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The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate farmer’s positional concerns in rural China, and how the positional concerns correlate with household expenditures on visible goods.

The authors conduct a survey-based experiment to measure farmers’ positional concerns, and employ econometric models to examine the determinants of the degree of positional concern and how the positional concern affects household expenditures on visible goods.

The authors find that Chinese farmers have strong positional concerns for income, and high-income households are more concerned with relative position. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between males and females with respect to correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on visible goods. For females, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on clothes, restaurants, and mobile phones, respectively. For males, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on mobile phones.

The government policy thus should pay attention to the positional goods, and the relevant consumption tax by increasing the prices of visible goods could be considered or suggested in the future even in the rural areas.

This paper provides complementary evidence on Chinese farmers’ positional concerns, and how the degree of positional concern relates to household expenditures on visible goods.

The purpose of this paper is to study which factors affect consumer expenditure and how, when positional concerns matter. It also investigates how consumers finance and reallocate their expenditure, and modify their consumer baskets when members of their reference groups spend more on positional goods, and they do not want to lag behind.

A literature review is presented, and then a new model is developed from a behavioural economic perspective. It describes how consumers with various risk attitudes reallocate their consumer expenditure and modify their consumer baskets when consumption externalities influence their relative consumption due to a positional game, but they want to “keep up with the Joneses”.

Consumers with different risk attitudes finance and reallocate their consumption expenditures variously to sustain their relative positions. Risk-neutral, slightly and intermediately risk-seeking consumers achieve a lower utility level than others. They do not realise a utility-maximising consumer basket, as it includes a relatively low number of nonpositional goods, but this choice can be considered the best response in a positional game in order to sustain their relative position.

The relationship between positional and nonpositional goods is explicitly described. The model assumes that consumers can be classified based on their risk attitudes when positional concerns matter. It also describes how consumers with various risk attitudes reallocate their consumer expenditure when they want to sustain or improve their relative consumption in a positional game.

The purpose of this paper is to study how positional concerns influence a parent’s time investment decisions of her/his child.

The author presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of household positional and non-positional time investment choices in the education of her/his child.

The author shows that a parent who is mindful of her/his relative position in the income distribution will use her/his time investment choices to influence her/his perceived status. The theoretical model predicts that visible time investment increases as members of her/his reference group move up in rank. The author shows that moving down in rank lowers utility. The author employs National Education Longitudinal Studies (1988) data set to test the model prediction and shows that visible time invested in child’s education is explained by place on the income distribution.

The author extends the positional literature to account for parent time investment in her/his child’s education. The work suggests that time investment in one’s child’s education is based on more than altruistic preferences and resources. It leaves open the possibility that perceived social standing influences a household’s time investment in their child’s education. From a policy perspective, the findings provide a new way to think about drivers of parental involvement.

The purpose of this paper is to assist service management academics and providers of positional services (i.e. services that provide status attainment benefits to consumers) to better understand how the envy reflex of outperformed consumers operates as an endemic emotional theme that, if properly managed, can be harnessed to improve consumer engagement outcomes.

The objectives of the research were addressed via two quantitative studies. In a preliminary descriptive study, the types of services consumers classify as “positional” were identified (n=351) and a measure of consumer perceived positional value was developed (n=179). In the main study, a 2 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design was adopted using a sample of positional service consumers (n=265) with the data analysed via SEM and two-way MANCOVA.

The main study found a significant mediation effect of the envy reflex on the relationship between consumer perceived positional value and the overall likelihood of an engagement intention for outperformed positional service consumers. In addition, specific engagement intentions were predicted for outperformed consumers with a high envy reflex after considering how deserving they perceived a superior performer to be.

This research contributes to the burgeoning scholarly interest in the envy reflex as a consumption emotion by demonstrating its influence on consumer engagement outcomes. The research also demonstrates how tactics informed by appraisal theories of emotion can be used to manage endemic emotional themes in service environments to improve engagement outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to robustly establish whether firms are implementing Lean or Agile production in the automotive supply chain (SC) and, by drawing on contingency theory (CT) as our theoretical lens, independently determine whether Lean and Agile firms can be distinguished based upon contextual factors.

Primary quantitative data from 140 firms in the West Midlands (UK) automotive industry were obtained via a constructed survey. Analysis incorporated the use of logistic regressions to calculate the probability of Lean and Agile organisations belonging to different groups amongst the contextual factors investigated.

Lean and Agile firms co-exist in the automotive SC and Lean firms were found to be at higher tiers of the SC, while Agile firms were found to be at lower tiers.

The originality of this study lies within the novel methodological attempt used to distinguish Lean and Agile production, based upon the contextual factors investigated. Not only is the importance of CT theoretically approved, but “received wisdom” within SC management is also contested. Extant literature propagates that the automotive SC is comprised of organisations that predominantly adopt Lean production methods, and that in SCs comprised of both Lean and Agile organisations, the firms closer to the customer will adopt more flexible (Agile) practices, while those that operate upstream will adopt more efficient (Lean) practices. The findings from this study have implications for theory and practice, as Lean and Agile firms can be found in the automotive SC without any relationship to the value-adding process. To speculate as to why the findings contest existing views, resource dependence theory and, more specifically, a power perspective, was invoked. The authors provide readers with a new way of thinking concerning complicated SCs and urge that the discipline of SC management adopts a “fourth” SC model, depicting a new Lean and Agile SC configuration.

Utilising dialogic meta-narrative analysis, a form of inquiry based on examining the difference between voices in meaningful and relevant dialogue (Wegerif, 2006, p. 347), the purpose of this paper is to present an examination of three relevant works on theories of the global South for identifying educational patterns, themes, and biases from the worldview perspectives of the respective authors.

In comparative and international education “qualitative” research, the acceptance of differing points of view and reference have often resulted in a fragmented and fractitious affirmation of cultural relativity, whereby the pursuit of truth (Veritas) has been replaced by the pursuit and contestation of a plurality of knowledges and truths. Davies defines this as “discursive practice”, which refers to the way discourse and the production of selves produce and reconstitutes one’s social and psychological realities (Davies, 1999, p. 88). The positional and discursive worldviews relative to “other” are not only dependent on locational, contextual, and time (Zeitgeist) dimensions, but also on disciplinary methodological foundations and subjective interpretations of both experience and choice.

The analysis of the three scholarly works identifies issues of comparative education research from a dialogic and dialectic perspective, suggesting that relativistic notions of research are required and necessary in order to expand horizons and “break out of the box” to broaden one’s imagination.

The questions raised by all three worldviews require further research: Who pays? Who benefits? Should the field contest the positional points-of-reference of comparativists? Should theory and mode of inquiry be made more clear in order to understand and discern the positional authority of the researcher and the researched? Should relevant literature addressing subject material involve greater scrutiny – if not collaboration – between scholars from different worldview perspectives?

Subjectivity, validation and significance of findings contribute to dissemination and advancement of knowledge, and if not robust or rigorous, are simply another point of view.

This is a new paradigmatic approach to problematising comparative and international research from three positional worldviews. The value in problematising the three worldviews helps to delve deeper into the issues at hand regarding the global South.

Tries to clarify and to define more strictly some central connotations of popular concepts in the field of personnel policy: mobility and flexibility. Develops a model connecting these concepts within a single theoretical scheme.

The purpose of this paper is to take a fresh look at the leadership and management debate through exploring underlying power assumptions in the literature.

The paper is a conceptual discussion that draws on the power-based literature to develop a framework to help conceptually understand leadership in relation to management.

The paper highlights the historically clichéd nature of comments regarding conceptual similarities and differences between leadership and management. The paper draws attention to a problem within this debate – a confusion regarding assumptions of power. As a result the paper brings to the forefront perspectives of management that are of an emergent and non-work perspective which enables the development of a framework of the literature that includes managers “doing” leadership, managers “becoming” leaders, “being” leaders and managers, and leaders “doing” management. The paper goes on to explore the meaning and potential behind each part of the framework and suggests a need to develop an understanding of “doing” leadership and management and “being” managers and leaders through an exploration of “becoming” in organisations.

This paper provides a new perspective on the leadership and management or leadership vs management question by introducing a non-work, emergent or personal perspective on management. Furthermore, this paper concludes that whether leadership and management are similar or different is dependent upon which power construct underlies each phenomenon, a consideration that has been neglected in the leadership and management debate for some time.

The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the idea currently rampant in the mainstream economics literature that it is relative rather than real income that is of most importance for individual well‐being and that both evidence on expressed happiness and individual “choices” in surveys provide strong evidence for that position.

A reconsideration of the theory, extensive new survey results, and presentation of material relevant for individuals' actual choices.

The idea that other's higher incomes leaves others worse off really is not convincing, the evidence from surveys that people really have preferences for living in societies where their relative income is high at the expense of real income is wrong and that people's actual choices reveal them to be interested in real rather than relative income.

Those social commentators who deride the negative externalities generated by individual pursuit of higher incomes and who advocate considerably more progressive taxes have still not provided good evidence to make their case.

The originality lies in providing an analysis of extensive surveys of positional preferences that allows for the demonstration that responses depend on survey structure and respondent knowledge levels and in shedding new light and doubts on previous attempts to use surveys to attempt to bolster the case that relative income is of overriding importance for individual welfare.

This study aims to examine theoretical insights from market orientation and resource-based view for enhancing grocery retailers ' distribution capabilities. The distribution capability of a firm can influence both effective and efficient handling of external stocks and internal distribution of products in response to changing market demands. Although firms rely on distribution capability to manage their supply chain to ensure the right products are in the right place at the right time, few studies examine the underlying factors that support distribution capabilities for a firm’s upstream and downstream supply chain activities especially in uncertain environments.

In the context of retail firms, a review of the literature shows that distribution capability can be conceptualized as an interfirm phenomenon based on theoretical insights from the resource-based view, market orientation and network structure.

Data from a sample of 247 small- and medium-sized grocery retailers operating in three major Chinese cities highlight a salient and positive relationship between a retailer’s distribution capabilities and its performance in uncertain environments.

However, a retailer’s strong interfirm relations in a distribution network are negatively associated with retailer performance. Similarly, the influence of interfirm market orientation on retailer performance cannot be established in the supply chain. The study suggests that SME grocery retailers would benefit from understanding their numerous supply chain relationships and managing them (rather than relying on centrally ingrained relationships), and developing behavioral norms of interfirm market orientation among different supply chain partners.