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This study aims to investigate the role of marketing agencies in aligning brand purpose with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the post-pandemic era. This study explores whether and how marketing agencies delineate and execute brand purpose in a way that supports sustainable consumption and marketing models.

Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with 35 senior managers at UK-based marketing agencies. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using NVivo software for inductive coding.

The study reveals that brand purpose in the post-pandemic era is increasingly aligned with the SDGs. Marketing agencies play a pivotal role in this alignment, as they not only help to delineate and execute the brand purpose but also do so in a way that amplifies perceived authenticity in the eyes of the brand stakeholders.

This research underscores the significance of marketing agencies in delineating and executing brand purpose that aligns with the SDGs. It enriches the literature by illustrating how agency expertise contributes to the evolution of brand purpose, guiding businesses towards responsible marketing practices and consumption patterns that support a sustainable future.

This paper identifies how the operations of labour market intermediaries (LMIs) transform dyadic employment relationships into triadic ones. It reveals the change dynamics that LMIs engage in to bring about this transformation and that contribute to the projectification of work.

Drawing on an institutional-work lens and using interview data from both TempX, a German-based staffing service provider, and its client organizations, the analytical framework details the dynamics by which LMIs appropriate various HR tasks and different labour-market-organizing roles and thus create these triadic employment relationships.

TempX assumes a powerful position between its client organizations and workers by increasingly taking over HR tasks from its client organizations, alternating between profiting from market transactions and engaging as a buyer and seller of labour. This powerful position, gradually created through four distinct, sequential, institutional work dynamics, allows it to transform dyadic employment relationships into triadic ones and to promote project-based work.

By showing how LMIs capitalize on the multiple services they offer, and how they use these services to establish a powerful position in both the labour market and in their relations with client organizations, this paper contributes to research on how LMIs change their institutional environment. Second, by showing that LMIs switch between different labour-market organizing roles and HR tasks, this paper reveals how essential this switching is for LMIs to establish triadic employment relationships and to drive the projectification of work, and thus it also contributes to research on LMIs’ role in the projectification of work.

Drawing on interviews with two types of essential workers – wound clinicians and care workers – the chapter examines stigma management in dirty care work through the lens of emotion management. The study combines two dimensions of dirty work: physical taint in relation to bodywork and social taint linked to working in close proximity to socially stigmatized clients. Hence, stigma management extends to dealing with the physically and socially dirty features of essential care work. In addition, the authors’ assessment of social stigma includes how essential care workers also sought to alleviate the social stigma encountered by their clients. In so doing, the authors extend the literature on dirty work to identify how emotion management skills are central to the stigma management strategies of the essential care workers in this study. The authors demonstrate how both groups deal with their stigma by emphasizing the emotion management skills in ‘doing’ dirty work and in the ‘purpose’ of this work, which includes acknowledging how the authors attempt to address the social taint encountered by their clients. Additionally, by comparing two occupations with different contexts and conditions of work, the authors show how complex emotion management skills are gendered in care work to expand the understanding of gender and stigma management. Furthermore, these emotion management skills emanate from the deep relational work with clients rather than through occupational communities. The authors argue that by focussing on emotion management, the hidden skills of dirty work in gendered care work are illuminated and contribute to contemporary debates about whether stigma can be overcome.

This article develops an innovative multidisciplinary conceptual framework in the field of refugee entrepreneurship by combining the theory of mixed embeddedness with the concepts of intersectionality and agency. Focusing on the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship, this conceptual framework addresses the following questions: how is entrepreneurship informed by the various intersectional positions of refugees? And how do refugees exert their agency based on these intersecting identities?

By revising the mixed embeddedness approach and combining it with an intersectional approach, this study aims to develop a multidimensional conceptual framework.

This research illustrates how the intersectional positions of refugees impact their entrepreneurial motivations, resources and strategies. The authors' findings show that refugee entrepreneurship not only contributes to the economic independence of refugees in new societies but also creates opportunities for refugees to exert their agency.

This conceptual framework can be applied in empirical research and accordingly contributes to refugee entrepreneurship studies and intersectionality theory.

This study aims to understand client food preferences and how pantry offerings can be optimized by those preferences.

This study develops and administers customized surveys to study three food pantries within the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwestern North Carolina network. This study then categorizes food items by client preferences, identifies the key predictors of those preferences and obtains preference scores by fitting the data to a predictive model. The preference scores are subsequently used in an optimization model that suggests an ideal mix of food items to stock based upon client preferences and the item and weight limits imposed by the pantry.

This study found that food pantry clients prefer fresh and frozen foods over shelf-friendly options and that gender, age and religion were the primary predictors. The optimization model incorporates these preferences, yielding an optimal stocking strategy for the pantry.

This research is based on a specific food bank network, and therefore, the client preferences may not be generalizable to other food banks. However, the framework and corresponding optimization model is generalizable to other food aid supply chains.

This study provides insights for food pantry managers to make informed decisions about stocking the pantry shelves based on the client’s preferences.

An emerging topic within the humanitarian food aid community is better matching of food availability with food that is desired in a way that minimizes food waste. This is achieved by providing more choice to food pantry users. This work shows how pantries can incorporate client preferences in inventory stocking decisions.

This study contributes to the literature on food pantry operations by providing a novel decision support system for pantry managers to aid in stocking their shelves according to client preferences.

Managing megaprojects is challenging due to their inherent complexity and uncertainty. Collaborative project delivery models have been introduced as an alternative to traditional project management in public infrastructure megaprojects and are often realized through collaborative contracts. These project organizations act as institutional arenas for logic interaction as actors with differing institutional backgrounds interact within the project. This paper aims to study the delivery phase of three megaprojects through an institutional lens, investigating the institutional interaction and alignment of logics therein.

A multiple case study was employed to reach deep insight into the phenomenon. Sixty-one interviews were conducted over 3 cases with representatives from all levels of the project hierarchy. Respondents were selected through snowball sampling. In two cases, observations of the shared project office were conducted. Data analysis built on first-order codes and second-order themes, collected into a theoretical framework.

The empirical evidence demonstrates the dynamics shaping institutional logics and gives evidence for changing logics in projects with a well-applied collaborative contract. However, there is a risk of resistance and a return to traditional logics since institutional change is slow and an unsuitably applied collaborative contract can lead to adherence to the conventional way of work.

Current research has focused on the regulatory framework and procurement phase of such models, but little attention has been given to the delivery phase and the interaction of conflicting logics. This paper can serve as an exemplar of the different logics found within public infrastructure projects and their interaction and alignment. Contributions include a heightened emphasis on the start of the project as a meeting point for differing institutional logics and the role change necessary when using a collaborative contract.

Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level learning in this field. This paper employs an institutional perspective to analyze how legitimacy for relational contracting has been produced and challenged in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, including implications for dissemination and learning.

A collaborative case study design is used, where longitudinal accounts of the developments in relational contracting over more than 25 years in four Nordic countries were developed by scholars based in each country. The descriptions are underpinned by literature sources from research, practice and policy.

The countries share similar problem perceptions that have triggered the de-institutionalization of traditional contracting practices. Models and policies developed elsewhere are important sources of knowledge and legitimacy. Most countries have seen pendulum movements, where dissemination of relational contracting is followed by backlashes when projects fail to meet projected outcomes. Before long, however, relational contracting tends to re-emerge under new labels and in slightly new forms. Such a proliferation of concepts presents further obstacles to learning. Successful institutionalization is found to rely on realistic goals in combination with broad competence development at the organizational and industry levels.

In seeking inspiration from other countries, policymakers should go beyond contract models to also consider strategies to manage industry-level learning.

The paper provides a unique longitudinal cross-country perspective on the field of relational contracting. As such, it contributes to the small stream of literature on long-term institutional change in the construction sector.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the progression from trade-based money laundering to service-based money laundering using the Regulatory Dialectic Theory with an explanation for the success of this progression arising from Agency Theory.

The authors provide a literature review regarding agency theory and the regulatory dialectic as the framework to examine service-based money laundering using three documented case studies. Using the caselet approach, this paper demonstrates that innovation in financial crime typologies is ongoing.

The short cases in this paper illustrate the factors related to the regulatory dialectic theory that have yielded innovation in service-based money laundering.

This paper examines only three recent SBML innovations.

Service-based money laundering represents an incremental advancement in money laundering beyond trade-based money laundering, in part supported by agency conflicts between financial intermediaries and stakeholders.

Managers and regulators should take into account that typologies will change as predicted by the regulatory dialectic and that the regulatory response can be burdensome to financial sector entities. This paper also provides recommendations for managers and regulators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to uncover new innovations in SBML in a high-risk geographic region.

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.