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The article presents summaries of papers of Business History Seminar. The Business History Seminar organized by Dr. Oddy met on 8 May 1981 in the Board Room of the Polytechnic of Central London. Dr. Charles Munn's paper, "Bank Finance for Industry: Scotland and Ireland 1820-1850" was concerned with the volume and techniques of lending by Scottish and Irish joint-stock banks in their formative years compared with their predecessors. In the 1820s and 1830s long established banking systems in the two countries gave way to systems of joint-stock banks and the average site of bank was larger than the English equivalent. The changing structures in the banking systems had implications for the ways in which they did business. Larger advances led the banks to look for more tangible forms of security than the traditional personal guarantee. Lending on the security of shares, property, goods, life assurance policies and ships became common but the banks struggled long and hard to find ways of obtaining effective security over these items. Acceptance finance and lending by means of unsecured overdraft also became common at this time.

The article presents various titles and abstracts of research papers related to geography by the Association of American Geographers. Some of papers included are "Problems of Geographic Influence," by Albert Perry Brigham, "Some Geographic Factors Influencing Brazilian Trade," by Walter S. Tower, "Postglacial Migrations of Vegetation in the Middle West," by Henry Allan Gleason, "Bases for Dividing the United States into Physiographic Provinces," by N. M. Fenneman, "The Losses of Nebraska," by G. E. Condra.

This article presents a systematic review of the existing literature on business longevity by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 142 papers published in the leading business history and management journals during the last three decades. The results show similarities (e.g. in explanatory models) and differences (e.g. in citation patterns, theories, and methods) between the disciplines, thus indicating that the literature is partially segmented into separate domains that prevent business longevity research from representing a truly unified field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In turbulent business times, organizations have sought to become more agile. Organizational agility has been asserted to require workforce agility, but thus far, little focus has been given to workers. Traditionally, salespeople have sought ways to differentiate themselves and create advantage for customers. This paper asserts that, in order to continue this tradition of differentiation and advantage, salespeople must engage in agility thinking. Agility has been studied as it applies to manufacturing processes and other firm activities. Agile salespeople have a mental dexterity at the point of customer contact. They are quick to observe opportunities and are able to anticipate customers' ever-changing needs, wants, and preferences. This paper presents a framework for agility selling, applying concepts from the agility manufacturing literature and proffering distinct characteristics of sales force agility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a review of business and environment from around the world. Standards published by the International Standards Organization (ISO); Operations of ISO; Information on the fourth annual Global Conference on Paper and the Environment on June 10, 1996; Details on a report `Towards a Sustainable Paper Cycle,' by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The article presents a reprint of the paper "A Conference Overview," by Jane Marceau which appeared in the 1979 issue of the journal "Social Science Information." The articles gave an overview of the papers presented at the EGOS conference. The papers presented at the EGOS colloquium were diverse and illustrated the range of data and approaches useful in the analysis of many of these problems. Some, basing themselves on micro-oriented studies of business practices and, especially, of what managers actually do, hence of the distinctions between the title and the post, attempted to use such data to examine wider problems of the utilization of expertise within firms and innovations in promotion and control policies in large businesses. Basing themselves on business organizations, these studies used the analysis of conflicts and policy innovations within particular firms to address questions concerning the relationships between business and its environment, the education system being included in the latter. Other papers analyzed major economic changes occurring in Europe after 1945 and the implications of corresponding changes in business organization.

The article offers interesting insights into the character and particularly the business methods of one of the greatest English newspaper proprietors. The absence of any mention of the newspaper Bell's Universal Advertiser from the few published studies of the career of its proprietor, John Bell, is both surprising and unfortunate. Certainly Bell's reputation and chief importance in the history of journalism rests on his conduct of various important periodicals. Nevertheless, the Universal Advertiser has an interesting place in his history. While the paper lasted for only a short two months, the preparations for its birth were a full eight years in the making. It was a favorite brainchild of Bell's and on it he lavished in full his considerable and unusual talents as a newspaper publisher. The Universal Advertiser's history, essentially the story of Bell's activities in preparing, publishing, promoting, and defending the journal, throws light on important social and economic factors influencing the behavior of newspapermen of the time. Newspaper proprietors throughout the eighteenth century shared with most industrialists the problem of adjusting to the steady growth of the consumer market.

The last decade has witnessed profound changes in advertising and the profession that supports it. These changes have important implications for research on advertising. This paper discusses the changes in advertising and the implications of these changes for research on advertising. It suggests that future research in advertising must address the following questions: 1) does advertising work, and, if so, when and why; 2) should advertising effects be determined with absolute or relative measures?; 3) how are the media related to advertising response?; 4) how is advertising related to the larger marketing mix of which it is a part?; and 5) how can research support advertising's inherent creative function? While these questions have been the focus of much of the advertising research to date, the paper concludes that the type of research that can answer these questions in the future may be quite different from research in the past in that it will need to focus more on advertising within context than on advertising in isolation from the larger environment of which it is a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issued including one by Mu Xia and Nan Xia about supplier relationships, another by Ravi Bapna, Paulo Goes, and Alok Gupta about electronic marketplaces, and another by Thompson S.H. Teo, Shirish C. Srivastava, and Li Jiang about reliable government web sites.

The theory of National Innovation System emphasizes innovation as a source of economic and productivity growth and stresses the importance of collaboration between science and industry. The basic objective of this paper was to research whether there is an interaction between Croatian companies and scientific institutions, and whether it affects an increase of innovativeness of economic entities. The results of the performed empirical research and their econometric analysis indicate a conclusion that a positive impact of the collaboration on intensity of innovation in Croatian companies is still absent. The results indicate that the system of innovation in the Republic of Croatia, when compared to developed countries, is still in a transition and that commercialisation of academic knowledge is a phenomenon paid somewhat greater attention only recently. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Capitalism evolves through stages that differ in institutional structure and policy regime. Finance is crucial to understanding an economic system but other institutional factors are important too. This paper compares finance capitalism with money manager capitalism on the basis of a number of features. Despite the fact that these two stages represent unique periods of evolution, the paper shows that these two stages of capitalism are much alike. This suggests that the current period's financial instability should be expected, and that public policy measures meant to address financial crisis may have to resemble those of the midtwentieth century Keynesian period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, marketing research and theory has included investigation into transportation and related subjects. This research has evolved much in the last few years. Researchers have begun to focus on a broadening of the transportation field that includes newer concepts such as logistics and supply chain management. In this paper, the evolution of transportation logistics, and supply chain management research over the last 15 years is compared to similar research from the previous 15 years as cataloged by Professor Richard Jones in the premiere issue of the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice. This paper attempts to chronicle the evolution from transportation to logistics to supply chain management since in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice was established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper modifies the two-industry, two-country Heckscher­Ohlin model with intermediate goods to decompose trade into its horizontal and vertical intra-industry, as well as inter-industry parts. Acknowledging that liberalization affects each type of trade differently, and that changes in each imply labor adjustment of different magnitudes, the paper analyzes the effects of widely observed asymmetries in liberalization policies. The paper concludes with the implications of the model for the liberalization between the East and the West through the Europe Agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the fastest growing business practices in today's environment. CRM has been credited with substantial improvements in improving the effectiveness of sales forces. This paper offers an investigation of CRM implementation and proposes a model that explains the roles of organizational learning, business process orientation, customer-centric orientation, and task-technology fit in enabling the transformation of CRM from a technological tool to an advantage-producing resource. The development of the framework is based on extant theory and an analysis of responses to open-ended questions assessing (dis)satisfaction with CRM implementation. Implications for sales management are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature about personal selling and sales management appearing in journals has grown approximately tenfold in the past 20+ years. Despite the growth of huge online literature databases, there has been no single source that catalogs all of this literature, making it difficult to learn about articles of potential interest. This paper describes an ongoing research project devoted to developing a free subject-matter database of all sales-related articles appearing in academic journals, now available at www.saleslitdb.com. Readers are encouraged to make use of this resource and to contribute to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As customer-relationship selling continues to emerge as a significant selling strategy, the role of customer-oriented selling takes on added significance. The personal selling relationship literature lacks a comprehensive review that summarizes and organizes the empirical research regarding customer-oriented selling. Subsequently, it is unclear what exactly has been learned by research on customer-oriented selling and what questions remain to be answered. Therefore, this paper addresses these concerns by reviewing the current literature in customer-oriented selling, offering propositions to extend our understanding, providing directions for developing a customer-oriented sales force based on our current understanding, and offering suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selling skills are learned proficiency at performing tasks necessary for a sales job. They are among the most important predictors of sales performance. However, the research into selling skills has been hampered by the lack of an overall scale. To address this shortcoming the present paper identifies a model of sales skills consisting of three components of interpersonal skills, salesmanship skills, and technical skills. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the authors report the development of a Selling Skill scale as a reliable and valid instrument. The authors suggest priorities for future research and potential uses of this instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies investigating the positive effects of including highly attractive models (HAMs) in advertising have failed to unilaterally support their use. This paper explores the differential effects of pairing highly versus normally attractive models with different types of attractiveness-relevant products. Contrary to past research (Kahle and Homer 1985; Kamins 1990), the results suggest that HAMS are not the most effective choice for all categories of attractiveness-relevant products. This research also explores the method by which the match between model attractiveness and product type influences advertising effectiveness. Results suggest that a match between a model and a product improves ad effectiveness not necessarily through the elicitation of product arguments from model appearance, but instead by heightening perceptions of the model's expertise about the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our existing knowledge of business process reengineering (BPR) is mainly derived from the experiences of private sector organizations, which have fundamentally different characteristics from public organizations. This paper represents a first step in understanding how BPR may be different in public organizations. Drawing on the public administration literature, it examines the differences between public and private organizations and their implications for BPR. Following that, it examines the BPR experience of a large public organization through an intensive case study. The case analysis shows that while there are similarities in the BPR experiences of public and private organizations, there are also notable differences. In this specific case, there were social and political pressures to reengineer, press publicity to promote BPR, a reengineering team comprised mainly of neutral staff, performance benchmarks adapted from the private sector, high-level approval for redesigned processes, and a pilot site implementation to secure further funding. It concludes with lessons learned for implementing BPR in public organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. Wholesale firms play an important role in the distribution of goods. They stimulate the flow of goods towards the final consumer by means of their intermediate position between the manufacturing sector and the retail sector in the distribution channel. This paper will focus on the question whether there is a link between the position of wholesale businesses in the distribution channel and their spatial choice of location. Can the position of the wholesale sector in the distribution channel be regarded as an influential location factor or not? As such, the location factor to elaborate is the location with regard to the suppliers and buyers of wholesale firms. First, the change of the spatial pattern over the long term is set out by means of a series of maps. Second, an inquiry has been set out in order to obtain an insight to the position of wholesale firms in the distribution channel. The major findings are that the sectors of repair shops, retail, manufacturing industry and building industry have the most business contacts with wholesale firms. Most business contacts are on a national level. The position of the wholesale sector in the distribution channel alone does not explain the choice of location. But the paper shows that the position is closely linked to other factors, such as accessibility, short distances and centrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2012 there has been an upsurge in New Zealand’s interest in how ecosystem service (ES) concepts can be used to assist decision-making. This paper outlines the progress New Zealand has made in integrating the ES concept into decision-making at government and business levels and provides insights into the challenges encountered. The observations and insights outlined in this paper are based on the interaction of the authors with the various actors in these dialogues and from their involvement in initiatives being undertaken by government and business. The key challenges discussed cover knowledge, indicators, indigenous cultural values, language and communication and decision-making. The paper also provides evidence to support or counter some of the ES critiques. While challenges exist with integrating ESs into decision-making, evidence to date suggests the approach is compelling and provides a structured, transparent and neutral mechanism to manage natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Universities with sales programs have the task of preparing students to successfully pursue careers in professional sales and also promoting the programs and students to the business community. This paper outlines the National Collegiate Sales Competition (NCSC) that was held in April 1999 and will be held again in February 2000. The NCSC provides universities an opportunity to further develop sales students, while at the same time displaying their students and programs to business organizations that have a strong emphasis in the sales area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the body of work known as the law and finance literature, the development of financial markets and the concentration of ownership across countries is to a large extent the consequence of the legal system nations created or inherited decades or hundreds of years ago. Despite the seemingly historical nature of this explanation, most of the body of work supporting the law and finance hypothesis has been ahistorical. This paper summarises the business history literature and provides evidence on investor protection and financial development over the long run that challenges the main tenets of the law and finance literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stakeholder dialogue, participation, and partnership have become mainstream concepts in international development policy, in particular in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, the accountability of multi-stakeholder initiatives on CSR to their intended beneficiaries in the global South is increasingly questioned. This paper looks at how the agendas of some initiatives in the areas of ethical trade and sustainability reporting are driven by what Western NGOs push for, what large companies consider feasible, and what consultants and accountants seek to provide. It describes how the resulting practices and discourse restrict change and marginalise alternative approaches developed by Southern stakeholders. It is argued that enthusiasm for stakeholder dialogue, participation, and partnership in CSR matters, and beyond, needs to be reconceived with democratic principles in mind. ‘Stakeholder democracy’ is offered as a conceptual framework for this endeavour, and some recommendations are made for NGOs, companies, and governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid growth in tourism has led to many sites* being engulfed by tourist development. This paper advocates that marketing can help achieve a balanced approach to achieving the aims of economic, social and environmental well-being. The discussion highlights that most marketing led activity in tourism focuses on promoting tourism, thereby increasing volumes and revenue earning opportunities. However there is a significant deficiency in the marketing activities aimed at tourist communication and education with regard to sustainable maintenance of the site environment at natural tourist sites. Empirical evidence is used to illustrate this circumstance and a conceptual model of holistic marketing in tourism is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a unique retrospective on the development of the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice. The journal is introduced and discussed, the articles published in JMTP from 1999 to 2004 are analyzed and discussed and the articles for this special issue are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooke, Rayburn, and Abercrombie (1992) use historical definitions of marketing to define four major schools of marketing thought. These four schools include the (1) economic utility viewpoint, (2) consumer viewpoint, (3) societal viewpoint, and (4) managerial viewpoint. We suggest that the 2004 AMA definition of marketing creates an additional school of marketing thought, the stakeholder viewpoint. In addition, for over four decades, researchers have used market orientation scales to operationalize what it means for a firm to follow the marketing concept. While the conceptualisation of a market orientation has remained static, the definition of marketing has changed quite dramatically. Few authors have revisited original scale properties and none have addressed the central question of what it means for an organization to be market oriented in the context of the 2004 AMA definition of marketing. As a consequence, market orientation scales have been used sometimes with little consideration as to their relevance. Given changes in the AMA definition of marketing, changes to market characteristics, changes in our understanding of competitive behavior and advances in management theory and scale development, this paper calls for a new scale or scales to be developed that more fully captures the market orientation construct in the context of the 2004 AMA definition of marketing and the ‘stakeholder’ perspective of marketing thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on three ethnographic studies of surrogacy we carried out separately in different contexts: the western US state of California, the south Indian state of Karnataka, and the western Russian metropolis of St Petersburg. In our interviews with surrogate mothers, intended parents, and surrogacy professionals, we traced the meanings and ideologies through which they understood the clinical labour of surrogacy. We found that in the US, interviewed surrogates, intended parents and professionals understood surrogacy as an exchange of both gifts and commodities, where gift-giving, reciprocity, and relatedness between surrogates and intended parents were the major tropes. In India, differing narratives of surrogacy were offered by its different parties: whilst professionals and intended parents framed it as a win-win exchange with an emphasis on the economic side, the interviewed surrogate mothers talked about surrogacy as creative labour of giving life. In Russia, approaches to surrogacy among the interviewed surrogate mothers, professionals and intended parents overlapped in framing it as work and a businesslike commodity exchange. We suggest these three different ways of ethical reasoning about the clinical labour of surrogacy, including justifications of women's incorporation into this labour, were situated in local moral frameworks. We name them "repro-regional moral frameworks", inspired by earlier work on moral frameworks as well as on reproductive nationalisms and transnational reproduction. Building on these findings, we argue that any international or global regulation of surrogacy, or indeed any moral stance on it, needs to take these local differences into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global trend to electronic service delivery (ESD) by governments can include the sponsorship of virtual communities that create value and become places where people, content, and communication come together around a need, enabling government agencies to extend their traditional service-provision role. Implementation is sometimes problematic, however, and understanding the implementation process is crucial to the success of such virtual communities. This paper reports a case study of a virtual community (an on-line export-documentation system) that links government and business. The study employs Bijker's framework to conceptualize the process of defining the technical standard and implementing the documentation system. Diffusion effects shaped the implementation and influenced participant responses, illustrating Bijker's argument that an artifact or product demonstrates interpretive flexibility before it stabilizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the importance of green entrepreneurs in the transition towards a sustainable society, the authors propose a framework for investigating the influences on, and motives of, green entrepreneurs. The literature on entrepreneurs generally, and approaches to classifying entrepreneurs, are reviewed with the aim of gaining useful insights for the green context. The scope for investigation encompasses all possible forms of green business, including not only those founded on the principle of sustainability but also those that are opportunistically or accidentally green. Assessing both the research on typologies of entrepreneurs generally and recent perspectives on green entrepreneurs in particular, the authors propose that green entrepreneurs are best characterised by a combination of internal motivations and external (hard and soft) structural influences. The resulting typology presented in this paper produces four 'ideal types' of green entrepreneurs: innovative opportunists, visionary champions, ethical mavericks and ad hoc enviropreneurs. Their characteristics are explored and examples provided. Recommendations are made on how the typology can contribute to further research into ways to foster green entrepreneurship and the change agent role that green entrepreneurs play in the two-way iterative relationship between firms and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-commerce success, especially in the business-to-consumer area, is determined in part by whether consumers trust sellers and products they cannot see or touch, and electronic systems with which they have no previous experience. This paper describes a theoretical model for investigating the four main antecedent influences on consumer trust in Internet shopping, a major form of business-to-consumer e-commerce: trustworthiness of the Internet merchant, trustworthiness of the Internet as a shopping medium, infrastructural (contextual) factors (e.g., security, third-party certification), and other factors (e.g., company size, demographic variables). The antecedent variables are moderated by the individual consumer's degree of trust propensity, which reflects personality traits, culture, and experience. Based on the research model, a comprehensive set of hypotheses is formulated and a methodology for testing them is outlined. Some of the hypotheses are tested empirically to demonstrate the applicability of the theoretical model. The findings indicate that merchant integrity is a major positive determinant of consumer trust in Internet shopping, and that its effect is moderated by the individual consumer's trust propensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the alternative urbanization strategies in South Africa. These strategies include the orderly urbanization and the positive urbanization. The orderly urbanization was compared with positive urbanization which argued that both of the policies fails to address the causes of urban problems or the demands and needs of the South Africans population. It was claimed that the policy of orderly urbanization was set out in the President's Council Report as an urbanization strategy for the country which adopted in a government White Paper. Moreover, it was emphasized that the orderly urbanization was heavily based on the positive urbanization strategy which advocated by Urban Foundation, a body representing the interest of big business in the country.

The article focuses on the Ealing Business History Seminar, which was held on April 28, 1978. The seminar has now been transferred to the Polytechnic of Central London with Professor Derek Oddy's move to that institution. "Enterprise in Inter-War Britain" was the theme for the meeting. Professor Church's paper was entitled 'Receivership, Reconstruction and Renaissance at the Austin Motor Company 1921-1939, or How the Capital Market effectively harnessed Technical Brilliance to Managerial Expertise. Church put the immediate post-war history of Austin in the context of the common view of effects of war upon the motor industry, namely that it probably accelerated, rather than retarded, innovative development. This was shown to be valid in the sense that large scale munitions production led to the adoption of repetition manufacture to an unprecedented degree, extended employment of unskilled labour and intensified research. But; involvement in munitions manufacture had the effect of distorting the basis for decision-making related to readjustment to peacetime production and left the company with a substantial indebtedness to the Treasury who helped to finance the expansion for war production.

This article discusses several publications about education and industry as of 1983. The Great Debate was launched at a time when the human capital theories which had flourished during the 1960s had become more or less exhausted and discredited. I. Berg's Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery in particular had hadlighted the inflation in credentials which had taken place in Western education and was highly critical of the methods used by economists to calculate rates of return on educational investment. A recent account of the origins of the Great Debate has been provided by John Beck in an article entitled Accountability, Industry and Education. Beck's argument is that the origins of the Great Debate can be found in the collapse of the Labor Government's industrial strategy between 1974 and 1976. Two recent books which examine some of the developments in industry-education relationships since 1977 are Work Experience and Schools edited by Tony Watts and Schools and Industry by Ian Jamieson and Martin Lightfoot. Neither purports to offer a sociological analysis of its subject matter, but each provides a useful assessment of attempts made to realize some of the intentions behind the Green Paper.

This paper suggests significant processes associated with regional industrial change. Particular emphasis is given to the sensitivity of an open regional economy to shifts in external trade relationships and the ability of management to assess and adapt to the changing forces influencing theft industries. The case study of Northern Ireland between 1950 and 1968 attempts to explain the transition followed by the leading older industries and why certain alternative paths for regional transition were followed. A recurrent theme is the crucial role played by the regional government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business model design is critical for a startup. A successful design must be developed and tested with limited resources and under conditions of great uncertainty related to both internal and external factors. At the same time, this lack of definition is an excellent opportunity for business model innovation. In this paper, we present the Innovation Pivot Framework, a practical tool aimed at assisting entrepreneurs in identifying alternative uses of their innovation and deciding which applications and target markets they should pursue first. This process leads to a formulation of the source of competitive advantage based on the innovation envisioned. This tool may be useful both at the first moment of a startup’s conceptualization and when the new venture needs to redefine its competitive advantage. Beyond the area of entrepreneurship, it could also be an effective analysis tool to achieve better business model designs in well-established companies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on material collected in the Record Office at the Liverpool Public Library and its bearing on local business history in England. Sparseness of industry in the collection, since the nineteenth century was marked by commercial growth rather than industrial development; Way that personal papers often illuminate some aspects of business.

When the Australian Trade Practices Act 1965 came into force on 1 September 1967 it was vehemently opposed by business as it threatened to reveal the extent of their anti-competitive arrangements. Yet by the time the Act was replaced by stronger legislation in 1974, most firms had accepted that collusion and price fixing were undesirable and that they had to compete. Using newspapers, parliamentary debates, archival records, and the Secret Register of trade agreements introduced by the 1965 Act, this paper examines the transformation of attitudes to competition in the Australian business community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research paper is an investigation of innovation and heritage entrepreneurship development in the South Wales Valleys. It is particularly concerned with opportunities to develop industrial heritage tourism enterprises in the South Wales Valleys, with special reference to Merthyr Tydfil. The research is based upon eight case study structured interviews and collated data to produce, in combination with the contemporary literature, four key themes to achieve a sustainable regeneration scheme for innovative heritage entrepreneur- ship development. These key themes are funding challenges, cohesion of the community, a strategic approach, and networking and partnerships. This analysis has shown the growing significance of non-environmental sustainable development and socio-cultural regeneration. Throughout the main themes that have been analysed, the importance of innovation and heritage entrepreneurship development has become particularly apparent. This has proved that they are practically inseparable due to the fact that they need to work together in order to provide a sustainable approach for regeneration to work effectively in the long-term. It has become apparent that a strategic approach is essential, for it is the only way forward that is sustainable in order to develop heritage tourism enterprises for future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive selling is the notion that salespeople alter their selling message to fit the buyer in order to increase the likelihood of success. This paper presents the results of a study where trade show salespeople were presented with three types of buyers. The findings indicate that salespeople do alter the content of their presentation depending on the type of buyer they are faced with. Implications for practitioners concern the importance of formal training so that prospects are closed for the appropriate follow-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are widely used by many of the top recruiters of computer science and business school graduates, providing significant business benefits when implemented effectively. While ERP concepts are taught within Universities from a theoretical point of view, few students have any hands-on experience of using an ERP system when they graduate. As a result, there is a significant gap between the way in which ERP concepts are applied in practice and the way in which they are taught in Universities. This paper describes the adoption of new, innovative material during 2006 which enhances two postgraduate courses taught at a leading UK management school and provides students with hands-on experience with an ERP system. It is argued here that this enhances their student experience, improves their employability and increases their 'readiness' for industry, thereby contributing to aligning the objectives of higher education institutions and practitioners. The paper also describes how a number of challenges to incorporating the new material within existing course structures were overcome, providing guidance for fellow academics embarking on similar ventures. Issues discussed include: coping with the uncertainty of new material, maintaining academic integrity and encouraging critical self reflection and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detailed analyses of environmental policies and their implications for the ecological sustainability of capitalism are missing from the eco-Marxist literature. Moreover, environmental policies have been often dismissed by several eco-Marxists on the ground that they are shaped on capital's terms. It is the objective of this paper to theorize the shaping of environmental regulation from a value-theoretic and class struggle perspective. It is argued that the negative economic impacts of pollution and resource depletion, captured by prices and rents, instigate various class and environmental conflicts and struggles which reshape the interchange between capitalism and nature. The state as a social site becomes an arena of these struggles. The state is called upon by the many different competing agents to mediate their access to nature. Evidence from many concrete cases shows that environmental policies and adjustments have been the outcome of this complex social interaction. However, the emerging ecological restructuring of capitalism can not guarantee its ecological sustainability. In particular, it gives rise to new problems and contradictions rendering ecological sustainability of capitalism uncertain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of normative delegitimation—the process by which an organization's normative legitimacy is diminished through challenges by outside organizations. I frame the phenomenon as a unique form of firm exposure, social risk—exposure to possible loss or constraints on strategic choice resulting from normative delegitimation challenges by external organizations. Using the context of social movement organizations' normative delegitimation challenges of firm behavior, I put forward propositions concerning firm, institutional, and socioeconomic antecedents that drive social risk. After this analysis, I consider extensions to the theory—particularly in terms of interorganizational dynamic processes and the strategic management of social risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]