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Digitalization and multi-channel strategy have appeared as recurrent themes in retailing for years, yet some major international as well as domestic mass retailers have chosen to retain a single, physical channel focus for customer transactions. These retailers, despite the digital mindset preoccupying the retailing sector, have chosen to rely fully, or predominantly, on their stores to generate revenues. A number of questions arise from this approach. This paper aims to understand the rationale for marketing and strategic practices which appear to go against the dominant, strongly digitally oriented, discourses and practices in the field of retailing. Why do some retailers choose not to add a digital transactional channel? Are there defensible reasons for this choice? Can such a strategy successfully create value?

This research is based on a qualitative, multiple case study of the strategies adopted by Primark (fashion) and Aldi (food), two major retailers that retain a largely single-channel transaction focus, in France and the UK.

This research suggests that some retailers may still be able to succeed by maintaining a single-transactional physical channel to avoid a cost trap which extensive moves towards digitalization of transactions might mean for them. In such circumstances, refusing to adopt a digital value proposition may be a means of preserving the success of their original business model.

Despite the weight of academic and practitioner discourses on the urge to undertake digital transformation, this work provides a comprehensive illustration of the rationale for sticking to a single physical channel to preserve the profitability of a traditional store-based business model.

To cope with online competitors and new consumer behaviors, retailers need to hybrid digital and physical offerings to implement an omni-channel business model. This constitutes a digital transformation of the traditional business model. However, business cases on how traditional retailers are shifting from multi-channel to omni-channel retailing are lacking. This paper aims to explore the different issues and organizational paths during the transformation of a business model.

This study is based on a qualitative multiple case study of five retailers with a global reach currently implementing an omni-channel business model.

This research sheds light on three main issues encountered by retailers and the different underlying decisions when moving toward an omni-channel business model. The first relates to revenue attribution across channels, which involves rethinking traditional key performance indicators to give incentives to stores when promoting digital offers. The second issue concerns the supply chain decisions associated with cross-channel operations. The third issue relates to the delicate balance between global reach (digital channel) and local reach (specific store) for communication on social media and marketing decisions on pricing. This study provides empirical evidence about the variety of choices that retailers make to cope with the issues during the implementation of an omni-channel business model.

This work explores the issues faced by established firms when moving toward a new business model that is the hybridization of two existing business model managed separately. It provides comprehensive and clear illustration of how to manage such a business model transformation process that can be used by both business strategy practice and academic research.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The impact of digitalization on the retail sector has prompted firms to modify existing business models to create a hybrid that focuses on both physical and online channels. Involving the entire company in the development of suitable approaches to revenue distribution, supply chain operations and communication activities can help ensure a successful transformation.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Digitalization has provided retailers with the option to expand operations to secure revenue from new channels. However, such firms must balance these additional opportunities against increases in costs and complexity to determine whether their business model should be based on a single or multichannel approach.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Besides diversity's positive effects, groups of “we” against “them” may form in accordance with social categorization theory, showing diversity's negative consequences. The authors aim to reconcile these results and examine their boundary conditions.

The authors studied 584 working professionals from five contexts (transnational companies dealing with multicultural interactions) and analyzed data using moderated-mediation procedures.

A leader-promoting diversity climate plays a crucial role in moderating the negative relationship between perceived dissimilarity and group identification, which is mediated by value dissimilarity.

This study mainly contributes by treating dissimilarity as a multicomponent construct, emphasizing the crucial differences embodied in various conceptualizations of dissimilarity – namely visible and value dissimilarity. For dissimilarity to result in group identification, the results highlight leaders' crucial role, beyond that of organizations and individuals, in stimulating a diversity-embracing climate in work units.

ALL journals move with the times if they are vital. We have always held that The Library World has been in touch with the currents of thought and practice and, as this is our jubilee number, we would stress these facts again. Fifty years ago, the pioneer public librarians of the closing nineteenth century found that they needed a means of expression and communication, and indeed of criticism, untrammelled by the necessary reticences of the official associations. That is not to say that they were not, as now, supporters of the Library Association; indeed, they were its most active members; but they realized that The Library Association Record is the property of the members. It is bound to refrain from undue praise or blame of any activity of any of those members. At least, that was the view then prevalent and we still think it is a fair one. Thence came THE LIBRARY WORLD with its open secret that the honorary Editor was James Duff Brown. It drew on a wide range of contributors, and was the voice of those who were fighting for open access, subject‐indexes, close‐classification, and the card catalogue, as well as the general liberation of libraries from indicators with all the restrictions those contraptions sustained. That echo of a dead controversy of long ago rings naturally in our jubilee hour. It was an influence from the start, and in its unbroken career almost every librarian of importance has written something for it; indeed, many young writers first saw themselves in print in it. That was and is a characteristic of our editorial effort—to furnish a forum for librarians of any age, in the belief that age needs the criticism and suggestions of youth as much as youth needs those of age. If, occasionally, an article has appeared which has betrayed the prentice hand, we have made no apology for it; there has always been something in it that repaid the publication. Generally, however, the methods which now prevail in public and other libraries, but perhaps especially in public libraries, were first expounded in our pages. Then we have writers who have written for nearly forty years in that remarkable correspondence, Letters on Our Affairs, which even today is probably the most‐read of all library writings. At least a dozen faithful correspondents have been involved in them.

The third Annual Meeting of the Library Association to be held in Manchester should prove to be as profitable as the former meetings there. The manifold interests of the great cotton city, its activities, commercial and intellectual, its intense artistic life—so curiously at variance with its apparently materialistic atmosphere—its many libraries, some of them with real traditions; these things should go to make the 1921 meeting memorable.

THERE was an air of expectancy about the audience which assembled at Draper's Hall on October 27th to hear the address with which the President of the Board of Education inaugurated the session of the London Branch of the Library Association. Quite unjustifiably, we fear, because it rested upon the expectation, or hope, that the noble and right honourable gentleman would deliver his views of library policy in anticipation of the report of the Trevelyan Committee. Lord Eustace Percy's speech was charming, was stimulating, and was an excellent statement of certain elementary ideals, which, though familiar to us all, cannot be emphasised too often. It was, indeed, exactly the type of speech which a cultured and skilful statesman must make (if he have the ability) to such an audience as ours, which would dearly have liked to hear him say something nearer to what was in their own minds. It said nothing whatever about the Committee, or even referred to its existence. Of course, no minister would or could anticipate the deliberations of any body which had not yet finished its work.

The major contribution of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework to coachee success and to identify the most relevant resources for coachee success.

This article attempts to determine the constructs of coaching success through a systematic literature review. The review identified 1,048,880 papers. From these, the authors selected 39 articles for the research. From these articles, the main elements of coaching success were identified.

The main elements of coaching success are coach quality, coachee engagement, coaching process, coaching reflection, behaviors resulting from coaching and coachee success. Coach quality, coaching process and coachee are often considered as key variables to success. Coachee's behavior is linked to performance but approaches to effectful coaching vary.

Coachee success is connected with the coach's emotional skills and the formality process. Success requires communication, interpersonal relationship, planning, goal setting and progress monitoring. An interplay between the coach and the coachee's emotional skills and the formality process enables success. In business, where employees usually work in their chosen profession, coaching is a tool for education and improvement that brings positive results to the organization.

On a personal level, it can lead to greater self-knowledge and to improvement in the quality of life. Coaching as a facilitator of the coachee's success must be more than a process in itself. It is a way of allowing the coachee to make a critical contribution in a broader context to an organizational culture that values human capital.

It contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms that lead to success in coaching. This systematic review adds to the few articles found on coachee success from over a million papers analyzed. It offers a proposed theoretical framework to coachee success, through a holistic approach.