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National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in small states operate in a unique market (e.g. small population, confined market and limited private sector) that brings challenges in securing sponsors and funding athletes. Whereas more than a quarter of International Olympic Committee (IOC)-recognized NOCs represent small states, not much is known about the sponsorship landscape in the market. This study explores the importance and challenges of NOC sponsorship in small states, with a focus on the Caribbean region.

Interviews were conducted with representatives from NOCs in Caribbean small states. Textual analyses were conducted with Leximancer to identify key themes on the importance and challenges of NOC sponsorship.

Athletes, funding and community were identified as key themes for the importance of NOC sponsorship. Olympic Movement, time, priority, resources and overcome were themes for sponsorship challenges. Compared to existing sponsorship knowledge driven from developed economies, known determinants for the sponsor's decision-making (e.g. interest in sport, competitor) were found to affect NOC sponsorship in Caribbean small states, but in distinctive ways. Particularly, the lacking appreciation of Olympic values and sport within society, resource constraints (e.g. volunteer-based and operating “within reality”) and competition against member federations and government were highlighted as unique situations/challenges faced in the market.

This study is one of the first to explore NOC sponsorship in the important, yet overlooked, market of Caribbean small states. Theoretical insights on how existing sponsorship knowledge applies to and practical implications for securing NOC sponsorship in the marginalized market are provided.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

When there are few treated clusters in a pure treatment or difference-in-differences setting, t tests based on a cluster-robust variance estimator can severely over-reject. Although procedures based on the wild cluster bootstrap often work well when the number of treated clusters is not too small, they can either over-reject or under-reject seriously when it is. In a previous paper, we showed that procedures based on randomization inference (RI) can work well in such cases. However, RI can be impractical when the number of possible randomizations is small. We propose a bootstrap-based alternative to RI, which mitigates the discrete nature of RI p values in the few-clusters case. We also compare it to two other procedures. None of them works perfectly when the number of clusters is very small, but they can work surprisingly well.

Technology and market pressures are encouraging localized and small-series production in customer-driven industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the supply chain-, product- and process-design factors for small-series production in EU’s textile and apparel industry, to understand configuration decisions, priorities and challenges.

An interview study was undertaken with ten companies that represent diverse small-series production models and value chain roles. Interview data was analysed to identify supply network configuration characteristics, decision priorities and challenges.

Three small-series production models emerged from the analysis, differing with respect to adoption of process postponement and customization. The findings confirm and extend past research regarding diverse decision priorities and product, process, supply chain structure/relationship configurations. Challenges identified relate to planning (priorities) and implementation (configuration). Whereas competence availability and digital technology challenges are common, several difficulties are linked to production model like tensions related to priorities and small volumes, which are not found with customization.

Future research can make comparisons with other industry and location contexts; adopt dynamic approaches to distinguish between design and reconfiguration processes; and address indicated paradoxical-tensions.

The study findings can provide guidance for companies regarding identification of priorities and management of (planning/implementation) challenges impacting small-series production in T&A.

The paper brings a configuration perspective at the supply chain level to the problem of small-series production implementation, which demands holistic and context-specific understanding.

Small business owners play an important role in the tax system. This paper seeks to establish a framework to highlight the particular tax situation of small business owners and the resulting implications, from a psychological perspective.

A framework identifying the key characteristics of small business owners' actual and perceived tax situation is established. Literature investigating these characteristics is reviewed in line with the proposed framework.

Three key aspects seem to distinguish small business owners' perceptions of their tax situation: small business owners are likely to perceive more opportunities not to comply than employed taxpayers; they are more likely to experience a lack of meaningful taxation knowledge; and they are more likely to face decision frames that render taxes as painful losses.

The suggested link between the subjective experience of the tax situation and compliance calls for a focus on strategies that aim to influence taxpayers' perceptions of their own evasion opportunities, their level of legislative and procedural knowledge, and their sense of ownership of tax money. Such a strategy is suggested to be particularly likely to be effective in the phase of nascent entrepreneurship and in a climate of mutual trust between taxpayers and tax authorities.

This paper comprehensively identifies and reviews the perceptual correlates of factors unique to small business owners' tax behaviour.

Drawing on open systems theory, this study aims to investigate the direct and moderating effects of information collaboration in the pre-sale stage, transaction management collaboration in the transaction stage and customer service collaboration in the post-sale stage on the linkages of the online–offline store image and the market performance of small sellers.

Data were collected from multiple sources, including self-reported and online objective data from 148 small restaurants that simultaneously sell online and offline, for validating the developed research model. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

This study illustrates the direct effects of an online store’s image and online–offline collaborations on the market performance of small stores. This study further reveals the boom-bust moderating effects of different collaborations between online–offline images and market performance.

Small stores should be aware of the importance of information congruence and functional integration concerning online–offline collaboration. They should also recognize the paradoxical intervening effects of online–offline collaboration on different channels and arrange appropriate collaboration tactics.

This study presents a significant contribution to the open systems theory by revealing both constructive and destructive properties of the online–offline collaborative system with offline-to-online targeting. Vertically differentiated online–offline collaboration may strengthen one side of the store image but weaken the other side for promoting the market performance of small stores.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of small manufacturing companies in Brazil. The paper seeks to identify their competitive priorities based on their recent developments and their anticipated opportunities and challenges.

This is an exploratory study based on semi‐structured telephone interviews. The interview guide contained around 30, mainly open‐ended questions.

The research both confirms and refutes previous research. It refutes the “traditional view” that small firms are driven by cost, quality, flexibility and delivery only; it supports recent research which has argued that there has been a shift in terms of what competitive priorities are being pursued. More specifically, innovativeness was identified as an important new competitive priority, but there was little evidence in support of other recently proposed priorities like security and sustainability.

This study is restricted to one area of Brazil (São Carlos). Further research is therefore necessary to confirm the relevance of the findings to other small firms in other regions, e.g. through a large‐scale survey.

Much of the available literature focuses on large firms in developed economies, and it assumes operations strategy is built on four “traditional” broad competitive priorities. This study provides insight into the state of small manufacturers in an emerging economy. It identifies innovativeness as a fifth key priority and argues that firms must compete on a blend of outcomes; this adds to the complexity of managerial tasks.

Pakistan has experienced financial liberalization with rapid ups and downs in economic growth due to domestic issues during the last 2 decades. Motivated by inconclusive and conflicting time-driven findings about the performance of the business groups, this study examines the performance of business groups in Pakistan for a relatively long period from 2003 to 2018.

The study uses 3,821 firm-year observations from non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). For the estimation, pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) with industry- and year fixed effects and two-step system generalized methods of moments (GMM) are used.

The study finds that group-affiliated firms outperform independent firms in accounting performance, while underperform in market performance. The outperformance is mainly driven by medium-sized business groups, while underperformance is driven by small and large business groups. Further, the study documents that the underperformance in terms of market performance of firms affiliated with small and large groups is greater before the economic downturn, while outperformance in terms of the accounting measure of firms affiliated with medium-sized groups is greater during the economic downturn. These findings support our time-driven concerns. Overall, the authors' findings are consistent with institutional and transaction cost theories.

Business groups are important channels to reduce market inefficiencies. Business groups may enhance the affiliated firms' resources and resistance capacity through active utilization of the internal capital market, specifically when market conditions are not ideal for affiliates. However, effective utilization of internal capital markets depends on group size. Therefore, investors should deliberate on the size of business groups and diversification within business groups.

The authors extend the literature by providing fresh evidence related to the performance of business groups in the Pakistani context while accounting for the role of the size of business groups.

With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution and the intelligent economy, this conceptual chapter explores the evolution of educational governance from one based on governing by numbers and evidence-based governance to one constituted around governance by data or data-based educational governance. With the rise of markets and networks in education, Big Data, machine data, high-dimension data, open data, and dark data have consequences for the governance of national educational systems. In doing so, it draws attention to the rise of the algorithmization and computerization of educational policy-making. The author uses the concept of “blitzscaling”, aided by the conceptual framing of assemblage theory, to suggest that we are witnessing the rise of a fragmented model of educational governance. I call this governance with a “big G” and governance with a “small g.” In short, I suggest that while globalization has led to the deterritorializing of the national state, data educational governance, an assemblage, is bringing about the reterritorialization of things as new material projects are being reconstituted.