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The consumption of music performed in different languages represents a significant aspect of the contemporary cultural experience. This phenomenon questions how different languages mediate music consumption in specific national contexts. In this paper, the authors investigate the case of live music consumption in France.

The authors surveyed 428 persons who saw 159 artists either performing in French or in English in 46 locations around Paris, France. The authors tested the effect of the language of the concert on three dimensions of music consumption: singing in unison, appraisal of the lyrics and dancing.

Multilevel analysis revealed that English was positively associated with dancing, whereas French was positively associated with the appraisal of the lyrics. The authors found no evidence that the language of the concert was associated with differences in singing in unison.

Results are discussed with respect to language diversity in the context of globalised popular music consumption.

Among leaders of the French Socialist Movement, Albert Thomas (1878‐1932) was one of the few steady supporters of scientific management. The purpose of this paper is to describe how Thomas developed his ideas about advanced management thought and practice during and after World War I.

The paper makes extensive use of published and unpublished primary sources preserved at the Archives nationales, Paris, at the Bureau International du Travail (BIT), Geneva, and at Smith College, Northampton, MA.

Thomas's reformist ideology first stood the test during World War I when he served as minister for munitions for France. After the International Labour Organization had entrusted him with the directorship of the BIT, Thomas helped to create the International Management Institute (IMI) as a center for the collection and dissemination of advanced management thought and practice. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the rationalization movement fell into disrepute. Like some progressive members of the Taylor Society, Thomas identified scientific management increasingly with concepts of socioeconomic planning and international cooperation. Nonetheless, the intellectual tide turned against his reformist creed. Having lost the support of its American sponsors, IMI closed its doors in January 1934, only about two years after Thomas's unexpected death.

The paper tries to show how one of the most brilliant French politicians of the last century developed and applied his theories‐in‐use about scientific management under changing historical circumstances.

This paper aims to highlight myriad accomplishments of C. Bertrand Thompson, who is perhaps most well known as a scientific-management bibliographer and a Taylor disciple, in the belief that his contributions as a pioneer management theorist and consultant in Europe deserve to be more widely known and more deeply appreciated.

Archival, primary and secondary sources were used in the research.

Thompson was among the first to bring management consulting to Europe. He understood the importance of adapting scientific-management principles to meet the diverse needs of each client for whom he consulted. Thompson’s strong belief and value system remained constant throughout his life.

Understanding the needs of customers or clients and adapting systems to meet those needs is essential in achieving success as a consultant.

By drawing on rarely accessed published and unpublished materials, this paper discusses Thompson’s many contributions to management thought and practice, most of which previously have not been highlighted in the referent literature.

This paper aims to examine the investment performance of pension funds in the UK using the three standard performance measurement models, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), Fama-French model and the Carhart model.

The authors use the CAPS-Mellon survey data for the period 1990-2008 and employ the three standard performance measurement models, the CAPM, Fama-French model and the Carhart model in assessing the investment performance of the pension funds.

The authors show that the abnormal returns of pension funds cannot be fully explained by size, book-to-market values, market returns, momentum and the term spread. The authors find larger abnormal returns in bond than in equity portfolios and that smaller funds outperform larger funds. The paper also shows that the addition of the momentum factor does not improve on the three-factor Fama-French model. The authors find that pension funds exhibit superior performance relative to the linear factor models.

First, this study contributes to the extant literature on pension funds performance. Future research may also extend the authors' work to incorporate economic, tax, political and legal differences across the countries on the performance of pension funds. Second, due to data constraints, this study excludes the default probability of corporate bonds as an additional variable in their tests on bond returns. Future work may add the default probability as an additional variable whilst examining bond returns.

The authors believe that the findings will be considerable food for thought for fund managers who continuously attempt to explore opportunities to provide a higher return to investors.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study that investigates the performance of UK equity and bond pension funds relative to standard linear factor models such as the CAPM, Fama and French, and Carhart.

This paper aims to shed light on the development of Altice, a French-based but multinational operator of cable and mobile networks.

A detailed longitudinal case study approach is adopted covering the period 2002 to 2018 (inclusive). Data are drawn from multiple sources, including the annual reports of Altice, its filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission, the prospectuses of Altice S.A. and Altice USA and the trade press.

The paper demonstrates how, until recently, Altice’s presence in France was relatively limited. This changed, however, with the acquisition of Numericable and SFR. These purchases, along with those of Suddenlink and Cablevision in the USA, were funded by a substantial increase in Altice’s debt burden. To address the negative consequences of this burden, Altice has retrenched through selling or planning to sell some of its operations and spinning-off Altice USA to its existing shareholders.

The paper highlights the complexity of multinational telecommunication companies. The challenges of developing a longitudinal case study of a company that operates in multiple countries through cascading holding companies is also illustrated by the paper.

There is a need for more data to be available in the public domain. This will, amongst other things, facilitate the analysis of companies like Altice that operate internationally and bundle products together to enhance their competitiveness.

This paper charts the growth of Altice, highlighting the role played by frequent merger and acquisition activity and debt in shaping its development and strategy.