Search results

1 – 10 of over 3000
Open Access
Article
Publication date: 14 June 2021

Olga Dziubaniuk and Maria Ivanova-Gongne

This study aims to explore how Russian-origin immigrant entrepreneurs manage to adapt their business-to-business (B2B) relationship management practices and moral concerns to the…

3846

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore how Russian-origin immigrant entrepreneurs manage to adapt their business-to-business (B2B) relationship management practices and moral concerns to the business ethics of their country of origin and of the host country via the prism of ethical relativism. By focusing on the ethical values of immigrant entrepreneurs in a business relationship context, the study aims to extend the currently limited understanding of these issues in the B2B marketing field.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative approach is applied to provide findings from eight in-depth interviews with first-generation Russian entrepreneurs living and doing business in Finland. A narrative approach to the data analysis is used, in particular by applying a thematic analysis of the collected interviews because of the focus on the personal experiences of the interviewees.

Findings

The results illustrate how the immigrant entrepreneurs adapt to ethical values and norms in Russia and Finland and how they enact those values in B2B relationship management in the countries. Immigrant entrepreneurs share several national and ethical backgrounds, which may influence their interaction in international markets, helping them adapt to country-specific business ethics.

Practical implications

The results imply that managers should acquire knowledge on ethical norms at the global level and at the national level, where they aim to expand their business. Productive business relationships involve the premises of honesty, transparency, fairness toward business partners and minimizing opportunism. However, business relations between developed and emerging markets may demand relativism when addressing ethical behavior.

Originality/value

This is one of the few studies that explore the ethical values of immigrant entrepreneurs in the context of international business relationships. The study contributes to the limited literature on ethics in the fields of B2B marketing and immigrant entrepreneurship. The authors encourage further research on ethical values adoption by immigrant entrepreneurs, which is an essential topic in times of increased workforce immigration.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 36 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 1 November 2023

Dan Jin

The purpose of this study is to provide insights and guidance for practitioners in terms of ensuring rigorous ethical and moral conduct in artificial intelligence (AI) hiring and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to provide insights and guidance for practitioners in terms of ensuring rigorous ethical and moral conduct in artificial intelligence (AI) hiring and implementation.

Design/methodology/approach

The research employed two experimental designs and one pilot study to investigate the ethical and moral implications of different levels of AI implementation in the hospitality industry, the intersection of self-congruency and ethical considerations when AI replaces human service providers and the impact of psychological distance associated with AI on individuals' ethical and moral considerations. These research methods included surveys and experimental manipulations to gather and analyze relevant data.

Findings

Findings provide valuable insights into the ethical and moral dimensions of AI implementation, the influence of self-congruency on ethical considerations and the role of psychological distance in individuals’ ethical evaluations. They contribute to the development of guidelines and practices for the responsible and ethical implementation of AI in various industries, including the hospitality sector.

Practical implications

The study highlights the importance of exercising rigorous ethical-moral AI hiring and implementation practices to ensure AI principles and enforcement operations in the restaurant industry. It provides practitioners with useful insights into how AI-robotization can improve ethical and moral standards.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the literature by providing insights into the ethical and moral implications of AI service robots in the hospitality industry. Additionally, the study explores the relationship between psychological distance and acceptance of AI-intervened service, which has not been extensively studied in the literature.

Details

International Hospitality Review, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2516-8142

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 9 August 2022

Achraf Guidara

This paper examines the association between the quality of management schools and sustainability and investigates whether ethical behavior of firms moderates relationship between…

1798

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines the association between the quality of management schools and sustainability and investigates whether ethical behavior of firms moderates relationship between the quality of management schools and sustainability.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample consists of 500 country-year observations over the period of 2014-2017. Sustainability is collected from the Global Sustainable Competiveness Index reports for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, while the quality of management schools and ethical behavior of firms are collected from the Global Competiveness Report for the same years.

Findings

The findings of this study suggest that the quality of management schools is positively associated with sustainability. When testing for the moderating effect of ethical behavior of firms on the association between quality of management schools and sustainability, results show that the positive association becomes positive and more significant for countries where firms operate with high ethical behaviors, while the association becomes insignificant for settings where firms operate with low ethical behaviors. Findings also show that the quality of management schools and ethical behavior of firms play a complimentary role in improving sustainability.

Social implications

The findings emphasize the role played by business schools and business ethics in improving sustainability. These results may have policy implications for governments aiming to improve sustainability by emphasizing on education for sustainable development in management schools’ 2019 programs enforcing standards dealing with business ethics and controlling firms’ 2019 compliance with them.

Originality/value

The findings of this study highlight the importance of education, as proxied by the quality of management schools, in the development of sustainable societies and economic systems. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study that tries to empirically link business schools programs to sustainability efforts and how business ethics may affect this association.

Details

Arab Gulf Journal of Scientific Research, vol. 40 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1985-9899

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 3 June 2020

Salla Syvänen and Chiara Valentini

The purpose of this study is to review the extant literature on chatbots and stakeholder interactions to identify major trends and shed light on knowledge gaps.

5070

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to review the extant literature on chatbots and stakeholder interactions to identify major trends and shed light on knowledge gaps.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review was conducted combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. A code book based on early systematic literature reviews was developed and used to extract information from 62 discrete peer-reviewed English articles. An inductive approach was used to analyse definitions of chatbots, topics, metrics, perspectives and implications.

Findings

Chatbots have been studied by many different disciplines, but not much from organizational, stakeholder and corporate communication perspectives. Existing studies focus on the technical developments of chatbots and chatbot language and conversations skills. Research has remained anchored at the micro-level understanding of the phenomenon, that is, the nature of chatbots, but has not yet taken into consideration the meso (organizational) or macro (societal) levels.

Research limitations/implications

This study focused only on academic peer-reviewed papers in English and excluded conference proceeding, books, book chapters and editorials that may have offered other important and relevant reflections. The limited number of studies in communication-related disciplines shows that corporate communication scholars could contribute more to the discussion of chatbot–stakeholder interactions.

Originality/value

This is the first research in the field of corporate communication that examines organizational chatbot–stakeholder interactions. Results of this review offer important information on chatbots' organizational capabilities and affordances, which, arguably, must be taken into consideration when stakeholder engagement strategies are set.

Details

Journal of Communication Management, vol. 24 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-254X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 20 December 2022

Abyshey Nhedzi and Caroline Muyaluka Azionya

This study answers the call for research and theorising exploring ethical communication and brand risk from the African continent. The study's purpose was to identify the…

1269

Abstract

Purpose

This study answers the call for research and theorising exploring ethical communication and brand risk from the African continent. The study's purpose was to identify the challenges that strategic communication practitioners face in enacting ethical crisis communication in South Africa.

Design/methodology/approach

The researchers conducted ten in-depth interviews with South African strategic communication professionals.

Findings

The dominant theme emerging from the study is the marginalisation and exclusion of the communication function in decision-making during crisis situations. Communicators were viewed as implementers, technicians and not strategic counsel. The protection of organisational reputation was done at the expense of the ethics and moral conscience of practitioners. Practitioners were viewed and deployed as spin doctors and tools to face unwanted media interactions.

Originality/value

The article sheds light on the concepts of ethical communication and decision-making in a multicultural African context using the moral theory of Ubuntu and strategic communication. It demonstrates the tension professionals experience as they toggle between unethical capitalist approaches and African values. The practitioner's role as organisational moral conscience is hindered, suppressed and undermined by organisational leadership's directives to use opaque, complex communication, selective transparency and misrepresentation of facts.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 28 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 26 July 2022

Jalal Rajeh Hanaysha, V.V. Ajith Kumar, Mohammad In'airat and Ch. Paramaiah

This research mainly aims to test the impact of two leadership styles (ethical and servant leadership) on employee creativity; and to determine whether organizational citizenship…

4501

Abstract

Purpose

This research mainly aims to test the impact of two leadership styles (ethical and servant leadership) on employee creativity; and to determine whether organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) mediates the relationships between them.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper relied on a quantitative research approach with a sample of 213 staff from public universities in the United Arab Emirates. In this paper, the partial least square approach (PLS-SEM) was employed in order to verify the proposed hypotheses.

Findings

The outcomes confirmed that OCB has a positive impact on employee creativity. Additionally, the findings indicated that ethical leadership positively affected OCB and employee creativity. It was also confirmed that servant leadership has a significant positive impact on OCB and employee creativity. Finally, the findings revealed that OCB fully mediates the linkages among servant and ethical leadership and employee creativity.

Originality/value

This paper acknowledges the existing gaps in the prior literature, and enables us to understand clearly about the significance of ethical as well as servant leadership in affecting employee creativity via OCB as a mediator.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 25 March 2019

Fahri Özsungur

Ethical leadership is at the forefront of what matters in today’s business life and current issues, with a view to making strong moral decisions through bilateral communication…

6924

Abstract

Purpose

Ethical leadership is at the forefront of what matters in today’s business life and current issues, with a view to making strong moral decisions through bilateral communication. Service innovation behavior is important in terms of individual and institutional actions in the process of producing and implementing new ideas. Investigating the mediating role of psychological capital which consists of self-efficacy, optimism, hope and psychological endurance dimensions, between ethical leadership and service innovation behavior, is a matter to be investigated. This study aims to assess the impact of ethical leadership on service innovation behavior by means of a comprehensive literature review. In this framework, psychological capital forms the scope of researching the mediating role.

Design/methodology/approach

This study was conducted with 376 blue-collar workers randomly selected from 140 company which were selected from 1,294 joint stock companies among 76,882 companies operating in the province of Adana in Turkey and registered in the Adana Chamber of Commerce, by applying a questionnaire of 40 items.

Findings

As a result of the factor analysis, 6 items which could not provide reliability were extracted from the scale and the remaining 34 items were distributed in three factors and the validity of the construct validity was measured by the convergence and divergence methods. Construct reliability (CR) values were found to be statistically significant (SRMR: 0.50, RMSEA = 0.058, IFI: 0.955, CFI = 0.97, GFI = 0.96, AGFI = 0.86, TLI = 0.97, χ2/s.d. = 2.264) when it was above 0.7, and the structural equation model determined that the research data and the initially determined model are compatible. Ethical leadership has a significant effect on psychological capital (ß = 0.224, p < 0.001), ethical leadership has a significant effect on innovation (ß = 0.113, p < 0.001), psychological capital was found to have a significant influence on service innovation (ß = 0.965, p < 0.001), and ethical leadership was mediated by psychological capital on service innovation behavior (SIE = 0.235).

Research limitations/implications

Further research is needed to assess conducting research in enterprises with different cultural characteristics. This paper provides the effectiveness of ethical leadership and psychological capital factors, which are effective in improving employee service innovation behavior and enabling managers to develop human resources strategies in this respect.

Practical implications

The results provide the impact of ethical leadership on the productivity of employees in the workplace and provide practical benefits in terms of developing innovation-oriented service development behaviors.

Social implications

The innovative behaviors of the employees enable the development of innovative ideas in social life by contributing to consumer satisfaction and economy. Ethical leadership ensures positive behaviors in the society by ensuring that employees in the workplace develop justice sentiments.

Originality/value

The mediating role of psychological capital between ethical leadership and service innovation behavior has not been investigated before. In this study, the effects of self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience factors were investigated in providing ethical leaders and employees, creating value in the enterprise, and in providing innovation-focused services for employees.

Details

Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-7812

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 August 2023

Vilja M.R. Levonius and Eveliina Saari

This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which is needed when digitalization efforts in elder care focus on the efficiency and adequacy of care work.

Design/methodology/approach

The Empatia method leans on previous studies of the interaction between care professionals and clients and elaborates further previous video reflection methods. In empathic care work, the care worker sees the client on their life continuum, rather than focusing on only medical treatments.

Findings

The empirical example demonstrates how a care worker gained awareness of their empathic interaction habits. Within the work community, the reflection process sparked discussions on values: the purpose of care work and how to conduct empathic care. Focusing on empathic relationships in care fosters both the client’s and the care worker’s well-being.

Practical implications

The strength of the Empatia method is that it makes empathy visible in interaction and something that is individually and collectively learnable. The Empatia includes an analytical tool for researchers to reveal empathy in client interaction. It can be developed further into a reflection tool for service work to learn how to be empathic in service encounters.

Originality/value

Compared to other video-stimulated recall methods, the Empatia involves contextual understanding of care work. Empowering positive interactions instead of detecting errors and solving problems is a novel concept and is scantily used in studies of organizational learning. The Empatia provides a detailed method description that allows for the replication of the method by anyone.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 35 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 March 2024

Cristina Mele and Tiziana Russo-Spena

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology…

Abstract

Purpose

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Findings

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

Originality/value

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

Details

Journal of Service Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-5818

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 20 June 2023

Teresa Heath and Caroline Tynan

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena…

1088

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena. The authors assess the use of arts-based activities, within a broader critical pedagogy, for encouraging imaginative and analytical thinking.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors devised two learning activities and an interpretive method for studying their value. The activities were an individual essay connecting themes in song lyrics to marketing, and a group photography project. These were applied, within a broader, critical approach, in postgraduate modules on sustainability, ethics and critical marketing. Data collection comprised diaries kept by the teachers, open-ended feedback from students and students’ assignments.

Findings

Students showed high levels of engagement, reflexivity and depth of thought, in felt experiences of learning. Their ability to make connections not explicitly in the materials, and requiring imaginative jumps, was notable. Several reported lasting changes to their behaviour. Some found the tasks initially intimidating or, once they were more engaged, stressful or saddening.

Research limitations/implications

This adds to scholarship on management education by showing the usefulness of an arts-based approach towards a transformative agenda.

Practical implications

It offers a template of how to draw from the arts to strengthen critical engagement upon which marketing teachers can build. It also contains practical advice on the challenges and benefits of doing so.

Social implications

The authors provide evidence that this approach can enhance sensitivity and reflexivity in students, potentially producing more ethical and sustainable decisions in future.

Originality/value

The pedagogical interventions are novel and of value to lecturers seeking to enhance critical engagement with theory. An empirical study of an attempt to integrate arts into teaching marketing represents a promising direction, given the discipline’s creative nature.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 57 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 3000