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The article aims to investigate how washing practices focused on appeasing sceptics of diversity work in for-profit organizations play out in corporate online communication of diversity and inclusion efforts, and how these enable communication to a wide audience that includes social equity advocates.

Online corporate communication data of diversity and inclusion themes were compiled from the websites of eight Swedish-based multinational corporations. The data included content from the companies’ official websites and annual reports and sustainability reports as well as diversity and inclusion-themed blog posts. A thematic analysis was conducted on the website content.

The study showcases how tensions between conflicting external demands are navigated by keeping the communication open to several interpretations and thereby achieving multivocality. In the studied corporate texts on diversity and inclusion, this is achieved by alternating between elements catering to a business case audience and those that appeal to a social justice audience, with some procedures managing to appease both audiences at the same time.

The article complements previously described forms of washing by introducing an additional type of washing – business case washing – an articulation of the business case rhetoric that characterizes the diversity management discourse. While much has been written about washing to satisfy advocates of social change and equity, washing to appease shareholders and boardroom members, who are focused on profit and economic growth, has received less attention. The article suggests that online corporate communication on diversity and inclusion, by appeasing diverse audiences, can be seen as aspirational talk.

In this case study, we examine how a citrus peel valorising company based in the Netherlands was able to adopt a circular business model while navigating regulatory, managerial, and supply chain-related barriers.

In-depth, semi-structured interviews with key personnel in the company, notes from field observations, photographs of the production process, and documents from a legal judgement served as data for this single, qualitative case study. Data were coded inductively using the in vivo technique and were further developed into four themes and a case description.

Results from our study indicate that the regulatory and political contexts in the Netherlands were critical to the company’s success. Like in the case of most fruitful industrial symbioses, partnerships founded on mutual trust and economically appealing value propositions played a crucial role in ensuring commercial viability. Collaborating with larger corporations and maintaining transparent communication with stakeholders were also significant contributing factors. Lastly, employees’ outlook towards circularity combined with their willingness to learn new skills were important driving factors as well.

In addition to expanding the scholarship on the adoption of circular business models, this research offers novel insights to policymakers and practitioners. It provides empirical evidence regarding the importance of public awareness, adaptable legislation, and harmonised policy goals for supporting sustainable entrepreneurship in the circular economy.

Research on online user privacy shows that empirical evidence on how privacy literacy relates to users' information privacy empowerment is missing. To fill this gap, this paper investigated the respective influence of two primary dimensions of online privacy literacy – namely declarative and procedural knowledge – on online users' information privacy empowerment.

An empirical analysis is conducted using a dataset collected in Europe. This survey was conducted in 2019 among 27,524 representative respondents of the European population.

The main results show that users' procedural knowledge is positively linked to users' privacy empowerment. The relationship between users' declarative knowledge and users' privacy empowerment is partially supported. While greater awareness about firms and organizations practices in terms of data collections and further uses conditions was found to be significantly associated with increased users' privacy empowerment, unpredictably, results revealed that the awareness about the GDPR and user’s privacy empowerment are negatively associated. The empirical findings reveal also that greater online privacy literacy is associated with heightened users' information privacy empowerment.

While few advanced studies made systematic efforts to measure changes occurred on websites since the GDPR enforcement, it remains unclear, however, how individuals perceive, understand and apply the GDPR rights/guarantees and their likelihood to strengthen users' information privacy control. Therefore, this paper contributes empirically to understanding how online users' privacy literacy shaped by both users' declarative and procedural knowledge is likely to affect users' information privacy empowerment. The study empirically investigates the effectiveness of the GDPR in raising users' information privacy empowerment from user-based perspective. Results stress the importance of greater transparency of data tracking and processing decisions made by online businesses and services to strengthen users' control over information privacy. Study findings also put emphasis on the crucial need for more educational efforts to raise users' awareness about the GDPR rights/guarantees related to data protection. Empirical findings also show that users who are more likely to adopt self-protective approaches to reinforce personal data privacy are more likely to perceive greater control over personal data. A broad implication of this finding for practitioners and E-businesses stresses the need for empowering users with adequate privacy protection tools to ensure more confidential transactions.

The Internet has changed consumer decision-making and influenced business behaviour. User-generated product information is abundant and readily available. This paper argues that user-generated content can be efficiently utilised for business intelligence using data science and develops an approach to demonstrate the methods and benefits of the different techniques.

Using Python Selenium, Beautiful Soup and various text mining approaches in R to access, retrieve and analyse user-generated content, we argue that (1) companies can extract information about the product attributes that matter most to consumers and (2) user-generated reviews enable the use of text mining results in combination with other demographic and statistical information (e.g. ratings) as an efficient input for competitive analysis.

The paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.

The paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.

The study makes several contributions to the marketing and management literature, mainly by illustrating the methodological advantages of text mining and accompanying statistical analysis, the different types of distilled information and their use in decision-making.

The study employs two independent experimental studies to collect data. It focuses on the matching effect between advertising appeals and product types. The Elaboration Likelihood Model serves as the theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive processing involved in consumers' responses to these advertising appeals and product combinations.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising appeals on consumers' intentions to purchase organic food. We explored the interaction between advertising appeals (egoistic vs altruistic) and product types (virtue vs vice) and purchase intention. The goal is to provide insights that can enhance the advertising effectiveness of organic food manufacturers and retailers.

The analysis reveals significant effects on consumers' purchase intentions based on the matching of advertising appeals with product types. Specifically, when egoistic appeals align with virtuous products, there is an improvement in consumers' purchase intentions. When altruistic appeals match vice products, a positive impact on purchase intention is observed. The results suggest that the matching of advertising appeals with product types enhances processing fluency, contributing to increased purchase intention.

This research contributes to the field by providing nuanced insights into the interplay between advertising appeals and product types within the context of organic food. The findings highlight the importance of considering the synergy between egoistic appeals and virtuous products, as well as altruistic appeals and vice products. This understanding can be strategically employed by organic food manufacturers and retailers to optimize their advertising strategies, thereby improving their overall effectiveness in influencing consumers' purchase intentions.

The role of procurement managers is crucial for diffusing sustainability throughout the supply chain. Whether or not they are willing to pay for sustainability is an important and not yet fully understood question. The authors examine antecedents and consequences of their willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainability.

The authors develop a multi-level framework to examine the WTP for sustainability in a B2B context. The authors test this multi-level framework with 372 procurement managers from multiple sectors and countries using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The authors find that individual values of procurement managers and institutional pressures directly, while ethical organizational culture indirectly influence WTP for sustainability. Functional and cognitive competencies of procurement managers improve the sustainability of procurement, but not WTP for sustainability. Importantly, WTP for sustainability directly influences the performance of the procurement function which in turn is positively associated with increased organizational performance.

The study, examining the interplay between individual, organizational and contextual factors, provides empirical evidence on the pivotal role of procurement managers in diffusing sustainability throughout the supply chain. The findings of the study, on the one hand, contribute to the literature on operations management and sustainability, and on the other hand, guide policy and managerial actions.

Value-based healthcare suggested using patient-reported information to complement the information available in the medical records and administrative healthcare data to provide insights into patients' perceptions of satisfaction, experience and self-reported outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted to questions about factors fostering the use of patient-reported information to create value at the system level.

Action research design is carried out to elicit possible triggers using the case of patient-reported experience and outcome data for breast cancer women along their clinical pathway in the clinical breast network of Tuscany (Italy).

The case shows that communication and engagement of multi-stakeholder representation are needed for making information actionable in a multi-level, multispecialty care pathway organized in a clinical network; moreover, political and managerial support from higher level governance is a stimulus for legitimizing the use for quality improvement. At the organizational level, an external facilitator disclosing and discussing real-world uses of collected data is a trigger to link measures to action. Also, clinical champion(s) and clear goals are key success factors. Nonetheless, resource munificent and dedicated information support tools together with education and learning routines are enabling factors.

Current literature focuses on key factors that impact performance information use often considering unidimensional performance and internal sources of information. The use of patient/user-reported information is not yet well-studied especially in supporting quality improvement in multi-stakeholder governance. The work appears relevant for the implications it carries, especially for policymakers and public sector managers when confronting the gap in patient-reported measures for quality improvement.

Stakeholder theory understands business in terms of relationships among stakeholders whose interests are mainly joint but may be occasionally conflicting. In the latter case, managers may need to make trade-offs between these interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of managerial decision-making about these trade-offs.

This paper draws on the ordonomic approach which sees business life to be rife with social dilemmas and locates the role of stakeholders in harnessing or resolving these dilemmas through engagement in rule-finding and rule-setting processes.

The ordonomic approach suggests that stakeholder interests trade-offs ought to be neither ignored nor avoided, but rather embraced and welcomed as an opportunity for bringing to fruition the joint interest of stakeholders in playing a better game of business. Stakeholders are shown to bear responsibility for overcoming the perceived trade-offs through the institutional management of social dilemmas.

For many stakeholder theorists, the nature of managerial decision-making about trade-offs between conflicting stakeholder interests and the nature of trade-offs themselves have been a long-standing point of contention. The paper shows that trade-offs may be useful for the value creation process and explicitly discusses managerial strategies for dealing with them.

How does the interaction between time and knowledge affect the evolution of organizations? Past research in organizational evolution has mostly investigated time and knowledge as two separate variables. In contrast, theoretical perspectives integrating these variables are still seemingly scant. The authors believe that filling this literature gap needs attention. Thus, this study aims to contribute by developing a conceptual framework.

This is a conceptual study. The framework is centred on the concept of “co-evolutionary time”, which the authors explain through a business example from the tourism industry. Supported by a narrative-based style, from a methodological point of view the framework is featured by the attempt to synthesize specific, extant literature into new theoretical development.

As its main theoretical contribution, the co-evolutionary time suggests how firms can adapt in a way that, from an evolutionary perspective, proves fitting both in terms of contents and methods, thus opening possibilities for new long-term social construction and reconstruction. As its main practical contribution, co-evolutionary time can constitute not only a temporary source of organizational success and competitive advantage but also an agent of enduring change and long-term business survival.

As its main novelty, the framework is developed through merging two literature streams. In particular, the authors first consider the literature about time, with a focus on its objective and subjective dimensions. The authors then consider the literature about organizational evolution, with a focus on the co-evolutionary nature of the firm/environment relationship.