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Successful companies make their talent strategy part of their strategic planning process and integrate it into daily operations. They strive for the alignment of their talent with the organization’s vision, goals and business strategy. When combined with the alignment of the tools and systems used by employees, these organizations are positioned to effectively compete and win in the marketplace. However, positioning your organization for success is one thing, while making it happen is quite another.

This article provides a practical approach for making site selection decisions driven by organizational business needs. New site selection decisions are best made when: business needs and opportunities drive new site exploration, vision and goals to be achieved are clear, the site selection team possesses the right skill set and works to a plan. Using a practical approach fosters rapid decisionmaking. The approach is appropriate for small, medium and large companies. The practical process positions leaders to apply it quickly and help their organizations realize the benefits of new site selection as outsourcing and globalization continues at an unprecedented rate.

This study aims to provide a better understanding of Native American women veterans’ experiences with Veteran Administration and Indian Health Services. Eighteen interviews were conducted with special attention to the quality and quantity of health and mental health care services veterans accessed, the barriers and local contextual factors in accessing and utilizing services, and potential solutions to service gaps for women veterans from two Montana reservations, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation.

We examine the barriers and needs of Native American veterans in both reservations using qualitative methods. The research analyzed 18 interviews with women veterans from the Northern Cheyenne and Flathead reservations.

Native American women veterans identified a number of barriers to accessing care, some of which include lack of information regarding eligibility and the types of services available. Women often found the application process to be confusing and difficult. Other barriers included distance, cost of travel, and conflicts with their work schedule.

This exploratory case study served to clarify the challenges and obstacles Native American women veterans experience with accessing health and mental health services. This research revealed several patterns and themes in the experience of Native American women veterans in both reservation communities when attempting to access and seek care at Veterans Administration (VA) facilities and Indian Health Services (IHS). This research calls for policy changes and research to clarify how resources can be more efficiently and effectively distributed to rural veterans.

Little research has addressed the needs of Native American veterans. American Indians and Alaska Natives serve at a higher rate in the U.S. military than any other population. This research provides important information about Native American veterans who are often underrepresented in survey research, yet a rapidly growing segment of the United States military and veteran population.

Displaying a sense of humour provides various interpersonal benefits including reducing tension and promoting conflict resolution, but should a firm use humour in response to publicly viewable online customer complaints after a service failure? The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that a firm’s use of humour in response to negative online consumer reviews has both positive and negative effects on perceptions of corporate image from a customer-as-onlooker perspective.

Three experimental studies are conducted and analysis of variance is used to empirically test the hypotheses.

Although humorous responses have an unfavourable influence on perceived trustworthiness of the firm, they have a favourable influence on perceived excitingness of the firm. The former influence is tied to lower perceived firm sincerity, whereas the latter is tied to higher perceived firm innovativeness and coolness. Furthermore, humour within the customer complaint itself is shown to moderate the influence of humorous responses on perceptions of the firm. Finally, regardless of the type of humour used (i.e. affiliative or aggressive humour) in the humorous response, the positive effect of humorous response remains strong, although aggressive humour further aggravates the negative impact of humorous response on trustworthiness.

The experimental set-up may limit external validity of the study, and the research is limited to the variables examined.

Humorous response is identified as a non-traditional approach to online customer complaints that poses a double-edged sword for managers of service organizations. Firms should avoid using humour in online service recovery if perceptions of trustworthiness are critical or if complaints are written in a neutral tone. However, such responses may be successfully used when a firm wants to position itself as exciting and if complaints are also humorous. Finally, firms are advised to avoid aggressive humour.

The present research represents one of the few studies in marketing to examine the potential of injecting humour into complaint management and service recovery. In addition, this study considers the consumer-as-onlooker perspective inherent in social media.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the activities of environmental consciousness from socio-psychographic perspectives and hence evaluates its effect on brand equity through intervening elements of environmental attributes (EAt). It further attempts to research the effect of the environmental performance, environmental communication and environmental positioning in enhancing brand equity. Indian refrigeration industry, particularly the air conditioners and refrigerator brands are chosen to convey and receive the research inputs as their impact on environment is easily interpretable.

A hypothesized model comprising the environment consciousness and association dimensions with brand equity is framed. In total, 74 expert respondents from four state capital cities of India participated in the survey and the model has been tested in the scope of analytical hierarchy process (AHP).

The result shows that the EAt and activities can be prioritized and subsequently efficient resource allocation can be done. It also gives theoretical arguments to legitimize the environmental practices.

On the other hand, clients have numerous options, and a competitive advantage may not be maintained. Regardless of the fact that clients are environmentally conscious of a given refrigeration brand at the present time that they are utilizing, they may observe that they are much more charmed with a competitors’ enhanced environmental dimensions. All methods that take a try at an enhanced brand equity must be continually determined by environmental consciousness. The above can be accomplished if the evaluations of competitors by the clients are known. The AHP-ECBE technique depicted in this study accordingly helps refrigeration organization to devise and keep up a pertinent, focused plan for persistent improvements in environmental dimensions. It offers a “greater image” in brand equity administration.

If legitimately done in a generalized way, environmental activities like eco-literacy, interpersonal influence and value orientation can impact EAt and contribute in building brand equity.

This study aims to critically examine the effects of COVID-19 social discourses and policy decisions specifically on older adult volunteers in the UK, comparing the responses and their effects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing perspectives on effects of policy changes designed to reduce risk of infection as a result of COVID-19, specifically on volunteer involvement of and for older adults, and understand, from the perspectives of volunteer managers, how COVID-19 restrictions had impacted older people’s volunteering and situating this within statutory public health policies.

The study uses a critical discourse approach to explore, compare and contrast accounts of volunteering of and for older people in policy, and then compare the discourses within policy documents with the discourses in personal accounts of volunteering in health and social care settings in the four nations of the UK. This paper is co-produced in collaboration with co-authors who have direct experience with volunteer involvement responses and their impact on older people.

The prevailing overall policy approach during the pandemic was that risk of morbidity and mortality to older people was too high to permit them to participate in volunteering activities. Disenfranchising of older people, as exemplified in volunteer involvement, was remarkably uniform across the four nations of the UK. However, the authors find that despite, rather than because of policy changes, older volunteers, as part of, or with the help of, volunteer involving organisations, are taking time to think and to reconsider their involvement and are renewing their volunteer involvement with associated health benefits.

Working with participants as co-authors helps to ensure the credibility of results in that there was agreement in the themes identified and the conclusions. A limitation of this study lies in the sampling method, as a convenience sample was used and there is only representation from one organisation in each of the four nations.

The paper combines existing knowledge about volunteer involvement of and for older adults.

This study aims to predict ethical self-identity’s effect on consumer buying behavior of biodegradable bags. Moreover, a moderated mediation model is tested by analyzing the mediating role of attitude and the moderating role of religiosity to investigate buying behavior. Few studies have been conducted to explore moderated mediation to predict consumer behavior based on belief congruence and planned behavior theories, according to previous literature, indicating a literature gap in consumer behavior studies. Accordingly, the moderating role of religiosity in the relationship between ethical self-identity and purchase intention in the context of biodegradable bags was used to contribute to the consumer behavior literature.

The population of the study included literate consumers who are aware of biodegradable bags and keen to buy them. The data were collected from consumers of twin cities (Rawalpindi/Islamabad) via purposive sampling. The data were collected from 310 consumers five-time lags.

The findings suggest that ethical self-identity influences the buying behavior of consumers toward biodegradable bags. In this study, the theory of planned behavior provides greater implications to predict consumer buying behavior because the subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and attitude were found to have a significant influence on purchase intention, which further predicts the actual consumer behavior.

The study’s sample was limited to one geographical area and the sample was limited to only biodegradable bags. Future studies may go for a cross-comparison of industries or multiple environment-friendly products to enhance the generalizability of the research.

This study provides useful insights to the companies of consumer-based brands to use eco-friendly practices from production to packaging and consumption. Environment-friendly consumers are ready to pay a premium price for environment-friendly products, which encourages decision-makers companies to cater to this niche market. Moreover, companies can focus on factors that influence their decision-making, such as ethical and moral values of responsibility, while planning their advertising strategies. Furthermore, the positioning of the environmental or consumer personal care products should be done by considering the personal disposition factors because they reinforce the actual behavior of employees.

For researchers, this research opens new avenues for predicting consumers’ buying behavior by applying the theory of planned behavior in the plastic bag industry. This study provides useful insights to the companies of consumer-based brands to use eco-friendly practices from production to packaging and consumption.

The proclivity to buy biodegradable bags increased over time, providing opportunities to the companies to offer environmentally friendly products to an increasing number of customers. However, personal deposition factors, such as religiosity and consumer views, are less well understood in terms of predicting actual behavior. Few studies have been conducted to explore moderated mediation to predict consumer behavior based on belief congruence and planned behavior theories, according to previous literature, indicating a literature gap in consumer behavior studies.