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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, with particular focus on its use of Repo 105 transactions.

The use of the Lehman's bankruptcy report produced in part by Anton R. Valukas was used as a basis to explain how Lehman maintained acceptable leverage ratios through the use of Repo 105 transactions to paint a better picture of its financial position than actually existed.

The study concludes that Lehman's accounting method choice disguised its real problems, perhaps long enough for bankruptcy to become the only option.

Lehman's bankruptcy becomes part of a growing history of business failures where accounting principles have become the focus. The failure of Lehman reminds us that financial reporting must remain transparent, allowing users to make informed decisions with confidence.

This bankruptcy provides a painful reminder that financial reporting must allow users to differentiate among investment alternatives, based on the relative, factual financial position of the investment. The credibility of our reporting model is at stake.

The Sussex OPAC is based on the Public Query software of Geac Computers Ltd's circulation module, but with substantial local modification. Coverage of loanable items in stock has reached 75 per cent, and the OPAC is now considered as the library's major catalogue. The OPAC displays very detailed copy availability information, including real‐time loan status and information about copies which are missing or on order: this is greatly valued by the library's users. Eighteen public terminals handle between 6,000 and 7,000 searches a day in term. Searches may be made by an author/title derived search key (‘Quick’ search), by author or other name, by title, by keyword/keyphrase, or by classmark; 70 per cent of searches are by routes which were not available in the card catalogues. The main stages in the development of the OPAC are described and a search is illustrated. Usage logs have been used to analyse user behaviour and to improve the design of the OPAC. User education methods, the campus‐wide extension of the service, and possibilities for future development are described.

This study aims to investigate the characteristics of the physical work environment that are known and used in practice to promote creativity for innovative start-up workplaces. The first part of the study identified these characteristics from a content and visual analysis, and examined the current state of implementation of these characteristics in the work environments of innovative start-up companies. The second part of the study examined criticalness and practicality of these characteristics in the workplace with a group of experts in the workplace design, evaluation and management.

A content and visual analysis for written and visual images was conducted to identify a comprehensive list of characteristics of the physical work environment critical to creativity of the workplace. With the seven characteristics identified, an instrument was developed and interviews were conducted to assess the physical work environments of 22 innovative start-up companies in Michigan. Following up the interviews, an expert group was formed with 26 professionals including architects, interior designers, facility managers and CEOs. A survey was conducted with them to understand the significance and implementation issues among the seven characteristics.

The most frequently incorporated characteristics in the innovative start-up companies in Michigan were spaces for idea generation, technology interface for collaboration and spaces for a short mental break or social hangout. The three most important physical work environmental characteristics for companies to produce creative, innovative ideas and products/services for growth and market competitiveness were balanced layout, technology interface for collaboration and spaces for idea generation.

The study provides a comprehensive framework to evaluate creative workplace regarding the physical environment. It also offers insights on the work environments of the innovative start-up companies for increased creativity and innovation performance in the workplace.

This chapter is a descriptive study of digital marketing to stimulate electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) through the social impact of content creation. This chapter firstly introduces the background, concept, and development of e-WOM. Secondly, discuss the relationship between digital marketing and e-WOM. Finally, make recommendations for the business. In the discussion of the relationship between digital marketing and e-WOM, this chapter expounds the social impact of content-generating, one of the essential means in digital marketing. It discusses the relationship between social impact and e-WOM. This chapter can provide references and the basis for exploring the relationship between digital marketing and e-WOM.

Today humanity is facing a time period, in which the speed and rate of change in different fields are faced. The rapid and effective change in the technological, economic, military, social and cultural fields all over the world in recent years has had important results in many topics such as informatics, interactive communication, production, data production and sharing and forms of consumption and perception. Changes and developments at very high speeds and rates affect the personal life, social life and work life in a deep manner, especially after the 1980s, paving the way for many concepts such as globalization, Industry 4.0, digitalization, new economy, new world order and digital transformation age to be the leading variables in every field of social sciences.

Production, consumption and communication forms at the global level are becoming more and more in depth and predicting the future is becoming more and more difficult and valuable. Understanding, analyzing and predicting the future for national and international companies and organizations directly and indirectly affect all economic, military and political variables. At this point, competition stands out as one of the most critical concepts for survival and growth for profit-oriented companies.

Based on this, the topics and contents selected in this study were created to cover the field of management and strategy. Indeed, in this study, the concept of organizational agility is explored theoretically from a historical perspective on the concept of Industry 4.0 and especially emphasized the dimensions and components of agility used in today’s world.

Within the scope of this study, the aim is to define and present the general framework of the Industry 4.0 and agile firms, which aim to combine the conceptual and theoretical infrastructure with the implementation of the agile firms within the field. In this respect, the study defines the situation coming from the past together with the world of today in the relationship of the technological and economical dimensions of globalization with the digitalization and latest theoretical view for the agile firm’s structure and management. On the other hand; in this study, the possible effects of the recent COVID-19 pandemic crisis on the management of organizations are interpreted in the context of Industry 4.0 and agile companies. This aim will provide a foresight for the future periods, with the conclusions added with the theory of senism, which present the dominant value of the study.

This paper aims to re‐examine the portfolio risk/return performance of “conventional” sector/regional classifications with one based on socio‐economic criteria.

Applying the mean absolute deviation (MAD) portfolio optimisation method, this study revisits sector versus regional diversification within the UK using the Investment Property Databank (IPD) annual data over the period 1981‐2007. A modern functional classification, with data from the 2001 Census, is used to retest the proposition that such groupings may offer superior diversification benefits.

In line with previous research, sectors dominate regions, however defined, and should be the first level of analysis when developing an optimised portfolio diversification strategy. When the performance of functional groups is compared with “conventional” administrative regions results show that such groupings can provide greater risk reduction. The underlying characteristics of these functional groups may be more insightful and acceptable to real estate portfolio managers in considering assets that a portfolio might contain.

Real estate markets are thought to be dynamic, in that their form and content can change dramatically even over quite short periods. This paper shows it is actually rather unlikely that matching changes in the structures of real estate investment portfolios will be observed, even over extended time periods, except at their margins. Although efficient frontiers move across the MAD risk/return space, the relative positions of the sectors and regions hardly change at all in pure analytical terms. In particular, the use of functional groupings, which reflect the greatly changed economic landscape in Britain over some 20 years, do not presage any great change in the pattern of institutional real estate investment, nor even a very obvious improvement in the portfolio performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine individual level property returns to see whether there is evidence of persistence in performance, i.e. a greater than expected probability of well (badly) performing properties continuing to perform well (badly) in subsequent periods.

The same methodology originally used in Young and Graff is applied, making the results directly comparable with those for the US and Australian markets. However, it uses a much larger database covering all UK commercial property data available in the Investment Property Databank (IPD) for the years 1981 to 2002 – as many as 216,758 individual property returns.

While the results of this study mimic the US and Australian results of greater persistence in the extreme first and fourth quartiles, they also evidence persistence in the moderate second and third quartiles, a notable departure from previous studies. Likewise patterns across property type, location, time, and holding period are remarkably similar.

The findings suggest that performance persistence is not a feature unique to particular markets, but instead may characterize most advanced real estate investment markets.

As well as extending previous research geographically, the paper explores possible reasons for such persistence, consideration of which leads to the conjecture that behaviors in the practice of institutional‐grade commercial real estate investment management may themselves be deeply rooted and persistent, and perhaps influenced for good or ill by agency effects.

Business leaders can face unique challenges in attracting, retaining, and developing an engaged workforce in today's global organizations. However, insights can be provided by examining a firm's Employee Value Proposition (EVP) as seen by employees, as well as carefully exploring drivers of employee engagement to equip executives and managers to overcome these challenges. This chapter uses results from Valtera's Annual Global Employee Survey to highlight the potential for leveraging survey data, analyzed at the country level, to best align and tune their human capital strategy and programs to operations and labor markets around the world. Examples of unique EVP profiles and key drivers of engagement from six countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America are provided to illustrate important differences organizations need to consider in optimizing their approach to global human capital management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of empowering leadership in intraorganizational knowledge management practices and to reveal how followers' acceptance and use of the hotel management system affect this role.

A serial multiple mediation model was evaluated and tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The database was created from the results of a structured questionnaire obtained from 401 employees working in hotels in Turkey.

The findings of the study reveal that empowering leadership has a significant effect on followers' knowledge creation, sharing and application. It was also found that the acceptance and use of the hotel management system were partially complementary to the impact of empowering leadership on followers' knowledge management practices.

This paper gives an insight into the empowering leader's role in gathering useful knowledge, which is self-managed within the organization, by encouraging, motivating, providing autonomous and supportive conditions and making it beneficial and easier for their followers to adapt to the organization's technologies.

The efficient management of knowledge in organizations through the use of technology is possible by distributing power to subordinates through expanding the theory of knowledge management, leadership and the acceptance and use of technology. Furthermore, this study contributes to the literature by establishing the theoretical foundation of the relationship between empowering leadership and knowledge management practices based on Dalkir's knowledge management model and by discussing the mediating effect of the core variables of the UTAUT model.