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Through activism, brands participate in the sociopolitical controversies that shape society today. Based on social identity theory, this study aims to examine the moderating effects of consumer–brand identification (CBI) and political ideology in explaining consumer responses to brand activism. Furthermore, the role of perceived marginalization that can arise in the case of consumer–brand disagreement is explored.

The hypothesized effects were tested in three experiments. Study 1 (n = 262) and Study 2 (n = 322) used a moderation analysis, which was supplemented by a mixed design analysis with repeated measures in Study 1. In Study 3 (n = 383), the mediating effect of perceived marginalization by the brand was tested using a moderated mediation model.

The results show that strong CBI as well as a conservative ideology buffer the negative effects of consumer–brand disagreement on brand attitude and word-of-mouth intentions. In the case of agreement with a brand’s stance, no direct or interactive effects of brand activism on consumer responses occur. Perceived marginalization by a brand mediates the effects of brand activism.

This study extends the “love is blind” versus “love becomes hate” debate to the realm of brand activism and finds evidence for the former effect. It also contributes to the research on political consumption by highlighting the role of political ideology as an important boundary condition for brand activism. Perceived marginalization is identified as a relevant risk for activist brands.

This study aims to explore how the attitudes, motivations and practices of informal entrepreneurs, who choose service exclusion, prevent them from recognizing and taking advantage of transformative opportunities and embracing change.

The authors conducted a two-year study to explore five types of informal entrepreneurs (musicians, street vendors, artists, owners of informal smoke shops and street food vendors). The authors used semi-structured interviews and applied thematic analysis (ATA) of popular music and narratives to shed light on their attitudes, motivations and practices.

The study shows how potential service participants freely exclude themselves from services and transformative service initiatives, preventing them from realizing opportunities and embracing change that can improve their well-being. The study also demonstrates that to serve human needs fairly, service designers need to recognize that some actors require more attention and resources than others to achieve their potential.

The study challenges the notion that any population experiencing vulnerability wants help and chooses to participate in transformative service initiatives. Service participants can, in fact, exclude themselves from services and transformative service initiatives by free will, demonstrating that service exclusion is a multidirectional phenomenon, not unidirectional. Additionally, the paper analyzes narratives gathered from aesthetic expressions, using principles of ATA, introducing music thematic analysis as a research approach.

Psychological ownership has been a topic of intense debate for several decades, especially in the digital era. In addition, as part of the digital public domain, virtual communities shape our digital lives. Unfortunately, few studies have examined the communication process in virtual communities from the perspective of psychological ownership. Moreover, information and organization are key aspects of virtual communities. This research aimed to explore the impact of psychological ownership on communication satisfaction from these two perspectives.

I collected 471 responses using a questionnaire. In terms of empirical methods, I developed a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the relationship between psychological ownership and communication satisfaction as well as the mechanism underlying this relationship – namely, information behavior. Specifically, I first examined the relationship between psychological ownership and information behavior. I then developed a comprehensive framework for the double-edged impact of psychological ownership in virtual communities on communication satisfaction.

I found that psychological ownership has a double-edged effect on communication satisfaction based on two types of information behavior in virtual communities. Specifically, organization-based psychological ownership (OPO) positively influences communication satisfaction through information exchange. In contrast, information-based psychological ownership (IPO) negatively impacts communication satisfaction through information-hiding.

The findings of this research demonstrate that psychological ownership has a double-edged effect on communication satisfaction. First, the findings of this study reveal the downsides of psychological ownership, which are not consistent with its beneficial role. Second, the negative effect of psychological ownership with regard to communication in virtual communities also helps explain communication failure in virtual communities. Finally, despite the downsides of psychological ownership in the context of a virtual community revealed by this study, this factor has an overall beneficial effect.

In this chapter, we introduce the history of critical thinking briefly, starting from Socrates to contemporary contributions. Based on this history, we derive several modules for training in critical thinking via practical exercises in critical thinking. Three classic critical thinking models are introduced: Socratic questioning method, Cartesian doubting method, and Baconian empirical method. We discuss their potential for critical thinking as foundational methods. The material in this chapter is distributed in three parts. In Part I, we provide a brief history of critical thinking. In Part II, we design models of critical thinking based on its classic history. In Part III, we list some models of critical thinking based on its history, from the Renaissance period to the current times. In the last section, we also discuss critical thinking in the context of business ethics, by delineating its normative domain, assessing its characteristics, and reviewing its processes.

The paper discusses a partnership between Huston–Tillotson University (HT), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) and the Austin Independent School District (AISD), a minority-serving school district, both in Austin, Texas, with a grant provided by Apple Inc. (Apple). The purpose of the partnerships is that valuable relationships can increase the number of African American male teachers in primary and secondary education in minority-serving public schools. The African American Male Teacher Initiative (AAMTI) at HT was created as an innovative approach to recruit and select 20 African American males each year of a four-year grant provided by Apple.

This paper reviewed the literature on the lack and need for African American male public school teachers. Once the data is established during a three-to-four-year period, a mixed-method approach will be utilized to examine data retrieved from interviews, surveys, demographics of student participants, numerical data and retention and graduation rates. This will establish whether strategic partnerships can successfully increase the number of qualified African American males in public education.

This paper proposes and provides research evidence that African American male teachers can positively impact all students in the classroom setting.

There is limited data to test a hypothesis on the effectiveness of a partnership between the university and public school to increase the number of African American male teachers through recruitment – selection and retention efforts. Therefore, follow-up research is needed for the first graduating class of 2024.

The broader impact of this paper is to show that partnerships between universities and public schools with corporate sponsorship can positively increase the number of African American male teachers prepared to teach in public schools through strategic recruitment and selection efforts.

This paper can serve as a model for universities and school districts to implement. High placement of prepared Black male teachers in public schools can reduce the school-to-prison pipeline and juvenile homicides and defeat generational poverty.

Much research highlights the problems associated with a lack of African American male teachers. This paper includes the challenges but offers a sound basis for practical solutions.

This paper conceptually aims to discuss the dual role of knowledge management (KM) and technological innovation, which brings about innovations, although it can be limited by psychological and emotional ownership.

This study examines the real impact of the paper on KM and technological innovation in family small to medium enterprises (FSMEs). This is a unique context affected by psychological and emotional ownership. However, COVID-19 has forced FSMEs to consider new strategies and practices to preserve their competitive advantage.

In this scenario, knowledge exchange, knowledge absorption and technology adoption appear relevant to the innovation process. This study offers a framework for how the duality of KM and technological innovation affects innovation.

Although extant research has explored technological innovation outcomes, a literature review reveals that accumulated studies on the drivers of technological innovation and KM in the context of FSMEs require further inquiry. Family members’ emotional ownership may foster KM because identification with organizational goals enhances individuals’ willingness to access and share information and stimulates new products and technological development.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

Over the years, the impact of personality attributes on work behavior has constituted a broad research domain. The manner in which employees view themselves have been regarded as significant in analyzing their work behavior and eventual employee performance from the organizational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between self-concept and performance, with resilience as a mediator and Machiavellianism as a moderating variable.

Data were collected from 271 employees from four medium-sized private sector companies in India after excluding missing data. Correlation, regression and Hayes Macro analysis were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Resilience mediates the relationship between self-concept and performance. Second, Machiavellianism moderated the relationship between self-concept and resilience and moderated the mediation effect of resilience on the relationship between self-concept and performance. The role of personality attributes has been found to profoundly impact the employee's perception of self and work performance. Resilience, which refers to the individual's ability to bounce back amidst adverse situations, is simultaneously moderated by one of the dark triad personalities, Machiavellianism.

Understanding the self-concept dimension, the dual effects of resilience and the Machiavellianism personality have gradually become immensely significant for improvising employee work performance in the organization.

This original research has examined a model of untested variables and explored the mediating effect of resilience by connecting self-concept to performance along with the moderated-mediated impact of Machiavellianism on the variables, which is a novel attempt.

Spatial olfactory design in the library appears to be a practical approach to enhance the coordination between architectural spaces and user behaviors, shape immersive activity experiences and shape immersive activity experiences. Therefore, this study aims to explore the association between the olfactory elements of library space and users’ olfactory perception, providing a foundation for the practical design of olfactory space in libraries.

Using the olfactory perception semantic differential experiment method, this study collected feedback on the emotional experience of olfactory stimuli from 56 participants in an academic library. From the perspective of environmental psychology, the dimensions of pleasure, control and arousal of users’ olfactory perception in the academic library environment were semantically and emotionally described. In addition, the impact of fatigue state on users’ olfactory perception was analyzed through statistical methods to explore the impact path of individual physical differences on olfactory perception.

It was found that users’ olfactory perception in the academic library environment is likely semantically described from the dimensions of pleasure, arousal and control. These dimensions mutually influence users’ satisfaction with olfactory elements. Moreover, there is a close correlation between pleasure and satisfaction. In addition, fatigue states may impact users’ olfactory perception. Furthermore, users in a high-fatigue state may be more sensitive to the arousal of olfactory perception.

This article is an empirical exploration of users’ perception of the environmental odors in libraries. The experimental results of this paper may have practical implications for the construction of olfactory space in academic libraries.