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The purpose of this paper is to describe the volume and quality of information and communication channel use at various stages of the malt barley value chain (MBVC) in Ethiopia and to investigate how metrics of these variables influence the extent of integration of the chain.

The study is based on survey data collected from 320 farmers and 100 traders and interview responses compiled from 76 respondents. Descriptive statistics and ordered logistic regression were used for data analysis.

The descriptive statistics show a lower volume and poor quality of information is being shared at farmer-trader interface and that value chain integration (VCI) is weak at all studied interfaces. Results of ordered logistic regression show that information volume and quality positively influence VCI, whereas a positive relationship between channel use and VCI was found only at farm level interfaces. Evidences found suggested that inconsistent information systems, lack of information sharing plans, low level of members’ awareness about the value of information, and lack of trust to share information were factors that inhibited information sharing in the MBVC.

The study offers pioneering evidence of the relative role of information volume and quality and channel use as factors that influence the extent of integration of the value chain.

Relational aspects between actors in a chain have been found to influence innovation capacity. Yet, many studies focus rather on groups of chain members, without investigating personalized links between the chain members. Other research involved case‐studies on a limited number of individual chains. The purpose of this paper is to examine quantitatively how the perceived relationship quality among three relational linked chain members affects the innovation capacity in traditional food chains beyond the dyad.

Evidence is drawn from a survey of 90 triplets of firms (three interlinked chain members), with each triplet belonging to a single individual traditional food chain. Research was conducted in three European countries and six traditional food product categories. Heterogeneity across these chains is examined based on cluster analysis. Binary logistic regression is used to examine the influence of relationship quality on the innovation capacity in the chains.

Three distinct clusters are identified and interpreted as reflecting three levels of innovation capacity: high, medium, and low. Relationship quality is defined through characteristics such as trust, social satisfaction, non‐coercive power, and reputation. Results suggest that the characteristics of the chain relationship quality may be important factors for the improvement of the innovation capacity in chains.

As chain relationship quality fosters sharing of resources necessary for innovation as well as the distribution of incentives, these results further strengthen the emerging conclusion from the literature that innovation can be catalyzed by collaboration strategies and building strong relationships.

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on widening the supply chain approach from dyads to triads, as it is argued that a dyad of firms is intensively influenced by the network they are imbedded in. In this case, the paper explores the influence of the relationship quality among the food manufacturer and its main supplier and customer (and vice versa) on the innovation capacity of the whole chain.

The past decade has witnessed a trend toward unbundling of enterprises that were once highly integrated in vertical forms or horizontally as conglomerates. The economic forces behind these changes simultaneously enabled collaborative relationships that replaced command‐control coordination. While such change has been widespread, the food industry serves as an example of an industry where such strategies have been incompletely pursued. This paper aims to provide a microeconomic explanation of three bases for the emergence of collaboration and network formation: transaction costs, interdependence in value creation processes, and shared resources.

Within a setting of the food industry, a microeconomic theory of firm level choice of transactions is presented and extended to consider market level equilibrium in where persistent relationships are defined to compose an integrated economic network.

The paper presents a framework for identification of the optimal pattern of relationships across firms to compose networks that could enhance the competitive advantage and the economic performance of the food sector.

While performance of the food system has been the target of extensive public policy, that policy has typically viewed food enterprises as autonomous units operating through competitive markets. This paper provides a framework that highlights an economic rationale for collaboration across food enterprises that offers enhanced performance while maintaining essential aspects of competition.

WHEN ROBERT HERRICK, that weaver of lovely words, wrote that, it was Youth that Man was accused of squandering. Never before have we been so guilty of that crime than as we are today.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate and compare the across-time individual and contextual factors influencing the participation of Canadian residents in adult education and training during the 1990s and the early twenty-first century. This era is characterized by the social investment state (SIS), a policy paradigm adopted by various developed nations throughout the world, including Canada, during the latter part of the twentieth century.

The authors analyzed data obtained from the 1994, 1998, and 2003 versions of the Adult Education and Training Survey, which is administered by Statistics Canada. They employed binomial logit regression so as to predict the likelihood of the respondents participating in training.

Participants whose level of education was below the post-secondary level were less likely to participate in training, as were adult residents of households in which pre-school children also lived. These findings occurred across all three periods of data collection. Furthermore, urban residents exhibited an increasingly greater likelihood to participate in training across-time.

Future studies should consider the funding source for training, be it from the public or private sector, and how this may affect participation. The impact that various types of training have on employment and earning patterns in developed nations should also be further assessed.

This study, with its use of the most recent available data to analyze across-time changes in the determinants of participating in training in Canada, has contributed to the knowledge base regarding the SIS in Canada and how it compares to its European counterparts.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study about how academic librarians can contribute to the interdisciplinary research endeavors of professors and students, especially doctoral candidates, through an intellectualized approach to collection development.

In the wake of protest movements such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, colleges and universities have begun to develop courses about these events, and it is anticipated that there will be much research conducted about their respective histories. Academic librarians can participate in those research efforts by developing interdisciplinary collections about protest movements and by referring researchers to those collections.

Through a case‐study approach, this paper provides a narrative bibliography about Southern Agrarianism that can help professors and students interested in the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movements to see their research endeavors from a new interdisciplinary perspective.

The value of this paper lies in presenting a concrete example of the way in which academic librarians can become active research partners through the work of building collections and recommending sources in areas that professors and students may not have previously considered.

This paper aims to examine the social interactions between Filipino immigrant-hosts residing in New Zealand and their visiting relatives (VRs) or guests from the Philippines using social exchange theory to understand their experiences.

This qualitative, multi-sited study used in-depth interviews to examine social interactions between Filipino immigrant-host families in New Zealand and their respective visiting relatives from the Philippines.

Hosting VRs reflects aspects of social exchange theory, and the interdependence and familial obligations related to VR travel demonstrate mutual relations of care. Maintaining relations of care within the family is an ongoing process involving intergenerational relationships that bind together immigrant-host families and their VRs.

The conceptualization of the social interactions between immigrants-hosts and VRs is not generalizable owing to the small sample size and lack of representativeness. However, despite a small sample, this qualitative inquiry uncovered a series of personal meanings and understandings attached to the maintenance of familial bonds.

As immigrant-receiving countries become more culturally diverse through migration, research about other cultures will assist tourism planners in understanding the values and actions of a more varied array of residents. A better understanding of travel experiences and interactions between immigrants and their guests may provide marketers with insights into host-guest dynamics within a VR context, thus potentially enabling tourism marketers to create better marketing campaigns.

Future studies may be undertaken from non-Western and Western perspectives that examine the social interactions between hosts and guests in the context of VR travel. Very little research has been conducted that addresses the meanings and understandings attached to these interactions from the perspectives of both hosting and visiting groups. This research highlights the importance of families in tourism, a contrast with the relative blindness of tourism scholarship toward relations of domesticity and sociality.

What separates the social interactions between family members in the context of visiting friends and relatives travel from the traditional host-guest paradigm is that it does not involve strangers. This study uses social exchange theory to examine social interactions between hosts and guests who are familiar with each other.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

The institution of an annual series devoted to current and ongoing research in economics and business should be considered one of the notable developments during the period under review. Long standing need for such a reference not withstanding, there has been until this year no systematic attempt to organize a continuing series which concentrated on selected areas of ongoing research, especially adapted to the Jahrbucher format. By facilitating the publication of research papers which are longer than the conventional journal‐length article yet shorter than a monograph, publishing outlets available to scholars in the field have been infinitely expanded. Two years ago, the Royal Economic Society and the Social Science Research Council of Great Britain, developed an experimental series, published by Macmillan, entitled Surveys of Applied Economics. The JAI Press, Greenwich, Conn., has now come out with an annual series, which is expected to fill the gaps in at least seventeen areas of economic theory and business. These are briefly listed below, with pertinent bibliographical citations: Research in Economic Anthropology: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, George Dalton. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.00 ISBN 0‐89232‐040‐9; Research in Economic History: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Paul Uselding. vol. 1. Sept. 1976‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐001‐X; Research in Health Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Richard M. Scheffler. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐042‐7; Research in Human Capital and Development: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Ismail Sirageldin. vol. 1. June/July 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐019‐2; Research in International Business and Finance: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Robert G. Hawkins. vol. 1. May/June 1977‐ $23.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐031‐1; Research in Labor Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Ronald G. Ehrenberg. vol. 1. March 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐017‐6; Research in Law and Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Richard O. Zerbe. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐028‐1; Research in Marketing: An Annual Compilation in Research. Series editor, Jagdish N. Sheth. vol. 1. June 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐041‐9; Research in Philosophy and Technology: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Paul T. Durbin. vol. 1. March 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐022‐2; Research in Political Economy: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Paul Zarembka. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐020‐6; Research in Population Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Julian L. Simon. vol. 1. April 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐018‐4; Applications of Management Science. Series editor, Matthew J. Sobel. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50. ISBN 0‐89232‐023‐0; Research in Econometrics. Series editor, Dennis J. Aigner. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐039‐7; Research in Experimental Economics. Series editor, Vernon L. Smith. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐030‐3; Research in Finance. Series editor, Haim Levy. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐043‐5; Research in Organizational Behavior. Series editor, Barry Staw. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐045‐1; Research in Public Policy and Management. Series editor, Colin Blaydon. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐044‐3.

The extent of national export volume attributable to the small firm sector within the UK does not compare favourably with that of certain other European countries/ particularly Germany and Italy. In an attempt to enhance the export competitiveness of this firm sector recent policy, research and management attention has been devoted to influences underlying export development. This article contributes to this knowledge by reviewing extensive research studies that have reported on one aspect of this topic: the international orientation of the decision maker within the small firm.