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Discusses pricing decision making, one of the oldest marketing topics, including several pricing methods. Presents a strategic pricing framework, developed from pricing literature. Presents rules for evaluating strategic pricing alternatives. Offers a model for marketers to explain and improve pricing decision‐making.

To outline the conceptual and technical difficulties encountered, as well as the opportunities created, when developing an interlinked collection of web‐based digitised primary sources on eighteenth century London.

As a pilot study for a larger project, a variety of primary sources, including the Old Bailey Proceedings (OBP), were digitised and then interlinked using names. The paper outlines the solutions adopted for dealing with uncertainties in record linkage and for displaying a range of different historical sources while preserving their archival integrity.

Records should be linked with varying degrees of probability, allowing users to participate in the choice of which records truly concern the same individuals.

Further work is necessary to create mechanisms for allowing users to specify levels of certainty in record linkage, and to develop methods for searching and displaying results when working with multiple collections of archival sources.

This paper shows the potential of combining XML markup with flexible record linkage strategies to interlink complex collections of digitised sources. The resulting source will allow historians to ask new historical questions; in this case concerning the role played by individuals in shaping the evolution of social welfare provision in London.

Explores the rationale and a method for psychographic segmentation of industrial marketers generally and in particular those performing the buying and selling functions. Discusses how buyers and sellers compare and what benefits might be obtained from a deeper understanding of each other′s personalities. Describes an empirical study in which industrial buyers and salespeople were segregated first into two groups and then into a four‐segment schema. Suggestions are given for real‐world applicability of the results of such investigations.

The only opinion in this world that appeals to anyone is his own. Jethro Tull, who is perhaps one of the best known personalities in the history of English farming, did not scruple to express his contempt for books, especially books about agriculture. When his seed‐drill and horse‐hoes had become famous he was pressed to write a book about them so that other people might benefit from his ingenuity. He opposed the suggestion with all the force at his command; eventually the pressure of his social obligations proved too much for him. He was not only unwilling to write, but he stated what may have been the habit of the small squire of his own class and the general run of yeoman and tenant farmers of his time. “I was,” he wrote, “so far from being inclined to the scribbling disease, that I had disused writing for above twenty years.” This admission may be taken as an indication that most farmers of Tull's day would avoid writing if they could, and indeed the smaller farmer of today often gets his wife to write his letters for him.

“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 purpose of this paper is to study a class of issues that in spite of recognised needs and explicit managerial demands have proven hard to have “stick” in organisations (information security is used as an example). It offers a theory-driven rationale why superficially different issue areas can indeed be considered as instances of the identified class, and builds on complexity leadership theory (CLT) to explain how the related strategic challenges can be explained and possibly alleviated.

A. Kenneth Rice’s notion of organisations’ “primary task” is used to home in on its opposite that is here labelled “peripherality”. Existing strands of organisation research that can be related to this notion are then revisited to ground the fundamental concept theoretically. The CLT is finally used to provide a detailed understanding of the underlying dynamics.

The paper explains how and why certain issue areas seem resistant to common managerial intervention methods even though it would seem that organisational members are in fact favouring proposed changes (a state that would normally increase the chances of success). It also offers ideas how these challenges may fruitfully be approached.

Problems related to the suggested “peripherality” class of issues have thus far been approached as wholly unrelated (and for that reason as idiosyncratic). The proposed framework offers a hitherto never attempted way systematically to link these challenges – and so structure and concentrate discussion about possibly common remedies.

This paper develops and tests a descriptive model of management accounting system choice through an empirical analysis of the adoption of innovative cost accounting systems in not-for-profit hospitals. The logistic regression analysis indicates that management accounting system design is impacted by organi zational objectives, technological complexity, and other features of the organizational control system. Descriptive statistics indicate limited use of management accounting techniques common in manufacturing firms, such as standard costing and variance analysis. A cross-lagged model suggests that implementation of an innovative management accounting system may be causally linked to decreasing operating costs.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what sales management practices (SMPs) are being used by managers in the current market place, changes over time, insights that can be gained and future research needs.

Data for this paper were collected via a cross-sectional internet-based survey using a sampling frame provided by a professional sales publication. ANOVA was used to analyze 159 sales manager respondents.

Empirical results indicate that several differences are evident across the 68 SMPs items gathered, especially in terms of the size of the sales force and establish some data on using technology in sales management. However, in spite of significant changes in the sales environment, many SMPs have had limited change.

The limitations of this paper include a sample frame drawn from a single source and via the internet and, thus, may have excluded some possible respondents from participation and somewhat limit generalizability.

The results of this paper raise a number of important issues for sales managers to consider. First, which SMPs should they be using? Managers need to give serious thought as to which practices they choose to use. Second, why are so many of them not making more extensive use of sales force technology? Third, is it wise for sales managers to be relying on executive opinion as their most extensively used forecasting method or should they be emphasizing another approach? A fourth issue is the continued heavy emphasis on generating sales volume as opposed to profits.

The data provide a rare and updated understanding of the use of SMPs by sales managers.