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This paper aims to examine how individuals’ need for distinction moderates the effect of perceived harm to others as a result of preferential treatment on customers’ attitudes towards the service provider.

Two experiments test the hypothesis that when a customer receives preferential treatment, the effect of perceived harm to others on the customer’s attitudes towards the service provider is moderated by their need for distinction and mediated by negative moral emotions, such that mediation occurs for customers with a lower (but not higher) need for distinction.

When customers have a lower need for distinction, they scan the environment to seek information about others when judging their own experience. In contrast, customers with a higher need for distinction tend to disregard others’ opinions and feelings, focusing solely on the benefits they receive from the service provider and avoiding moral emotions. Our results show that customers with a higher need for distinction tend to evaluate the service provider more favourably than those with a lower need for distinction in scenarios where the benefit given to an advantage customer imposes a disadvantage on other customers.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this research is the first to examine the interaction between perceived harm to others and one’s need for distinction as drivers of customers’ response to preferential treatment. The authors are the first to show that negative moral emotions may arise for customers with a lower need for distinction but not for those with a higher need for distinction.

The article extends the distinction of semantic from syntactic labour to comprehend all forms of mental labour. It answers a critique from de Fremery and Buckland, which required envisaging mental labour as a differentiated spectrum.

The paper adopts a discursive approach. It first reviews the significance and extensive diffusion of the distinction of semantic from syntactic labour. Second, it integrates semantic and syntactic labour along a vertical dimension within mental labour, indicating analogies in principle with, and differences in application from, the inherited distinction of intellectual from clerical labour. Third, it develops semantic labour to the very highest level, on a consistent principle of differentiation from syntactic labour. Finally, it reintegrates the understanding developed of semantic labour with syntactic labour, confirming that they can fully and informatively occupy mental labour.

The article further validates the distinction of semantic from syntactic labour. It enables to address Norbert Wiener's classic challenge of appropriately distributing activity between human and computer.

The article transforms work in progress into knowledge for diffusion.

It has practical implications for determining what tasks to delegate to computational technology.

The paper has social implications for the understanding of appropriate human and machine computational tasks and our own distinctive humanness.

The paper is highly original. Although based on preceding research, from the late 20th century, it is the first separately published full account of semantic and syntactic labour.

The distinction between formality and informality has been a topic central for many scholarly fields. Without rejecting the usefulness of this distinction, the authors argued that instead of analyzing an empirical situation in terms of what is formal and what is informal, it could sometimes be fruitful to focus on what is stable and what is fluid.

This paper reports the results of review and analysis of secondary sources on the distinction between formality and informality, followed by a conceptualization of an alternative distinction between fluidity and stability. This conceptualization was inspired by a science and technology studies (STS) understanding of relations, and was assessed through applying it to a case of patient organizations’ participation in patient councils in Russia.

Stability and fluidity do not map neatly into formality and informality; rather, the stability and fluidity cut across these categories. The authors propose a view of both stability and fluidity as kinds of relations between elements of the societal fabric. The distinction proposed here could be especially fruitful when applied to analyses of (1) complex bureaucracies where formal requirements are extensive and potentially in conflict with each other and (2) oppressive situations where significant power imbalances exist.

Instead of providing yet another line of demarcation between formality and informality, this paper proposes a shift in attention to what is stable and what is fluid. This novel distinction can help not only in discerning how things actually work but also in bringing to the fore hitherto unnoticed forms of creativity, responsiveness and inclusion.

This paper aims to examine the effects of the social distinction of company directors on firm performance.

The social distinction of company directors adds to the firm’s reputation, allowing the firm to access resources and privileges. The indicators of social distinction this study uses are the prenominal titles of directors in Malaysian companies. As Malaysian companies are known to have directors with political connections and the prenominal titles can be intertwined with these connections, to ascertain the effects of social distinction on firm performance, this study examines whether social distinctions proxy and complement political connections in improving firm performance. This study uses Tobin’s Q (TQ) for longer-term performance and gross sales for current-year performance.

This study finds evidence to suggest that the impact of higher-order titles on Tobin’s Q and sales is greater in politically unconnected firms than in connected firms. This study also finds evidence to suggest that higher-order titles amplify the effect on Tobin’s Q in politically connected firms, whereas lower-order titles amplify sales, both moderated by firm-age. The findings shed light on the mediating variables that contribute to the above, and are robust for alternative performance measures, and account for endogeneity concerns.

The results are generalisable only to countries where social distinctions are of significance.

Future research on political connections should consider social connections that affect firms. Also, such research should prompt the awarders of titles to prohibit the use of titles for pecuniary motives to minimise market imperfections.

Adding to the prior literature on the characteristics of directors and firm performance, this study shows that the social distinctions of directors do matter.

In the extant literature, the concepts of charity and philanthropy have been differentiated based on the belief that charity stems from religious motivations and philanthropy is often secular in origin. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate whether there is a distinction between managerial practices regarding the given concepts as emphasized in the conceptual discussions.

To see the managerial practices, the authors determined bazaars, community fundraising events organized by nonprofit organizations (NPOs), as the research field. Then, this study followed the general systematic of qualitative research. Accordingly, the authors conducted 44 interviews with experienced bazaar organizers from 10 NPOs in total. Furthermore, four days of participant observation with field notes were made in each bazaar, which lasted from 7 to 10 days. This study also used archival data as a secondary data source and then analyzed all data with a content analysis technique.

This study found that the field practices mainly do not support the distinction drawn over the conceptual discussions. Both concepts are nouns describing the act of giving and helping the needy. They are actively performed based on different motives (religion-based and secular).

The relevant distinction is limited to the conceptual discussions and has not been supported by the findings obtained from the field. Also, most of the studies on helping were carried out in the Western context. Studies conducted outside these cultures are quite limited. The value of the current study lies in the fact that it was conducted in a cultural context different from the Western cultures and paves the pathway for future research.

Nonfamily farms are responsible for a disproportionate amount of US agriculture production. The importance of these operations to the volume of agriculture production in the United States has led researchers and policymakers to understand nonfamily farms as large commercial operations. This paper examines whether the distinction between family and nonfamily helps explain the financial outcomes of farm operations and households.

We test for differences in financial outcomes of the household and operations of family and nonfamily farms using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. We compare these results to a decomposition of other possible typologies.

We present evidence that nonfamily farms are a heterogeneous group with a majority of small operations that are dominated by a small number of large operations. We discover that differences associated with the family-nonfamily distinction are largely explained by observable farm and operator characteristics that arise mechanically from the definition. However, we find suggestive evidence that family-nonfamily classification captures differences in economic behavior that lead to higher profitability measures to nonfamily farms. We find little evidence of any inherent structural differences between family and nonfamily farms that helps explain financial outcomes related to leverage or household finances.

We conclude that including nonfamily farms in official statistics of farm households may provide a more comprehensive overview of the farm sector, as our results suggest that family and nonfamily farms do not have innate differences that help explain many of their financial outcomes.

We incorporate previously unused data on nonfamily farm households and test the difference in mean financial outcomes between family and nonfamily farms.

This chapter discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923), the overall work of Thorstein Veblen, and Wesley C. Mitchell’s essays on spending and money. The three authors are concerned with transformations in production, related changes in the organization of consumption, and the effects on people. The approach is based on reading of Kyrk’s book in light of an integrated view of Veblen’s overall work. This chapter explains how Mitchell’s essays on money and spending built on Veblen’s work and discusses their relevance for understanding Kyrk’s book as conceptually linked to institutional economics. This chapter delineates the following commonalities: conception of living humans and money as an institution; distinction between business and industrial concerns; connection between distribution, waste, and consumption; and Veblen’s “machine process” of standardization in production and its relation to consumption. This chapter brings more detail in the conceptual and theoretical discussion of Veblen’s influence on Kyrk’s book.

Contemporary coliving is a rapidly developing housing typology, characterised by high-density private living spaces integrated with various shared, mixed-use amenities. The purpose of this research is to quantitatively examine the spatial configurations of coliving building systems, and the integration of programmatic space labels, to provide insights for architects and researchers into the homogeneity and genotypical patterns embedded within these contexts.

Coliving buildings of various scales from the United Kingdom and the USA were examined using small graph matching and inequality genotypes. The former was adopted to identify a genotype signature and assess homogeneity levels, whilst the latter provided a comparative analysis of the ranked integration values for space labels within these building systems.

Although local samples exhibited superior levels of homogeneity compared to the sample population (n = 18), the latter still evinced a marked homogeneity and no statistical difference in building system integration (mean real relative asymmetry (RRA)). Local large-scale samples showed the greatest homogeneity and building system integration of all sample groups, whilst a statistically significant distinction in building system integration was evident between large- and small-scale samples. However, a comparison of space label integration (RRA) across different building scales demonstrated that a potential genotypical pattern exists between small- and large-scale samples.

Through the identification of homogeneity and integration values related to scale and location, this research establishes an empirical, methodological framework for the generalisable spatial analysis of contemporary coliving buildings. Furthermore, genotypical patterns provide insights into space labels that are most likely to encourage copresence and social encounters between residents.

The purpose of this study is to introduce the concept of Ecopoiesis. Introduction of the concept of ecopiesis, which explains the linkage strategy between relational and energetic resources (sustainability) that enable the relational viability of living things.

The design is based on the use of the relationship between abduction, epigenesis, cismogenesis and morphogenesis.

This paper concludes with a counter-intuitive proposal to the dominant lines of thought, distinguishing: Complexity as vital interweaving, Aristotelian Oikos as communitarian distinction, Organism-Entorno from relational theory (beyond the interactional), in a cybernetic referential framework that allows tending to sustain and sustain life from Ecopoiesis.

According to a relational theory of cognition, the sources of knowledge go beyond genetic and environmental factors. In the sphere of explanation, this study moves from “how much,” “why” and “how” to “why not.” Thus, the processes involved in understanding the living are forced to move from the logic of parts to the logic of patterns, which implies developing an explanation that considers the unique characteristics of development, encompassing the diverse origins of the organization of the living.