Following the pioneering work of Kohli and Jaworski, Narver and Slater, and other academic researchers during the 1990s, the concept of ‘market orientation’ has evolved as an important area of study within the marketing discipline. This work has initiated a large number of empirical studies that have been undertaken during the last two decades. Despite its importance and the attention that this concept has received during the last two decades, most of these studies have conceptualized market orientation and measured its levels within only the Western contexts where it has been developed. Although other studies have been undertaken within newly developed and developing economies, there has been little focus on exploring the concept, its constructs and implementation in less developed and resource-based economies. In order to address this research gap, a mixed-method design was adopted that consisted of two phases. Following a literature survey, the first phase involved a qualitative study to gain better understanding of the notion of market-orientation within a resource-based context and refine the preliminarily conceptual framework based on existing literature and Deshpandé’s definition of market-orientation. In the second phase, this framework was tested by means of a survey of both financial services providers and their customers. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were employed to analyse the survey responses. The models showed a good fit to the data and good convergent, nomological and discriminant validity, reliability and stability, demonstrating improvement to existing scales by the addition of further salient items elicited from the qualitative phase. The findings of this study identified four constructs of market-orientation in financial services providers within a resource-based economy, viz. market-oriented corporate culture, strategy formulated and implemented, structure and systems employed, and market-oriented activities. Those dimensions (constructs) were consistent with various previous works in the market-orientation literature. Additionally, the study found that a market-oriented corporate culture had a mediating role in facilitating the business organizations’ responses through the strategy formulated and implemented.A key contribution of this research was to offer a robust model that explained market-orientation within a resource-based economy and demonstrated that a market-oriented corporate culture had a mediating effect on facilitating financial services providers’ responses to satisfying customer needs and expectations. The use of a qualitative approach to identify market-orientation dimensions in this context was also considered a methodological contribution in this area of marketing research. Moreover, the present study added a novel perspective to the body of market-orientation literature and suggested directions for future research. Finally, the study provided managerial implications for financial services managers to identify what they should do to become more market-oriented businesses or to enhance their level of market-orientation in order to meet their businesses’ needs and customers’ expectations.

The problem of this study was to investigate the influence of a course in business speaking on certain aspects of self-concept and self-confidence of college students.

Dans l’Ancien Droit, le droit criminel des affaires constitue une étape singulière de l’histoire d’une matière qui reçoit aujourd’hui le nom de droit pénal des affaires. À cette époque, les fraudes commises par les professionnels de la vie des affaires ne relèvent cependant pas toutes du droit criminel. Dans l’ombre des divers textes de police économique, naît en effet une matière dont les règles sont si spécifiques qu’elles doivent être isolées du droit commun. L’exemple de la Flandre wallonne et du Hainaut – où la bourgeoisie industrielle et commerciale fonde la puissance des républiques urbaines –fournit un corpus jurisprudentiel important et représentatif. L’étude de cette jurisprudence prouve que les turpitudes du cercle des affaires de ces provinces sont parfois criminellement réprimées. Ainsi, entre 1424 et 1789, six cent soixante-neuf sentences et arrêts sont prononcés en droit criminel des affaires. La richesse de cette branche du droit criminel et le silence des criminalistes en ce domaine, imposent decréer a posteriori des catégories juridiques permettant de rendre compte de la grande variété des incriminations. Hier comme aujourd’hui, le droit criminel des affaires comprend un versant général (vol et faux) et un versant spécial (droit criminel commercial, droit criminel de la consommation et droit criminel fiscal). De ce premier constat résulte plusieurs questions. Comment distinguer le droit criminel des affaires de la police économique ? Quelles sont les différentes infractions à la vie des affaires ?Quelles en sont les spécificités qui nécessitent de les traiter distinctement des autres infractions ? / In ancient law, buisiness criminal law constitutes a peculiar step in the history of what has now become « buisiness penal law ». Although, in those days, the various types of fraud committed by buisiness professionnels don't all relate to criminal law. In the shadow of various economic police texts, emerges a subject whose rules are so particular that they have to be isolated from common law. For example, Flandres wallonne and Hainaut provinces (where the industrial and commercial wealthy bourgeoisie establish the power of the urban republics) provide a important and representative body of case law. The study of this jurisprudence reveals that the turpitudes of the buisiness circles of these provinces sometime relate to criminal law. Consequently, between 1424 and 1789, 669 judgments areissued in criminal law. The abundance of this branch of law and the silence of the criminal law specialits on it lead to the necessity of creating a posteriori several law categories in order to appreciate the great variety of incriminations. Yesterday and today, buisiness criminal law contains general (theft and forgery) and special (commercial criminal law, consumer criminal law and tax criminal law) topics. As a consequence of this firstobservation many questions appear. How to distinguish between buisiness criminal law and economic police ? Which are the different offences committed against the buisiness world ? Which are their specificities that lead to treat them distinctly from the other offences.