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Purpose — The Regional Household Travel Survey (RHTS) was a large-scale regional household travel survey that covered 28 counties in the New York, North New Jersey, and Connecticut regions (i.e., the New York City “megaregion”). Data collection for the survey began in October 2010 and concluded in November 2011.

The chapter discusses the multiple modes and methodologies used in the RHTS, and presents the participation rates and trip rates obtained using this multimodal approach.

Methodology/approach — This survey used a combination of web, telephone, and mail-out/mail-back methods to collect household and travel information from approximately 18,800 households. Ten percent of the sampled households participated in the survey by using wearable global positioning system (GPS) devices that collected detailed travel data which, in turn, were processed and presented back to the households in a GPS-based prompted recall interview administered by web or telephone. The GPS component was used to generate trip rate correction factors for the other 90% diary-based households.

Findings — This large regional survey was the first to use this specific combination of methods and technologies, and provides many insights into the success of targeted survey modes and methods for different population groups.

The Unexpected Offer is a relatively short case involving the valuation and sale of a Web site and its domain name. Because the issues involved are easily identified and apparently straightforward, it may be used at the start of a negotiation course. Specifically, it can be very effective in introducing a discussion of how to value or quantify a BATNA. While students in the marketing associate role tend to rely on budgets and other internal concerns to assess their BATNA, those in the entrepreneur role tend to focus on external factors or their own widely varying estimates. This variability frequently generates a stimulating discussion.

Geertz is well known for his methodology. Many Symbolic Interactionists refer to his notion of “thick description.” They may not know his work on Indonesia in general, but they often know his famous essay on the Balinese cockfight: “Deep Play” (Geertz, 1972, 1973). That essay is often held up as an exemplary “model” of ethnographic fieldwork. But we need to examine what he calls “thick description” more carefully. After the first few pages of the essay there is actually very little “idiographic description” per se. Much of the paper concerns general description and analysis. We do not get a blow-by-blow account of a cockfight as viewed by Geertz. Instead we get an analysis that is based on Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism (Parekh, 1998). There is a good deal missing from the broader analysis as well. Much of that can be found in other work (Geertz, 1959, 1966, 1980, 1995). Students who only read “Deep Play” often form a superficial impression of the method of “thick description” and a distorted sense of Balinese culture (Howe, 2001; Vickers, 1996 [1981]; Warren, 1993). This essay supplements Geertz’s essay with a discussion of a religious ceremony of far more importance than the largely secular cockfight. I touch on a central feature of Balinese society not emphasized by Geertz: the temple anniversary festival. It is called an odalan (Belo, 1966 [1953a]; Eiseman, 1990; Geertz, 2004). But the problem is not just restricted to the “Deep Play” essay. Geertz’s other work is often also not based primarily on ethnographic thick description. It concerns historical and sociological generalizations. Those are often based on archives and general fieldwork. Geertz also benefits from reading of Dutch research not available in English. The celebrations which take place at a temple are “deeper” than more immediate, largely secular games like a cockfight. Geertz’s oeuvre is well worth reading, but his notion of “thick description” needs to be seen in a broader, comparative historical sociological context. That involves Interpretive research paradigms that Geertz, as a symbolic anthropologist, distanced himself from, including Symbolic Interactionism and Weberian verstehende Soziologie.

In an ever-complexifying business context, organizations need to continuously adapt, adjust and change their routines in order to remain competitive. Drawing upon a qualitative study focusing on three Southeastern European countries (Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia), this paper explores the role played by managerial feedback on routine change within small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The authors draw from an in-depth qualitative study of six manufacturing SMEs located in three Southeastern European countries: Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The process of data collection, which spanned over a period of fifteen months, was centred around both interviews and observations.

The authors argue that feedback is a powerful and constructive managerial practice that sets to initiate changes in routines through three different means: (1) making sense of the changes required (by channelling information), (2) rationalizing the decision for changing the unproductive routines and (3) reviewing the process of change through the legitimization of situational routines. In addition to this, the authors found that managers perceive that routines need to change for four main reasons: inability to meet targets (e.g. performance); too cumbersome to deal with complex environments; inflexibility and failing to provide control; obsolete in terms of providing a sense of confidence.

This research provides evidence that feedback is an important managerial means of changing routines in informal, less bureaucratic and less formalized workplaces such as SMEs. Managers might embrace deformalized approaches to feedback when dealing with routines in SMEs. Working within a very sensitive structure where the majority of changes on routines need to be operationalized through their hands, managers and practitioners should deploy feedback in order to highlight the importance of routines as sources of guiding actions, activities and operations occurring in SMEs that create better internal challenges and processes.

The authors’ research suggests that routines are subject of change in dynamic and turbulent situations. Perceiving routines as antithetical to change fails to capture the distinctive features of change such as its fluidity, open-endedness, and inseparability. Likewise, the authors claim that routines are socially constructed organizational phenomena that can be modulated in different ways in SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to review the continued development of the “shadow banking” market in the USA, namely, lending to the private middle market, defined as financings of $5-100m to non-public, unrated operating entities or pools of assets with not more than $50m in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

The analysis includes a continued review of an innovative segment of the financial markets and primary evidence from direct participation in four actual cases of private, non-bank lending between 2013 and 2015 and theoretical observations around that data.

Although there have been considerable challenges, historically, in providing credit for small and mid-sized businesses in the USA, the authors show further evidence that private middle market capital is growing (post credit crisis) at a dramatic pace, in part because of excessive constraints placed on the regulated depositary institutions. The authors also explain the nature of the shadow banking innovation and how it is intrinsically linked to “arbitraging” often excessively restrictive banking regulation. The growing US shadow banking market, while providing an important service to middle market companies, may pose a new systemic risk post 2007-2008 credit crisis in the USA.

Any generalization is limited because of the difficulty in extrapolating from a small number of specific case studies and the absence of adequate survey data for the US capital markets and the limited examples examined.

This research calls for additional case studies, including participant observation research that offers a unique close-up view of financial behavior that is often beyond the view of regulators and the public. Data obtained may be useful in providing a deeper, more timely understanding of credit market behavior and contribute to efforts at formal financial modeling as well as the development of practical regulatory regimes.

The shadow credit market is a key source of funding for the global financial system, thus contributing to job creation and economic growth. The authors demonstrate the value of financial innovations and show that shadow credit fills a void left by depository financial institutions, shifting much of the risk from the public to investors. This research increases transparency in the operation of this market, which is extremely important for the industry, the government and the public. The authors offer a modest attempt at understanding credit behavior to avoid a repeat of the 2007/2008 financial crisis.

Direct participation is unique to the firms studied. Value is in developing a general framework to analyze an emerging credit market in advanced economies.