Search results

The purpose of this paper is to progress operations management theory and practice by organising contributions to knowledge production, in industrial sustainability, from disparate researcher communities. It addresses the principal question “What scholarly dialogues can be explicated in the emerging research field of industrial sustainability?” and sub-questions: what are the descriptive characteristics of the evidence base? and what thematic lines of scientific inquiry underpin the body of knowledge?

Using an evidenced-based approach, a systematic review (SR) of 574 articles from 62 peer-reviewed scientific journals associated with industrial sustainability is conducted.

This paper distinguishes three prevailing dialogues in the field of industrial sustainability, and uses Kuhn’s theory of paradigms to propose its pre-paradigmatic scientific status. The three dialogues: “productivity and innovation”, “corporate citizenship” and “economic resilience” are conjectured to privilege efficiency strategies as a mode of incremental reductionism. Industrial sustainability espouses the grand vision of a generative, restorative and net positive economy, and calls for a future research trajectory to address institutional and systemic issues regarding scaling-up and transition, through transformative strategies.

The review is limited by the nature of the inquiries addressed in the literatures by specific researcher communities between 1992 and 2014.

This study performs the first SR in the field of industrial sustainability, synthesises prevailing scholarly dialogues and provides an evaluation of the scientific status of the field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the brand relationships between a mega-sports event, the Olympic Games, and its branded main sponsors, using the lens of brand personality.

The study uses the internet-based website communications of the sponsor and event brands to assess congruence in brand personality identity exhibited in the communications of sponsors and how these relate to the event brand itself. A lexical analysis of the website text identifies and graphically represents the dominant brand personality traits of the brands relative to each other.

The results show the Olympic Games is communicating excitement as a leading brand personality dimension. Sponsors of the Olympics largely take on its dominant brand dimension, but do not adapt their whole brand personality to that of the Olympics and benefit by adding excitement without losing their individual character. The transference is more pronounced for long-running sponsors.

Sponsorship of the Olympic Games does give brands the opportunity to capture or borrow the excitement dimension alongside building or reinforcing their own dominant brand personality trait or to begin to subtly alter their brand positioning.

This study is the first to examine how the sponsor’s brand aligns with the event being sponsored as a basis for developing a strong shared image and associative dimensions complimentary to the positioning of the brand itself.

This research tests empirically the level of consumer engagement with a product via a nonbrand-controlled platform. The authors explore how social media influencers and traditional celebrities are using products within their own social media Instagram posts and how well their perceived endorsement of that product engages their network of followers.

A total of 226,881 posts on Instagram were analyzed using the Inception V3 convolutional neural network (CNN) pre-trained on the ImageNet dataset to identify product placement within the Instagram images of 75 of the world's most important social media influencers. The data were used to empirically test the relationships between influencers, product placement and network engagement and efficiency.

Influencers achieved higher network engagement efficiencies than celebrities; however, celebrity reach was important for engagement overall. Specialty influencers, known for their “subject” expertise, achieved better network engagement efficiency for related product categories. The highest level of engagement efficiency was achieved by beauty influencers advocating and promoting cosmetic and beauty products.

To maximize engagement and return on investment, manufacturers, retailers and brands must ensure a close fit between the product type and category of influencer promoting a product within their social media posts.

Most research to date has focused on brand-controlled social media accounts. This study focused on traditional celebrities and social media influencers and product placement within their own Instagram posts to extend understanding of the perception of endorsement and subsequent engagement with followers. The authors extend the theory of network effects to reflect the complexity inherent in the context of social media influencers.

The purpose of this paper is to update the Team Performance Management (TPM) readership on the development of the journal since the first review article was written in 2007.

Each of the 136 articles published in the journal between 2007 and 2012 were analyzed to identify interesting trends and patterns.

The USA still holds the top positions in terms of the largest number of published articles, and a total of 28 countries are represented by first author affiliation. Academic first authors have increased from 69 to 92 percent since the 2007 analysis. Of the total articles published from 2007-2012, 32 percent of the articles are single authored, while 35 percent are double authored. The majority of the authors published just once in the journal (84 percent) during that period. The publication of research articles has increased from 55 to 67 percent. The most popular article achieved 4,310 downloads.

This study is not a rigorous statistical analysis, but rather seeks to provide an update on the 2007 analysis, with a review of the last six years' articles published in the journal. As before, only the first author's details were used for the analysis, which may have caused a slight bias in the findings.

This article provides a quick guide in terms of the types of articles published in TPM during the last six years and with the 2007 article, gives an overview of the journal and team performance management research in the last 18 years.