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Healthcare systems are under pressure to improve their performance, while at the same time facing severe resource constraints, particularly workforce shortages. By applying resource-dependency-theory (RDT), we explore how healthcare organizations in different settings perceive pressure arising from uncertain access to resources and examine organizational strategies they deploy to secure resources.

A cross-sectional survey of key decision-makers in different healthcare settings in the metropolitan area of Cologne, Germany, on perceptions of pressure arising from the environment and respective strategies was conducted. For comparisons between settings radar charts, Kruskal–Wallis test and Fisher–Yates test were applied. Additionally, correlation analyses were conducted.

A sample of n = 237(13%) key informants participated and reported high pressure caused by bureaucracy, time constraints and recruiting qualified staff. Hospitals, inpatient and outpatient nursing care organizations felt most pressurized. As suggested by RDT, organizations in highly pressurized settings deployed the most vociferous strategies to secure resources, particularly in relation to personnel development.

This study is one of the few studies that focuses on the environment's impact on healthcare organizations across a variety of settings. RDT is a helpful theoretical foundation for understanding the environment's impact on organizational strategies. The substantial variations found between healthcare settings indicate that those settings potentially require specific strategies when seeking to address scarce resources and high demands. The results draw attention to the high level of pressure on healthcare organizations which presumably is passed down to managers, healthcare professionals, patients and relatives.

Based on a case study of the ‘regeneration’ of the ‘Five Estates’ of Peckham, a neighbourhood located in south-east London, this chapter considers the social implications of urban ‘regeneration’ processes from an anthropological perspective centred on concepts of waste and value and highlights the emotional turmoil and personal disruption that individuals affected by regeneration plans routinely experience.

An ethnographic approach is used based on participant observation, unstructured and semi-structured interviews as well as limited archival research. Life histories are central to the methodology and these result in the substantial use of long quotes from respondents, to highlight the ways in which they framed the issues as well as their opinions.

The chapter shows how urban regeneration processes that involve displacements and demolitions deeply affect the lives of estate residents. In juxtaposing the voices and experiences of local politicians, officers and residents it sheds light on the ways in which the values and interests of some individuals — those invested with more power, ultimately — ended up shaping regenerated landscapes. At the same time, the homes and communities valued by the residents who lived in them were demolished, removed and destroyed. They were wasted, literally and symbolically, erased from the landscape, their claims to it denied and ultimately forgotten.

The chapter highlights how while the rhetoric of regeneration strives to portray these developments as improvement and renewal, the ethnographic evidence shows instead the other side of urban regeneration as wasting both communities and urban landscapes resulting in ‘state-led gentrification’.

Thinking about regeneration and recycling through waste and value allows us to consider these processes in a novel way: at a micro level we can look at the ways in which individuals attribute to and recognise value in different sets of objects and social relationships. At the macro level we can then observe how the power dynamics that shaped the situation resulted in only a specific view and set of values to be enacted and respected, while all others were silenced, wasted and literally expelled from Peckham.

To understand the motivations for adopting RI practices for institutional investors and asset managers; to understand the different RI strategies available to institutional investors; to understand the impediments to adoption of RI at an organisational level; to debate how financial institutions can drive the growth and adoption of RI among the investment community; and to illustrate the complexities of organisational change and the strategies that institutional entrepreneurs can use to overcome resistance to change from key stakeholders.

The case is set in October 2017 against the backdrop of the pending unbundling of Old Mutual plc into four new independent businesses, and the subsequent relisting of Old Mutual Ltd on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa. The head of responsible investment at Old Mutual Investment Group and the main protagonist of the case, Jon Duncan, is considering what the subsequent relisting will mean for the responsible investing programmes that he has set up over the past six years. The case goes on to describe how responsible investment principles were supported through the implementation of ESG integration and active ownership strategies. It also examines recent developments in ESG product innovations and demonstrates another technique available to responsible investment practitioners in the form of best-in-class ESG screening. The case ends with Duncan contemplating the strategic priorities of the RI team moving forward, and how the managed separation might impact on the RI agenda. It provides prompts for students to discuss and formulate a strategy for advancing the aims of responsible investing.

The case is aimed at postgraduate-level students enrolled in a management-related degree programme such as an MBA, and covers both sustainable and responsible finance and institutional entrepreneurship theory.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance

Whole Foods and Wild Oats were both natural- and organic-food stores that competed for similar customers on values such as high-quality and healthy products, excellent customer service, knowledge of products, and an enjoyable shopping experience. In February 2007, Whole Foods announced that it would purchase a smaller but formidable competitor, Wild Oats. There was tremendous geographic complementarity involved: The merger would give Whole Foods the largest footprint within the natural- and organic-grocery industry in North America.

The premise of the case is how to make best use of customer shopping time while staying competitive and profitable: The increase in the number of ecommerce-based channels and the growth of Amazon and Wal^*Mart have forced brick-and-mortar retailers to seek alternative ways to reach potential customers in a cost- and time-efficient manner. In the U.S., an average of 0.74 hours per day is spent purchasing goods and services, while an average of 1.77 hours per day is spent doing household activities. Regardless of location, customers all have the same 24 hours in a day and only so much of it can be spent shopping.

One of the benefits of ecommerce has been an increase in product variety offered to customers. The online marketplace has enabled consumers in many industries to locate, evaluate and purchase a far wider variety of products than they can with traditional brick-and mortar channels. 30% to 40% of Amazon book sales are titles that wouldn't normally be found in brick-and-mortar stores.

The CFO of a diversified baking company must decide whether to issue convertible debt rather than straight debt or equity. In evaluating the proposed terms of the convertibles offering, the student must value the securities by valuing the call option (using option pricing theory) and the bond component. This case introduces the topic of convertible securities. Student and instructor worksheet files are available for use with the case and teaching note.

The purpose of this study is to understand the role of the migrant entrepreneur’s social capital and specifically their family social capital in the success of their crowdfunding ventures.

This paper develops an exploratory single case study of the Persu Bag started by a Chinese migrant entrepreneur in the USA, which was documented through in-depth interviews, email communication, social media interactions and secondary documents publicly available. This paper draws on crowdfunding and social capital literature to fulfil the purpose and adopt the perspective of the migrant entrepreneur in the study.

The study shows that the crowdfunding migrant entrepreneur’s family network contributes with their operand and operant resources from both the country of residence and country of origin. Besides having financial capacity, institutional knowledge and experience from both the host and home countries, the family network in both countries make the crowdfunding immigrant entrepreneur’s families more resourceful, providing additional benefits to the crowdfunding migrant entrepreneurs in the development of the campaign and crowdfunded venture.

This study broadens the understanding of the ways migrant entrepreneurs can rely on their family social capital for building financial capacity and starting a crowdfunded venture.

This study tests the hypothesis of market integration between the securitised and the unsecuritised real estate market by examining the information contents of their respective ex‐post conditional volatility measures. The two markets are said to be integrated if the conditional volatility terms of one market do not contain incremental information for the ex‐post conditional volatility of another market. Our empirical results showed no evidence of the ex‐post returns of the direct real estate (PPI) market incorporating the market volatility of the securitized real estate asset. The ex‐post conditional volatility of the PPI market, which contains only information on the past shock and the past conditional volatility, is sufficient to statistically explain the variation in the log‐PPI price variations. However, there was significant evidence of incremental information flowing from conditional volatility of the unsecuritized property market to the securitized property market. Therefore, the securtized and unsecuritized real estate markets are integrated, but the integration is only uni‐directional. Some degree of segmentation is still observed as the information of property market (PPI) still has significant impacts on the returns of the property stock market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how shoppers’ expectations regarding the amount of search and disconfirmation of these search expectations affect outcomes of the shopping trip.

A survey of shoppers is used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Survey results indicate that search disconfirmation is conceptually distinct from but related to search effort and search regret. The results show that negative search disconfirmation mediates the relationship between search effort and shopper satisfaction, hedonic and utilitarian shopping value, choice confidence, search regret and negative word-of-mouth intent.

The findings underscore that search effort itself is not negative for shoppers. However, when search effort is perceived as excessive compared to shoppers’ expectations, negative retail outcomes can occur. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.