Purpose: This chapter examines two rather extreme examples of non-human entities in home assemblage, interior objects, and companion animals, and how their agency appears distributed with human consumers in assembling home. The authors aim at drawing conceptual contrasts and overlappings in how agency expresses itself in these categories of living and non-living entities, highlighting the multifaceted manifestations of object agency. Methodology/Approach: This chapter employs multiple sets of ethnographi-cally inspired data, ranging from ethnographic interviews and an autoethno-graphic diary to three types of (auto-)netnographic data. Findings: The findings showcase oscillation of agency between these three analytic categories (human, non-human living, and non-human non-living), focusing on how it is distributed between two of the entities at a time, within the heterogeneous assemblage of home. Furthermore, the findings show instances in which agency emerges as shared between all three entities. Originality/Value: The contribution of this chapter comes from advancing existing discussion on object agency toward the focus on distributed and shared agency. The research adds to the prevailing discussion by exhibiting how agency oscillates between different types of interacting entities in the assemblage, and in particular, how the two types of non-human entities are agentic. The research demonstrates the variability and interwovenness of non-human and human, living and non-living agency as they appear intertwined in home assemblage.

In order to succeed in today's dynamic and competitive marketplace, it is of paramount importance for firms to manage their brand and product portfolios such that they not only create or acquire new brands/products, manage the existing ones, but also delete the ones that are underperforming. Brand/product deletion is an important but daunting strategic choice for firms. It deserves focused academic research attention, especially theory development, due to the fragmented nature of the literature in this field. This article conducts a comprehensive bibliometric review on relevant publications in the brand/product deletion literature with an aim to provide insights into the field's current intellectual structure and thematic classification of the published studies, and offers avenues for future development of this critical area of strategic brand and product management.

This paper presents a new regularization for Extreme Learning Machines (ELMs). ELMs are Randomized Neural Networks (RNNs) that are known for their fast training speed and good accuracy. Nevertheless the complexity of ELMs has to be selected, and regularization has to be performed in order to avoid underfitting or overfitting. Therefore, a novel Regularization is proposed using a modified Lanczos Algorithm: Iterative Lanczos Extreme Learning Machine (Lan-ELM). As summarized in the experimental Section, the computational time is on average divided by 4 and the Normalized MSE is on average reduced by 11%. In addition, the proposed method can be intuitively parallelized, which makes it a very valuable tool to analyze huge data sets in real-time.

This paper develops and tests a conceptual environmental risk assessment and management framework to guide businesses and other stakeholders, including government, in defining and addressing potential environmental problems in ocean shipping and port operations. The framework aims to protect the natural environment and its ecosystem services while at the same time allowing society to obtain goods and benefits from the seas. As such it integrates three elements: firstly, the criteria required to achieve sustainable management that, secondly, underpin a problem structuring method which, thirdly, can be assessed using an ISO Bow-tie industry standard analysis tool. Ocean pollution from water and air-borne discharges are used to illustrate this framework; this uses an input from an exploratory research study with maritime practitioners which investigated the framework veracity and potential for use, highlighting its potential and shortcomings.

This paper proposes a novel standardized test for abnormal returns in long-horizon event studies that takes into account cross-sectional correlation, autocorrelation, and heteroskedasticity of stock returns. Extensive simulation analyses demonstrate improved size and power of testing relative to existing long-run test methodologies. Application to initial public offerings and seasoned equity offerings further demonstrates robustness to extreme return outliers inherent in these long-run studies.

This study approaches coopetition as a strategic change and aims to bridge the gaps in micro level cognition and strategy by exploring how a coopetitive frame is constructed, as well as how individual level differences in this creation can be explained. The empirical case study findings contribute to existing coopetitive research by showing that individuals differ in their ability to create future accounts of engagement in strategic activities, as well as in modifying established frameworks of competition to fit an emerging coopetitive frame. Based on the case study findings, a model of sensemaking is presented, which indicates the influence of attitudes and expectations over time on the development of a coopetitive frame. Managers that were unable to update their expectations from the past accordingly struggled in their sensemaking, whereas the interpretative process was aided by optimism and high expectations of the future. A key contribution of the empirical study lies in the focus on sensemaking differences that sheds light on the complexities inherent in coopetitive strategizing.

Purpose This study proposes a garment modularization model based on an interactive genetic algorithm. The suggested model consists of extraction and identification of parts and the determination and implementation of connections. Rules and corresponding mathematical equations have been formulated for the part's extractions from the discarded products and connections for the redesigned products. Design/methodology/approach Sustainability entices scholars and practitioners while referring to reducing waste to control environmental degradation. One of the ways to safeguard natural resources is to increase the reuse of old or discarded products. The current study focuses on the redesign process to improve the reuse of products. Findings The intelligent system proposed based on the modularization techniques is expected to simplify and quantify the redesign process. The model can further help in the minimization of wastage and environmental degradation. Originality/value Presently, manual decisions are taken by the designers based on their memory, experience and intuition to extract and join the parts.

Writing is presented in hegemonic academic discourse as a rational and predictable activity that targets publications in the right journals. Nevertheless, many academics struggle with writing. In this article, we draw attention to how writing is experienced as an embodied, sensuous, emotional, social, and identity-related activity. Specifically, we aim to advance this comprehensive understanding of academic writing with the concept of love. By understanding love as action rather than feeling, we can foster our love for writing both as practice and in practice. We can learn to deal with the struggle by writing every day and approaching writing with dedication. By advocating the perspective of love, we seek to encourage discussion on academic writing so that it reflects the multifaceted experiences of writers, and unleash its potential in confusing and disrupting the masculine order in academia. Love offers a language to talk about vulnerability and courage, and viewing writing in the light of love helps us to learn more about ourselves and our activities as writers of management.

The capability to develop and sustain superior knowledge of markets and supply chains, or supply market intelligence (SMI), is an important element in increasing the strategic relevance of purchasing and supply management (PSM). This study draws on information processing theory (IPT) to shed light on how firms acquire SMI. In particular, the study aims to identify the drivers and mechanisms of information processing in SMI acquisition and to explore how the two constructs are related. Our findings emerged from an abductive multiple case study including 22 SMI tasks in eight case companies operating in various manufacturing industries. We find that the drivers of information processing needs in SMI acquisition are related either to uncertainty or equivocality. Uncertainty describes a situation in which decision-makers may be ignorant of a variable's value while equivocality describes a situation in which they may be ignorant of the variable's existence. We identify four structural mechanisms and three information technology mechanisms for information processing in the SMI context. We also find that equivocality seems to trump uncertainty in determining the use of the identified SMI acquisition mechanisms. In addition to elaborating IPT in the SMI context and exploring the theoretical foundations of SMI, we offer practitioners a framework for supporting the design of SMI practices in procurement organisations.

This study examines how subsidiaries can manage dual embeddedness with both local partners and a multinational enterprise. Specifically, we examine the role of absorptive capacity and appropriability mechanisms on subsidiary performance. We analyse how absorptive capacity and appropriability enable subsidiaries to successfully address knowledge challenges related to internal and external networks. We conducted an empirical analysis on a sample of 165 subsidiaries. Our results suggest that absorptive capacity has a direct, positive effect on subsidiary performance, which is greater in emerging countries. The study also found an indirect effect of absorptive capacity on subsidiary performance, which is mediated through appropriability mechanisms. These findings extend the literature on international networks, dual embeddedness and absorptive capacity.