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The paper aims to compare two general team identification processes of consumers’ in-group-favor and out-group-animosity responses to sports sponsorship.

The paper draws on two studies and four samples of professional baseball fans in Taiwan (N = 1,294). In Study 1, data from the fans of three teams were analyzed by using multi-group structural equation modeling to account for team effects and to consider parallel in-group-favor and out-group-animosity processes. In Study 2, the fans of one team were sampled and randomly assigned to assess the sponsors of one of three specific competitor teams to account for differences in team competition and rivalry. In both studies, these two processes were compared using patterns of significant relationships and differences in the indirect identification-attitude-outcome relationships.

Positive outcomes of in-group-favor processes were broader in scope and were more pronounced in absolute magnitude than the negative outcomes of out-group-animosity processes across all outcomes and studies.

The research was conducted in one country and considered the sponsorship of one sport. It is possible that the results could differ for leagues within different countries, more global leagues and different fan bases.

The results suggest that managers should carefully consider whether the negative out-group-animosity outcomes are actually present, broad enough or strong enough to warrant costly or compromising intervention, because they might not always be present or meaningful.

The paper demonstrates the comparatively greater breadth and strength of in-group-favor processes when compared directly to out-group-animosity processes.

The goal of this paper is to examine the mediating role of organizational social capital between family firms' organizational culture, characterized by their group vs individual orientation and external vs internal orientation, and their performance.

A structural equation model is developed and tested in a sample of 176 US family firms recruited through Prolific Academic.

The authors show that group vs individual cultural orientation fosters bonding social capital, while external vs internal cultural orientation fosters bridging social capital. In turn, family firm performance is only enhanced by bridging social capital, not bonding social capital, which appears to have neutral to negative direct performance effects. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that bonding social capital facilitates the establishment of bridging ties, leading to overall positive performance outcomes.

The understanding of how organizational culture influences family business heterogeneity and performance, along with the clarification of how bonding social capital fosters or hinders performance, provides novel insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand the complexities within the unique context of family businesses.

The South African wool industry is integral to the country's agricultural sector, particularly sheep farming and wool production. Small-scale farmers play a vital role in this industry and contribute to employment and food security in rural communities. However, these farmers face numerous challenges, including a lack of funding, poor farming practices and difficulty selling their wool at fair prices. This study aims to address these challenges, the University of Free State launched a wool value chain project for small-scale farmers.

In this project, one of the studies conducted assessed the effectiveness of different detergents suitable for traditional wool scouring methods for small-scale farmers who lack access to sophisticated machinery. The investigation was conducted by scouring 160 wool samples using three different detergents and filtered water as a control. The wool samples were then evaluated for their cleanliness, brightness and fibre properties through a combination of scanning electron microscopy, spectrophotometry and statistical analysis at different scouring times (3, 10, 15 and 20 min, respectively).

The results showed that the combination of scouring time and the type of scouring solution used could significantly impact wool quality. It was found that using a combination of standard detergent or Woolwash as a scouring solution with a scouring time of 10–15 min resulted in the best outcome in terms of fibre property, wool colour and scouring loss.

This study demonstrated that traditional wool scouring methods could be an option for small-scale farmers and anyone who want to learn how to scour wool without expensive machinery to make wool products.

This study aims to examine how daily communication and transactive memory systems (TMSs) promote implicit team coordination, meaning when team members cooperate smoothly without engaging in explicit communication, in organizations. In TMSs, members share knowledge of who-knows-what with one another.

A survey was conducted with 216 teams consisting of 1,545 people in three organizations. The relationships among daily communication, TMSs and implicit coordination in the survey data and in team performance were analyzed using multi-level structural equation modeling.

Results confirmed a significant influence process model in which “daily communication → TMS → implicit coordination → team performance” at the team level. Therefore, as hypothesized, implicit coordination is positively related to team performance and daily communication has a positive relationship with implicit coordination through mediation by TMSs.

This study demonstrated the evidence of the relation between implicit coordination, TMS, team performance in organizational settings by using multi-level structural equation modeling.

The objective of this paper is to propose a taxonomy of sustainability communication (SC) topics that provide digital content managers with a guide for setting a sustainability content agenda and for fostering stakeholder engagement mechanisms on environmental, social and economic issues that increasingly characterize conversations on social media of all stakeholder groups.

Taxonomy is a conceptual and qualitative way used to classify and represent the corporate sustainability (CS) domain of knowledge. The taxonomy categories of SC topics are both theoretically and empirically derived, combining an in-depth literature review with a thematic content analysis of 300 web pages of the corporate websites of the top ten sustainable brands selected in “The 2019 GlobeScan-SustainAbility Leaders Survey.”

The analysis of the results led to the construction of a hierarchical dictionary of tags that categorizes all sustainability topics based on a new, four-dimensional conceptual structure: planet, people, profit and governance. Each dimension is organized in four groups of sustainability themes, which, in turn, group multiple topics, considered the smallest communication unit to develop the SC content.

The taxonomy provides a concise and immediate conceptual framework on all those topics of broader interest, which, suitably modulated, can act as touch points with several groups of stakeholders. Drawn upon the best practices of thematic organization of SCs via the web, the taxonomy represents a guide for programming an editorial plan based on environmental, social, economic and governance issues from a sustainability content marketing perspective. The taxonomy of sustainability topics also finds application as a framework for a content intelligent system, providing a dictionary of tags that can be used for the indexing and retrieval of SC web content.

The study represents the first attempt at reaching a taxonomic organization of the sustainability aspects from a communicational perspective, supporting a new way of thinking and managing SC in the digital realm. Moreover, the results highlight, for the first time, that the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) theory, applied to corporate communications, lacks the governance aspect, which is essential to pursue sustainability consistently and effectively.

The issues associated with the production and dissemination of management research have been widely debated amongst administrators, scholars and policymakers for decades. However, few studies to date have examined this issue at the level of the individual scholar. The purpose of this paper is to view a management scholar’s choice of knowledge dissemination (KD) outlets as a legitimacy judgment embedded in their social structure and community norms.

To explore this, the authors conduct a sequential mixed-methods study. The study uses qualitative methods, including one-on-one interviews (n=29) and five workshops (n=79) with administrators, management scholars, students and external community members (practitioners and policymakers). In addition, the authors analyzed the KD outcomes of 524 management scholars at seven Canadian universities drawn from a stratified sample of business schools.

The results of the research demonstrate the complex interaction between individual scholar-level factors, including socialization (degree type and practitioner experience) and tenure, and the institutional-level factors, such as strategic orientation and accreditation, and how these influence KD judgments. Specifically, the authors find that institutional factors (such as tenure and promotion) are a central predictor of scholarly KD; in contrast, the authors find that individual-level factors including degree, professional experience and career stage influence non-scholarly KD.

The results suggest that as management scholars face increasing pressure to demonstrate impact beyond academia, it may be more difficult than simply adapting the reward system. Specifically, the authors suggest that administrators and policymakers will have to consider individual factors, including their academic training (including interdisciplinary training), previous practitioner experience and career stage.