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As brands progressively become instruments for consumers to advocate for social change, many feel pressure to engage in social purpose branding (SPB) through addressing social issues. In a rush to remain socially relevant, brands have approached SPB differently; some genuinely intend to advance the social issue, while some intend to capitalise on social movements to mobilise the brand. This paper aims to explain these differences by theoretically outlining various approaches to SPB.

This mixed method paper draws on theory, interviews with marketing practitioners, and practical exemplars to present a typology of SPB approaches. 

Using institutional logics theory, SPB is categorised into four approaches: social purpose-driving, social purpose-driven, social purpose-aligning and social purpose-washing.

The typological framework for SPB advances this domain to outline effective and ineffective ways for brands to engage with social issues. A detailed agenda for further research is provided to guide ongoing SPB research. 

The typology presented reduces complexity and helps marketers understand the different approaches to engaging with a social issue. Given the growing intertwinement of brands and social issues, this research is essential for brands seeking to advance a social issue and remain relevant.

This paper offers a novel conceptualisation of SPB by defining it, identifying a framework of its characteristics, and detailing four SPB approaches. 

Social practices of work humor among engineering workers are a lesser studied phenomenon. We examine the social practices of an engineering work team through acts of a peculiar form of humorous expression we identify as installation humor. In these cases of installation humor, an anonymous member of the team created a temporary, inappropriate, yet neutral installation of a physical object to amuse the other members of the team. We provide three mini-cases of installation humor; these installations appeared as the team subtly resisted a managerial initiative. We contribute knowledge to the practices of engineers at work and to the practices of resistive humorous expression.

Qualitative, full-participant ethnographic research with multiple data collection methods and utilizing abductive analysis. During the data collection, one of the researchers was a full member of the engineering team.

We identified anonymous, artefact-based enactments of resistive humorous expression, which we named installation humor. We identify and describe installation humor, which occurred at the intersectionality of work and self-expression and served as momentary artefacts symbolic of engineering worker resistance in a high-tech environment.

Managerial awareness of the unfolding forms of worker-led, fleeting signals of resistance, such as acts of installation humor, would provide another dimension of perception for identifying salient signals surrounding the phenomenon of resistance to managerial-led change initiatives. Further research is needed on engineering humor in the R&D workplace to better understand the complexity and dynamics of phenomena such as worker resistance through humorous acts. We suggest future studies on forms of humor in the engineering workplace, including incidences of installation humor as they exist in other professional work environments and organizations, to understand common and shared practices across professional boundaries.

We advance and extend the understanding of humor as a social practice in the context of professional engineers in their R&D workplace and we identify humorous acts serving as a response to negative emotions (Huber, 2022) toward the organization related to a newly instated form of managerial control. This paper contributes to the studies of social practices of humor and emotions (Fine and De Soucey, 2005) in the engineering workplace (Buch and Andersen, 2013; Buch, 2016; Mazzurco et al., 2021) as unsupervised activity at work (Gabriel, 1995), with the social practice of humor adopting a non-verbal form that we identified as installation humor. We named this specific form of humor that we observed as installation humor and defined its specificity and differences from more traditional methods of humor (t. ex. Fine and De Soucey, 2005; Martin and Ford, 2018), shop floor humor (t. ex. Roy 1959), workplace humor (t. ex. Rosenberg et al., 2021) and engineering student humor (Holmila et al., 2007; Bender, 2011; Berge, 2017).The results of this study also suggest that ethnography for studying humor as a social practice is useful in identifying micro-level occurrences of unfolding engineering humor, including humor as a form of resistance.

The study of humor in high-tech engineering settings enhances the literature of engineering work (t. ex. Mazzurco et al., 2021) and emerging humorous phenomena (Jarzabkowski and Lê, 2017). This case study highlights and extends the understanding of the non-technical competencies of engineers and the role of peer-to-peer humor in the engineering workplace as a form of resistance during managerial initiatives within an organization.

The study extends and contributes new knowledge to research on emotions and humor by engineers at work, including the identification of a peculiar form of humor used by the engineers. This study also contributes to nascent research on the social practices of engineers at work. The research material was gathered as a full-member ethnography, increasing methodological knowledge of researching a site from within.

This study aims to explore how sustainable business models (SBM) can be developed within agri-innovation systems (AIS) and emphasize an integration of the two with a systemic understanding for reducing food loss and value loss in postharvest agri-food supply chain.

This study conducted longitudinal qualitative research in a developing country with food loss challenges in the postharvest supply chain. This study collected data through multiple rounds of fieldwork, interviews and focus groups over four years. Thematic analysis and “sensemaking” were used for inductive data analysis to generate rich contextual knowledge by drawing upon the lived realities of the agri-food supply chain actors.

First, this study finds that the value losses are varied in the supply chain, encompassing production value, intrinsic value, extrinsic value, market value, institutional value and future food value. This happens through two cumulative effects including multiplier losses, where losses in one model cascade into others, amplifying their impact and stacking losses, where the absence of data stacks or infrastructure pools hampers the realisation of food value. Thereafter, this study proposes four strategies for moving from the loss-incurring current business model to a networked SBM for mitigating losses. This emphasises the need to redefine ownership as stewardship, enable formal and informal beneficiary identification, strengthen value addition and build capacities for empowering communities to benefit from networked SBM with AIS initiatives. Finally, this study puts forth ten propositions for future research in aligning AIS with networked SBM.

This study contributes to understanding the interplay between AIS and SBM; emphasising the integration of the two to effectively address food loss challenges in the early stages of agri-food supply chains. The identified strategies and research propositions provide implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accelerate sustainable practices for reducing food loss and waste in agri-food supply chains.

This study explores how auditors' emotions, specifically negative moods triggered by flight delays, impact auditing quality.

Utilizing flight delays during audit assignments as a mood indicator, weather conditions at departure airports serve as an instrumental variable to provide a robustness check between flight delays and audit outcomes, employing a two-stage least squares model.

The findings suggest that such negative moods improve auditing effort and quality, as evidenced by reduced future accounting restatements and increased audit fees. The positive effect of flight delays on auditing quality is consistent across different tests and measures.

This study highlights the significance of auditors' emotional states on their professional performance, indicating a unique angle on auditing quality research by focusing on the emotional well-being of auditors as influenced by external factors such as flight delays.