Developing a Pricing Strategy for the Los Angeles Dodgers

In 2011, the Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium averaged 36,236 fans per game, dropping from 43,979 in 2010 and 46,440 in 2009, an overall loss of about 10,000 fans per game in just two years. In 2011, The Dodgers\u27 attendance ranking fell from first to eleventh in Major League Baseball (MLB), which amounted to a loss of over 800,000 tickets sold per year, as well as the resulting revenue from concessions and parking. Despite the Dodgers\u27 long and storied history, ticket demand had been negatively influenced by inconsistent performance, mounting bad publicity surrounding owner Frank McCourt\u27s divorce, the beating of a San Francisco Giants fan on opening day at Dodger Stadium, and the threat of suspension or termination of the Dodgers by MLB commissioner Bud Selig if McCourt did not agree to sell the team. In 2009, the San Francisco Giants were the first MLB team to adopt dynamic ticket pricing, which adjusts prices in real time to match fluctuations in consumer demand

Feeding Collective Impact: How to Foster Cross-Sector Partnerships that Build Innovative Solutions for Social Change

As Dave Krepcho, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB) of Central Florida, stared at the numbers, he realized they were not going to food bank their way out of the meal gap—the representative number of the meals missing for those whose food budget falls short in securing adequate, nutritious food year round. It remained at approximately 110 million meals. Every year SHFB has increased food distribution playing a vital role in alleviating hunger— ‘feeding the line’; however, the meal gap persisted. SHFB’s vision is to inspire and engage the community to end hunger— ‘shortening the line’. Given the complexity, causes, and effects of food insecurity—a household’s inability to provide consistent access to sufficient food for every person to live an active healthy life—the answer to how to shorten the line remained elusive. Increasingly, Dave and his executive team felt the solution would require SHFB to disentangle the social determinants of health—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, which include employment, housing, socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood and physical environment, and social support networks, as well as access to health care. Dave wondered: Where and how should SHFB start? He knew they could not do it alone and they would need cross-sector partnerships to co-create innovative solutions together. But, what organizations would be willing, motivated, and able to collaborate? Dave and his executive team began to reach out to healthcare industry leaders asking: what if we worked alongside each other instead of separately? Guiding their conversations was a goal of fostering collective impact, which was first defined by Kania and Kramer (2011) in their article published Stanford Social Innovation Review as “the commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem” (p. 36). With each conversation they intentionally used the word ‘we’, emphasized the shared value of “Food as Medicine’, and encouraged collaborative exploration. The open-ended nature of the conversations focused on listening and ideation. As champions of collective impact, SHFB invested in values, focused on facilitating rather than owning the process, and embraced continuous iterative learning. The assumption is institutional change, which refers to changes in the general constitution of an entire class of organizations, is best led by governments and corporations as they have the infrastructure and resources to enact change, whereas nonprofits have limited bandwidth and capacity to expand their business operations. Nevertheless, SHFB—an established community nonprofit with a strong financial foundation and an entrepreneurial organizational culture focused on innovating for tomorrow—began to play the vital role of fostering cross-sector partnerships to build innovative solutions for social change.Ye

Encouraging servant leadership: A qualitative study of how a cause-related sporting event inspires participants to serve

A longitudinal, qualitative case study was conducted to explore if a cause-related sporting event could inspire participants to serve others and how the event achieved this. Servant leadership theory, social leverage theory, and social capital theory were used to inform the investigation. Findings revealed the event encouraged servant leadership. The structural mechanisms and social processes which helped to achieve this were: (a) creating event-related social events to build a community; (b) encouraging themes and hosting ceremonies to create a culture of storytelling and safe spaces; and (c) facilitating formal and informal gathering places to foster celebration. These structural mechanisms and social processes then generated individual-level impacts, which helped participants practice servant leadership by: (a) developing broader identities; (b) nurturing participants’ abilities to see they can make a difference; and (c) strengthening awareness of the healing power of service. A conceptual framework emerged from the data to describe how a cause-related sporting event can create a sustainable community of servant leaders.Ye

Developing a Pricing Strategy for the Los Angeles Dodgers

The article discusses the downfall of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California, and also suggests to develop pricing policies for its revival. It mentions that the number of fans for the team averaged 36,236 per game in 2011which was major loss. It suggests the team to reassess ticket prices owing to changes in the product on and off the field.Ye

A total eclipse of the heart: compensation strategies in entrepreneurial nonprofits

We examine how shifting resource dependencies influence compensation strategy during commercial transitions within entrepreneurial nonprofits. Analyzing a longitudinal sample of 4732 organizations, we show how compensation strategies shift non-linearly as nonprofits transition from contributed resource dependence to market-based resource dependence. Dynamic quadratic models unveil a dual threshold of commercialization concerning this transition. Nonprofits at moderate stages of commercialization contend with competing dependencies from both contributed and market-based sources, resulting in a decrease in compensation spending and an increase in part-time employment. At higher stages, contributed resource dependence is eclipsed by market-based dependence, reflected in increasing compensation spending and full-time employment.Ye

Exploring transparency: a new framework for responsible business management

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the relevant literature on transparency, provide a comprehensive definition of transparency, and present a new framework for facilitating the adoption of transparency as an ethical cornerstone and pragmatic strategy for organizational responsible business management.Ye

Start with What You Have: A Leader’s Path to Innovation

On his thirty-first day as the new CEO of Central Florida’s largest food bank, Dave Krepcho faced unprecedented challenges as a wave of devastating hurricanes pummeled the state. Floridians in 2004 were hit by Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, which left thousands without homes, shelter, water, and food. Across Florida, 114 food service operations and eight comfort stations were established, requiring the team at Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB) to distribute an additional three million pounds of food. Although Dave was no stranger to disaster relief, having worked as a Director for the Daily Bread Food Bank in the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, this was a major test of a new CEO in a new community. Instead of focusing on the challenges of the hurricanes, he leveraged the surprise crises as a catalyst to create an organizational culture that fostered collaborative innovation. SHFB was left with two challenges: (1) how to stabilize the new way of operating, and (2) how to maintain the flexibility in funding that allowed them to restructure efficiently during the storm and as needed. Dave believed that SHFB needed to develop new ways of generating funding by creating new enterprises or business ventures consistent with its mission and capabilities. These new social enterprises would seek to achieve social/environmental objectives using market-based mechanisms. They would further support building an innovative culture while increasing revenues from new related lines of business.Ye

Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 - an evaluation of function among ICUs in South Africa

OBJECTIVES : To evaluate the performance of the Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 as mortality risk assessment model. DESIGN : This prospective study included all admissions 30 days to 18 years old for 12 months during 2016 and 2017. Data gathered included the following: age and gender, diagnosis and reason for PICU admission, data specific for the Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 calculation, PICU outcomes (death or survival), and length of PICU stay. SETTING : Nine units that care for children within tertiary or quaternary academic hospitals in South Africa. PATIENTS : All admissions 30 days to 18 years old, excluding premature infants, children who died within 2 hours of admission, or children transferred to other PICUs, and those older than 18 years old. INTERVENTIONS : None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS : There were 3,681 admissions of which 2,253 (61.3%) were male. The median age was 18 months (interquartile range, 6–59.5 mo). There were 354 deaths (9.6%). The Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 predicted 277.47 deaths (7.5%). The overall standardized mortality ratio was 1.28. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.81 (95% CI 0.79–0.83). The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test statistic was 174.4 (p < 0.001). Standardized mortality ratio for all age groups was greater than 1. Standardized mortality ratio for diagnostic subgroups was mostly greater than 1 except for those whose reason for PICU admission was classified as accident, toxin and envenomation, and metabolic which had an standardized mortality ratio less than 1. There were similar proportions of respiratory patients, but significantly greater proportions of neurologic and cardiac (including postoperative) patients in the Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 derivation cohort than the South African cohort. In contrast, the South African cohort contained a significantly greater proportion of miscellaneous (including injury/accident victims) and postoperative noncardiac patients. CONCLUSIONS : The Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 discrimination between death and survival among South African units was good. Case-mix differences between these units and the Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 derivation cohort may partly explain the poor calibration. We need to recalibrate Pediatric Index of Mortality 3 to the local setting.Ann Lake Publications, Getinge, Drager, Biomerieux, Astellas, Fresenius Kabi, the University of Cape Town, Imperial College Press (royalties), Critical Care Society of Southern Africa, N Kelly attorneys.https://journals.lww.com/pccmjournal/pages/default.aspxhj2022Paediatrics and Child Healt

More than competition: exploring stakeholder identities at a grassroots cause-related sporting event

The purpose of this paper is to (a) explore stakeholder identities of a grassroots cause-related sporting event; and (b) gain a better understanding of how identities are related to stakeholder development, support of the event, and future intentions. We used a mixed methods research design that consisted of two studies: qualitative followed by quantitative. Study 1 explored stakeholder identities and how they are related to stakeholder development and support of the event, and Study 2 examined how future intentions regarding attendance, donations, and sponsor support differ based on levels of stakeholder identity. Sports marketing and non-profit management literature streams as well as identity theory and social capital theory informed our studies. The National Kidney Foundation Surf Festival was selected because it is a grassroots cause-related sporting event with financial success over the last two decades. In addition, a surf contest, an action sport, is a unique sport setting in the nonprofit sector, which offers insight to marketers seeking to target subcultures. The findings of the qualitative study revealed three identities relevant to participants: sport subculture, community, and cause. A framework emerged from the data that illustrated how these identities unite together to generate social capital, which is linked to effective volunteer and sponsorship management. Quantitative analysis through survey data provided further evidence of the impact of identification with a cause-related sport activity on consumer outcomes. Results indicated attendees with high surf-related identity are more likely to attend future Surf Festivals, have higher intentions to donate to the cause, and have higher sponsor purchase intentions compared to those with low self-identity with the sport subculture. The conclusion discusses implications, framing the findings through the intersection of the sports marketing and non-profit sector industries, and provides suggestions for future research.Ye