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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relevance of expert opinions as a marketing tool for Pinotage amongst young South African student millennials by means of sensory hedonic testing.

Sensory hedonic testing was used because it is necessary to examine the extent to which extrinsic cues influence a wine’s intrinsic merit, as this can influence future purchase decisions. Thus, it combines marketing factors and sensory science and explores the sensory liking of food products by consumers. A total of 126 South African student millennial consumers were analysed.

The results confirm that expert opinions are an effective marketing tool. While positive expert opinions did not reinforce perceived quality for already generally liked wines, they increased perceived quality for wines that were not liked. Female student millennials specifically seem to be influenced by expert opinions and packaging, even though they show a relative dislike for Pinotage under blind tasting. These results are useful in the design of marketing strategies.

Because of the chosen research approach, it may be difficult to generalize the research results. However, future research could apply this methodology to investigate the perceived quality of wine and other food products in different countries. Furthermore, replicating this study could provide interesting comparative results.

Little is known about the liking for Pinotage wines by young South African consumers or about the cues that make them respond positively to marketing.

Supplier evaluation is a part of logistic management. In the present era, resilient supply chain performance (RSCP) assessment of the vendor enterprise is respected as a hot topic. The purpose of this paper is to enable the managers to map the performance in percentage system and also enabling managers for identifying the weak indices-metrics, which need to be improved up to ideal or standard level and strong indices-metrics.

The authors found two research gaps via a literature survey. The first research gap revealed that the performance of a resilient supplier is computed solely in terms of a fuzzy mathematical scale. The articles are not yet published, which could measure the RSCP in percentage. The second research gap argued about the mitigation of the multi-level hierarchical resilient vendor/supplier evaluation framework for materializing RSCP and identifying weak and strong performing indices-metrics. To compensate the both research gaps, the authors developed a novel fuzzy gain-loss evolutionary computational approach to assess the performance of a firm in percentage. Next, a revised ranking technique coupled with trapezoidal fuzzy set based fuzzy performance importance index is implemented on the framework to seek weak and strong indices-metrics. The performance loss of each metric using the ideal solution concept considering the attitude of decision makers is also revealed.

The authors found the RSC performance of supplier firm 74 per cent, whereas performance loss 26 per cent, while actual performance is compared with standard fuzzy performance index (SFPI). Performance loss 26 per cent can be compensated by improving the performance of weak indices-metrics.

The novelty of the paper is that the authors used the ideal solution concept to compute the SFPI and compare it with actual FPI for evaluating the gain and loss of resilient supplier firm in percentage and identify weak and strong indices so that managers can improve the performance of weak indices. The work possesses the significant for all organizations, as research work enables the managers to map and improve the RSC performance of any vendor firm in future. The presented work considers the case of an automobile parts supplier industry to validate the developed approach.

In this chapter, I present the scientific pillar of the project. Given the political proposal that informs the book, it is necessary for me to show why and how such an activist endeavour as I propose produces valid and reliable knowledge. To this end, I deal with the historical debate about the role of the intellectual in society based on the ideal types of the neutral expert and the academic activist introduced in Chapter 2.

This paper aims to identify the importance of individual variables in the corporate real estate (CRE) decision-making process.

Nine experts received a posed scenario of a changed business strategy requiring a CRE reduction in individual interviews. Based on their suggested response, a decision network was modelled for each expert using the causal network elicitation technique, incorporating the utilities for decision variables and importance weights for attributes and benefits. The decision model offers a graphical representation of decision-benefit links for the decisions CRE managers make in such a period of decline.

Perceived facilitators of CRE dynamic alignment were identified by calculating lift ratios on their perceived importance of the attributes they mentioned during the interviews as nodes in the network that link decisions to benefits. Facilitators included CRE metrics and workplace strategy, while capital expenditure and landlords inhibit alignment processes. The research provides more granular insight into the variables used in CRE decision-making and the factors that facilitate or inhibit the dynamic alignment process.

The research set a specific scenario for the experts to consider. That could be regarded as small but there was clear evidence of saturation of expert knowledge. Additional face-to-face interviews with the experts may have generated further details on the thought processes of the experts.

The research provides more granular insight into the variables used in CRE decision-making and the factors that facilitate or inhibit the dynamic alignment process. Thereby providing CRE decision-makers with key elements for a decision model.

The research technique, causal network elicitation technique, uses semi-structured interviews to create decision networks, which is a technique that has not been widely applied to CRE research. The research provides a granular view of what are important inhibitors or facilitators of dynamic alignment of CRE to business strategy.

The key research issue addressed in this paper is whether individuals perceive advertisements featuring themes from their own religion more positively, and advertisements featuring religious themes from other religions less positively, than neutral ads. In the process, this paper aims to test whether the in-group bias theory (IGBT) and the polarized appraisal theory (PAT) apply in a religious context.

Respondents in a large Indian University were shown advertisements featuring Hindu and Muslim themes as well as a neutral advertisement in the context of pet adoption. Cognitive and affective response measures were used for evaluation.

Respondents did not evaluate advertisements with their own religion’s symbols any more positively than neutral advertisements but did evaluate advertisements with themes from other religions more negatively than neutral ads. In sum, religious advertisements did not have any positive effect on in-group respondents, but rather worked in antagonizing out-group respondents.

Both IGBT and PAT did not work as predicted when tested on in-group respondents but worked as expected on out-group respondents.

In the Indian market, using religious themes has largely negative consequences in terms of alienating out-group members, with no commensurate advantage on in-group members. Firms are better off not using religious advertising, and this decision would likely have a positive impact on a firm’s bottom line.

Though, the general topic of religious advertising has been much researched, but this paper deals with the role of religious symbols in advertising in the Indian context, which is done for the first time in a multi-religious context. Further, the applicability of IGBT and PAT is also tested for the first time in religious advertisement context.

This paper presents a method for adapting an Information Security Focus Area Maturity (ISFAM) model to the organizational characteristics (OCs) of a small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) cluster. The purpose of this paper is to provide SMEs with a tailored maturity model enabling them to capture and improve their information security capabilities.

Design Science Research was followed to design and evaluate the method as a design artifact.

The method has successfully been used to adapt the ISFAM model to a group of SMEs within a regional cluster resulting in a model that is aligned with the OCs of the cluster. Areas for further investigation and improvements were identified.

The study is based on applying the proposed method for the SMEs active in the transport, logistics and packaging sector in the Port of Rotterdam. Future research can focus on different sectors and regions. The method can be used for adapting other focus area maturity models.

The resulting adapted maturity model can facilitate the creation and further development of a base of common or shared knowledge in the cluster. The adapted maturity model can cut the cost of over implementation of information security capabilities for the SMEs with scarce resources.

The resulting adapted maturity model can facilitate the creation and further development of a base of common or shared knowledge in the cluster. The adapted maturity model can cut the cost of over implementation of information security capabilities for the SMEs with scarce resources.

Is public administration neutral? Scholarship does not interpret public administration as neutral, even though, on moral–ethical grounds, it frequently advises neutrality for practitioners. Five main schools of thought are surveyed. Neutrality and alternative expressions of it, such as nonpartisanship, expertise, impartiality or facilitation, are role prescriptions for practicing public administrators, and are typically offered as appropriate comportments in interacting with citizens and groups. At the same time, public administration is undeniably a political institution having political purposes and constitutive impacts. Indeed, the very existence of the administrative state is politically contestable. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Critical reflection, political philosophy, political theory.

Scholars across the various schools of thought in public administration do not presuppose the presence of a neutral public administrator. However, there is sometimes an admonition to practitioners to behave as if they were politically neutral.

Advising practitioners that their practices are neutral masks the fact that public administration is an inherently political institution.

Neutral public administration is revealed as empty cant.

Few library studies have investigated recommendation classifications for e‐book (electronic book) usage, while none have directly compared what recommendation sources (word‐of‐mouth, advertising, and expert recommendation) might influence e‐book usage intentions. To fill this gap in the literature, the main purposes of this study are to: examine how users perceive the influence of recommendations on the intention to use e‐books for academic purposes; and to measure the level of the perception of trust and perceived risk when users receive e‐book recommendations from peers, advertisers, and experts.

Data for this study were collected from 382 academic digital library users between the ages of 18 and 25. A multiple regression analysis was then conducted to identify the key causal relationships.

The comparison of three recommendation sources (word‐of‐mouth, advertising, and expert recommendations) revealed that word‐of‐mouth (WOM) played a more important role than other recommendations in determining the intention to use e‐books in an academic digital library. In addition, enhancing the perceived trust and reducing the risk towards the use of e‐books can mediate the relationship between recommendation sources and the behavioural intentions to use e‐books.

This study assessed self‐reported behavioural intention as part of its survey and, as a result, could have introduced unintentional inaccuracies.

Librarians should emphasise e‐book advantages (e.g. easy searching, easily accessible index) to get positive recommendation if users follow all of the recommendations of the source. They can also create online discussion forums to provide usage intention discussions, which can influence users' perceptions of trust and risk and increase the willingness of potential users to read e‐books.

Little has been written on the intentions of using e‐books. Therefore, this conceptual model is novel. This model is also useful in explaining how recommendations stimulate the intentions of using e‐books by enhancing the perceived trust and reducing the perceived risk; these findings may generally be applicable to librarians, current users, and potential users.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new direction for managing information‐credibility risk in the current information and communications technology (ICT) era, where ICT has had both positive and negative effects on contemporary society.

The paper takes a practical and inductive approach to study the Kyoto avian influenza panic and countermeasures taken in 2004.

The paper identifies factors which led to enormous damage through harmful rumors and proposes new perspectives for devising countermeasures, such as increasing consumer confidence in an agency as a source of information and effective management of knowledge transfer from experts to non‐experts.

The study gains a better understanding of both technological and social factors that enable or detract from effective nationwide management of information‐credibility risk. Many related ICT projects have been based on either human resource systems or advanced technology. It considers the integration of both factors from three perspectives.

This is a new perspective for examining the transfer of knowledge from experts to consumers in terms of practical solutions, in contrast to the many existing knowledge‐related articles that have mainly focused on knowledge management among experts.

Recent scholarship reveals the imagery of the professional as the “ideal citizen”. The linkage between professionalism and citizenship is here approached from the perspective of democratic social justice in order to examine the persistence of gendered inequalities in the health care system. The paper aims to examine the ideas framing professionalism, both in sociological theory and historically, asking what gendered hierarchies mean in modern health care systems, and why and how they persist in the conditions of liberal democracy.

The question is approached through both sociological literature and an analysis of historical framings of professionalism; the Finnish health care system is employed as a case. The reason for keeping the discussion close to a specific case is that different professional fields, countries and historic contexts differ from each other in democratically relevant respects.

Traditional sociological theory assumed that professional privilege was based on essentially neutral expertise that benefits democracy only if protected from bureaucracy and politics. The recent theoretical turn reframes professional knowledge as socially defined, but the destabilisation of professional knowledge claims is not without problems. The paper refers to the persisting tensions between changing governance and gendered hierarchies in health care and argues for new approaches that suggest ways through which professional expertise can be democratically represented in politics.

The interdisciplinary framework uses political theory on social justice to examine how health care politics frame professionalism.