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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an innovative way to train adult apprentices for the construction industry.

The paper emphasizes that, in order to address skills shortages for international construction, training methods must be improved. It looks at the example of an adult apprenticeship scheme in Australia from the perspectives of the apprentice, the training provider and the employer.

The paper suggests that trained adult apprentices with previous experience can be more productive and loyal, and that this scheme has implications for the training of apprentices generally.

To date, the scheme has enjoyed success in Australia and for the provision of tradespeople in the international construction industry.

The paper illustrates how a training partnership has sought to provide necessary and increasingly scarce skills for an international construction organization through an original apprenticeship scheme.

Evaluates the advanced‐entry adult‐apprenticeship scheme that Thiess Kentz construction company in Australia introduced in partnership with group‐training organization East Coast Apprenticeships and public training provider Skills Tech Australia.

Focuses on the recruitment and selection of apprentices; the profile for selection; the recognition of prior learning; the independent test program; initial deployment to site; and what happens on completion of the program.

Suggests that trained adult apprentices with previous experience can be more productive and loyal.

Reveals that the apprenticeship scheme creates and maintains a guaranteed element in the company's skilled workforce, identifies and positions a new generation of supervisors and encourages loyalty to the company among people who have benefited from the program.

Argues that the scheme has widespread application across all trades and is being recognized as a new pathway to qualification and potentially a major solution to skill shortages across the world. Emphasizes that, in order to address skills shortages for international construction, training methods must be improved. Highlights a possible way forward.

Illustrates how a training partnership has sought to provide necessary and increasingly scarce skills for an international construction organization through an original apprenticeship scheme.

It has become increasingly apparent that one's perception of issues depends largely on his or her personal history. Human beings, professionals, and stakeholders vary in their perspectives, strategies, and solutions. Rather than arbitrarily selecting issues or seeking consensus among interdisciplinary but disparate groups, it is critical to examine the broader array of values and issues that impact learners with exceptionalities and the future of special education. In addition, it is important to conceptualize effective techniques to reverse traditional problems or difficulties while considering the “cycles” of change in general and special education. These cycles are based on the view that educational perspectives have their time since they come and go. When they are innovative, they become the status quo and become finally obsolete as the next group of methods, beliefs, and educational initiatives takes hold. In special education, we have fundamental values that must be respected and followed to deliver services to learners with exceptionalities. These values are sometimes not valued by ill prepared and unprepared professionals, especially since good professionals believe in change. This chapter focuses on how these values can be respected to protect and advance special education and education as a whole.

Purpose – This study is intended to extend scholarship on the management of organizations by examining the long-term performance of orphaned products.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses the historical context of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression to examine the long-run appeal (performance) of orphaned products – products from start-ups that fail soon after production. I use this setting to determine how factors within the purview of management, as well as the role of changing tastes, affect the appeal of music from short-lived start-ups founded in 1929 and 1933.

Findings/originality/value – I find that while the evolution of tastes has a substantial effect beyond the control of a firm's managers, a start-up's decision-makers were able to positively influence the long-run appeal of music when they (a) recorded tunes with new artists and (b) were able to create an early big hit with the tune. These results demonstrate how and why, even with cultural producers in one of the greatest economic disasters in U.S. history, managerial decisions were meaningful for product performance. Finally, I show that the effect of being a start-up on the long-run appeal of a tune is time-varying such that being a start-up in 1929 or 1933 does not harm a tune's appeal until after World War II. These final analyses point to further ways in which strategy, history, and sociology might combine to further scholarship on the management of organizations.

This review has two purposes: (1) to systematically analyse the literature on export competitiveness (EC) and (2) to provide an overview of various determinants and the methodological trends in the subject field, making it possible to develop a roadmap for future researchers.

The systematic literature review (SLR) method was employed in this paper. The authors have covered three decades of research articles published in Scopus listed journals between 1991 and 2020. The determinants of EC are synthesized and widely used theories, and methodologies are identified and classified. The authors have also provided directions for future research.

The key determinants identified are labour and capital productivity, labour costs, exchange and real effective exchange rate (REER), domestic gross domestic product (GDP), trade liberalization and barriers. The findings reveal that EC is now a scientific measure, since the studies in this subject field have moved towards measuring EC and its determinants.

There has been no comprehensive review in this area exploring the theories, context, constructs and methodologies until now. Therefore, this review provides deep insights into the topic and also offers a unified picture of the subject field.

ALL THE FIGURES go to prove that the recession is behind us. There is no question but that business is once again on the up and up. Order books, for the first time in ages, are full and, what is quite as important, all the indications are that delivery dates will be met in the future — as they should always have been.

One way of looking at the association between ethics and stakeholder theory – of examining the idea that stakeholder theory has a strong moral foundation – is to consider how the stakeholder approach might in fact be directly driven by and guided by the moral obligations of business. An alternative perspective we offer is that stakeholder theory only indirectly derives from the moral obligations of business, with business purpose serving as a mediating factor. We work through the fairly straightforward logic behind that alternative perspective in this chapter. We argue that it is a better way to think about the association between ethics and stakeholder theory, particularly because it allows for a theoretical and practical distinction between corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory. Stakeholder theory can thereby continue developing as a theory of strategic management, even as it brings morals to the fore in ways that other approaches to strategic management do not.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of consumer ethnocentrism, country image, functional food image, subjective knowledge and health consciousness in predicting purchase intention of imported functional foods using the theory of planned behavior.

A total of 361 Chinese consumers from 20 to 60 year old who have purchased Korean functional foods participated in this study using an online survey. Structural equation modeling was performed to examine the hypotheses.

Consumer ethnocentrism had a negative effect on the intention to purchase Korean functional food, but the image of Korean functional foods, subjective knowledge and health consciousness positively affected intention to purchase Korean functional foods. Country image had a positive effect on the image of Korean functional foods. Attitude and perceived behavioral control had a positive effect on the intention to purchase Korean functional foods.

This study combined social and personal factors to explain Chinese consumer intention to purchase imported Korean functional foods.

In the wake of climate change and its associated impact on firms' performance, this paper attempts to provide a piece of empirical evidence in support of the effect of weather conditions on the stock market performance.

Monthly time-series dataset and the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) semi-parametric econometric technique are used to establish the effect of weather variables on stock market return.

This study finds that temperature and wind speed have a negative and statistically significant relationship with stock market performance. Likewise, humidity exhibits a negative relationship with stock market performance, albeit insignificant. The relevant stock market and macroeconomic control variables are statistically significant in addition to exhibiting their expected signs. The findings lend support to advocates of behavioural factors inclusion in asset pricing and decision-making.

For policy purposes, the authors recommend that traders, investors and stock exchange managers must take into consideration different weather conditions as they influence investors' behaviour, investment decisions, and consequently, the stock market performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first empirical evidence of the nexus between disaggregated weather measures and stock market performance in Ghana. This study uses monthly data (which are very rare in the literature, especially for developing country studies) to provide empirical evidence that weather influences stock market performance.