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Although being fired up about changes such as firm expansion, chief executive officers (CEOs) have a hard time with changes that involve divesting businesses or downsizing operations. This study aims to examine how a particular psychological process – regulatory focus – serves as a managerial exit barrier in the context of store closings in the US retail industry. This study also examines how a particular corporate governance mechanism, the board of directors, moderates the relationship between CEO regulatory focus and divestment activity.

This study content-analyzed letters to shareholders to measure the regulatory focus of retail CEOs and used negative binomial regression to test the effect of the CEO’s regulatory focus and board independence on store closure activity.

The two motivation orientations – promotion and prevention – focuses have distinct effects on store closure decisions. As predicted, promotion-focused CEOs, who value attainment and growth, resist “pulling the plug.” Conversely, prevention-focused CEOs, who are more sensitive to losses, are more inclined to close stores. Independent boards decrease the CEOs’ resistance to “pull the plug” only when necessary, which is the case when CEOs have less vigilant tendencies.

This study contributes to the strategy and marketing literature. It examines an individual-level antecedent of store closure decisions and responds to the call for research on the effect of regulatory focus on divestment decisions.

Leaders themselves can be a source of resistance to change. The findings suggest the importance of boards hiring CEOs psychologically aligned with the firms’ strategic priorities. Promotion-focused CEOs may be a better fit for companies engaged in growth and acquisition. By contrast, prevention-focused CEOs may be a better fit for firms involved in retrenchment and restructuring. Independent boards still have the power to influence CEO decisions in the case of a misfit, as the findings suggest.

This study examines divestment decisions during the “retail apocalypse” and provides empirical evidence for the existence of managerial exit barriers, first introduced by Michael Porter.

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive value of psychopathy features on crime-related emotional states in forensic male patients with offence histories who were mandated to Dutch clinical care.

The study had a retrospective design in which psychopathy features were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. For each patient, information on the events leading up to the crime and a description of the crime itself were extracted from the hospital record to assess emotional states. These crime-related emotional states were assessed using the mode observation scale. The sample consisted of 175 patients with offence histories.

Multiple regression analyses indicated that affective features of psychopathy were a negative predictor for feelings of vulnerability in the events leading up to the crime but not predictive of loneliness. The interpersonal features were predictive of deceit during criminal behaviour.

This study leads to a better, more nuanced and substantiated understanding of which emotional states play a prominent role in criminal behaviour and how these states are affected by psychopathic traits. This knowledge can influence existing treatment programmes for patients with offence histories.

Several studies have examined the relationship between emotional states and criminal behaviour and between psychopathy and emotions, but less is known about the predictive relationship between psychopathy features and crime-scene-related emotional states.

This paper aims to provide new insights into and offer potential solutions to the challenges encountered by mental health services working with remote, rural or underserved communities in the UK.

In this paper, the authors reflect on the utility of integrating conventional clinical approaches, with preventive care and empowering work within the community, to provide culturally sensitive and accessible mental health services. The authors describe an example of community intervention from a mental health service in Ghana designed to enhance reach within remote and rural communities and identify potential lessons for practice in the UK.

The partnership between community mental health services and the rural communities, including families and existing social frameworks, applies collaborative care to overcome the lack of resources and facilitate the acceptability of mental health services to the local population. There are a series of important lessons from this experience including the importance of understanding the culture of a community to optimise reach and the importance of working IN the community and WITH the community.

This paper is novel because it provides learning from a model of care applied in the global south that has potential for implementation with underserved populations in the UK. The authors suggest a reframing of the notion of community care to encompass existing frameworks of community, not merely a biomedical conceptualisation.