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How can large international financial firms go green in authentic ways? What enhances ‘Net Zero action’? Changes in global banks, fund managers, and insurance firms are at the heart of green finance. External change pressures – combined with problematic firm predispositions – exacerbate barriers to change and promote scepticism about authentic Net Zero change. Field research reveals main elements, connections, and interactions of this question by considering financial firms as complex socio-technical systems (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). An interdisciplinary/holistic narrative approach (De Bakker et al., 2019) is adopted to design a conceptual framework that can support a green ‘behavioural theory of the financial firm’ (green BTFF). The BTFF presents an international version (Peng, 2001) of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991; Hart, 1995; Teece et al., 1997).

The approach of this chapter is aimed at closing knowledge gaps and realign values in financial markets and society. By raising awareness about organised hypocrisy and facades (Brunsson, 1993; Cho et al., 2015; Schoeneborn et al., 2020) in financial firms the chapter aims at overcoming the gap between ‘talking’ and ‘walking’ in the financial sector. The chapter defines testable firm-level hypotheses for ‘Green Finance’ (Poterba, 2021) as well as – by implication – tests for ‘greenwashing’.

Research on measures to strengthen the implementation of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) principles has been scarce in developing countries such as Nigeria. Hence, this study sought to identify and assess the crucial measures for encouraging the adoption of IEQ principles in the Nigerian construction industry, specifically from the viewpoint of quantity surveyors.

To accomplish this objective, a quantitative research methodology was employed, utilizing a well-structured questionnaire distributed to quantity surveying (QS) firms in Nigeria. The collected data were examined using a range of statistical techniques such as frequencies, percentages, mean item scores (MISs), the Kruskal–Wallis test and exploratory factor analysis.

The top five ranked measures were as follows: offer financial incentives and tax breaks, develop educational materials and resources, establish clear and accessible reporting mechanisms, develop awards and recognition programs and provide advocacy and awareness campaigns. Factor analysis led to the categorization of the identified measures into four primary clusters: education and training, policy and regulation, incentivization and recognition and collaboration and networking. Consequently, these clusters were renamed the EPIC (Education and training, Policy and regulation, Incentivization and recognition and Collaboration and networking) framework, with each first letter representing a significant measure for fostering the adoption of IEQ principles.

Consequently, this study offers a robust foundation for understanding and implementing measures to enhance the adoption of IEQ principles within the Nigerian construction industry, ultimately benefiting stakeholders and improving the quality of built environments.

The EPIC framework designed in this study offers valuable insights for policymakers, construction industry professionals and other stakeholders interested in promoting IEQ principles, which can potentially lead to healthier, more comfortable and more sustainable built environments in Nigeria and beyond.

Tourists’ resource integration both offers opportunities and presents challenges to tourism service providers. Focussing on the tour guide perspective, the purpose of this paper is to explore how tour guides experience knowledge/information-based asymmetry in encounters with tourists and identifies the roles and coping strategies used by guides to facilitate service co-production.

Critical incident technique is used in qualitative interviews with 47 tour guides in Scotland, broadly representative of the Scottish tour guiding context. 107 critical incidents were analysed, with an average of 2.32 incidents per interview. Narrative analysis of the incidents was performed inductively in four iterative steps using QSR NVivo.

Three resource asymmetry incident categories are identified: probing – Guide-Oracle is questioned by inquiring tourists and copes through diverting, evasion, and follow-up strategies; learning – Guide-Magpie learns from expert tourists through acknowledging and co-delivery; and negotiation – Guide-Diplomat with greater knowledge helps misguided tourists save face through appeasing, following the official line and tactfully correcting.

The paper contributes to service co-production research in tourism by theorising about contexts where knowledge/information asymmetry exists between tour guides and tourists, particularly where fluid power relations between guides and knowledgeable tourists occur or where misguided tourists co-produce the service by prioritising own meanings. Findings highlight the importance of soft skills and other non-content capabilities of guides, and suggestions are offered for effective training and resource sharing/ learning initiatives for tour guiding services.

游客资源整合为旅游服务提供商提供了机遇, 同时也带来了挑战。本文以导游视角为重点, 探讨了导游在与游客接触中如何体验知识/信息不对称, 并识别了导游用于促进服务共同生产的角色和应对策略。

本研究采用关键事件技术（CIT）进行质性访谈, 对象为苏格兰的47名导游, 广泛代表苏格兰导游环境。分析了107个关键事件, 每次访谈平均2.32个事件。对事件的叙述分析在QSR NVivo中通过四个迭代步骤进行归纳性分析。

确定了三个资源不对称的事件类别：1）探询 - 导游-神谕被询问, 通过转移、回避和后续策略来应对询问的游客; 2）学习 - 导游-喜鹊通过承认和共同交付从专业游客中学到经验; 3）协商 - 导游-外交官以更多知识帮助误导的游客保全体面, 通过安抚、追随官方路线和巧妙纠正来应对。

本文通过理论化导游和游客之间存在知识/信息不对称的情境, 特别是在导游和知识丰富的游客之间存在流动权力关系的情况下, 或者误导的游客通过优先考虑自己的意义来共同生产服务的情境, 为旅游服务的共同生产研究做出了贡献。研究结果强调了导游的软技能和其他非内容能力的重要性, 并提出了关于为导游服务提供有效培训和资源共享/学习倡议的建议。

La integración de recursos de los turistas ofrece oportunidades y presenta desafíos para los proveedores de servicios turísticos. Centrándose en la perspectiva de los guías turísticos, este artículo explora cómo los guías turísticos experimentan una asimetría basada en conocimiento/información en encuentros con turistas, e identifica los roles y estrategias de afrontamiento utilizados por los guías para facilitar la coproducción de servicios.

La técnica de incidentes críticos (CIT) se utiliza en entrevistas cualitativas con 47 guías turísticos en Escocia, ampliamente representativos del contexto de los guías turísticos escoceses. Se analizaron 107 incidentes críticos, con una media de 2,32 incidentes por entrevista. El análisis narrativo de los incidentes se realizó de forma inductiva en cuatro pasos iterativos utilizando QSR NVivo.

Se identifican tres categorías de incidentes de asimetría de recursos: 1) Sondeo: los turistas interrogan a Guide-Oracle y lo afronta mediante estrategias de desvío, evasión y seguimiento; 2) Aprendizaje: Guide-Magpie aprende de turistas expertos a través del reconocimiento y la entrega conjunta; y 3) Negociación: el guía-diplomático con mayor conocimiento ayuda a los turistas descarriados a salvar las apariencias apaciguándolos, siguiendo la línea oficial y corrigiendo con tacto.

El artículo contribuye a la investigación de la coproducción de servicios en el turismo al teorizar sobre contextos donde existe asimetría de conocimiento/información entre guías turísticos y turistas, particularmente donde ocurren relaciones de poder fluidas entre guías y turistas conocedores, o donde turistas equivocados coproducen el servicio priorizando propios significados. Los hallazgos resaltan la importancia de las habilidades interpersonales y otras capacidades de los guías no relacionadas con el contenido, y se ofrecen sugerencias para iniciativas efectivas de capacitación e intercambio de recursos/aprendizaje para los servicios de guías turísticos.

With the rise of the gig economy, management positions are increasingly staffed with flexible labor, so-called interim managers. They plunge into organizations for a limited period, operating in a liminal position as partly insider, partly outsider. Although several contributions to their client organizations are acknowledged, it is unknown how the interim manager’s knowledge from previous assignments is made useful in the new context under these particular working conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the interim manager’s knowledge is transferred to the client organization while operating from a liminal position.

This paper presents an interview-based multiple case study of six interim assignments where knowledge transfer is considered a social and context-dependent process.

The findings unveil the multifaceted nature of the liminal position, which consists of task orientation, time limitation, political detachment and cultural distance. These facets contribute to knowledge transfer in terms of new shared understandings and joint interests, which in turn might create new practices that augment continuous knowledge-sharing patterns.

The results contribute to the research on flexible work arrangements by shedding light on how the liminal position, predominantly depicted as an obstacle for the individual, might facilitate knowledge transfer. Through the process of knowledge generation, it is shown how a short-term engagement might enable the organization to increase its knowledge over time.

In this chapter, we discuss talent development in the context of higher education. After discussing the advantages and disadvantages of inclusive and exclusive approaches to talent development, we present empirical data that detail how the participants of a focus group study perceive talent development in higher education. Our data show the importance of a contextualized reading of talent development as the competitive context in academia hinders an inclusive focus on talent development. This context results in a performance-centred, instead of a development-centred approach to talent management, where outperforming others in narrowly defined areas (e.g. publication record) is the main goal. We show that in such a context the development of competitive talent is rewarded, and the development of communal talent is not. The focus on performance instead of (inclusive) development becomes more pronounced when employees move through their career and is believed to have several negative consequences. Mostly women perceived that such a non-inclusive approach to talent development hinders the development and deployment of their talents and obstructs their career progression.

This chapter explores the relevance of critical race theory (CRT) and queer theory to the relational aspects of program evaluation. Often conceptual binaries that undergird traditional evaluation theory and practice (e.g., internal versus external evaluation, subjective versus objective analysis, observation versus intervention, and insider versus outsider positionalities) adversely influence rigid social roles between evaluator and participant limit a study's effectiveness in supporting programs for equity in contemporary school districts. To illustrate this approach, an array of problems within a program evaluation of a district-wide ethnic studies reform initiative is presented. Approaches to these challenges rooted in tenets of CRT and queer theory illustrate how the district was able to clarify goals and develop an effective implementation plan that focused on effective ethnic studies curriculum and pedagogy.

This study aims to descriptively identify and refine the role of emotional intelligence (EI) in the retail banking employee–customer contact context, and prescriptively use this knowledge to develop a framework for improving true customer service without excess organizational cost, in Lebanon.

The research adopts the classical interpretive/constructivist ontology and the interpretivism/constructivism epistemology, and it rests on a tripod of methodological foundations. The first leg is the theoretical work that sets the extant scientific ground for the empirical work to develop. The second incorporates the main (qualitative) empirical tools, i.e. 40 interviews with customers and HR managers (NVivo-analyzed), plus a critical incident technique study. The third includes the supportive tools of secondary data and an expert panel composed of industry and scholarly specialists.

EI was empirically shown to modulate the levels of customer satisfaction and to hold a critical role in the company–customer interface, albeit one that is currently and unjustly both undervalued and ineffectively controlled. The findings identify the key factors and exhibited behavioral attributes of EI within the customer service process, and they integrate all into a comprehensive framework of both scholarly and executive worth.

This study provides distinct theoretical elucidations and conceptualization that have identified and interrelated the relevant works on the subject; empirically refines the variables involved in the EI context of retail banking customer service; and culminates in the form of the proposed framework that incorporates and interrelates the findings into an empirical-data-based composition of both scholarly and executive orientation and worth.

This study aims to examine the moderating effect of sustainability marketing on brand loyalty of brands that advertise their sustainable development agenda goals. The study highlights the mediating effect of brand love having cognitive antecedents of brand authenticity, popularity and congruence with private and social self of the consumer.

A mall intercept survey was used to collect data from consumers who use brands that embrace sustainable marketing strategies. Only those brands were selected which are popular as well as advertise sustainable practices in their brand communication (mainstream and social media). The data was self-administered by trained research assistants, who gathered data from a sample of 350 respondents.

The findings revealed that the popularity and authenticity of a brand play an essential role in developing brand love and later influences brand loyalty behavior. A larger effect is seen on brand love when there is congruence of private and social self with the brand. The brand has even a stronger relationship with brand loyalty when moderated by sustainability marketing.

Brand love has the potential for long-term influences, only if sustainability marketing is used as a backbone. Brand managers should target an authenticity-seeking segment of consumers, who once convinced can lead to repeat business and brand loyalty and reduce dissonance. As sustainability marketing provides multiple benefits, genuine branding strategies should be devised that amalgamate into a single message spun around sustainability concerns and connecting the ethos of authenticity, popularity and self-expression. Future research may take into consideration more categories than this study on clothing, and consumer goods, adopting a mixed-methods approach. Moreover, a range of potential antecedents of brand love can be determined along with potential outcomes when aligned with external efforts such as sustainability, corporate social responsibility and international investment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating the moderating role of sustainability marketing on the relationship between brand love and brand loyalty and the mediating role of brand love between brand authenticity, popularity, social/private-self-expression and brand loyalty. It is also the first study documenting how sustainability marketing reinforces the brand loyalty for popular brands in developing countries like Pakistan. This study fills a research gap as it expands the existing literature on sustainability marketing and brand love that is generally focused on brand dimensions and not the brand communications and thus has not reached similar results.