased productivity ad reduced turnover.

Regina Clark speaks at association conferences and corporate meetings throughout the year. The ideas found in this article were communicated by audience members or were a result of experiences that Regina had as a management consultant.

There are many practical applications cited in the article. All of the ideas have been implemented.

This paper aims to share best practices.

Little is known about the comparative effectiveness of official sports event sponsorship, sports team sponsorship and ambush marketing (AM). The purpose of this paper is therefore to examine and compare the effectiveness of those three types of sports event-related marketing.

This research draws on a field experiment analyzing the effects the three types of sports event-related marketing during the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2014. To test the proposed main effects, the authors conducted a field experiment in two product categories (airlines and beer) testing for differences in brand attitude, customer-based brand equity and word-of-mouth (WOM), and testing moderating effects of advertisement creativity and sponsorship recognition.

Drawing on a field-experimental study on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup 2014, this research shows that team sponsorship has a stronger positive effect on consumers’ attitudes than AM and event sponsorship. Brand attitude emerges as a central mediator of the sponsorship effect on WOM and customer-based brand equity. The authors find, surprisingly, that sponsorship recognition does not significantly moderate the relationship between sponsorship and customer attitudes, whereas advertisement creativity even weakens the positive effect of sponsorship on brand attitude, WOM and customer-based brand equity.

Consumers do not seem to form their brand attitude on the fact whether they recognize the particular brand as a sponsor or ambushing brand. This can be attributed to the theory of moralistic fallacy, which describes the phenomenon that makes individuals ignore the existence of something they perceive immoral, explaining the similar effectiveness of both.

This research contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it tests a causal model that examines brand attitude, customer-based brand equity and WOM -intentions as outcome variables of AM effectiveness. This goes far beyond the proxy-measure of “sponsorship awareness,” which previous studies used in order to quantify AM effectiveness. Second, taking into account and comparing the specific effects of event sponsorship, team sponsorship and AM, the study broadens the knowledge about the effectiveness of alternative sports event-related marketing approaches. Third, previous studies advised event sponsors to design humorous and creative advertisements to defend themselves against ambush marketers and beat them at their own game, which is tested by including ad creativity as a moderating variable.

Southeast Asia (SEA) is a region highly susceptible to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis, though the region has been underrepresented in disaster mental health research. This chapter addresses risk factors for SEA, including its disaster-prone location, the psychological toll of frequent disasters, and stigma and shame and lack of psychoeducation about psychological help-seeking. Collectivism, strong family ties, and religious faith are among SEA’s resilience factors. Culture should be heavily accounted for in mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), considering the wide array of cultural differences in spirituality, affect and expression, power distance, and gender and masculinity in SEA. Because culture affects treatment satisfaction, treatment engagement, and treatment outcomes, future research should explore how aspects of SEA culture impact accessibility and engagement in MHPSS.

Information management practice falls under various themes: vision and policy, change implementation, alignment of strategies to information technology (IT), business process re‐engineering, the review of new systems and IT infrastructure. It has been found from exploratory case studies in the construction industry that the current management of information is characterized by systems in which: (1) information exchange between project parties is limited to paper, a medium in which retrieval is very slow and inefficient; (2) functional departments maintain their own data structured to suit their particular needs; (3) most information searching and transfer between project parties and clients are paper based, providing constant source of delays; (4) no efficient interfaces exist between departmental systems to access information electronically;and (5) the impact of IT investment to date has been limited. These characteristics can be first traced to the general lack of coherent management policy and vision on information management. Also, although construction is a distinctly collaborative business environment, for historical, cultural and legal reasons, there is no desire to consider seriously the use of collaborative IT tools. Thirdly, although there is a degree of knowledge of business process evaluation and improvement techniques such as business process re‐engineering (BPR), it appears there is less confidence for management to adopt such tools in its drive to solve information management problems. Finally, the lack of progress in adopting IT to widely improve communication is related to the fact that until now stand‐alone departmental systems have been the norm. Above all, the culture of the industry dictates that each function maintains total independence in all aspects including information retrieval and exchange. The result is that experience of implementing corporate IT systems is lacking and it is clearly affecting the ability to examine the potential of emerging IT or appraise current infrastructure.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

Although our society has made college more universal through vastly increased access to postsecondary education, college completion has stagnated, and the return on a college degree varies by field of study. Therefore, gaining admission to college – even a four-year college – is no longer a guaranteed ticket to social mobility. As colleges and universities attract and enroll more diverse populations of students, the barriers to student success once enrolled remain prominent concerns. To explore stratification processes regarding student success, choice of major, and completion, interviews were conducted with 41 low-income students at a large research university. These interviews illustrate the ways that students’ aspirations are lowered after entering college and how the cooling-out process functions within STEM majors. The primary catalyst facilitating the lowering of student aspirations and migration out of STEM majors was negative experiences in introductory math and science courses. Students responded to this catalyst by either lowering their aspirations or changing their behavior to improve performance in those courses. Students who were able to persist in STEM majors had a family member or mentor who helped them to frame the problem as a reflection of their behavior, not their innate ability, and to strategize behavioral changes. Institutional agents played both the role of support which helped some students maintain their aspirations and the role of steering students out of STEM illustrating the importance of the messages we send as advisors, student affairs professionals, or faculty. These findings demonstrate the ways in which the cooling-out process works in four-year institutions to perpetuate structures of opportunity within degree attainment and access to elite careers.