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This article intends to shine a light on venue-related tax increment financing (TIF) through the first comprehensive inventory of its use at the major league level.

For each 2018 venue in the five North American major leagues, data was collected on TIF contributions to direct venue capital costs as well as to projects using TIF to enable real estate development ancillary to a venue. Neighborhoods surrounding a venue were also assessed for the presence of a TIF district. With both the direct and ancillary elements, data was collected from government, industry, academic, mapping and media sources. A review of this data set and findings are followed by a discussion of implications and directions for future work.

Over one-third of the TIF eligible permanent stadiums and arenas studied in the five major leagues have a direct or strong TIF connection. Direct TIF contributions to sports venues, as well as TIF use intended to generate real estate development around these venues, are most frequent and financially significant in arenas and soccer-specific stadiums. Additionally, arena and stadium projects using TIF often accompany ancillary real estate development.

A primary purpose of this article is to provide a previously missing general reference resource to governments and citizens of jurisdictions considering facility TIF use on the scope, nature, extent and identity of TIF projects related to major league sports venues. More generally, the inventory and assessment of TIF use in professional sports venues offered by this article sets the stage for future research on associative relationships between TIF contributions and facility finance outcomes as well as the normative value of venue-related TIF.

Emerging economies have to address positive challenges such as sustainability, digitalization, entrepreneurial readiness and planning and behavioral strategies and negative challenges, such as corruption and bureaucracy. The COVID-19 pandemic hit all economies and arguably made hotel businesses that are from less typical emerging economies, such as the Czech Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to deal with similar challenges to that of their counterparts from typical emerging economies. How do Czech hotel SMEs address the COVID-19 challenges and what sustainability message can be extracted from that with the relevance for not only businesses from emerging economies? The purpose of this paper is to explore how Czech hotel SMEs address the COVID-19 challenges and what sustainability.

A consolidated parsing of the literature, legislative and analytical framework, along with an investigative case study of 11 Czech hotel SMEs was performed, based on the questionnaire survey and semi-structured in-depth direct interviews. The holistic thematic analysis processed this fresh data and allowed Socratic questioning and glossing while addressing both research questions.

The performed case study reveals that typical challenges faced by entrepreneurs in emerging economies became, via COVID-19, universal challenges, these challenges are a valuable impulse for digitalization and changes of entrepreneurial strategies, but not so much for sustainability, and the omnipresent negative impact of corruption and bureaucracy.

This paper presents a pioneering study regarding the addressing COVID-19 and sustainability concerns by SMEs in a less typical emerging economy and offering a universal, partially comparative and sadly not so sustainable, message which is not just limited to emerging economies.

The rapid advancement in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has brought enormous business opportunities as well as challenges. One of these challenges is the demand for ICTs skills and expertise in adopting and implementing these emerging technologies. Coping with skills shortage poses a serious challenge across all European countries. Lack of ICTs skills and knowledge is more evident in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). As training is regarded as the most effective way of improving skills and enhancing knowledge, this paper attempts to address skills shortage at pan‐European level by identifying SMEs’ needs on ICTs training in the UK, Portugal and Poland. The investigation focuses on the most needed training areas, the required training levels and the preferred training delivery channels. The paper summarises findings from three‐country investigations and highlights the implications of findings for the design and development of a Web‐based training system for the use of ICTs in SMEs.

While progress has been made in the realm of teaching about sustainability to business students, integrating sustainability into experiential learning with a systemic mindset has been identified by leading scholars as an area for improvement. The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot project in which students prepared a sustainability report for a client company and to answer the question of whether the experiment yielded the anticipated benefits.

The paper presents an initiative that was part of an MBA course delivered at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland by an international team of professors. The multinational group of students was confronted with the task of preparing an integrated sustainability report for a large corporation.

The initiative creates opportunities for both students and commercial organizations to understand large business commercial activities from a sustainability perspective. This paper identifies the next steps for others to build upon.

The paper explains the experiential learning opportunity that was created, describes how students rose to meet the challenge, discusses the benefits that accrued to students, professors and a commercial organization and shares some guidance for those seeking to emulate this practice.

Purpose: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the most significant contributors to maximum employment generation, the gross domestic product (GDP) of many countries, and the overall global economy. It is also evident that cyber threats are becoming a big challenge for SMEs, which is directly impacting global economy.

Methodology: Existing research inputs were accessed to understand current cyber threats for SMEs and their cybersecurity posture. Additionally, this research has collected the latest insights by taking direct inputs from SMEs and conducting a well-designed research survey. It has provided a few direct inputs to designing solutions for the SME segment. For analysis and recommendations, cybersecurity best practices and core cybersecurity concepts are considered at the centre of the solution.

Findings: Implementing existing cybersecurity standards or frameworks is not easy for SMEs, as they generally have limited resources and different priorities for their business when it comes to the implementation of any cybersecurity controls. Currently, many cybersecurity standards are not able to support the implementation of business domain-specific controls.

Practical implications: Along with the research findings shared in this chapter, as a resolution to the problems faced by SMEs, the authors will propose a new framework as a solution. This framework is designed using core concepts of cybersecurity such as confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA triad) as well as defence in depth (DiD) mechanisms in each layer of organisation. The authors will also share a high-level idea about how reliable artificial intelligence-based software can help identify recommended controls for particular SMEs.

The winter 1987 issue of Reference Services Review featured a bibliography of AIDS‐related materials prepared by Edmund SantaVicca, former head of Collection Management Services at Cleveland State University.

Bloggers often create digital content. Diffusion of the creative articles can make many bloggers or readers visit blog platforms. Restated, diffusion of the creative articles can assist blog service providers (BSPs) to retain bloggers and attract new bloggers. Thus, the research is conducted on creative article diffusion on blogs based on innovation diffusion theory and social network theory. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this study, an information system was used to collect 250 creative articles and social network data of these creative articles. Validity of the specific study hypotheses is tested by using multi-regression analysis.

Analytical results indicate both observability and network density positively affect creative article diffusion, and ties-strength negatively affects creative article diffusion.

Since the interpersonal interactive mechanism of blogs differs from that of social network websites, bloggers establish different social networks which may influence innovation diffusion. However, different websites may have different interpersonal interactive mechanisms. Therefore, the results of this study should not be over-generalized.

For diffusing information, BSPs may focus on blog articles with trackback rate below 10 percent among the friends-bloggers network and advertise these articles to make their trackback rate increase to 10-20 percent to reach the self-sustaining status. This strategy ensures the largest payoff from creative article diffusion.

This study contributes to the knowledge of social network and innovation diffusion on blog website and develops a model explaining how antecedents influence creative article diffusion.

Examines the seventeenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of social interaction ties, trust and business networks in the acquisition of foreign business knowledge and foreign institutional knowledge. It also assesses the effect of these types of knowledge on small and medium enterprises’ (SME) export performance. Furthermore, this study determines the moderating role of absorptive capacity in the relationship between foreign business knowledge, foreign institutional knowledge and export performance.

This study used a survey research design using data from nontraditional SME exporters in Ghana. There were 257 respondents who were employees (managers/owners) of SMEs in Ghana. The model was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Social interaction ties, trust and business networks have a significant effect on the acquisition of foreign business knowledge and foreign institutional knowledge. Furthermore, foreign business knowledge and foreign institutional knowledge have a significant positive effect on export performance. The path between foreign business knowledge and export performance is also moderated by absorptive capacity. However, the moderating role of absorptive capacity in the relationship between foreign institutional knowledge and export performance is not significant.

This study uses social capital to explain how SMEs acquire foreign business knowledge and foreign institutional knowledge, and how both affect SMEs’ export performance. Furthermore, it tests the moderating role of absorptive capacity in the relationship between foreign business knowledge, foreign institutional knowledge and export performance.

The purpose of this study is to explore how creative-cultural hotels can achieve sustainable service design through the development of a holistic conceptual framework.

The authors created this framework using a qualitative exploratory multi-case study of four creative-cultural hotels in Taiwan. The framework comprises strategic, organizational and interface levels to describe the design process and implementation of service offerings that co-create value within a multifaceted network of actors.

The findings of this study show that incorporating local arts and culture into sustainable service design can generate unique value and experiences for customers. From the perspective of sustainable development, these hotels seek to add value by using local creative and cultural resources to ensure that they have a sound commercial base from which to showcase their cultural features. As such, this study recommends that the hotel industry shift its focus to a paradigm that provides a strategic and sustainability-framed vision to create value for society while protecting local natural and cultural resources.

This multilevel model reframes the development of customer value constellations through a holistic understanding of user experience, eco-design practice, service encounters aligned with user touchpoints and front-line employee capabilities. To integrate the perspectives of both service providers and their customers, the proposed model embeds these stakeholders within a single model through the vehicle of local value co-creation. This holistic framework can assist in designing sustainable service within the hospitality industry to deliver better services and customer experiences. The findings provide an illustration of how the proposed multilevel sustainable-development-oriented service design framework can serve as a useful tool in guiding hotels toward corporate sustainability.