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The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for brand meaning co-creation between brands and fans on Facebook.

A case study methodology was applied. Brand posts in the form of text, pictures, videos and fan comments of three brand pages – Nike Run, Mizuno and Jack Daniel’s – were collected and analyzed in a netnographic manner. Seven influential fans of the Nike Run brand page, who were identified in the data, and one marketing manager of each brand were interviewed.

This paper shows how brand meanings are orchestrated by brand managers and co-created through a process in which the brand leads the dialog through several types of brand actions. It also shows how fans engage in this dialog through multiple forms of reactions. A brand page’s content should be curated by its manager based on the role of the content on fans’ lives and their potential reactions and not merely on the meanings that the brand desires to communicate.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for understanding brand meaning co-creation at the micro-level of brand-fans daily interactions. Nevertheless, this study analyzed only three brand pages in two product categories – alcoholic beverages and running. Therefore, the authors do not claim that one can extrapolate from their findings.

The brand meaning co-creation process that is identified here provides a useful frame of reference for brand managers who seek to understand how they can best influence fans to co-create brand meanings in directions that benefit their companies.

This paper evolves with the co-creation of brand meanings literature by proposing a framework of brand meaning co-creation on Facebook. This framework can help brand managers to fine tune their content strategy in social media.

This study investigates whether the skilled minority of active equity managers in emerging markets can be identified using a machine learning (ML) framework that incorporates a large set of performance characteristics.

The study uses a cross-section of South African active equity managers from January 2002 to December 2021. The performance characteristics are analysed using ML models, with a particular focus on gradient boosters, and naïve selection techniques such as momentum and style alpha. The out-of-sample nominal, excess and risk-adjusted returns are evaluated, and precision tests are conducted to assess the accuracy of the performance predictions.

A minority of active managers exhibit skill that results in generating alpha, even after accounting for fees, and show that ML models, particularly gradient boosters, are superior at identifying non-linearities. LightGBM (LG) achieves the highest out-of-sample nominal, excess and risk-adjusted return and proves to be the most accurate predictor of performance in precision tests. Naïve selection techniques, such as momentum and style alpha, outperform most ML models in forecasting emerging market active manager performance.

The authors contribute to the literature by demonstrating that a ML approach that incorporates a large set of performance characteristics can be used to identify skilled active equity managers in emerging markets. The findings suggest that both ML models and naïve selection techniques can be used to predict performance, but the former is more accurate in predicting ex ante performance. This study has practical implications for investment practitioners and academics interested in active asset manager performance in emerging markets.

Encapsulant materials for flip‐chip‐on‐board (FCOB) were developed to address issues that have been observed during assembly of consumer electronic products on a high volume manufacturing FCOB/SMT line. The viscosity, surface tension, and filler particle sizes of several encapsulants were studied in an attempt to correlate these properties to their recorded underfill times and to observe their flow properties under the gap. Materials characterization studies were performed to determine their glass transition temperatures (Tg), tensile elastic and loss moduli (E′ and E′′), coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE), and apparent strengths of adhesion (ASA). In addition, reliability tests were conducted, and several promising materials were identified. The ASA of the encapsulant to the die passivation and the printed circuit board (PCB) is critical to the robustness of the assembly. Studies were conducted to observe the ASA as a function of FCOB assembly conditioning prior to underfilling and the degradation of the ASA as a function of humidity exposure. The ASA of the FCOB encapsulants was highest when the assembly was “baked‐out” prior to underfilling. Conditioning the assemblies for 24 hours at 23°C/85 per cent RH, to simulate the “worse case” factory environment, reduced the ASA. The ASA was also reduced when the “baked‐out” assemblies were placed in the 85°C/85 per cent RH chamber after underfilling. Although the ASA was decreased when the boards were not “baked‐out”, the reliability performance was not affected during air to air temperature cycling (AATC). A new class of low stress encapsulant materials systems were developed to reduce the stress state of the backside of the die. Studies showed that for specific materials compositions, the stress was proportional to the glass transition temperature of the encapsulant. In addition, it was observed that the stress state was a function of humidity, temperature, and time. FCOB assemblies were built with several low stress encapsulants and placed in reliability testing and they performed as well as assemblies underfilled with the qualified encapsulant.

When products are differentiated, applying the standard critical loss formula to assess whether it is profitable for a hypothetical monopolist to impose a common price increase can lead to delineating an antitrust market that is too broad by setting a critical loss threshold that is too low. This error is particularly likely to occur when the products exhibit very different per-unit profits, own price elasticities, and cross price elasticities. In particular, different per-unit profits are a necessary condition for this error to occur and this difference is more likely to be driven by an asymmetry in prices than by an asymmetry in costs when own price elasticities are moderate in magnitude. In contrast, differences in the quantity sold of each product do not tend to lead to errors in market definition. Given the issues associated with the standard critical loss analysis, critical loss analysis with asymmetric price increases and the gross upward pricing pressure index are practical alternative approaches for conducting market definition analysis when products in a candidate market are differentiated.

The motivation for this paper comes from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation’s (TRC) Calls to Action, and in particular, the call for more meaningful consultation and respectful, consent-based relationships between businesses and Indigenous communities in Canada. To this end, this study empirically examines leadership in the context of a wicked problem faced by a pulp and paper mill and suggest an Indigenous epistemology as helpful to inform the leadership behaviours employed in this company.

Firstly, this study established that the problem faced by the company aligns with the characteristics of wicked problems, hence necessitating a collective leadership approach. This study then compiled a database from publicly available documents and inductively coded this data to identify themes that told us something about the leadership behaviours employed by the company as it attempted to resolve the problem at hand.

This study provides evidence that the company did not employ collective leadership when attempting to tame its wicked problem. It then shows that the context in which the firm operates lends itself well to the Mi’kmaw concept of Two-Eyed Seeing as a guiding principle that could have informed the company’s leadership and contributed to a long-overdue process of reconciliation. This study proposes several specific actions that plausibly could have helped produce such an outcome.

This paper helps fill a void in applications of the wicked problem construct to businesses. Further, this study suggests that the problem faced by this firm remained difficult to tame precisely because it failed to employ a collective leadership approach. The contribution to the leadership literature comes from introducing Two-Eyed Seeing and showing how it may help produce leadership that is inherently more collective in nature. Beyond its instrumental value, this approach may nurture more consent-based relationships between businesses and Indigenous communities in Canada, as called for by the TRC, hence contributing to reconciliation with a long-suffering neighbouring Indigenous community.

We examine the sources of performance for a sample of mutual funds that invest primarily in utility companies. Given recent deregulation developments in the utility industry and the sub‐market performance of utility stocks in the 1990s, we hypothesize that utility funds may be considering alternatives to traditional high‐yielding electric utility stocks. Although there is anecdotal evidence that utility funds may be tilting their focus away from electric utility stocks, we find that utility mutual funds as a group are no more or less heavily invested in utility stocks today than they have been over the past 10 years.

UKOLN (the UK Office of Library and Information Networking) has created a Web resource based on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island in order to explore how a children's library can integrate the Internet into its services. The site is at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/treasure. Visitors to the site can learn more about the book, contribute book reviews, design a pirate and wander around a virtual Treasure Island.

This paper addresses social and ethical issues in computer‐mediated education, with a focus on higher education. It will be argued if computer‐mediated education is to be implemented in a socially and ethically sound way, four major social and ethical issues much be confronted. These are: (1) the issue of value transfer in higher education: can social, cultural and academic values be successfully transmitted in computer‐mediated education? (2) the issue of academic freedom: are computer‐mediated educational settings conducive for academic freedom or do they threaten to undermine it? (3) the issue of equality and diversity: does a reliance on computer networks in higher education foster equality and equity for students and does it promote diversity, or does it disadvantage certain social classes and force conformity? (4) the issue of ethical student and staff behaviour: What kinds of unethical behaviour by students and staff are made possible in computer‐mediated education, and what can be done against it? Existing studies relating to these four issues are examined and some tentative policy conclusions are drawn.

This paper uses ideas of ‘organisational storytelling’ and three ‘domains’ to create the author's own stories about the role of organised communication in a major corporate merger. The author draws on his first‐hand experience as one of the two directors of internal communication in the UK's largest merger, between his company Grand Metropolitan plc (GrandMet) and Guinness plc that completed on 17th December, 1997; and, second, on 11 years of working as an external communication (PR) professional alongside corporate financiers in some high profile ‘deals’ of the 1980s, including the British Telecommunications privatisation (1984), and the vote of members and subsequent flotation of Abbey National (1989–90).

Describes how an institution in Canada attempted to broaden staff understanding of two telecommunications media, videoteleconferencing and telecourse delivery, by establishing provisional systems or opportunities to trial new ideas based on the temporary educational systems (TES) typology, suggested by Bergquist (1992), and the Concerns‐Based Adoption model (CBAM), following Hall and Hord (1987). Referencing the case examples, contemporary literature and in the light of the UK National (Dearing) Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education’s report (1997), deduces implications for implementing future projects and identifies factors to consider in the development of communications and information technology (C&IT) strategies for learning and teaching.