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The aim of this paper is to better understand the good news coming from Africa and reflect on ideas discussed at the “Africa 2060: Good News from Africa” conference in April 2010 organized by Boston University's Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer‐Range Future.

Africa's performance over the last 50 years has been akin to a roller coaster ride of good news followed by bad news, with the bad news dominating. However since the dawn of the millennium Africa's outlook has increasingly become optimistic. As one looks at Africa's future, several questions emerge: which of these gains can be consolidated? Which of the positive trends will be sustained? Has this recent period of global attention provided the continent with a real institutional scaffolding on which a positive future can be built? And what needs to be done to ensure that the dangers of chronic poverty, conflict, and institutional collapse that still lurk in the shadows will be contained long enough that they eventually disappear?

The authors base their observations on the intense discussions during the conference by practitioners and experts and an engaged and informed audience, plus a broader reading of the literature, including that which was presented at the conference. These observations reflect a locus of expert and informed opinion and provide a window into the priorities that are engaging the imaginations of those thinking deep and hard about Africa's future. The authors distill seven key drivers that are of particular importance in shaping Africa's longer‐range future. Of course, all of these can operate in either a positive or a negative direction. It is the decisions that will be made by African and international policy‐makers, businesses, civic organizations, and citizens today that will determine which direction Africa will be “driven” towards tomorrow.

There are a number of exciting opportunities that await Africa in its future, but many of these also come with potential hurdles and pitfalls. Innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, knowledge, and globalization are among the areas that have generated significant good news to record from Africa. But within each of these areas there is also the potential and reality of bad news. The choice now lies with African citizens, decision makers and societies as to whether they are able to make the type of decisions that will control the negative tendencies of these drivers and accelerate the positive tendencies.

The purpose of this project was to explore and identify factors that influence a consumer to purchase wine during an afternoon of product sampling (wine tasting). A panel of consumers was recruited for an afternoon of wine tasting at vineyards in Napa, California. Several potential hedonistic, utilitarian and logistical factors (i.e. winery facilities, quality of the wine and order in which the winery was visited) were measured using a journal log that was maintained by participants following the tasting experience for a period of one‐month. The conclusions drawn from this study were that group size, confidence in one's ability to purchase wine and overall assessment of a vineyard's wine portfolio were more important than the hedonistic factors in terms of inducing a sale immediately following a taste.

This paper develops and tests a descriptive model of management accounting system choice through an empirical analysis of the adoption of innovative cost accounting systems in not-for-profit hospitals. The logistic regression analysis indicates that management accounting system design is impacted by organi zational objectives, technological complexity, and other features of the organizational control system. Descriptive statistics indicate limited use of management accounting techniques common in manufacturing firms, such as standard costing and variance analysis. A cross-lagged model suggests that implementation of an innovative management accounting system may be causally linked to decreasing operating costs.

This article is premised on the idea that social networks represent an important, but often overlooked, unit of analysis in management and entrepreneurship studies. The concept of embeddedness, emphasizing the significance of social relationships, is of particular relevance as more and more frequently minorities and immigrants engage in small businessownership. This article borrows from the ethnicity and social network traditions, and offers that an analysis of the ethnic homogeneity of an entrepreneur's strong and weak social ties would be fruitful in gauging entrepreneurial success.

Given the dramatic changes in the business environment, the purpose of the paper is to stimulate readers to challenge their mental models of business and industrial marketing, and consider the implications of the blurring of the lines between industrial and consumer marketing.

The paper is a reflection on the evolution of the discipline of industrial marketing since the author's first publication in this area 40 years ago, and an analysis of the impact on this discipline of five interrelated forces of change including: the convergence of B2B and B2C driven by the advances in the internet and rise of small businesses; the prevalence of outsourcing and creation of value networks across firms and countries; the opening of corporate R&D, manufacturing and marketing to the involvement of empowered customers; bridging the functional silos within the firm; and the movement from an “industrial” to a “knowledge” based society and the blurring of products, services, and customer experience.

The lines between consumer and business marketing are increasingly blurred by new technologies and business models. Researchers and practitioners need to re‐examine their mental models of business and industrial marketing in light of these changes.

The blurring of the lines has many implications, including moving from focusing on buyers to stakeholders, recognizing new forms of relationships with empowered consumers, re‐examining the role of outsourcing, bridging disciplinary silos, recognizing the importance of brand equity, utilizing information and communications technology, focusing on the total customer experience, addressing emerging markets, re‐examining the role of marketing research and modeling, and rethinking the use of dashboards. By recognizing these changes, one can build upon the foundation of the field to develop innovative approaches to both business and consumer markets.

A call to debate the need to redefine and rethink the discipline, and even rethink the title and focus of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.

Considers the pluralistic cultures which exist within a nation and outlines the history of previous research into this field. Introduces the concept of embeddedness which means that the society within which a person lives will influence their behaviour. Discusses intracultural differences and presents some research strategies for looking at the ethnic consumer.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Stagflation and persistent balance of trade deficits during the 1970's encouraged government policy makers in many countries to seek improvements in export market performance. Another significant development during the 1970's was the empirical verification provided by the PIMS project of the positive relationship between a firm's market share and its profit ability, or other measures of performance in a particular market. The authors propose that the PIMS findings may also apply for an aggregation of firms — namely, world traders. A market share analysis of the export trade performance of the U.S., the E.E.C., and for Japan is presented, the implications of this research are discussed, and some directions for future research are provided.

The past decade has seen widespread adoption of specific strategy analysis methods ranging from PIMS to portfolio management. Recently, disenchantment has set in. The answer lies not in rejecting the various theories and models, but in creatively combining usage of them. Each may only give part of the picture, but together they can clarify even the most complex strategy.