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This study aims to provide a conceptual framework to investigate the effects of consumer attitudes toward brands and attitudes toward a series of fashion oriented print advertisements with and without homosexual themes, on consumer willingness to buy from brands. The influence of consumer skepticism and inferences of manipulative intent (IMI) as moderators between these variables is also investigated. This study also closes various research gaps identified within the literature.

A self-administered survey instrument was designed using established scales to collect data through an online questionnaire. Fashion advertisements namely one advertisement representing homosexual content and one heterosexual advertisement were used in the study within subjects (e.g. male and female) design. Statistical techniques, specifically factor analysis, regressions and multiple regressions are used to analyze the data.

The findings indicate significant and positive relationships between attitude toward the brand and advertisement as well as willingness to buy for both males and females. The moderation analyses noted that consumer skepticism enhanced the relationship between attitude toward the brand and attitude toward the advertisement, but weakened the relationship between attitude toward the advertisement and willingness to buy, only for the female cohort. Similarly, a weakening effect of IMI was noted on the relationship between attitude toward the advertisement and willingness to buy.

The current study contributes to the literature on homosexual imagery in advertising. In applying the persuasion knowledge model, the current study demonstrates the applicability of the model to homosexual themes in fashion advertising while accounting for the effects of consumer skepticism and IMI.

The current research highlights the importance of accounting for gender differences when introducing homosexual themes in fashion advertisements. Heterosexual males and females differ in their attitudes toward homosexual themes in fashion advertising, as well as how skeptical they are with regards to the motives of the advertiser. While a great deal of acceptance is already present in today's society, these differences still need to be accounted for in future fashion advertising campaigns.

The present study represents an examination of consumer responses to a series of fashion advertisements in Australia and provides useful implications to marketers of fashion products. The study further contributes to the literature on consumer skepticism and IMI with regards to cause-related advertising.

Joint ventures (JVs) are known to create value for their parent firms, in part due to the mutually beneficial sharing of information that occurs at the JV level. Market orientation (MO) is a well-documented strategic orientation that has received little attention in the JV literature, despite considerable research suggesting that MO has a positive effect on performance. This study posits that the MO skills contributed to a new JV by parent firms are likely to play a central role in a shareholder's assessment of the potential for success of a newly announced JV, thereby triggering changes in market value for parent firms.

Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis (CATA) is used to calculate MO heterogeneity from annual reports, and event-study methodology is used to assess parent firm performance. The authors rely on a US sample of 82 public JV parents involved in 41 new equally-weighted JV formation announcements.

The authors find that heterogeneity on MO's behavioral components (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and coordination) is negatively related to parent performance, while heterogeneity on MO's profitability component is positively related to parent performance. However, the effect of MO's long-term focus heterogeneity on parent performance was not supported.

The results suggest that the benefits of information sharing in partnerships may be of a nuanced nature when it comes to MO. Although heterogeneity in profitability inclination created value for parent firms announcing a new JV; heterogeneity in customer, competitor and coordination market orientations did not appear to be rewarded by shareholders.

Environmental dynamics affect all sectors, and retailing is no exception. Scholarships reveal that, in such turbulent times, entrepreneurial characteristics are essential for business. In academic research, entrepreneurial characteristics like entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and entrepreneurial competence (EC) are seldom evaluated for retailers. This study aims to decode the impact of small retailers’ EO and EC on firm business performance (BP). It also traces the mediation effect of EC in the relationship between EO and BP.

The study executed among 740 small retailers is a pioneering work to trace EO’s efficacy via EC on the retailer’s BP. The present research is a primal work in the Indian context. This work redesigns the EC scale to suit the retail context and evaluate its mediation role in the EO and BP relationship.

Examining the mediation model through structural equation modelling (SEM) adds empirical evidence to entrepreneurial value creation (EVC) theory and throws light on the indispensable qualities required for small business retailers. The outcomes of the SEM model portray that there is an association between the EO, EC and BP.

This study, though carried out methodically, it is constrained by the ensuing intricacies. The investigation was limited to the small- and medium-retailers engaged in retailing with a floor space from 500 to 5,000 square feet. All three constructs used in the study are measured using the self-reported perceptual scale, which infuses the subjectivity in the data. Exploring the EO and EC of widely dispersed retailers, examining the entrepreneurial character of large-format independent retailers and evaluating financial performance measures through retailers will add value to the study in future.

The study verified the central role of EC in the intangible resource-reward relationship. Among the five pillars of EVC theory, the role of intention and external finance are not considered in this work. The present work explored the EO and EC of existing retailers, and hence intention is excluded. The study concentrates on small retailers, and the role of external financing is not explored. Mishra and Zachary (2014b) opined that the EVC process should be studied in different context and listed out several prepositions. Considering the role of intention and external financing and studying several prepositions spelt out in the theory in varying contexts will throw more lights on the EVC process.

Scholarship on reputation in and of organizations has been going on for decades, and it always has separated along level of analysis issues, whereby the separate literatures on individual, group/team/unit, and organization reputation fail to acknowledge each other. This sends the implicit message that reputation is a fundamentally different phenomenon at the three different levels of analysis. We tested the validity of this implicit assumption by conducting a multilevel review of the reputation literature, and drawing conclusions about the “level-specific” or “level-generic” nature of the reputation construct. The review results permitted the conclusion that reputation phenomena are essentially the same at all levels of analysis. Based on this, we frame a future agenda for theory and research on reputation.

This paper aims to explore the experiences of a high school senior, a doctoral student, a university professor and an online academic coach with a rapid, unplanned shift to online learning in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the challenges and distinct skills they identify as essential for success in a 100% virtual learning environment.

Through scholarly personal narratives (SPNs), the researchers shared details and authentic knowledge regarding their experiences and perceptions of successful teaching and learning in a 100% online learning environment.

The main goal was to identify necessary skills for success in a 100% virtual learning environment resulting from an unplanned shift. The findings show a need for learner and teacher self-directedness in developing a variety of nontraditional, critical literacies.

In light of the imposed and unplanned educational shifts in teaching and learning, this study has strong practical implications for human resource development offered through an analysis of multiple perspectives. This research may lead to a better understanding of how, in a period of rapid, unexpected shifts, individuals need to use self-directedness to leverage personal and professional development opportunities to adapt and succeed in the new environment. Additionally, the authors use an innovative critical theoretical framework to outline the skills the participants report as useful for success in an online classroom during a period of rapid, unexpected shifting.

OUR theme in general this month is the personality of the librarian. One may say that librarians have a habit of discussing the recruitment of the profession, its pay and other factors in the personnel. And it is natural that they should have, because after all it is their life. The librarian as a man rarely figures at any length or in any detail in the books or magazines that we usually read. Lately, it is true, Mr. L. Stanley Jast has been contributing to a contemporary, The Library Review, some admirable all‐too‐brief articles on his memories of personalities and doings mainly in connection with the Library Association thirty or more years since. It is a pity that Mr. Jast cannot be persuaded to give these reminiscences at much greater length, and although it is possible that their main appeal is to the born librarian, yet for those who read as they run, they possess many things of quite living interest. In short, the librarian is bound to be interested in the librarian himself; that is human nature.

Ever since Mark Weiser coined the term “ubiquitous computing” (ubicomp) in 1988, there has been a general interest in proposing various solutions that would support his vision. However, attacks targeting devices and services of a ubicomp environment have demonstrated not only different privacy issues, but also a risk of endangering user’s life (e.g. by modifying medical sensor readings). Thus, the aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of security challenges of ubicomp environments and the corresponding countermeasures proposed over the past decade.

The results of this paper are based on a literature review method originally used in evidence-based medicine called systematic literature review (SLR), which identifies, filters, classifies and summarizes the findings.

Starting from the bibliometric results that clearly show an increasing interest in the topic of ubicomp security worldwide, the findings reveal specific types of attacks and vulnerabilities that have motivated the research over the past decade. This review describes most commonly proposed countermeasures – context-aware access control and authentication mechanisms, cryptographic protocols that account for device’s resource constraints, privacy-preserving mechanisms, and trust mechanisms for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SLR on security challenges in ubicomp. The findings should serve as a reference to an extensive list of scientific contributions, as well as a guiding point for the researchers’ novel to the security research in ubicomp.

LONDON proved to be successful as a Conference centre, and the Fifty‐Seventh Annual Meeting was one of our best. As for the programme generally, the forecasts which appeared in THE LIBRARY WORLD last month were in most cases justified. The Presidential address, delivered by Mr. Pitt while recovering from a rather serious illness and while suffering from anxiety as to the health of Mrs. Pitt, was remarkable in the circumstances, and, as we premised it would be, was a statesmanlike survey of the accomplishments of the Library Association in the past, and a forecast of hopes for the future. These it would undoubtedly be impossible to summarise here. They included, however, a suggestion that so far as professional training is concerned, that there should be a joint examination award of the University, the Library Association and the employing authorities. This seems to be an avenue of development worth exploring, to use a Parliamentary phrase.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of banking institutions in Costa Rica over the period 2004–2014.

This paper employs system GMM, dynamic panel data and traditional financial hypothesis framework to analyze bank performance and assess marketplace sustainability for a sample of commercial and cooperative banks from Costa Rica. In the assessment, the authors visit the relative market power, structure conduct performance (SCP) and efficient structure literature.

Market share (MS) is positively related to performance whereas the authors find a negative effect of market concentration (Herfindahl–Hirschman index) on bank profits, thereby refuting the SCP hypothesis. The authors accept the “quiet life” hypothesis within Costa Rican banks since a moderate level of profit persistence is detected. Commercial banks are less profitable. Yet when crisis is introduced to the models, it has a significant and negative impact on overall bank performance.

The authors selected years and banks based on available data plus default information in the relevant database. More insights can be gained from post-2014 developments.

The current results and conclusions have implications for developing economies (and economic development, in general) by showing that the traditional understanding of cooperative bank model as better for the public good may not be necessarily true. They offer insight into the understanding of how different bank-type institutions affect the public good. Furthermore, expanding the research to Latin America in order to directly compare commercial and cooperative enterprises via a meta-frontier technique would help buttress this evidence.

This is the most recent study to provide such an investigation for a Latin American country with a sizable MS for cooperative and public sector banks. The paper offers analysis that has been limited in Latin American banking markets thus far.