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The purpose of this study is to examine whether the context of ad pictures differs between Chinese ads and US ads and whether it can influence consumers' ad attitudes.

An ad content analysis and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings suggest that contextualized ads appear more frequently in Chinese magazines because East Asians have a context‐dependent mode of thinking while westerners have a context‐independent mode of thinking. However, the effect of culture on advertising is moderated by product class (goods vs service), product category, and magazine category. Moreover, East Asians prefer contextualized ads to non‐contextualized ones, while westerners prefer non‐contextualized ads to contextualized ads. However, the effect of culture on ad attitudes may be moderated by ad involvement.

The limitations of this study stem from its being based on ad samples from China and its use of students to test ad attitudes.

The findings allow managers to better determine whether and under what conditions to use contextualized or non‐contextualized advertisements.

The study's examination of the effect of culture on the context of ad format and effect of context on persuasion in this context constitutes a unique and valuable contribution to the literature. The paper also contributes much to the literature by checking cultural differences across 17 magazine categories, compared to the vast majority of studies analyzing ad content between eastern and western cultures, which have been based on ads from only a few sources.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the microfinance industry practices can benefit from the culture and spiritual traditions of a country.

The authors use the Bhagavad Gita and the codes of Manu and Kautilya to describe the background of Hindu teaching and practical wisdom. The authors use a case study of a Hindu microfinance institution (MFI).

The authors find that Indian spirituality is a case-based application of learning through experience.

The case used in this study is one of a religious organization led MFI. It would be interesting to have follow up case studies of for-profit organizations and study their philosophy and links to spiritual traditions.

The authors find that business in general, and MFIs in particular, should adopt risk-based pricing. The specificities of each product, its delivery and price should be based on continuous learning from experience of helping customers. Thus a case-based approach to product development and pricing is required.

This paper is a response to the current criticism of microfinance and argues for more tolerance on the part of society and more sensitivity on the part of MFIs. The case study shows that with the right attitude, it is possible to balance societal interests, customer needs and the institution's growth.

This is the first paper on microfinance which looks at outsourcing from a spiritual viewpoint and launches a debate on whether “playing God” is useful.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The overall capability of an organization to learn can be enhanced further through unlearning and relearning. However, the relationship between these latter constructs is subject to considerable debate and their precise contribution to the learning process remains somewhat unclear as a result.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to share the successful lean implementation experience of a small to medium enterprise (SME) and the resultant performance improvement including the development of a quality management climate.

An action research (AR) approach was used with two successive rounds of interventions.

The results from this project show that the organization was indeed able to build a quality climate as measured by the total defect count. Results include a measurable reduction in non-conformances.

The study took place in a single organization and, as such, it is difficult to generalize the results of the research. However, the benefit of studying one organization is the depth at which the organization may be studied. The major takeaway is that any organization of any size or any industry can increase the quality climate of the organization by intensely focusing on a minimal number of high-impact factors.

The research fills a gap identified in the literature regarding the critical success factors for lean implementation in SMEs and practitioner/academic collaboration in research activities. Moreover, there are very few research studies in the lean literature that provide the practical insights that may be garnered from an AR approach. Thus, both the context and methodological approach contribute to the literature.

One of the most effective tools used by interactive marketers is personalized advertising, which allows consumers to directly respond to customized offers to purchase a brand’s products and services. Yet, recent studies show many consumers are installing ad blockers to avoid personalized ads. This study aims to examine how ad skepticism, ad relevance and ad irritation predict ad avoidance directly, as well as indirectly through consumers’ attitudes toward personalized advertising. Also, considered were how these antecedents’ study in tandem to trigger consumers’ desire to avoid ads by installing ad-blocking software.

An online survey was administered to a pool of 1,313 paid panelists who were familiar with ad blocking and reported that they either currently used an ad blocker, previously used an ad blocker, were considering using an ad blocker or did neither use nor were they considering using an ad blocker. All hypotheses were addressed via path modeling using PROC CALIS in SAS 9.4.

Results indicate that attitudes toward personalized advertising are more complex than attitudes toward advertising in general and mediate the effect of ad relevance on ad avoidance. Likewise, trust in interactive marketers moderates attitude toward personalized advertising and the negative outcomes of ad avoidance and ad blocker usage among skeptical consumers. Also, the reported differences in ad avoidance based on participants’ current vs previous ad blocker usage suggest that former users are using a more sophisticated evaluation of the costs and benefits of using ad blockers.

Consumers’ trust in an interactive marketer to properly collect and use their information plays an important role in moderating negative outcomes associated with personalized advertising. Also, the key is the use of high-quality data (best obtained through a permission-based relationship with the consumer) to deliver relevant ads without stimulating reactance or (privacy-related) boundary turbulence. Findings suggest that bolstering trust by engaging in a transparent, permission-based relationship with consumers may mitigate the tendency to adopt ad blockers and enhance the effectiveness of interactive marketing efforts.

Ad blocking presents a significant threat to the effectiveness of interactive marketing efforts like personalized advertising. Previous research on the antecedents of ad blocking is limited, considers a broad range of factors and offers mixed findings. The present study examines an informed set of cognitive and affective factors suggested by previous ad blocking studies to predict consumers’ desire to avoid personalized ads by installing ad-blocking software. Given the continued threat to the interactive marketing industry posed by ad blocking, a greater understanding of consumers’ motivations to adopt and use ad blockers is critical.

The garbage can model showed that what appears to be irrational and unpredictable choices can be explained by processes that regulate attention allocation and the availability of choice alternatives. Because attention to alternatives fluctuates, the model generates context-dependent choices: evaluations of alternatives depend on the mix of other alternatives considered. I re-examine the mechanisms by which fluctuating attention can cause context-dependent choices. Using insights from behavioral decision theory I demonstrate how adding fluctuating attention to a well-known model of organizational decision making generates context-dependent choices of a kind that could not be explained by a maximizing process.

When I began to teach within a Masters of Education (Leadership and Management) program, I questioned my assumed unproblematic nature of the presentation of Western leadership and management theories to students from a diverse range of countries without understanding the diversity. The expectations of International students are also that overseas study is designed to facilitate the transport of Western theory, as ‘the solution’ which makes the indigenous knowledges they bring struggle to appear. Few students seem to question the transferability of Western knowledge to other cultures, yet it may actually be of limited value to the real concerns and issues associated with the leadership of organisations in their home countries. Building on the ideas of Raewyn Connell and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, this chapter examines possibilities for research-led pedagogies which support an awareness of the dominance and persistence of northern-centric patterns of global knowledge production, challenging students to question their own expectations of the dominance of Western theory. Through so doing, it makes possible the re-imagining of possibilities for transformation through the emergence of alternatives, where engaging in democratic deliberation about what is gained and lost from adopting various knowledge positions informs a better understanding of human social and organisational experiences. Rather than subscribing to a single, universal and abstract hierarchy among knowledges, which privileges Western theories, cognitive justice favours context dependent knowledges. We can prepare the ground for students thinking about the knowledges they bring, and the importance of unique contextual and cultural factors through Butler's notions of intelligibility and performativity to help students understand that actions are conditioned by what is available within the culture and by what practices are legitimating. Dialogue and interpretation can occur across cultures, at the same time as raising the awareness of reciprocal incompleteness of knowledges.

The purpose of this study was to advance the understanding of the effect of extraversion on an expatriate's level of contexting (adopting a higher or lower level of context) while abroad. Particularly, this study focused on Polish expatriates in the US and American expatriates in Poland.

The participants were 30 American expatriates living in Poland and 41 Polish expatriates living in the USA.

The results from the regression analysis suggest that extraversion has a different effect on contexting among Polish expatriates than American expatriates, the higher the level of extraversion, the more context dependent the American expatriates were. Moreover, Polish and American expatriates differ in terms of contexting related to the universalism and the particularism dimensions of the seven cultural dimensions from Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars.

This advanced understanding led the researchers to give practical implications on the training of expatriates for their abroad assignments.

The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Netherlands is increasing. Studies show that BIM is mainly used in the lifecycle stages of initiation, development and realisation. Owners and operators are presumably yet to discover the added value of BIM for maintenance and information management within their organisations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate information management during the operations stage from the viewpoint of owners and determines the added value of BIM within this growing field of construction.

This research is based on a literature review, explorative interviews and process modelling. In total, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted among public real estate and infrastructure owners and operators, software companies, service providers and contractors.

This paper provides empirical insights into the sources of inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the activities of Dutch semi-public and public clients. It finds that the current added value of BIM in the operations stage is marginal. The main reasons for this are a lack of alignment between the supply of and demand for information and the context-dependent role of information.

The authors propose a structured approach that supports client organisations in establishing greater alignment between the supply of and demand for information, and a less context-dependent role for information during the operations stage.

In contrast to previous studies, this paper offers a new perspective on BIM in the operations stage, a growing field of interest in practice and science.