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The purpose of this paper is to apply a structured approach to understand the importance of personal ecological norms in purchasing organic food. The norm‐activation‐model by Schwartz is used to predict self‐reported and observed purchase behaviour of organic milk.

The paper reports the results of a field study with 63 customers of a German supermarket. A combination of covert observation and in‐store interviews was applied to obtain reliable data on actual shopping behaviour and its predictors.

The results show that the self‐reported and the observed purchase of organic milk is predicted by personal ecological norms, social norms, and perceived behavioural control. Personal norms are activated by awareness of need, awareness of consequences, perceived behavioural control, and social norms. People with strong personal norms use “organic production”, the “EU‐BIO‐Label” and “ingredients” as additional criteria during their decision process. For people with strong ecological norms the price difference between organic and conventional milk, the lack of knowledge about organic milk, and convenience are less important constraints. Finally, people with strong personal norms react more sensitively to proposed norm‐centred interventions.

The study offers insight into the processes of motivating behaviour and can therefore be used to design intervention strategies. Suggestions are developed in the closing part of the paper.

The study applies for the first time the norm‐activation‐model to the domain of purchasing organic milk and underlines the importance of normative influences for this decision.

Generation Z in Germany – born after 1995 – follows in many ways similar trends to be seen in other countries. Contrary to Generation Y, it is less career-focussed, less keen on financial rewards and less willing to work flexible in a competitive world with total work–life blending. They look for structure, security and feeling good. What is different: Germany is one of the few countries in the world in which Generation Z in many cases can live up to their dreams. Germany has a prospering economy, a stable society and still a good educational system. Most important, for young people, it has an unemployment rate of virtually zero per cent. Therefore, companies definitely must engage in the war for talents and provide Generation Z with a fitting employer value proposition: Generation Z looks for meaningful and exciting work but seeks also meaning and excitement in private lives. In particular, they demand a clear separation of their private lives from their job. All this stands in contrast to the ambitions of the industrial sector in Germany promoting a more Generation Y-type environment with flexibility, agility and work–life blending. This conflict is not dealt with in an open way, since politics and media stand on the side of the large companies. Still, the power of Generation Z is not to be underestimated. Therefore, the chapter leaves it for the future to find out whether the Generation Z or other forces will win.

We investigate whether active involvement of private equity firms in their portfolio companies during the holding period of a later-stage private equity investment is related to increased levels in operating performance of these companies. Our analysis of unique survey data on 267 European buyouts and secondary performance data on 29 portfolio companies using partial least squares structural equation modeling indicates that private equity firms, that is, their board representatives, can increase operating performance not only by monitoring the behavior of top managers of portfolio companies, but also by becoming involved in strategic decisions and supporting top managers through the provision of strategic resources. Strategic resources, in particular expertise and networks, provided by private equity firm representatives in the form of financial and strategic involvement are associated with increases in the financial performance and competitive prospects of portfolio companies. Operational involvement, however, is not related to changes in operating performance. In addition to empirical insights into the different types of involvement and their effects, this chapter contributes to the buyout literature by providing support for the suggested broadening of the theoretical discussion beyond the dominant perspective of agency theory through developing and testing a complementary resource-based view of involvement. This allows taking into account not only the monitoring, but also the more entrepreneurial supporting element of involvement by private equity firms.

This comprehensive case has been written for an undergraduate-level course on general management and a post-graduate-level course on organizational behavior and strategic management. After working through the case and conducting an in-depth discussion of the assignment questions, students will be able to do the following: 1. perform a comprehensive assessment of the institute’s internal context to measure its resources and preparedness to deal with COVID-19; 2. apply organizational change frameworks (to understand the trigger of the change, type of change and change process); 3. qualitatively analyze the dynamic capabilities and resources available to reopen the institute; and 4. suggest ways to institutionalize agility in the organization to improve the preparations and future responses to student management on campus based on a thorough analysis.

Founded in 1996, the Indian Managerial Studies Institute, Indore, has emerged as a leader in management education by appropriately weaving the pertinent roles of industry, government and PSUs into a common thread. With the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020, IMSI Indore began to respond to educational and administrative challenges by building on resilient strategies. Two decision-making situations cropped up as the situation improved and again converged to the more lethal second wave in March 2021. Dr Hemant Vishwas, Dean of IMSI Indore, needed to determine whether the institute should continue with the reduced employee and hybrid classroom model or reopen with full-fledged operations for the following academic year.

This comprehensive case has been written considering the teaching pedagogy for an undergraduate-level course on organizational behavior (organizational development and change module) and a post-graduate-level course on organizational behavior and strategic management. This case is suitable for courses on organizational development, change and strategy implementation. Organizational behavior and organizational development and change can be used to understand the core concepts of the change content and process, i.e. the scope and scale of the change. The case also touches on inducing a dynamic change in response to the pandemic in an educational setting, teaching the concepts of dynamic capabilities. It is also expected to be useful for teaching courses related to operations strategies in educational services for executive degree programs and faculty development workshops.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

This study aims to examine the impact of voluntary adoption of integrated reporting on the stock prices of firms in Japan.

The event study methodology was used to analyze the stock market reactions to voluntary integrated report (IR) publication. Abnormal returns were estimated for 1,602 observations of 490 firms publishing IRs in Japan using the market model. The t-test, the Boehmer et al., 1991 test and the generalized sign test examined the significance of the cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs).

The study reveals that the stock market reacts positively to voluntary IR publication by firms, especially in 2019 and 2015. Additionally, it reveals a tendency for higher CAARs around IR publication dates than around corporate social responsibility report publication dates, especially in 2016 and 2015.

The limitations of this study include the possibility of self-selection bias and omitted variable bias.

This study suggests that firms can earn higher abnormal returns in the stock market through environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in IRs, corroborating the recently rising investor interest in voluntary integrated reporting in Japan.

This study contributes to the literature on the value relevance of voluntary adoption of integrated reporting by providing evidence of firms achieving significantly positive abnormal returns around voluntary IR publication dates. There is no published analysis on this topic using multitudes of sample firms using the event study methodology.

Israel is 280 miles long and 10 miles wide at its narrowest point; it is comparable in size to the State of New Jersey. The total population of Israel is currently about 6.5 million, of the same order as the populations of Austria, Switzerland or Denmark. Eighty per cent of the population are Jews, 15 per cent Muslim, 3 per cent Christians and 2 per cent Druze (Yaffe, 1999). Israel is a highly urban and industrialized country, with over 95 per cent of the population living in cities or towns. Israel’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is approximately US $17,500. This, despite its geographical location in the Middle East, makes Israel’s economic level equal to that of England, placing Israel among the developed European countries.

Following Starratt’s (1991) proposed conceptual framework for ethical leadership that is no longer defined as a style or an attitude, but as the basis for moral dimensions and actions that can be developed and based on the ethics of care, critique, and justice, this chapter traces the following questions: (a) How does cultural and social context influence the meaning and practices of unethical leadership in the school? (b) How do principals and vice-principals preserve and interpret their unethical practices? Using Langlois’s interview guide on ethical dilemmas (1997), 10 interviews were conducted with school principals and vice-principals in the Arab education system in Israel. The chapter presents unethical behaviors emerging from content analysis of the interviews such as personal development versus loyalty to others (unethical behaviors that are related to managing staff underperformance or appointing candidate teachers); or loyalty to my minority-society or to the government. The chapter fosters better understanding of both national specificities and universal commonalities associated with unethical leadership, as well as of the cultural and social characteristics that facilitate or hinder the development of ethical leadership, and finally explains some approaches to leadership that would improve the practice.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the significance of the incidence of female principals in the urban sector of Eretz Israel, against the background of growing Jewish society, through the prism of which we can view the development of modern Hebrew education during the waning Ottoman rule.

In addition to the archival material, contemporary newspapers provided an important source, as did memoirs of prominent people that, to some extent, filled in the “gaps”, more on the running of the schools and less on the activities of the four principals.

A survey of the archival material reveals that the four women share biographical elements, their talents, personalities and education obtained abroad, style of school leadership and organization, not to mention their moral contribution to the education of girls in Eretz Israel.

One may point to other fields in which women began to play a more prominent role, based on European training and experience. For instance, in medicine and a modern approach to midwifery, From 1900, modern trained female doctors, nurses and midwives began to be employed in hospitals and private practices around the country, helping to radically reduce childbirth fatalities and allowing women to consult a woman practitioner where before they had been unwilling to expose themselves to men. Although a direct link between the earlier presence of female educational administrators and the entry of women doctors may be difficult to establish, the atmosphere had certainly begun to change.

From that period on, during the British Mandate, and after the creation of the State of Israel, immense changes have been instituted. One can view the seeds of these changes as, at least in part, having been planted by the pioneering work of our four women. There were far reaching developments in the conception of female management from the time of the Ottoman rule through the period of the British Mandate.

This research shines a light on a forgotten world and pursues a phenomenon not yet revealed in Zionist historiography − the running of girls’ schools by women in the Jewish community, under the dying Ottoman regime. The study allows us a deeper insight into the historical educational processes that fashioned the profession of head teachers, via pioneering female principals. Female administration in a patriarchal society, with a hegemonic male orientation that placed man at the centre and woman as secondary, faced these problems, obstacles and opposition. Women who were appointed to run schools had to justify their position by imitating the “masculine” style of management and to carry out their work − both pedagogical and administrative − without organizational, social or emotional support. They suffered opposition, internal (their male teaching staff) and external (from patrons and the religious community) and the need to respond to their criticism.

The subject of Jihad has been a fiercly debated topic in the past few decades. Contradictory translations have been adopted by differing religious groups and political camps. In some quarters Jihad has been associated with violence and war. Other quarters perceive the Jihad to mean a striving within oneself and the struggle for self‐improvement. In this paper, the historical and contemporary perspectives of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam regarding Jihad are outlined. The evolution of the meaning of Jihad in each religion is clarified and similarities and dissimilarities among the three religions are highlighted. Various forms of Jihad are presented. The paper, however, argues that true Jihad means an active participation in social improvement and economic development. In addition, the paper provides implications of Jihad for business and organizations.