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The aim of the research, in the East and Southeast Asia context, is to explore the advantages and problems of Buslish (business facilitation English) for managers and to generate suggestions for maximising the use of Buslish as a critical resource in organisational effectiveness, including potential educational support and its required technology.

Data aimed to explore the issue were collected from a multi-country sample of 31 non-native English speakers, using a semi-structured questionnaire, plus in-depth interviews (10) with some respondents. Data were analysed using a mixture of descriptive statistics and logical argumentation.

The authors found a strong agreement that Buslish is important in the chosen setting, but there are problems in practice. Views on the importance of style and precision of the language actually used varied considerably. A key practical implication is that there is a role for English continuing professional development (CPD) courses.

Firms should support the development of English language skills of employees, certainly at management level and perhaps also at shop floor level. Suitable courses could be offered in firms' CPD programmes. Employees who are native speakers should be encouraged to enunciate clearly for non-native speaker colleagues, not to use slang and not to speak too quickly. While the authors encourage the use of contemporary communication technologies (e.g. virtual classrooms), they maintain that these should be supplementary in nature, supporting, rather than replacing, face-to-face learning formats.

A key aspect of the originality of the work is derived from the specific location, primary data collected and the creative nexus of the initial issue and its educational requirements, including technologies.

This paper aims to study parental expectations of and satisfaction with overall services of preschool centres and to determine the factors which affect parents’ satisfaction in a part of one of Thailand’s southern provinces.

Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from parents of children attending 29 day-care or preschool centres in Songkhla Province, South Thailand, over a two-month period in the Spring 2014. The data were analysed mainly using descriptive statistics and some correlation analyses with subsequent logical interpretation.

Given the location and non-compulsory nature of the childcare provision being assessed, it would seem fair to say that the answer to the overarching objective was fairly positive. Expectations were non-trivial; parents looked for more than “baby-minding” and expected there to be some appropriately qualified staff. The perceived satisfaction levels indicate that there is nevertheless scope for improvement.

The sample studied is from a limited geographical region of Thailand; hence, there must be some caution in making recommendations for the whole country.

As the outcomes being delivered are seen to be mainly positive by parents and guardians, the policy implication for the Thai Government is that they should continue to promote, and ideally enhance, this kind of early years provision. Results suggest that Thai parents would be well advised to make use of childcare centres to promote the socialisation and development of their children.

The originality of the work derives from the lack of similar systematic studies in Thailand and, in particular, for the rural southern provinces.

The data for this case were obtained primarily through a series of in-person interviews in Penang between the authors and Pete Browning (a pseudonym) from 2017 to early 2019. The authors also consulted secondary data sources, including publicly available material on BMax and “Company B”.

This case examines a key decision, or set of decisions, in the life of a small- to medium-sized management consultancy group, namely, whether they might expand their operations in Southeast Asia, and if so, where. These key decisions came in the wake of their having already established a very modest scale presence there, with an operating base on the island of Penang just off the north western coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The initial establishment of a Southeast Asian branch had been somewhat spontaneous in nature – a former colleague of one of the two managing partners in the USA was on the ground in Malaysia and available: he became the local partner in the firm. But the firm had now been eyeing expansion within the region, with three markets under particular consideration (Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand) and a further two (Vietnam and China) also seen as possible targets, though at a more peripheral level. The questions facing the decision makers were “was it time they expand beyond Malaysia?” and “if so, where?”

This case could be used effectively in undergraduate courses in international business. The key concepts on which the case focuses are the factors affecting market entry, particularly the choice of market and the assessment of potential attractiveness such markets offer.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that both leisure and sustainability objectives can be achieved via Buddhist economics informed agritourism. Buddhist economics differs significantly from mainstream (neoclassical) economics in its ontological underpinning. This means that assumptions about human nature are different: the core values of mainstream economics are self-interest and competition in the pursuit of maximum welfare or utility; while in Buddhist economics, “self” includes oneself, society and nature, which are all simultaneously interconnected. The core values of Buddhist economics are compassion and collaboration through which well-being is achieved, leading to higher wisdom (pañña). Because of this, the interconnectedness of activities and relationships, even those not initially obviously so linked, is crucial.

The theoretical argument is illustrated by a pilot study of an agritourism, package tour to visit the properties of Thai farmers involved with a project known as “running a one rai farm to gain a one hundred thousand baht return”. The research is exploratory in character.

A result of this study is to reveal agritourism as a significant market channel to promote sustainable agriculture.

Agritourism can be considered an instrument for rural development with its contribution to positive economic impacts, providing economic opportunities to sustain financial security for the farming family, maintaining viability of the agricultural sector and local communities and creating jobs for rural residents together with sustainable agriculture.

This paper is an initial attempt to discuss the American institutionalist movement as it changed and developed after 1945. Institutionalism in the inter-war period was a relatively coherent movement held together by a set of general methodological, theoretical, and ideological commitments (Rutherford, 2011). Although institutionalism always had its critics, it came under increased attack in the 1940s, and faced challenges from Keynesian economics, a revived neoclassicism, econometrics, and from new methodological approaches derived from various versions of positivism. The institutionalist response to these criticisms, and particularly the criticism that institutionalism “lacked theory,” is to be found in a variety of attempts to redefine institutionalism in new theoretical or methodological terms. Perhaps the most important of these is to be found in Clarence Ayres’ The Theory of Economic Progress (1944), although there were many others. These developments were accompanied by a significant amount of debate, disagreement, and uncertainty over future directions. Some of this is reflected in the early history of The Association for Evolutionary Economics.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

This paper advocates for and describes the use of provocative statements as a leadership assignment to foster critical thinking. Critical thinking is an essential competency for leaders who must analyze issues and convince others of their point of view as they compete for scarce internal resources. The provocative statement assignment incorporates common elements from long-established practices of Socratic questioning, debate, argumentation analysis, and rhetoric. It challenges students to develop and advocate their point of view on the controversial issues of their field. Preliminary findings of student perceptions of the assignment in a graduate leadership class are presented which suggest the assignment can be a powerful learning tool.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.