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In 2006/2007, the Canadian academic library community came together in the largest national LibQUAL+^® consortium to conduct ARL library service quality survey. This paper aims to address how and why the national consortial project came about, the challenges for recruiting and managing participants, and what was learnt, together with possible future directions.

This paper uses a case study approach.

The research touches on the challenges planning and implementing LibQUAL+^® with such a large, diverse consortium, with its bilingual mandate and multiple library types, and what made the project successful and its limitations.

The most apparent accomplishment of this project was successful collection of a large, diverse data set for comparative analysis of services and facilities – a meaningful data set both for individual libraries seeking appropriate Canadian comparators and for analyses by region, institutional categories, etc.

A valuable result of the project was to engage more Canadian academic libraries in the process of service assessment. CARL's bi‐lingual consortium approach will provide a valuable example for other national organisations attempting to carry out similar projects.

Sport match-fixing has emerged as a complex global problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it critically reviews how match-fixing is typified as a policy problem. Second, it advances an analysis of the legal framework and regulatory system for sports betting as a causal source for “routinized” match-fixing.

This study extracts and synthesises (cross-national) materials from policies, media releases and scholarly works on the subject of match-fixing and sports betting. The analysis is framed by the contrasts between rational choice and sociological institutionalist approaches.

Match-fixing is typically attributed to: criminal organisations and illegal sports betting; vulnerable individuals; and failure of governance on the part of sports organisations. Each cause holds assumptions of utility-maximising actors and it is argued that due consideration be given to the fundamental risks inherent in legal sports betting regimes.

Match-fixing in sport is a recurrent social problem, transcending national boundaries and involving a wide range of actors and, sporting disciplines and levels of competition. Within such an environment, it may matter little how strong the incentive structures and education programmes are, when betting on human beings is both normatively and cognitively advanced as a value and institutionally permitted as a practice.

This paper argues that legal betting regimes paradoxically contribute to routinised match-fixing because: for betting customers there is no qualitative, ethical difference between legal and illegal operators; and legalisation serves to normalise and legitimate the view of athletes as objects for betting (like cards or dice).

The purpose of this editorial is two‐fold: first, to provide an overview of team‐related issues in the particular realm of contingent work arrangements, and second, to introduce the collection of articles encompassing this special issue.

The editorial is a general literature review that provides the readers of this special issue with a broader scholarly literature framework. The editorial also provides a historical context of the field. First, the phenomenon of contingent work arrangements is discussed. Second, attention is given to identification of major strategic factors, which have been contributing to the growth of contingent work arrangements. Third, team‐related issues of differentiation, integration, and cooperation are discussed.

The overview of research in the area of contingent work arrangements demonstrates that such work arrangements are diverse in their contractual structure. The rationale for which organizations use contingent work arrangements are diverse, as are the reasons why employees undertake such work outside the scope of the traditional employment model. Research in this area has grown primarily with the focus on economic, legal, and social factors influencing the expansion of non‐standard work arrangements. Less research is found in the area of individual, managerial, and organizational consequences of this expansion.

This editorial – and the special issue in particular – gives attention to understanding the array of experiences associated with contingent workers with the purpose of accumulating theoretical knowledge in this field, but also – and perhaps more importantly – to add to the transition from evidence‐based knowledge to practical advice.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of small, rural retailers based on personal beliefs about business use of the internet and to identify similarities and differences between the retailer subgroups in attitude, perceptual performance, and behavioral intention to use the internet.

A mail survey is completed by owners of small, independently owned retailers in rural communities across the USA.

Cluster analysis reveals three types of retailers: optimists, efficiency minded, and skeptics. Differences in attitudes towards use of the internet and intention to use the internet for purposes of strategic positioning are found across the groups.

The sample frame consists of small, independently owned retailers in rural communities, the response rate is low, and results will not generalize to small retailers in urban areas.

The stories of optimist retailers can show efficiency‐minded retailers how to gain greater benefit from use of the internet. The skeptical retailers are not likely to adopt the internet even when important others, such as their customers, want them to. These retailers may need to be sold on what the internet can do for retail performance of their specific business. An individualistic approach would likely be the only salient appeal to these retailers, since they are not socially compliant or socially embedded.

This paper produces a typology of small, rural retailers and provides information on internet use of such retailers, both of which are new to the literature.