Freedom Collection

The addition of the Freedom Collection to our resources is proving a big hit, and some of the electronic resources included will be relevant to business students.

If you are doing work on online business or cloud computing Freedom Collection includes  in full-text the journal Computers and Security.

The security and legislative regulation of online business is covered in depth in this journal.

For those studying Tourism and Leisure you will find a key source Tourism and Management

The Freedom Collection can be accessed through  the Library Catalogue or contact be for further information and I will try to help :

alan.bullimore@beds.ac.uk

Head in the Cloud Computing

Marston, S, Li, Z, Banyopadhyay, S, Zhang, J, Ghalsasi, A (2011) Cloud computing - the business perspective Decision Support Systems (51) p.176-189

For AMP students doing the question on cloud computing and it's applications this is an excellent introduction to the topic.

Good definitions, and a SWOT analysis are included.

As with many academic articles a few lines may require closer examination. For example :

"One of the biggest threats...is the possibility of backlash from entrenched incumbents" ( Marston et al 2011, p.182 )

I am taking this to mean that those who feel they are forced to adopt new technologies such as this react especially badly when technology does not benefit their business.

Culture and Business

Whilst checking DISCOVER sources  on Fairtrade and recession recently I chanced across a very good article from the journal Cultural Studies.

I mention this because it's tempting sometimes to assume that only business journals will be relevant to our studies. In some areas the dividing line is more blurred.

The article in question gives a good history of Fairtrade, what it means on a practical level ; did you know that Chelmsford was the first UK Fairtrade town, and the type of consumer attracted to Fairtrade goods.

Wheeler, K. (2012) Change today, Choose Fairtrade Cultural Studies Vol 26 (4) p.492-515

SCOPUS - New resource for business research

Learning Resources have recently acquired a database called SCOPUS which will be of potential use to level three business students and above. SCOPUS is a form of citation index. It is not the best way to get to full text material ( you should persevere with DISCOVER for that ).

However if you are at the stage of a literature search this is how you might choose to use SCOPUS.

Try a search for "business ethics". There are over 3000 results, retrieved chronologically.

Each of the results includes the reference list used. A recent article with lots of references can therefore give you a good clue about which journal titles are going to be useful and maybe key authors in your area too.
This is known as citation analysis.

Don't be despondent if you can't get to all these initally in Full Text. SCOPUS is literally "scoping" the literature available and there are often other routes to getting hold of it.

Journal of Business Ethics - a key resource for the above search is available both in print and online.

Luton fan changes face of Football

Marc Watson is a Luton fan. He is also CEO of BT. The company have just announced plans to show 38 Premier League matches next season (2013-14)

These games will be free to BT Broadband customers.

The group paid £738 million for rights, and will be battling with Sky, who have 10.8 million subscribers already.

It will be a tough battle. For further stories and analysis use Newsbank.

BRIC Nations lost in the MIST

The acronym BRIC nations has been around since  about 2001 to refer to the world's fastest growing economies :

• Brazil
• Russia
• India
• China

If you are looking at the success of these nations there are valuable Marketline ( Datamonitor ) Reports on each available through the library catalogue.

The growth of an  middle class in each of the four seems to be a key to growth, and has impacted for example on the appetite for luxury goods.

More recently the MIST nations have also been talked about in terms of economic growth too. Although I personally find these harder to remember. They are :

• Mexico
• Indonesia
• South Korea
• Turkey

Luxury Goods in India

One of the recent AMP Questions concerns the appetite for luxury goods in India.

Using Advanced Search on DISCOVER it is fairly easy to obtain a potentially useful set of results.

Luxury goods industry is Subject Term, so use the drop down box to select this, and the next box to choose India

You should now have around 300 results to choose from. The top one on my list is a short, but interesting survey of India's most popular luxury brands. Desire for these has been increased by the "youthquake" in India, and building of new shopping malls.

The Rolex pictured looks just like mine. Not really....

Online Shopping not the only way....

According to a number of different news stories published recently, online shopping has not entirely taken over the retail market.

The furniture chain Oak Furniture Land began life as an online presence but recently opened a huge store so that customers can lie down on their beds.

Might we ever see the return of High Street bookshops like this one in Luton ( now the 99p store ) ?

For further stories on this topic try a search on our Newsbank database for "showrooming"