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The purpose of this paper is to explain the SEC's new dollar threshold tests under the qualified client standard.

The paper explains the amendments to the dollar thresholds, which provide for inflation adjustments to the assets under management and net worth tests every five years; the exclusion of net equity in the primary residence from the net worth calculation; and certain transitional provisions designed to allow investment advisers and their clients to maintain performance fee arrangements that existed when they entered into advisory contracts.

The paper finds that these increased dollar thresholds codify the increased thresholds that the Commission issued in its July 12, 2011 order as required by the Dodd‐Frank Act.

The paper provides practical guidance from an experienced financial services lawyer.

Very little research addresses whether the values that consumers bring to a situation can affect their reactions to a brand failure. This paper suggests the interesting possibility that consumers may react very differently to the same brand failure depending upon their values. Here, the authors introduce a new construct to the marketing literature – honor values – and demonstrate its effect on responses to brand failures.

Three experiments and one secondary data study were utilized.

Across four studies, honor values are shown to aggravate consumers’ desire for vengeance following a brand failure. That is, as honor values increase, so too does desire for vengeance in the face of a brand failure. Additionally, this desire can be attenuated by allowing the consumer to play a role in resolving the failure or by giving a heartfelt apology.

High-honor consumers are a major obstacle for firms facing a brand failure. To overcome this challenge, the authors offer strategies, including (1) allowing high-honor consumers to suggest ways to punish the offending employee, and (2) offering simple, heartfelt apologies to high-honor consumers, which are as effective as monetary compensations.

Making effective use of the knowledge available to a charitable organization is crucial to the achievement of its strategic objectives and the outcomes of its humanitarian interventions. This study aims to explore the integration of knowledge at an international development charity from the perspective of its workforce.

Rich primary data were collected through an in-depth case study of a large international development charity actively embracing the management of knowledge using semi-structured interviews (n = 42), participant observation and organizational documentation. The data were integrated and analyzed thematically.

The analysis of the empirical data sheds light on how a more systematic framework for knowledge integration and application could enhance the capabilities and strategic effectiveness of a charitable organization.

The findings enable important contributions to the strategic management and effective use of knowledge in charitable organizations by empirically uncovering how a more coherent and structured approach to knowledge management could enhance the focus, efficiency, flexibility and relevance of its actions and those of its members. Accordingly, this paper advances a new integrated schema to meet the goals of charities and their stakeholders for broader application and testing by charities and future researchers.

The continued increase in mental health problems in students in higher education is a global public health concern. This study aims to examine the predictors of mental health in the context of higher education, focusing on first-year female undergraduate students as a particularly vulnerable group.

Two hundred first-year female undergraduates from a UK Higher Education Institution took part in a quantitative survey. Participants completed a range of questionnaires assessing resilience, perceived stress, levels of depression, hope, general anxiety and levels of exercise.

Two significant individual predictors of depression were identified: perceived stress and resilience. A mediation analysis showed that resilience acted as mediator for the impact of stress on depression. Two significant individual predictors of anxiety were identified: stress and exercise. There were no significant mediators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time a range of psychological and lifestyle predictors of mental health while exploring potential mediators have been investigated. From the findings, the authors suggest that psychoeducational interventions targeting resilience while also providing problem-solving strategies could augment internal resources and promote positive mental health in this particularly vulnerable group of young people.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of perceived threat, brand congruence, and social support on consumer coping strategies for a preventative health service.

An online survey of 570 women aged over 50 in one Australian state was conducted (users and non-users of the service). The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

A competing models approach reveals that threat on its own is associated with avoidance coping; however, when brand congruence is high, there is an association with active coping. Social support appears to have a buffering effect on threat and is associated positively with active coping and negatively with avoidance coping.

The study findings suggest that threat appeals should be used with caution in increasing participation in transformative preventative health services due to its double-edged sword effect (increasing both avoidance and active coping). When consumers have social support, this results in active coping and buffers avoidance coping. This research offers useful insights for social marketing and transformative service research.

Organizational leaders value effective communication in employees, but ineffective communication persists (Peart, 2019). Communication Skills Training (CST) programs often face time and engagement constraints (Wright et al., 2006), necessitating increased resources for improvement. This study investigates the fields in which communication skills are examined and the research methods used. Given past training-communication associations, it explores CST programs' positive impact through experimental research (Bakker & van Wingerden, 2021). The study aims to enhance CST research by providing insights into effective training methods for facilitators and practitioners.

This systematic literature review examines CST's effectiveness in improving employee communication outcomes and identifying key factors. It highlights the importance of communication training, provides insights into existing research, and identifies areas for future investigation. As communication training is not context-specific, a comprehensive understanding of its effectiveness is necessary. This review establishes a foundational framework to support the creation of impactful training programs.

This research reaffirms the importance of Communication Skills Training (CST) in enhancing key competencies such as communication competence, self-efficacy, and empathy for workplace success, benefiting collaboration, conflict resolution, and problem-solving. It provides a foundational understanding of CST's impact, serving as a resource for researchers, trainers, and leaders, while also emphasizing the need for further research, including larger experiments, diverse skill sets, and long-term assessment. In our digital age, exploring contemporary skills, including digital communication, is essential for comprehensive training. The systematic categorization of skills into intrapersonal and interactional dimensions ensures consistency and supports in-depth analysis.

To address the broad range, outcome skills were categorized as intrapersonal or interactional, excluding the behavioral aspect concerning societal improvement. Leveraging Zimmerman's (1995) empowerment theory to enhance focus, this framework provides value for diverse CST research outcomes. Intrapersonal encompassed self-views, like self-efficacy and knowledge, while interactional involved understanding and aligning exchanges with personal goals. This categorization enhances research clarity and effectiveness by systematically understanding how these skills are related.

Learning object developers need to understand that presently there are powerful organizations of “intellectual property” owners, and vendors of music, videos, books and software that are making a concerted attack on copyright, attempting to convert it from a law to promote knowledge and the useful arts into a mechanism to protect and serve their special interests. This paper represents an attempt to overturn the misconception that copyright is simply about protecting the rights of authors and re‐introduce an understanding of the original foundational role of copyright in “promoting science and the useful arts” and inform U.S. and international readers of the concerted assault on our “fair use” copy rights as educators in the digital environment. The paper argues for the need to put an end to the “quasicopyright” laws that have severely curtailed the traditional rights of educational institutions and passed on responsibilities that previously were the purview of the copyright owners. It calls for a restoration of the balance returning copyright to its original educational focus.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to understand how different forms of anthropomorphism, namely verbal and visual, can enhance or detract from the subjective well-being of consumers and their co-creation behaviors whilst collaborating with artificial intelligence (AI) service agents. Second, it seeks to understand if AI anxiety and trust in message, function as primary and secondary consumer appraisals of collaborating with AI service agents.

A conceptual model is developed using the theories of the uncanny valley and cognitive appraisal theory (CAT) with three hypotheses identified to guide the experimental work. The hypotheses are tested across three experimental studies which manipulate the level of anthropomorphism of AI.

Results demonstrate that verbal and visual anthropomorphism can assist consumer well-being and likelihood of co-creation. Further, this relationship is explained by the mediators of anxiety and trust.

The empirical results and theorizing suggest verbal anthropomorphism should be present (absent) and paired with low (high) visual anthropomorphism, which supports the “uncanny valley” effect. A moderated mediation relationship is established, which confirms AI anxiety and trust in a message as mediators of the AI service agent anthropomorphism-consumer subjective well-being/co-creation relationship. This supports the theorizing of the conceptual model based on the “uncanny valley” and CAT.

Online offerings for transformative services create value for consumers, although little research examines the process through which these services deliver this value. The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework to capture the complexity of the co-creation of transformative value experienced by the consumers of online transformative services.

This paper uses a netnography approach to examine longitudinal data from an online weight management program. In total, this research examines 15,304 posts from 3,149 users, including eight staff users.

Consumers integrate a range of social support resources, from informational support to esteem support, which provide a range of benefits such as new ideas and self-efficacy that underpin the different types of value such as epistemic and personal value. The degree of co-created value differs across the consumption experience but culminates over time into transformative value.

The proposed framework may be useful beyond the weight management and online contexts; however, further work is required in a range of behavioral contexts and other modes of service delivery.

By understanding the resources consumers integrate and value, co-created services can develop appropriate value propositions to assist in improving consumers’ well-being.

This research provides a comprehensive framework of the transformative value co-creation process, extending on existing frameworks which examine either the process, value co-creation or the types of value co-created.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to extend service and retailers understanding of how the inclusion of haptics can gamify digital service experiences. Second, it seeks to understand the moderating role of consumers orientation towards adventure in service experiences.

This research adopts a two-study, 2 (haptic technology: present vs absent) × 2 (adventure orientation: high vs low) to test the proposed hypotheses (Study 1 n = 210, Study 2 n = 452). The data are tested using ANCOVA's and Hayes PROCESS Macro to investigate mean differences and the potential presence of two different moderated mediated relationships.

The results are consistent across the two experimental studies evidencing that the inclusion of haptics to gamify the service experience leads to significantly improved outcomes for service brands and channels. Further, the results demonstrate that the impact of haptics is greater for consumers with a lower, compared to higher, sense of adventure. Thus, the results demonstrate that whilst haptics improves consumers experiences with technological services overall, this is more prevalent for those who have “less sense of adventure”.

This paper sheds insight into the emerging area of haptic technology and is one of the first to specifically examine the impact of consumers “sense of adventure.”