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The purpose of this paper is to investigate current practices of water governance disclosure in the food, beverage and tobacco industry and to determine whether the quality of disclosure has a positive association with integrated reporting (IR).

A water governance disclosure index was developed that used content analysis to code the latest standalone social, environmental and sustainability reports or integrated reports of 49 companies in the food, beverage and tobacco industry. The selected companies are listed on three indices, the ASX, JSE and DJSI. This was followed by quantitatively testing the association between IR and the quality of water governance disclosure, as measured against the qualitatively developed index.

It was found that the 18 IR companies’ water governance disclosure quality significantly outperformed the 31 companies in the non-IR group, with a calculated index score of 71.67% and 40.97%, respectively.

The evidence indicates that IR is superior to non-IR water governance disclosure, and the study, therefore, contributes to the literature around the legitimacy theory by concluding that IR is supportive to companies to legitimise their being.

The originality of this paper stems from the comparison of water governance disclosures between IR and non-IR firms. Considering that IR preparers outperformed companies in the non-IR group could provide insights to academics, regulators and reporting organisations that IR could be used to enhance water governance disclosure.

The recent COVID-19 outbreak and severe natural disasters make the design of the humanitarian supply chain network (HSCN) a crucial strategic issue in a pre-disaster scenario. The HSCN design problem deals with the location/allocation of emergency response facilities (ERFs). This paper aims to propose and demonstrate how to design an efficient HSCN configuration under the risk of ERF disruptions.

This paper considers four performance measures simultaneously for the HSCN design by formulating a weighted goal programming (WGP) model. Solving the WGP model with different weight values assigned to each performance measure generates various HSCN configurations. This paper transforms a single-stage network into a general two-stage network, treating each HSCN configuration as a decision-making unit with two inputs and two outputs. Then a two-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is applied to evaluate the HSCN schemes for consistently identifying the most efficient network configurations.

Among various network configurations generated by the WGP, the single-stage DEA model does not consistently identify the top-ranked HSCN schemes. In contrast, the proposed transformation approach identifies efficient HSCN configurations more consistently than the single-stage DEA model. A case study demonstrates that the proposed transformation method could provide a more robust and consistent evaluation for designing efficient HSCN systems. The proposed approach can be an essential tool for federal and local disaster response officials to plan a strategic design of HSCN.

This study presents how to transform a single-stage process into a two-stage network process to apply the general two-stage network DEA model for evaluating various HSCN configurations. The proposed transformation procedure could be extended for designing some supply chain systems with conflicting performance metrics more effectively and efficiently.

Successful knowledge transfer (KT) between younger and older workers (YW and OW, respectively) is critical for organizational success, especially in light of the recent surge in employment volatility among the youngest and oldest segments of the workforce. Yet, practitioners and scholars alike continue to struggle with knowing how best to facilitate these exchanges. The qualitative study offers insight into this phenomenon by exploring how KT unfolds in YW/OW dyads.

The authors performed a reflexive thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with two samples of blue- and white-collar younger/older workers from the USA (N = 40), whereby the authors interpreted the “lived experiences” of these workers when engaged in interdependent tasks.

The analysis, informed by social exchange theory and exchange theories of aging, led to the development of the knowledge transfer process model in younger/older worker dyads (KT-YOD). The model illustrates that, through different combinations of competence and humility, KT success is experienced either directly (by workers weighing the perceived benefits versus costs of KT) and/or indirectly (through different bases of trust/distrust perceived within their dyads). Further, humility in dyads appears to be necessary for KT success, while competence was insufficient for realizing KT success, independently.

In exposing new inner workings of the KT process in YW/OW dyads, the study introduces the importance of humility and brings scholars and organizations a step closer toward realizing the benefits of age diversity in their workplaces.

When discussing the term “technology-facilitated violence” (TFV) it is often asked: “Is it actually violence?” While international human rights standards, such as the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (United Nations General Assembly, 1979), have long recognized emotional and psychological abuse as forms of violence, including many forms of technology-facilitated abuse (United Nations, 2018), law makers and the general public continue to grapple with the question of whether certain harmful technology-facilitated behaviors are actually forms of violence. This chapter explores this question in two parts. First, it reviews three theoretical concepts of violence and examines how these concepts apply to technology-facilitated behaviors. In doing so, this chapter aims to demonstrate how some harmful technology-facilitated behaviors fit under the greater conceptual umbrella of violence. Second, it examines two recent cases, one from the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) in Canada and a Romanian case from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), that received attention for their legal determinations on whether to define harmful technology-facilitated behaviors as forms of violence or not. This chapter concludes with observations on why we should conceptualize certain technology-facilitated behaviors as forms of violence.

This paper aims to show that zakat solves the collective action problem by changing the framework of giving. An additional purpose of this paper is an attempt to fill a critical gap in the Islamic economics literature. This gap concerns the nature and role of zakat in effectively delivering aid to those in need while mitigating the potential for free riding. There is also a general gap in the current literature on Islamic economics that the issues of zakat and charity have not received the same attention as the focus remained mostly on money, banking and the issues of interest and usury. The paper is also an attempt to provide a refocus.

This paper attempts to build an argument to show how zakat can function as a unique solution to the free-rider problem in voluntary charity. The author’s argument is based on a precise theoretical framework, namely the “free-rider problem,” and how zakat can function as a unique solution to this problem. The author also uses game theory to show how reputation can lead to cooperation in a repeated game. The author uses an example from Pakistan to show how reputation can be a disciplinarian of zakat collection organizations.

Zakat solves both the free-rider problem in ordinary charity and the coordination problem between members in a large group. The free-rider problem is solved by changing the very framework of giving and the coordination problem between Muslims around the globe disappears because the rates and details of levying zakat are centrally created based on divine revelation.

This paper presents an important topic as it addresses one of the most popular giving practices in Muslim societies, called zakat. It also provides a framework in examining the meaning and function of zakat in Muslim societies.

This paper reports results of analyses made at an all-female Gulf Arab university measuring the nature and extent of biases in students' evaluation of faculty. Comparisons are made with research reporting the nature of similar relationships in North America. Two issues are investigated: 1) What variables (if any) bias faculty evaluation results at an all-female Arab university? 2) Are biasing variables different in nature or magnitude to those reported at North America universities? Using the population of 13,300 faculty evaluation records collected over two school years at Zayed University, correlations of faculty evaluation results to nine potentially biasing factors are made. Results show biases to faculty evaluation results do exist. However, biases are small, and strikingly similar in nature to those reported at North American universities.

This paper adds to the literature on societal grand challenges by shifting the focus away from business firms and other formal organizations as key actors in addressing such challenges toward the inherent organizing capacity that lies in the use of language itself. More specifically, we focus on the organizing capacities of metaphor-based communication, seeking to ascertain which qualities of metaphors enable them to co-orient collective action toward tackling grand challenges. In addressing this question, we develop an analytical framework based on two qualities of metaphorical communication that can provide such co-orientation: a metaphor’s (a) vividness and (b) responsible actionability. We illustrate the usefulness of this framework by assessing selected metaphors used in the public discourse to make sense of and organize collective responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the flu metaphor/analogy, the war metaphor, and the combined metaphor of “the hammer and the dance.” Our paper contributes to extant research by providing a means to assess the co-orienting potential of metaphors in bridging varied interpretations. In so doing, our framework can pave the way toward more responsible use of metaphorical communication in tackling society’s grand challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of identity play process by including the stories we live by in depth. Over the past decade, identity play literature has placed more emphasis on the role of self-narratives. Yet, the “stories we live by”, including the told or untold stories of past and imagined events of the future, have not been considered in depth in these self-narratives.

This conceptual paper draws on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures and attempts to include the stories we live by in scholarly conceptualizations and explorations of identity play processes.

Drawing on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures this paper offers a comprehensive conceptual model of how the stories we live by infuse individual identity construction processes. The model highlights the inter-connectivity among stories we live by, identity play, identity work, sensemaking and social validation. Looking through the lens of the personal construct theory and taking these inter-connectivities into account lead to the observation of temporality in identity construction and the plurivocality of self-narratives.

This paper looks at identity play through the lens of the personal construct theory. However, self-narratives are seen as a medium for manifestation of personal constructs. Thus, this paper also draws on the narrative identity literature and dialogical-self concept, which helps access the multiplicity of the self-narratives to widen our grasp of personal constructs. This paper combines discourse of deconstruction with the dialogical-self concept and provides more means for the explication of identity play.