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21 – 30 of 53Jonathan Hanson and Diane Holt
The purpose of this paper is to assess the sustainable food procurement (SFP) of members of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA). It also considered the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the sustainable food procurement (SFP) of members of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA). It also considered the inconsistencies between their animal and human food supply chains, as well as between their procurement priorities and practices.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative, cross-sectional approach was employed, involving the use of a web-based questionnaire to gather data from 41 BIAZA members across 21 indicators of food sustainability. The results were considered within a sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) framework.
Findings
There was considerable variation amongst the issues considered by zoos during the SFP process for their animal and human food operations. For both, local expenditure, nutritional content and packaging reduction were some of the highest scoring indicators in practice and as priorities. The overall levels of SFP were found to be equal between the human and animal food supply chains. Significantly low levels of inconsistency were found between the two, practically and in terms of procurement aspirations. Within both supply chains, there was also very few significant gaps between procurement priorities and actions.
Originality/value
The originality of this study lies in its comparison of procurement practices and priorities for two contemporaneous but distinct food supply chains. It demonstrates that it is possible to have a high overall degree of consistency between two parallel, but contrasting, supply chains, as well as between procurement priorities and priorities. It will be of use in SSCM, particularly within values-led organisations.
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The paper explores a management fashion within the Swedish Public Sector called intrapreneurships. Intrapreneurships became popular during a period of public debate on what forms…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper explores a management fashion within the Swedish Public Sector called intrapreneurships. Intrapreneurships became popular during a period of public debate on what forms of organizing are most suitable for the production of welfare. However, while the popularity of the model was short-lived, a few municipalities nevertheless constitute examples of where it was supported for a longer period. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the model became continuously legitimate having lost its appeal elsewhere.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper comprises a longitudinal analysis of two municipalities. Field-material was collected through qualitative methods including interviews (35 interviews, 42 interviewees) and document analysis.
Findings
The results draw attention to how management fashions become enduring. The metaphor of translation highlights how different professional actors in a local setting apply editing rules, and how they constitute work acquired for continuous translation of the model in order to make it legitimate, disseminated and supported. The study draws particular attention to the large number of actors involved in the editing process.
Originality/value
Besides an extended understanding of management concepts, to explain the anomaly of a long-standing management fashion, the paper illustrates the importance of acknowledging editing as processes and not process. A key notion in why intrapreneurships became legitimate is that professional actors edited the model differently in order to satisfy their desires and needs. This contradicts the more common case study design in translation studies, which seeks a unitary translation process, in a single local setting.
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Lena Ekelund, Erik Hunter, Sara Spendrup and Heléne Tjärnemo
Current food consumption patterns contribute negatively to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change. Positioned at the interface between producers and consumers…
Abstract
Purpose
Current food consumption patterns contribute negatively to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change. Positioned at the interface between producers and consumers, retailers have the potential to reduce this problem through informing their customers on the consequences of their actions. The purpose of this paper is to understand the variety of ways European retailers go about informing their customers on the linkage between food choice and climate change as well as which actions they advocate in-store to reduce the problem.
Design/methodology/approach
In-store walkthroughs lasting between 40 minutes and 1.5 hours were carried out at 30 grocery stores in five European countries to identify climate mitigating communications. The observations targeted any message produced and transmitted by the retailer where links between food and climate change were drawn.
Findings
The diversity in climate mitigating food communication we expected to find across Europe did not materialize. Only four out of the 30 retailers visited transmitted to their customers any information showing a direct link between food consumption and climate change. Indirectly, the authors found some retailers communicating food choices believed to lead to GHG reduction without linking them to climate change. Finally the authors found several retailers communicating what the authors argue are ambiguous messages to their customers where sustainability issues were confounded with climate ones. The dearth of climate mitigating food communications reveals the complexity in informing customers on such issues but also a possible lack of interest on the part of both parties.
Originality/value
This research contributes empirically to knowledge of how retailers communicate climate mitigating food consumption to consumers.
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Interest in product‐level carbon auditing and labelling has been growing in both business and government circles. The purpose of this paper is to examine the practical problems…
Abstract
Purpose
Interest in product‐level carbon auditing and labelling has been growing in both business and government circles. The purpose of this paper is to examine the practical problems and costs associated with highly disaggregated analyses of greenhouse gas emissions from supply chains. It then weighs these problems and costs against the potential benefits of the carbon labelling of products.
Design/methodology/approach
The views expressed in this paper are based on a review of relevant literature, informal discussions with senior managers and personal experience with the practices being investigated.
Findings
Stock‐keeping unit‐level carbon auditing of supply chains and the related carbon labelling of products will be fraught with difficulty and very costly. While simplification of the auditing process, the use of data inventories and software support may assist these processes, the practicality of applying them to all consumer products seems very doubtful. The resulting benefits to companies and consumers are also highly questionable. The main conclusion, therefore, is that product‐level carbon auditing and labelling is a “wasteful distraction” and that it would be better to devote management time and resources to other decarbonisation initiatives.
Research limitations/implications
To date relatively few firms have carbon audited their supply chains at a product level and so industrial experience is limited. Market research on the likely behavioural response to carbon labelling is also at an early stage. There is sufficient evidence available, however, to conduct an initial critique of product level carbon auditing and labelling.
Practical implications
Some companies and government agencies should reconsider their plans for the carbon labelling of products.
Originality/value
This is the first paper in the logistics/supply chain literature to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this new form of carbon footprinting and labelling. It is intended to stimulate debate among logistics academics and practitioners.
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Elizabeth Mamali and Peter Nuttall
Focusing on a community organisation, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the process through which infringing contested practices that threaten or compromise the community’s…
Abstract
Purpose
Focusing on a community organisation, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the process through which infringing contested practices that threaten or compromise the community’s sense of distinction are transformed into acceptable symbolic markers.
Design/methodology/approach
An ethnographic study comprising participant observation, in-depth interviews and secondary data was conducted in the context of a non-profit community cinema.
Findings
Taking a longitudinal approach and drawing from practice theory, this paper outlines how member-driven, customer-driven and necessity-imposed infringing practices settle in new contexts. Further, this paper demonstrates that such practices are filtered in terms of their ideological “fit” with the organisation and are, as a result, rejected, recontextualised or replaced with do-it-yourself alternatives. In this process, authority shifts from the contested practice to community members and eventually to the space as a whole, ensuring the singularisation of the cinema-going experience.
Practical implications
This paper addresses how the integration of hegemonic practices to an off-the-mainstream experience can provide a differentiation tool, aiding resisting organisations to compensate for their lack of resources.
Originality/value
While the appropriation practices that communities use to ensure distinction are well documented, there is little understanding of the journey that negatively contested practices undergo in their purification to more community-friendly forms. This paper theorises this journey by outlining how the objects, meanings and doings that comprise hegemonic practices are transformed by and transforming of resisting organisations.
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– The purpose of this paper is to present a literature survey on, and classification for, green marketing research.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a literature survey on, and classification for, green marketing research.
Design/methodology/approach
Suitable keywords were used to search peer-reviewed journal articles published in marketing, business and management journals in duration 1990-2014. The articles identified were screened for titles, abstracts, keywords, frameworks, headings and sub-headings that resulted in 161 relevant articles. These articles were classified across thematic categories and their distribution was also presented for year of publication, publication outlets, location of authors, key contributing authors.
Findings
The articles were classified across four thematic categories: eco-orientation, green marketing strategy, green marketing functions and green marketing consequences. It outlined the contribution of the earlier work under each theme, illustrated upon their implications for green marketing practice and research and provided directions for future research.
Research limitations/implications
This literature survey provides a source for understanding current state of research on green marketing and to stimulate further interest of researchers in the domain.
Originality/value
The paper provides a comprehensive review of green marketing literature on green marketing, distinctly adding to the contributions made by earlier literature reviews in the domain. It outlines the classifications of the literature, and key concepts and themes related to green marketing that intend to shape future research directions.
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C.W. Von Bergen and Morgan P. Miles
The purpose of this paper was to address one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”. The paper applies negative option marketing, the use of defaults as a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to address one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”. The paper applies negative option marketing, the use of defaults as a behavioral engineering tool to shape choice, to social marketing and then uses the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics to evaluate it against President Kennedy’s (1962) Consumer Bill of Rights and the American Marketing Association’s (2014) statement of marketing ethics.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual assessment of the ethics of negative option social marketing (NOSM) using the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics as the evaluative framework.
Findings
When assessed using the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics, NOSM possesses neither ethically sound means nor socially desirable ends.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the emerging debate on the use of nudges in a social marketing context and is a partial response to Spotswood et al. (2012).
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Peter Jones, David Hillier and Daphne Comfort
The purpose of this paper is to offer an exploratory case study of how the UK's top ten food retailers are communicating sustainable consumption agendas to their customers within…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer an exploratory case study of how the UK's top ten food retailers are communicating sustainable consumption agendas to their customers within stores.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper begins with a discussion of the growing awareness of the role that retailers, and more particularly food retailers, can play in promoting sustainable consumption. This is followed by a short literature review of current thinking on sustainable consumption. Information obtained from two simple “walk through/visual observation and information collection” surveys conducted within the largest store operated by each of the top ten food retailers within the towns of Cheltenham and Gloucester, UK, provided the empirical material for the case study. The paper concludes with some reflections on how sustainable consumption fits into the large food retailers' business models.
Findings
The survey revealed that, while the UK's top ten food retailers were providing customers with some information on sustainable consumption, the dominant thrust of marketing communication within stores was designed to encourage consumption. More generally, the paper concludes that, at best, the UK's leading food retailers are pursuing a weak model of sustainable consumption and that their definitions of, and engagement with, sustainable consumption is driven as much by commercial imperatives as by commitments to sustainability.
Originality/value
This paper provides an accessible review of the extent to which the UK's leading food retailers are communicating sustainable consumption agendas to their customers within stores and as such it will be of value to academics, practitioners, consumer organisations and policy makers interested in the role retailers can play in promoting sustainable consumption.
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Fiona Spotswood, Jeff French, Alan Tapp and Martine Stead
The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope of social marketing by re-examining some of its core concepts: the balance between the “wants” of individuals with the “needs” of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope of social marketing by re-examining some of its core concepts: the balance between the “wants” of individuals with the “needs” of society; the nature of exchange; the inclusion of techniques not explicitly considered part of the panoply of marketing; techniques available to social marketing, such as “nudge” style techniques, regulation or behavioural conditioning; the view that behaviour change must be its definitive goal; the ethical and political dimensions of social marketing; and the definition of social marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors pose seven questions based on these concepts which they debate.
Findings
The authors conclude that a more inclusive view of what constitutes social marketing is required: one that avoids absolutism or defining the field in terms of the tactics it employs. The paper calls for a set of ethical codes which would enable social marketers to better defend approaches that deploy more implicit and strongly persuasive techniques common in the commercial world but unacknowledged in social marketing.
Originality/value
The paper questions some of the settled views of the field, such as the focus on “behaviour change” and the notion of “exchange” and “voluntary” behaviour change. The paper debates the ethical implications of using “invisible” or coercive techniques, and the nature of customer-centricity. The paper also debates the politics of social marketing and encourages debate about interventions which go beyond rational exchange.
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– The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain what organizes the marketing of retail sustainability.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain what organizes the marketing of retail sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
Theoretically, this paper takes a marketing-as-practice approach and makes use of practice theory to conceptualize the marketing of sustainability. Methodologically, an ethnographic study of three Swedish retail chains and their marketing work has been conducted. Interviews with management, observations made at the stores of these three retailers and various marketing texts and images produced by these retailers form the material analysed.
Findings
This paper illustrates three different ways of marketing and enacting sustainability. It shows that sustainability is framed differently and, indeed, enacted differently in order to fit various ideas about who are the responsible consumers. The argument is that rather than consumer demand, supply pressure or media scandals, the marketing of sustainability is in each of the cases studied configured around a specific notion of the responsible consumer. What sustainability work is marketed, through which devices it is marketed, and how it is framed is guided by an idea of whom the retailers’ responsible consumers are, what their lifestyles are, and what they will be interested in. Images of responsible consumers work as configuring agents around which retailing activities and devices are organized.
Originality/value
The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the marketing of sustainability and offers a new explanation about what it is that influences the various approach to sustainable marketing taken by retailers.
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