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Most of the research on international outsourcing of value chain activities focuses on larger firms. The purpose of this paper is to fill an important research gap by exploring how small firms manage institutional differences to enhance their international outsourcing success.

The paper uses data from interviews conducted with two managers of a small New Zealand apparel manufacturing firm who have over 35 years of combined experience with international outsourcing. The firm had both failed and successful experiences in its international outsourcing ventures. Findings are discussed in the context of the extant literature on international outsourcing.

Small firms overcome institutional constraints they face in offshore locations by leveraging from their entrepreneurial skills, learning from failures and using a relational governance mode. This results in achieving performance targets and sustaining long-term relationships with suppliers, defined as international outsourcing success in this study.

The findings may not be generalised as they are based on a single case and cover only the client perspective. The study contributes to the offshoring literature from the perspective of smaller firms and calls for quantitative investigations to generalise the findings.

The key implications include that small firms need to develop quality relationships and leverage from their unique entrepreneurial capabilities to enhance their success while outsourcing to relatively different institutional environments. Moreover, even a failed experience might help generate subsequent multiple successful ventures, if lessons are learned and behaviour adapted accordingly. Operating in emerging economies is much more challenging than managers from developed markets usually expect – thus the need for them to understand and prepare well before undertaking operations in these markets.

With the rise of international outsourcing of value chain activities, the findings are useful to small firms aiming to achieve success in their outsourcing ventures in offshore locations. This study is one of only a few studies investigating small firms’ international outsourcing that examines both failure and success in an institutionally diverse context.

The purpose of this paper is to report on service and service-intensive New Zealand-based internationalising firms in respect of their managers’ perceptions towards the usefulness of government assistance.

Interviews were undertaken with the key decision makers in 66 service and service-intensive firms.

Positive perceptions were found relating to government support at a macro-level; for example, Ministerial visits that open opportunities for managers in overseas markets. This was found to enhance micro-level support, such as individual assistance programmes.

The contribution is at the public/private sector interaction within the international marketing literature; the area of originality involves the consideration of support at the macro, as opposed to micro-level, as this is an issue that has not received a great deal of coverage in earlier studies. A contextual aspect of originality relates to the study being undertaken with service and service-intensive firms in comparison to the manufacturing sector that has featured heavily in earlier literature.

The aim of this paper is to review the debate on the purpose, focus and necessity of UK undergraduate marketing education.

Assumptions in this debate are challenged by the collection and analysis of interview data from practitioners, alongside additional data from UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in respect of their current marketing programmes.

The results indicate that there is a large degree of commonality between the offerings at UK HEIs, and that some significant gaps between the teaching offered by the academy, and the knowledge and abilities required by practitioners do exist.

The data sets have limitations of depth and scope. Further research is needed in which the details of marketing education and the requirements of marketing practice are examined more closely, and at levels other than undergraduate, and in countries other than the UK.

This paper should be of interest to marketing programme managers, and also to marketing module co‐ordinators as a basis on which to consider the future development of their educational practices.

The collation of data about marketing modules offered by UK HEIs will be of interest to most marketing teachers. Further value will be obtained if this paper is used as part of the re‐engineering of a marketing programme.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the developing wine markets of Japan and Singapore for New Zealand (NZ) wine. It is principally an opinion piece with some reference to the academic literature, to the trade literature and quite a bit of the authors' own experiences as marketing academics conducting research in East Asia on the growth of wine drinking in this region of the globe.

This paper is atypical in that it is more of a descriptive commentary, or “Viewpoint”, that draws on the literature interspersed with the autoethnographic reflections regarding the experiences in looking at NZ wine in Japan and Singapore as well as drawing on data from face-to-face interviews and focus groups with a variety of participants with knowledge of the global wine industry. Informal meetings were held with individuals representing NZ wineries, Japanese and Singapore wine distributors, restaurant food and beverage managers, wine journalists, wine shop proprietors and sommeliers data. Personal reflections and opinions are interspersed with the trade and academic literature in relation to the exploration of the NZ experience in the wine markets of Japan and Singapore.

The major finding is that there are marked differences between Japanese and Singaporean consumers and that the adoption of wine drinking or the incorporation of wine into one's non-traditionally wine-drinking society involves individuals who play cultural intermediary roles as communicators and distributors of “cultural products” and as translators of cultural products into meaningful local, consumption experiences. Based on personal observations, there appears to be a functional aspect to this facet of globalisation in that cultural intermediaries facilitate the adoption of wine consumption in emerging Asian markets simply through promoting it as a social accompaniment much like local alcoholic beverages, but also that wine has the capacity to enhance local cuisine.

The insights gained through personal reflection and an examination of perspectives from participants with knowledge of the wine industry in Japan and Singapore should help NZ wine producers with specific knowledge to navigate through the complexity of emerging wine markets in the Asian context.

The contribution is in looking at “sophisticated globalization” in the context of NZ wine producers looking to market a cultural product such as wine to specific Asian societies not traditionally known for wine drinking.

Independent actors operating through peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms co-create service experiences, such as shared car-rides or home-stays. Emotional labor among both parties, manifested in the mutual enactment of socially desirable behavior, is essential in ensuring that these experiences are successful. However, little is known about emotional labor practices and about how sharing economy platforms enforce emotional labor practices among independent actors, such as guests, hosts, drivers, or passengers. To address this research gap, we follow a mixed methods approach. We combine survey research among Airbnb and Uber users with content analysis of seven leading sharing economy platforms. The findings show that (1) users perform emotional labor despite not seeing is as necessarily desirable and (2) platforms actively encourage the performance of emotional labor practices even in the absence of direct formal control. Emotional labor practices are encouraged through (hard) design features such as mutual ratings, reward systems, and gamification, as well as through more subtle (soft) normative framing of desirable practices via platform and app guidelines, tips, community sites, or blogs. Taken together, these findings expand our understanding of the limitations of peer-to-peer sharing platforms, where control over the service experience and quality can only be enforced indirectly.

A major difficulty identified many years ago in psychiatric care is the shortage of appropriate instruments with which to carry out valid and reliable therapeutic assessments which are behaviourally based and therefore appropriate for use in a variety of contexts. The aim of this project was to ascertain the utility of a forensic nursing risk assessment tool - Behavioural Status Index (BEST-Index). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A multi-site cross-sectional survey was undertaken using mixed method design. Quantitative data was generated using BEST-Index to allow comparisons across three different levels of security (high, medium and low) in Scotland and Ireland. Qualitative data were gathered from patients and multi-disciplinary team (MDT) members using semi-structured interviews and questionnaire.

Measured over an 18-month period, there was a statistically significant improvement in behaviour, when comparing patients in high and medium secure hospitals. Two key themes emerged from patient and staff perspectives: “acceptance of the process” and “production and delivery of information”, respectively. The wider MDT acknowledge the value of nursing risk assessment, but require adequate information to enable them to interpret findings. Collaborating with patients to undertake risk assessments can enhance future care planning.

Studies using cross-section can only provide information at fixed points in time.

The BEST-Index assessment tool is well established in clinical practice and has demonstrated good utility.

This project has served to highlight the unique contribution of BEST-Index to both staff and patients alike and confirm its robustness and versatility across differing levels of security in Scottish and Irish forensic mental health services.