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Research demonstrates that individuals display relative thinking – the tendency to consider relative savings rather than just absolute savings in their decisions to search for a deal or purchase an item. This paper aims to review empirical and analytical literature on relative thinking, perceived search costs and price savings to propose and test a conceptual model of relative thinking.

Through two studies, the paper tests whether individuals display relative thinking when shopping across stores vs online and how they perceive search and time spent in pursuing savings. Both studies are adaptations of the classic jacket-and-calculator scenario study (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981).

Results show attenuation of the robust relative thinking phenomenon over the internet compared to shopping across stores. Individuals exhibit increased price sensitivity for both low and high relative savings conditions on the internet but demonstrate price sensitivity only in the high relative savings condition in the store shopping contexts. Diagnostic measures pertaining to the attractiveness of savings and the perceptions of search costs corroborate the support for relative thinking across stores but not over the internet.

These results lend weight to the central claim in this paper that the internet marks a new boundary condition for the relative thinking phenomenon in marketing literature. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings, the limitations of the studies and future research opportunities are discussed.

Women’s understanding of familial aspects of breast cancer was examined using both focus groups and interviews. The studies covered issues related to perceptions of breast cancer risk factors, perceived breast cancer risk, understanding of risk information, and family history of breast cancer as a risk factor. Study 1 consisted of four focus group discussions with women from the general community. Study 2 comprised ten face‐to‐face interviews with women who had a family history of breast cancer. The results in combination indicate a fairly high level of awareness of family history as a risk factor for breast cancer. However, the definition of a familial history of breast cancer differed between the groups, with those without a family history being more inclusive than those with such a history. The paper concludes with suggestions for use by those developing resources materials for those with a familial history of breast cancer.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the competency models used by organizations to assess the strategic thinking ability of their leaders, managers, and other employees.

A basic interpretive study was conducted with human resource executives across a broad range of large organizations. Participants were interviewed, and competency models in use were shared, reviewed, and discussed. The model development process was also explored in depth. Findings were verified via member checks and triangulation.

Models in use either identify strategic thinking as a stand-alone competency, or embed it under three different areas. Most cover one or more executive levels, stating varying expectations for strategic thinking by job title or level, or differentiating strategic thinking performance levels. The models include descriptions of strategic thinking behaviors that cross seven categories of strategy development, implementation, and organizational alignment.

The study provides indications of potential generalizations that should be considered with more organizations across sectors.

The findings provide practitioners with format and content examples to enhance the assessment of strategic thinking in existing competency models, as well as process considerations for model development/revision. The findings also identify how competency model components are used across the spectrum of talent management activities.

The study fills a gap in the literature by providing empirically based identification of the strategic thinking behaviors organizations consider essential competencies and how they are assessed. In so doing, the study provides a glimpse of how strategic thinking is used in practice and across a range of strategic management activities. In addition, the study links strategic thinking to the competency development literature, illustrating details of competency model development for strategic thinking, and identifying opportunities for related theory development in both domains.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to make the case for the value of fostering collaborative sensemaking in responding to literature. Drawing on examples of classroom interactions in 6th-, 8th-, 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms, it proposes methods for teachers to foster collaborative sensemaking.

Drawing on theories of “participatory sensemaking” (Fuchs and De Jaegher, 2009), transactional literary response (Rosenblatt, 1994) and “comprehension-as-sensemaking” pedagogy (Aukerman, 2013), this paper conceptualizes collaborative sensemaking to illustrate how teachers foster making sense of texts through sharing responses based on lived-world experiences, understanding the use of literary techniques and understanding events in students’ own lives.

Given that this is not an empirical study, there are no findings. The discussion of students’ sensemaking practices in responding to classroom texts, suggests the importance of teachers creating open-ended response events in which students collaboratively support each other in making sense of characters’ actions and events, as opposed to having to conform to teachers’ predetermined agendas.

Analysis of the classroom discussions suggests the importance of building students’ trust in the process of sensemaking itself, fostering adoption of alternative perspectives as central to sensemaking and using activities for students’ translating or rewriting events in texts to co-create texts with authors.

This paper explores the importance of teachers engaging students in open-ended, sensemaking response events based on attending to “in-between,” dialogic meanings through sharing emotions, alternative perspectives and related experiences to enhance students’ engagement in responding to literature.

Owing to the wave of consumers concern about food quality, the organic food market has grown rapidly. However, how organic food promotions outweigh the negative impacts of high prices has become a pressing issue scholars need to discuss. Hence, with the value perspective as the basis, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to understand whether or not organic food consumers have preferences for specific promotional programs as opposed to other promotional programs.

The two-stage study design was adopted to explore these issues. In the first stage, 225 copies of promotional program documents were collected, and middle-ranking and high-ranking supervisors from seven organic food distributors were interviewed. According to the value perspective, the promotional programs were divided into four types: discount category, member category, free giveaway category, and limited time offer category, which were used to develop the questionnaire questions. In the second stage, 1,017 copies of valid questionnaires were recovered.

The logistic regression analysis was adopted to discuss the impact of the various promotional program actions on consumers’ choices. The empirical results indicate that the consumers preferred the programs in the discount category and the free giveaway category, while the programs in the member category and limited time offer category reduced the purchase intention.

The stringent qualitative and quantitative design in this study shall serve as a reference for follow-up research. The important implications of the operators’ promotion practices are covered in the discussion.

This paper presents an approach for performing knowledge discovery in texts through qualitative and quantitative analyses of high‐level textual characteristics. Instead of applying mining techniques on attribute values, terms or keywords extracted from texts, the discovery process works over conceptss identified in texts. Concepts represent real world events and objects, and they help the user to understand ideas, trends, thoughts, opinions and intentions present in texts. The approach combines a quasi‐automatic categorisation task (for qualitative analysis) with a mining process (for quantitative analysis). The goal is to find new and useful knowledge inside a textual collection through the use of mining techniques applied over concepts (representing text content). In this paper, an application of the approach to medical records of a psychiatric hospital is presented. The approach helps physicians to extract knowledge about patients and diseases. This knowledge may be used for epidemiological studies, for training professionals and it may be also used to support physicians to diagnose and evaluate diseases.

Integrating conceptual perspectives from social exclusion, thinking style and context effects, this study aims to examine how different types of social exclusion influence attraction and compromise effects.

Eight studies were conducted. To establish the causal relationship between social exclusion types and context effects, this study uses experimental designs in all studies.

The attraction effect is stronger when consumers feel rejected than ignored, whereas the compromise effect is stronger when they feel ignored than rejected. Consumers who feel rejected increase their propensity to think holistically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for asymmetrically dominant options. Conversely, those who feel ignored increase their propensity to think analytically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for compromise options.

The findings show that consumer preferences for one option over the other alternatives in choice contexts are susceptible to subtle differences in the manner that exclusion is communicated. The studies are limited to recall tasks and scenarios that previous research has shown to be effective. Future research may use actual exclusion to corroborate this study’s findings.

Marketing practitioners may benefit from this study’s findings when it comes to an increase in the relative share of their target brand against their competitor brands by introducing a third option.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to provide evidence that exclusion communicated in an explicit manner produces the attraction effect, whereas exclusion communicated in an implicit manner produces the compromise effect. Given that threatening situations often influence individuals’ preferences and choices, how social exclusion shapes cognitive processes is an empirical question worthy of investigation.

This paper aims to review the history of critical thinking as a seminal and foundational skill for small groups. The paper shows that much of the team research focuses on the elementary functions of decision‐making processes, task fulfilment, and project management. Virtual teaming research adds some of the complexities introduced by working in and between cultures, across time zones and related difficulties in coordination and meaning‐making activities for the virtual team.

The paper seeks to review the definitions of critical thinking, and review the literature relative to small group activities and the impacts and requirements of critical thinking for effective team functioning. The notion of reflective journaling is introduced as a way in which to introduce improved critical thinking into the organization at the level of the individual for performance organizational performance.

The paper finds that critical thinking within teams will improve organizational performance. It will also enhance any training and development initiatives. The topic is introduced as an information analysis of the field of critical thinking, and its impact on individuals working in teams. Authorial content is presented which can become the elements of a critical thinking checklist for team practitioners in the organization to enhance critical thinking at the individual, organization and societal levels.

In this paper useful ideas for established or “to be established” teams and improving performance are shown.

Looks at the impact John Maynard Keynes and the movement (Keynesian) he started had on the theory and practice of economics in the 1930s and onwards. Identifies respective problems about capitalism and discusses them in depth. States that the monetary and fiscal policies recommended by Keynes have helped the West escape severe social consequences in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Goes on to show how economists after Keynes carried his work forward and upward in the 1940s and 1950s. Closes by stating there is a further, third revolution in economic thinking on the rise.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a classroom assessment aimed at determining the extent to which five key sustainability competencies develop in students during an introductory transdisciplinary sustainability course. University sustainability programs intend to provide integrated education that fosters the key competencies students need to solve real-world sustainability problems. Translating sustainability competencies into effective pedagogical practice in integrated academic programs is not straightforward. This work builds on a previous study by both expanding the competencies evaluated and considering additional demographic characteristics.

The paper summarizes previously identified key sustainability competencies and describes teaching methodologies used to foster these competencies in students. Development of competencies in students during a semester-long course is assessed using a pre-/post-test based on two case studies. The implications of the findings for teaching practice and overall program structure are discussed.

Based on the assessment methods used here, four of the five sustainability competencies evaluated in this study developed differently in students according to gender, disciplinary affiliation and age. Females improved interpersonal competence more than males. Systems thinking competence improved for students associated with the three disciplinary affiliations considered in this study: sustainability major, sustainability minor and business major. Anticipatory competence improved for sustainability and business majors only, but not for students minoring in sustainability and majoring in other disciplines. Finally, normative competence improved for younger students only.

Insights for teaching practice and overall program structure are based on assessment of one introductory transdisciplinary sustainability course. Much additional work is needed to draw strong conclusions about general teaching practices and program structure for sustainability education. This study provides a flexible and field-tested rubric for further evaluative work in other sustainability courses or degree programs.

Universities incorporate sustainability into their undergraduate curricula in many ways, ranging from certificates to entire degree programs focused on sustainability. The results of this study suggest that educators pay attention to gender diversity, classroom teaching practices, disciplinary perspectives and student attitudes and developmental stages as they figure out how to make sustainability part of undergraduate education. This information may help create more effective sustainability courses and academic programs, which may maintain the viability of current sustainability programs and promote the institutionalization of sustainability in higher education.

This research contributes to undergraduate sustainability education by providing insight into how sustainability education might thoughtfully be integrated into academic programs. It also offers an assessment approach for use by other sustainability educators to evaluate effectiveness of teaching practice and overall program structure based on five key sustainability competencies commonly cited in the literature.