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The case opens with Martha Stewart's 2005 release from prison following her conviction for obstructing an insider-trading investigation of her 2001 sale of personal stock. The scandal dealt a crippling blow to the powerful Martha Stewart brand and drove results at her namesake company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), deep into the red. But as owner of more than 90 percent of MSO's voting shares, Stewart continued to control the company throughout the scandal.

The company faced significant external challenges, including changing consumer preferences and mounting competition in all of its markets. Ad rates were under pressure as advertisers began fragmenting spending across multiple platforms, including the Internet and social media, where MSO was weak. New competitors were luring readers from MSO's flagship publication, Martha Stewart Living. And in its second biggest business, merchandising, retailing juggernauts such as Walmart and Target were crushing MSO's most important sales channel, Kmart. Internal challenges loomed even larger, with numerous failures of governance while the company attempted a turnaround.

This case can be used to teach either corporate governance or turnarounds.

Students will learn:

• How control of shareholder voting rights by a founding executive can undermine corporate governance

• The importance of independent directors and board committees

• How company bylaws affect corporate governance

• How to recognize and respond to early signs of stagnation

• How to avoid management actions that can make a crisis worse

• How weaknesses in executive leadership can push a company into crisis and foster a culture that actively prevents strategic revitalization

How control of shareholder voting rights by a founding executive can undermine corporate governance

The importance of independent directors and board committees

How company bylaws affect corporate governance

How to recognize and respond to early signs of stagnation

How to avoid management actions that can make a crisis worse

How weaknesses in executive leadership can push a company into crisis and foster a culture that actively prevents strategic revitalization

Discusses customer dissatisfaction and how it is expressed. Reports on a study showing that customers will complain to management if the problem is severe and if they are encouraged to participate in service management, whereas if service firms create barriers within the complaint‐handling process and set up luxury‐oriented and aloof service images, customers will adopt more harmful negative word of mouth forms of complaining. Proposes ways of managing customer complaints, for controlling the more harmful types of dissatisfaction and for maximizing opportunities to develop loyal customer bases through effective handling of problems.

The purpose of this work is to test several incentive strategies for attaining new customers via electronic referrals, or e‐referrals. The paper aims to examine: the roles of both the magnitude of the incentive offered to the sender and the magnitude of the incentive offered to the receiver; and the effect of equity versus inequity of financial incentives for the two parties.

The study consisted of a large‐scale field experiment conducted with 45,000 members of an online mall. The participants were divided into eight conditions in an incomplete two‐factor 4×4 between‐subjects design, where not every combination of incentive magnitudes was utilized and the magnitude of the incentive offered the receiver and sender varied in size such that sometimes rewards were equal, sometimes receivers of the e‐referral had larger rewards, and sometimes senders of the e‐referral s received more. Dependent measures included the number of e‐referrals sent, the number of those e‐referrals that lead to a new customer registering, and the number of new registrants that converted to buyers from completing a purchase.

The results demonstrate that both the magnitude of financial incentives, and the relative magnitude of the incentives for the senders and receivers both influence e‐referral rates. Specifically, it was found that offering higher incentives to senders and receivers led to an increase in referral invitations sent, new member sign‐ups and new buyers. It was also found that the disparity between incentives offered to senders and receivers affected e‐referral rates and that inequity should favor the sender to enhance results.

This paper offers marketers valuable insights as to how different combinations of financial incentives to receivers and senders can affect e‐referral rates. The findings suggest that potential referrers respond not only to referral incentives but also to the disparity between their incentives and the receivers' incentives.

Over the twentieth century, the relationships between the home and the school have been considered from a number of perspectives. These include social class and children’s education (David, 1993; Halsey et al., 1980; Utting, 1995); the language of the home and school (Bernstein, 1971); involving parents in their children’s learning (David, 1993; Mortimore & Mortimore, 1984; Sylva, 1987; Wolfendale, 1983); parents’ political participation in their children’s education (Ball, 1990; David, 1993; Deem, 1989; Golby, 1989; Macleod, 1989); home-school relations and minority ethnic families (Tomlinson, 1984); gender and home-school issues (David, 1993); family structure and children’s education (Cockett & Tripp, 1994; Utting, 1995); the treatment of family in the school curriculum (Cockett & Tripp, 1994; DfEE, 2000; OFSTED, 2002; Utting, 1995); the role of school in addressing students’ family problems (Cockett & Tripp, 1994; Rodgers & Pryor, 1998); and home-school contracts (Bastiani, 1991; David, 1993; Macbeth, 1989). The range of areas outlined above alone highlights the complexities of the issues surrounding home and school.

Since ethnographers tend to study poor, urban black communities most often, it is not surprise that the methodological literature contains a wealth of information designed to help scholars do this kind of work. Far less is known about the challenges ethnographers face when “studying up,” that is exploring middle and upper-middle-class communities. Less is know too about the challenges of working in a suburb versus an urban community. This chapter helps to fill that void. By chronicling the challenges I faced in the field while collecting the data for Blue-Chip Black, my book about the identity options of middle and upper-middle-class suburban blacks, I show that the strategies ethnographers of the urban poor employ in their work are not necessarily transferable to studies of the upper classes. I identify a set of methodological tools appropriate for analysis of the upper classes. I then turn to the theoretical contributions of my study as a way of showing the kinds of insights that can be gleaned from a study of those near the top of the class ladder.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study of support received by 60 young adults who experienced sexual, physical or emotional abuse and neglect in childhood. It is focussed on the support provided by friends in particular, and draws out relevant learning for child sexual exploitation (CSE).

In all, 60 young people completed a questionnaire, complemented by a two hour follow-up interview to explore experiences of formal and informal support in disclosing abuse. In total, 13 young people were recruited on the basis of their prior participation in a larger, associated study of child abuse and neglect, with the remainder recruited via open invitation.

There is rich information in the interviews about the ways that friends provided support to participants. Friends provided practical, moral and emotional support. They intervened to keep their friends safe. They offered emotional “escape” and a conduit to adults who could help keep them safe. Importantly, friends recognised that participants were in distress even when they did not know the participants were being abused.

The results highlight that friends have a crucial role to play in helping children to keep safe and to feel safe, provided that they are equipped with information and knowledge of how to respond and where to seek help.

The paper is original in considering the role of friends within a community safety framework. In addition, the study sample is larger than other studies of its kind, and considers a wider variety of child maltreatment experiences than previous studies, making clear links to CSE.

The apparel industry is often scrutinized for its lack of environmental stewardship, and thus pro-environmental initiatives have been of significant consideration among apparel brands in recent years. However, one personality trait of specific concern to brand marketers is consumer skepticism toward climate change, which has the potential to negatively impact the success of brands’ pro-environmental initiatives. In this light, research indicates that knowledge of the environmental impact of products can lead to lower skepticism (Tobler et al., 2012) and ultimately higher purchase intentions of such products. Thus, this study investigates the impact of consumers’ knowledge about environmental impact of apparel, climate change skepticism on their evaluation of brands’ pro-environmental initiatives (shared value and perceived benefit) and ultimately their relationship with the brand (perceived trust, commitment), leading to purchase intention for both familiar and unfamiliar brands.

Two separate studies were conducted for familiar and unfamiliar brands. Data for online surveys were collected from two US nationwide samples and analyzed using path analyses.

Consumers’ intention to purchase from a pro-environmental brand was influenced by knowledge and skepticism. Particularly, the obtained shared value perceptions and perceived benefits of consumers influenced their relationship with the brand through trust and commitment, which eventually impacted their intention to purchase from the brand. Differences were observed for familiar and unfamiliar brands.

Findings of this study will help brand managers design effective pro-environmental marketing messages. Both familiar and unfamiliar brands would benefit from educating consumers about the true environmental impact of their apparel choices, as well as the personal benefits and values earned when purchasing/consuming pro-environmental apparel. This, in turn, reduces consumer skepticism toward climate change, leading to favorable evaluations of the brand’s pro-environmental initiatives and improvement of long-term brand relations.

This study extended the social exchange theory by understanding antecedents of consumers’ shared value and perceived benefits, namely, their knowledge about the environmental impact of apparel and their skepticism toward climate change, with the final outcome variable being consumers’ patronage intention of pro-environmental brands.

This paper aims to determine the importance of the human touch in customer service interactions.

The paper is based on two original studies using tech‐savvy respondents, utilizing a survey and scenario‐based research.

The paper finds that, even for tech‐savvy customers, human touch is an important factor in both customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

The study is limited to US respondents and telephone‐based service encounters.

This paper shows the importance of keeping some aspects of the human touch in customer encounters with the firm. Firms cannot rely on self‐service technology for all services.

This paper fulfills a gap in the existing services literature, with a specific focus on valuing human interaction in technology‐enabled service encounters.

On September 22, 2010, a young man stood in distress on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge not far from his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, looking 600ft below at the Hudson River. He was ready to act on the decision he had announced just minutes before on Facebook. His first semester at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, located 27 miles southwest of New York City, had brought an unexpected challenge: his roommate had streamed two live Internet videos of his intimate encounters with another man. These were very private moments, and it was simply too much to bear. Tyler Clementi jumped to his death, leaving behind broken-hearted friends and family members, and shocking an entire nation with his tragic story (Kolowich, 2010; Foderaro, 2010).

Tyler probably had no idea how his death would shed light on a serious college issue – cyberbullying. In this chapter, the authors address this issue in detail. This is done first by providing a review of relevant literature that defines cyberbullying, explaining its presence in higher education, and describing various factors that should be considered when dealing with it. The literature review includes discussion regarding key electronic resources that college students use to cyber bully, as well as various legal and judicial issues that relate to this cultural phenomenon. Following the literature review, cyberbullying is examined through a research study at Ohio University, a large public institution located in southeastern Ohio. This is accomplished by setting forth research questions and hypotheses, describing the research instrument and design, and explaining the findings from an Ohio University undergraduate student survey. The chapter concludes with suggestions that practitioners might consider implementing on campus, as well as recommendations for future research on this topic.

In this chapter, the author shares almost 2 decades of experience as Director of Colonial Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol in guiding students' storytelling and historical interpretation. Storytelling provides specific benefits in the classroom, including increased student interest, creativity, citizenship, and awareness of heritage and history. The author explains the pedagogical and curricular value of storytelling and historical interpretation activities; she provides a strong rationale for involving students in both processes for engagement and also as a multimodal learning method. Potter shows how to develop an effective instructional sequence that addresses not only assessment but also student motivation and creativity. Modeling storytelling and historical interpretation for students prepares them to take the next steps in research and development for their own presentations that incorporate language arts, social studies, civics, and critical thinking skills. The author provides detailed suggestions on directing student performances at the community and state levels, which in turn foster a sense of personal achievement and external recognition for their work. This chapter includes resources and strategies to support students in choosing historical figures and stories for their projects, in conducting research, in story mapping, and in identifying performance criteria. At the performance level, the author offers tips on coaching students effectively and using media. She concludes with recommendations on how to showcase student work at the school and state levels, to build parent involvement, and to manage funding and publicity.