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Research for the case study was conducted using a combination of semi-structured interviews and secondary data sources.

This case traces the international expansion of Sadowsky Guitars’ bass guitar product line. Roger Sadowsky is one of the most respected instrument makers in the world and gained early acclaim for his outstanding repair and restoration work on guitars and basses. Some of his early clients included Prince, Will Lee (The Tonight Show), Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith, Jason Newsted of Metallica, Eddie Van Halen and Marcus Miller. Roger’s reputation and the demand for his instruments led to some customers having to wait for more than a year to obtain the chance to purchase a Sadowsky instrument, while others were unable to do so due to financial constraints. In 2003, Roger made the decision to form Sadowsky Japan to begin the contract manufacturing of more affordable Sadowsky instruments in Tokyo, Japan. As the company grew in size, Roger realized he was becoming more focused on running a business than building instruments. Furthermore, his Japanese partners were only interested in serving the Japanese market. This required him to handle the sales and distribution in the remaining parts of the world. In December of 2019, he announced a new, exclusive licensing agreement and distribution partnership between Sadowsky Guitars and Warwick GmbH & Co Music Equipment KG. The new agreement allowed Roger to continue running the Sadowsky NYC Custom Shop while Warwick would take over building and distributing the Metro instruments and a less-expensive, Chinese-built version of the MetroExpress instruments.

This case is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate-level courses related to marketing and consumer behavior. The case walks students through a real-life scenario when the founder of a well-known musical brand sought to expand internationally as a way to meet growing market demand. Students are asked to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the five key international market entry strategies: exporting, licensing, contract manufacturing, joint ventures and investment (equity/acquisition).

The case works well in the classroom, even if people are unfamiliar with the musical instrument retail industry. Participants are most likely aware of some of the artists and musicians mentioned in the case. Some may also be or know musicians. The instructor should be able to quickly engage participants in a lively discussion about Roger Sadowsky’s vision for his instruments and the opportunities and challenges of expanding product offerings and increasing market share.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

Warren Nutter and James M. Buchanan did not revise “Universal Education” to turn against providing tuition grants to segregated schools in 1965. Their revised text contains no call to expel segregation academies from the tuition grant program and does not even express disapproval of the goals or the work of segregation academies. Recent claims to that effect by Fleury (2023) and Levy and Peart (2023) cannot be sustained by either textual or contextual evidence.

Of critical concern to the world is the need to reduce consumption and waste of natural resources. This study provides a multi-level exploration of the ways situational and transformational links between levels and challenges are related to the adoption and utilization of material flow cost accounting in Vietnam, to encourage green productivity.

Based on triangulation of public documents at different institutional levels and a set of semi-structured interviews, situational and transformational links and challenges for material flow cost accounting in Vietnam are examined using purposive and snowball sampling of key actors.

Using a multi-level framework the research identifies six situational and transformational barriers to implementation of material flow cost accounting and suggests opportunities to overcome these. The weakest links identified involve macro-to meso-situational and micro-to macro-transformational links. The paper highlights the dominance of meso-level institutions and lack of focus on micro transformation to cut waste and enable improvements in green productivity.

The paper identifies ways for companies in Vietnam to reduce unsustainability and enable transformation towards sustainable management and waste reduction.

The paper is the first to develop and use a multi-level/multi-time period framework to examine the take-up of material flow cost accounting to encourage transformation towards green productivity. Consideration of the Vietnamese case builds understanding of the challenges for achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 12, to help enable sustainable production and consumption patterns.

This paper describes how financial professionals' behavioral biases influence their financial forecast and decision-making process. Most of the earlier studies are focused on well-developed financial markets, and little is researched about financial professionals, such as institutional investors, portfolio managers, investment advisors, financial analysts, etc., in emerging markets.

An expert-validated questionnaire measure four prominent behavioral biases and Indian financial professionals' rational decision-making process. The final sample consists of 274 valid responses using the purposive sampling technique. IBM SPSS and AMOS structural equation modeling (SEM) software are used to build measurement and structural models, multivariate analysis including regression, factor analysis, etc.

The results provide empirical insights into the relationship between behavioral biases and the decision-making process. The results suggest that the structural path model closely fits the sample data. The presence of behavioral biases indicates that financial professionals' forecasting and decision-making is not always rational but bounded rational or irrational due to these factors. Furthermore, these biases (except overconfidence bias) have a markedly significant and positive relationship with irrational decision-making.

It is critical to eradicate these psychological errors, but awareness and attentiveness toward behavioral biases may help financial professionals to make informed decisions. Investors can improve their portfolio decisions and investments by recognizing their judgment errors and focusing on specific investment strategies to mitigate the impact of these biases. It is necessary to incorporate behavioral insights while developing training techniques for financial professionals. Rules of thumb, visual tools, financial coaching and implementing social-cultural elements in training programs enable financial professionals to develop simple, engaging, appealing and customized approaches for their clients.

This novel study is the first of this kind of research that examines the relationship between financial professionals' behavioral biases and rational decision-making process. This study significantly and remarkably provides insights into irrationality in financial professionals' decision-making.

This study aims to establish whether three technology-specific attributes – convenience, compatibility with cultural needs and social reputation – influence the sustained use of clean cooking technologies in Uganda’s households.

This study adopted a cross-sectional and correlational research design. A survey was conducted with 125 households. The data were analyzed using SPSS and Smart PLS.

The results indicate that, in contrast to convenience, social reputation and compatibility with cultural needs significantly influence the sustained use of clean cooking technologies in Uganda’s households.

This study focused on the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area; hence, several households in other urban centers and rural communities were excluded from the study. In addition, technology-specific attributes only accounted for 34.4% of the variation in the sustained use of clean cooking technologies in Uganda, leaving 65.6 unexplained. Therefore, the authors recommend that future studies look at other technology-specific attributes that may influence the sustained use of clean cooking technologies in Uganda’s households.

This study provides initial evidence of technology-specific attributes and the sustained use of clean cooking technologies based on the expectation–confirmation model.

This study aims to examine how the theory of planned behaviour and technology acceptance theory can be used to understand the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). The relationships between attitudes, behavioural intentions towards using NPIs, actual use of NPIs and word-of-mouth (WOM) were examined and compared between early and late adopters.

A survey was conducted to test the hypotheses with partial least squares structural equation modelling (n = 278).

The results indicate that relationships between attitudes, intentions and behavioural intentions were positive and significant in the whole data set – and that there were differences between the early and late adopters. WOM had no substantial relationship with actual usage and early adopters’ behavioural intentions.

This research gives a better sense of how WOM impacts attitudes, behavioural intentions and actual usage among early and late adopters of NPIs and highlights the effectiveness of WOM, especially among late adopters of NPIs. Furthermore, using the TAM allows us to make specific recommendations regarding encouraging the use of NPIs. A new three-stage communications model is introduced that uses early adopters as influencers to reduce the NPI adoption time by late adopters.

The purpose of this study is to frame digital transformation (DT) within municipalities to improve the life cycles of urban infrastructure.

The study provides the results from a systematic review of the literature on concepts of DT and its implications for municipalities, barriers and challenges to DT, as well existing DT frameworks for municipalities and their built assets. This literature review leads to the development of a DT framework to help cities conduct a planned and federated DT beforehand. Then, workshops are conducted with two major Canadian municipalities.

The results of these studies point to the need for a dedicated DT framework for municipalities because of their particular context and their role and proximity to citizens. The theoretical framework develops 22 elements, which are divided among 6 categories. Through its application, the framework helps to identify and target the predominant issues hindering the DT of municipalities, specifically “legacy practices” and “data management.”

Limitations include limited experimental conditions and small sample size. Further work is needed to validate the framework. Other approaches are advocated to complement the data collection and analysis to generate more convincing results.

The theoretical framework was validated through two case studies on two large Canadian municipalities.

Municipalities maximize the value they provide to citizens and to be at the forefront of resilience and sustainability concerns. The use of technology, digital processes and initiatives helps cities to improve planning, optimize works and provide better services to citizens.

The framework is original in that it specifically aligns assets management with DT in a municipal context.