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As empirical insights into when salespeople should integrate information and communication technology (ICT) into their sales tasks are limited, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of salespeople’s ICT orientation on role stress by considering the interplay of individual salesperson characteristics and the complexity of the selling environment, differentiating between customer and supplier complexity.

The authors develop an empirical framework based on the Job Demands-Resources model and previous research in the area of technology in sales. They test their hypotheses by means of a survey of 255 business-to-business salespeople which is analyzed using ordinary least squares regressions.

The results of this study show that ICT orientation generally helps salespeople to reduce role ambiguity. However, the benefits salespeople derive from ICT orientation to reduce role conflict depend on an interplay of both their job tenure and the average relationship duration with customers as well as the complexity of the selling environment.

This study contributes to research on the impact of technology use on salespeople by enhancing the understanding of contexts that make ICT valuable for them. In particular, the findings of this study demonstrate that the impact of ICT orientation on salespeople’s role stress depends on an interplay of individual salesperson characteristics, that is, resources, and environmental complexity characteristics, that is, demands.

This study analyzes small-sized asset owners’ optimal choice problems in selecting an outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO). While large-sized asset owners can select OCIOs through procurement auctions, it is difficult for small-sized asset owners to use this method. Instead, they access OCIO services by participating in an investment pool or utilizing OCIO funds. In this study, the authors compare the two OCIO selection methods. The authors construct an agent-based model for OCIO selection to reflect the heterogeneity in production efficiency and preferences. The results of this study imply that when the market has enough investment pools, the utility of all small-sized asset owners increases. To enhance the growth in the OCIO market, the investment pool should represent the preferences of small-sized asset owners and enable individual owners to find an appropriate OCIO.

Social innovation (SI) acknowledges socio-economic challenges as opportunities to make communities more sustainable and cohesive through inclusive grassroots practices. The question remains, however, as to whether and how socially innovative practices can be effectively supported in developing inclusive economies. Drawing on the findings from two South African in-depth case studies, This paper aims to discuss how social innovation ventures may be supported to drive inclusiveness.

This paper purposively sampled two social enterprises (SEs) and conducted in-depth case studies through interviews and secondary data review.

The SEs selected promoted digital, economic and social inclusion. Despite the diversity of the two organisations, they shared similar challenges in undertaking their practices mostly deriving from South Africa’s lack of legal recognition and policy framework for social purpose-driven businesses.

Applying Moulaert et al.’s (2007) SI classification criteria to the case studies in focus, this paper seeks to extend our understanding of the challenges that innovative SE organisations face in tackling exclusion and contributing to build inclusive economies in the South African context.

This study intends to understand if managerial coaching, a sustainable competitive strategy, has an impact on sales performance, through customer and results orientation of the salesforce. It also aims to investigate whether pressure for results, one of the predominant demands in organizations today, and the centralisation of decisions, a traditional management demand still present in several organizations, undermine the effect of coaching on performance.

The 167 responses collected, through the distribution of questionnaires among workers in the commercial area, were analysed through a structural equation model using the partial least square (PLS) technique.

The results of this study confirm that managerial coaching has a positive impact on sales force performance through customer and results orientation, with customer orientation having a greater impact on performance. It was also found that centralised decision-making and pressure for results do not undermine the relationship between managerial coaching and performance, and they even reinforce the positive impact of results orientation on performance.

Managerial coaching practices can impact sales, especially when associated with customer orientation, freeing employees from the pressure for results and the centralisation demands. This scenario favours a more sustainable and emancipatory sales force management.

This study is the first to integrate organizational demands, namely pressure for results and centralisation, to better understand the effect of managerial coaching on sales performance, through customer and results orientation, thereby extending previous research on this topic.

This study aims to investigate Malaysian stock market efficiency from the view of Sharīʿah-compliant and conventional stocks based on the effectiveness of technical trading strategies.

This study uses unconventional trading strategies that mix buy recommendations of Bursa Malaysia analysts with sell signals generated from 10 selected technical trading strategies (simple moving average, moving average envelopes, Bollinger Bands, momentum, commodity channel index, relative strength index, stochastic, Williams percentage range, moving average convergence divergence oscillator and shooting star) that are detected using ChartNexus. The period from 1 January 2013 until 31 December 2015 produces a total sample consisting of 1,265 buy recommendations of 125 Sharīʿah-compliant stocks and 400 buy recommendations of conventional stocks. The study period is extended until 31 March 2016 to provide an ample time for detecting the sell signal especially for buy recommendations that are released towards the end of 2015.

The resulting Jensen’s alpha show 8 out of 10 strategies are effective in generating abnormal returns in Sharīʿah-compliant samples while only 3 out of 10 strategies are effective in conventional samples. Prominent effectiveness of technical trading strategies in Sharīʿah-compliant stocks implies clear inefficiency in that stock market segment as opposed to those of the conventional stocks.

The results based on unconventional trading strategies provide new insights of Malaysian stock market efficiency especially in Sharīʿah-compliant and conventional stocks. The paper provides more robust findings on market efficiency as firms’ equity level data were focussed together with analysts’ buy recommendations from Bursa Malaysia.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce instruction of technical analysis on the undergraduate level that can coincide with traditional teachings of fundamental analysis.

Through examples using the latest in security analysis technology, this paper illustrates the importance of technical security analysis.

This research illustrates how technical analysis techniques may be used to make more significant investment decisions.

Kirkpatrick and Dahlquist define technical analysis as a security analysis discipline for forecasting future direction of prices through the study of past market data primarily price and volume This form of analysis has stood in direct contrast to the fundamental analysis approach whereby actual facts of the company its industry and sector may be ignored. Understanding this contrast, much of academia has chosen to continue to focus its finance curricula on fundamental analysis techniques. As more universities implement trading rooms to reflect that of industry, they must recognize that any large brokerage trading group or financial institution will typically have both a technical analysis and fundamental analysis team. Thus, the need to incorporate technical analysis into undergraduate finance curricula.

This paper aims to historicise the contemporary chlorophyll trend through the first academic study of its early marketing in Sweden (1950–1953). Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, it demonstrates how brands used advertisements to convince female consumers of chlorophyll’s necessity to fulfil certain aspirational goals.

In all, 150 advertisements for chlorophyll products were collected from the Swedish Historical Newspaper Archive, as well as 600 additional advertisements for the three most popular products (toothpaste/mouthwash, sanitary towels and soap) from 1940 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1964. Then, multimodal critical discourse analysis was used to investigate how the products were marketed before, during and after the chlorophyll trend, identifying the general themes and linguistic/semiotic structures of the advertisements.

This paper shows how the commercial use of chlorophyll offered a lucrative opportunity for marketers, acting as a “tabula rasa” on which they could use discourses of science, nature, idealised femininity and luxury to draw connections with health, modernity and beauty, despite the product having no real purpose or value.

Viewing this fad from a historical perspective emphasises how brands, marketers and influencers continue to capitalise on the anxieties of female consumers with promises around beauty, hygiene and health. It, thus, offers us critical distance to reflect on contemporary claims about chlorophyll’s health benefits to make informed choices.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits and challenges of implementing circular economy (CE), as well as shed light on the influence of procurement strategy in CE implementation in construction projects.

A qualitative research approach with abductive reasoning was adopted. The empirical data were collected from the construction industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The results reveal that clients, consultants and contractors have limited awareness, knowledge and motivation to implement CE in construction projects. The absence of incentives to design projects following CE principles, lack of involvement of contractors and suppliers, non-use of materials that use CE principles and current procurement strategies are the main challenges for the implementation of CE in the UAE.

Previous research offers limited knowledge on CE and its implementation in construction projects particularly from a procurement strategy perspective. The findings of the study provide new knowledge of the benefits, challenges and role of procurement strategy for implementing CE. It is suggested that collaborative and partnering-based procurement methods are needed to facilitate the effective implementation of CE.