Search results

Women working in public relations (PR) in the 1990s developed the power of metamodern pragmatism to avoid being constrained in this decade of contradictions.

This was a time of promise for female empowerment and careers. The PR industry in Britain had quadrupled in size, yet increased feminisation and professionalisation did not resolve gender inequity. Indeed, alongside the existence of ‘old boys clubs’ and hedonistic macho agencies in the industry, the 1990s offered a lad's mag culture and an AbFab image of PR.

An original collaborative historical ‘Café Delphi’ method was developed using three themes (sex, sexuality and sexism) to explore women's careers and contributions in the expanding and increasingly powerful field of PR in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. It built on feminist critique of the industry and paradoxical portrayals of women resulting from significant changes in media, popular culture and a pluralistic marketplace.

Individual and collective experiences of women working in PR at the time reveal the power of attitudes to affect their ability to achieve equality and empowerment. Women navigated tensions between the benefits of accelerated pluralism and the patriarchal resistance in the workplace through performative choices and a deep sense of pragmatism.

This study aims to examine Braille usage among consumers with visual impairments, investigating motivations and addressing inherent challenges.

Drawing insights from 16 semistructured interviews with individuals experiencing blindness, this study reveals nuanced aspects of Braille utilization.

Three key motivations for Braille usage are identified: as a coping mechanism for functional needs and to combat stigma; as an embodied experience contributing to pleasure; and as a heritage embodying a culture of visual impairment. Obstacles include cultural and financial barriers to learning, incomplete retail transcriptions limiting practicality and spatial congestion issues.

This study underscores Braille’s dual function as both coping mechanism and cultural heritage. By highlighting obstacles, it sheds light on challenges faced by consumers with visual impairments, facilitating advocacy and promoting inclusive retail practices. Originality lies in recognizing diverse motivations and experiences among Braille users, offering insights for enhancing tactile engagement in the marketplace.

The purpose of this study is to find out what is the relationship between sustainability toward consumer behavior. Consumer behavior is the method of choosing, buying and using goods and services with an attachment to needs and wants. Now consumers are aware about sustainability, they make purchase decisions according to environmental safety, benefit to the society and increase economic growth.

This study validates the result through experts in textile industry by using the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory approach. This method has many benefits which provide decision makers and experts to understand the interdependence and influential relation between the criteria by hierarchical approach.

According to the results, green culture (F8) and green brand (F3) are the most influential (causal) factors and exert a substantial amount of influence over other factors for achieving organizational performance and sustainability. On the other hand, past experience (F14) and time pressure (F12) are the most influenced (effect) factors that are highly influenced by other factors.

The study conducted in Pakistan underscores the significance of maintaining a healthy and pristine environment for future generations. Both consumers and organizations play a vital role in this endeavor. It is imperative that they actively promote and support goods and services that advocate for sustainability.

Mangers should use long-term strategies that meet the high product value to enhance the organization’s reputation, so it will have positive consumer perception. If managers make policies to implement natural resources in their raw material, so this policy avoids conflicts and maintains a balance in our society.

This research delves into the complexities and subtleties associated with the identification and examination of the interconnections between the success factors of sustainability and consumer behavior.

In the African context, the threat of the disruption of traditional business value-creation processes, currently facilitated by the growing information technology (IT) ecosystem, came with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on interfirm relationships within the context of the digital ecosystem in Africa.

This study employs an explanatory–exploratory qualitative approach from an interpretivist stance to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on interfirm relationships. The authors conducted seven in-depth interviews with top management executives in a Nigerian technology company, together with the company's archival data that provided the pre, during and post pandemic (2018–2021) business-to-business (B2B) relationship structures, to determine how these relationships have been affected.

The results suggest that the pandemic had a minimal effect on partnership relationships in the B2B ecosystems of the case company but affected only non-partnership relationships.

The authors' qualitative study is interpretive and the sample size is limited. Hence, there is a need for caution in generalizing the findings. The framework can be further validated across a wider population.

Partnerships can help organizations weather business crises. Consequently, organizations should maintain a healthy number of partnership relations to deal with periods in which challenges emerge in the business landscape. In other words, with tight contracts and a strategic focus on goals and objectives, partnership relations can help organizations weather business crises.

This study builds upon the burgeoning body of literature on digital ecosystems within the African context, which is a relevant contextual contribution.

This paper aims to inform the discussion on why and how non-profit organizations can experience a hybridization process to address the criticism that would assume hybridity as an intrinsic characteristic of all organizations. Specifically, by referring to the academies of intellectuals as the non-profit setting in which investigating the emergence of hybridity takes place, this paper aims at exploring, first, to what extent this emergence could be induced by institutional conditions, and, second, which structural innovations could sustain the academies’ “motion” towards hybridity.

This paper relies on the institutional logics perspective and adopts the case study method applied to a historical context. The case under analysis is the Academy of “the Immobili”, which, in spite of its name, experienced a hybridization process in 1720 because of the decision to involve an impresario in the management of its theatre.

The findings highlight the significant role played by institutional conditions in inducing the emergence of hybridity, even in presence of internal resistance to any “motion” from the non-profit setting. Moreover, the analysis of the innovations associated with this emergence detects the intertwined action of the different decision makers involved in the hybridization process, in spite of their formal separation. These findings strengthen the conceptualization of hybridity within non-profit organizations.

Besides referring to a historical period that is still little explored in terms of hybridity within organizations, the paper focuses on an original context, i.e. academies, representing an ancient typology of cultural organizations. Therefore, the paper also provides the first insights into the hybridization process of cultural organizations from a historical perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel qualitative activity focus group (AFG) method for studying consumption practices. This participatory method, which is inspired by practice-theoretical thinking, combines focus group discussions with activities that represent the practices at the centre of the research.

The application of the AFG method is demonstrated with an empirical study of the transition to plant-based food consumption practices in Finland, involving four group sessions of 13 participants.

The findings from the empirical application of the AFG method illustrate that its key strength is the ability to foster fruitful and natural discussions on routine consumption practices that connect with discursive and practical dimensions and thus generate multidimensional data in resource-efficient ways.

The AFG method extends the methodological approaches in practice theory–oriented research, responding to the call for creative, real-life-reflecting methods that are able to grasp the discursive and embodied dimensions of practices. The method is proposed to be particularly suitable for research on mundane consumption practices.

This study aims to develop and test a research model that explores the empirical relationship between consumer religiosity, brand love and consumer forgiveness. Its objective was to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms that can influence consumers to extend forgiveness to brands in the context of Islamic banking in Tanzania.

The study used a quantitative cross-sectional survey design to gather data from 399 respondents in the Dodoma and Dar-es-salaam regions of Tanzania. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the data, which were subsequently analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS 21.

The study’s findings revealed that consumer forgiveness is influenced by the level of brand love at an individual level. Additionally, the findings indicate that in the context of Islamic banking, brand love is an emotional behavior that is influenced by the strength of religious beliefs, that is, consumer religiosity. Consequently, the findings highlighted the mediating role of brand love in the proposed relationship between consumer religiosity and consumer forgiveness.

The fact that Islamic banking is guided by Islamic laws (Sharia) and Islamic values means that competitiveness in this sector can be established by serving consumers who are well-versed in Islamic teachings and doctrines. Furthermore, customers who possess a strong understanding of Islamic teachings and doctrines can be an asset to Islamic banks, as they are less likely to switch banks due to service delivery issues.

This empirical study is one of the few attempts to explore the relationship between consumer religiosity, consumer forgiveness and brand love. It expands our understanding of consumer forgiveness by examining the influence of deontological norms (applying norms to assess Islamic banking practices) and teleological evaluation (evaluating Islamic banking practices based on the overall balance of right and wrong expected to occur).

Despite the growing popularity of online secondhand platforms globally, there is a lack of studies exploring how consumers worldwide perceive contamination and the use of secondhand goods differently according to the culture. Based on the consumer contamination theory, this study aims to investigate the cultural differences of South Koreans and Americans by examining three variables (e.g. transaction type, ownership duration and physical attractiveness) related to consumers' perception of contamination and purchase intentions for a secondhand apparel item.

Data were collected from 422 US and South Korean female consumers who were assigned to an experimental scenario, and their secondhand purchase intentions and perceived contamination were compared through independent t-tests and moderated regression analyses.

Consumers' purchase intentions increased, and perceived contamination decreased when the transaction type was business-to-consumer (vs consumer-to-consumer), when the item had been owned for a shorter period of time and when the item was sold by an attractive seller. Such effect was more pronounced for South Korean consumers than the US consumers in the negative contamination contexts (i.e. transaction type, ownership duration), but not in the positive contamination context (i.e. attractiveness).

The findings of the study add to the literature on consumer contamination theory through an examination of several negative and positive contamination factors in retail contexts and highlight the role of culture as a critical moderator.

The purpose of this paper is to examine peace as a paradigm for promoting peace culture.

The paper amalgamates paradigmatic concepts, insights and analytical writing while building on existing literature.

The findings of this research suggest that the paradigm of peace can be used as a model to promote peace culture and harmony in the 21st century, which is characterized by “hyper” and “super” diversity. Diversity is everywhere, including schools, workplaces and marketplaces. Diversity is very complex and encompasses nearly every element of human life. Diversity should not only be based on the race, culture, ethnicity, religion or gender of an individual. Diversity should be based on the uniqueness of an individual. The fact that we live in a diverse world does not mean that we cannot coexist harmoniously. This paper explores the paradigm of peace research by focusing on how it enhances peace culture to thrive amidst diversity. This study also illustrates that peace and conflict studies cannot be restricted to the resolution of war, violence and conflict. It can likewise aid us in addressing cultural, racial, religious and ethnic concerns. In addition, this research demonstrates that encouraging positive peace (and discouraging negative peace) can be used as a deterrent against violence, including war and conflict. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the significance of personal peace and some other types of peace. It demonstrates that inner peace combined with external peace yields personal peace. Therefore, an individual may not be able to enjoy the holistic values of personal peace without inner and external peace. Also, this research indicates that encouraging a daily culture of peace can assist us in becoming quotidian agents of peace.

Most publications focused on peace and conflict but made no connection between peace and culture. In addition, the majority of publications did not discuss peace as a paradigm that can aid in promoting a culture of peace and nonviolence. In addition, most papers did not link peace culture with diversity. Moreover, the majority of studies did not connect peace with the environment. This study addresses these gaps by introducing peace as a paradigm for fostering a culture of peace amidst diversity in the 21st century. This paper introduces peace as a paradigm for promoting nonviolence, peace culture and harmony. This study also emphasizes the need for environmental peace, thereby increasing awareness of the problems that affect the planet. This study also includes a discussion of positive and negative peace, as well as other definitions and viewpoints of peace. It also underlines the importance of establishing positive peace. This paper can be used as an introductory pathway to understanding the intriguing aspect of peace that fosters a peace culture if practiced adequately and why a peace culture is important in a world of diversity.

If building and nurturing a learning organization is not a random chance, the question of where organizations should start is patent. Because learning culture is one of the core components of learning organizations, it is wondered how individuals and organizations contribute to this phenomenon. Under an interactional perspective, the authors explore the cross-dynamics between learning resources, structure and support (organizational level), and self-directed learning (individual level).

The authors conducted qualitative and exploratory research in Spring 2021 in France. They used semi-structured interviews with HRMs and a Delphi panel as the main instruments. This dual approach brings a reflexive and complementary dialogue to the research question.

The results show that non-learning organizations took advantage of the Covid-19 period. They created a learning biotope and fostered learning dynamics. Although this biotope acted as a learning marketplace and lacked guidance, individuals interacted with this learning biotope. They took learning initiatives and developed their self-directed learning. This understanding argues for constant interaction and co-influence between organizations and individuals to build and nurture a learning culture.

There is little discussion on how individuals and organizations contribute to building and nurturing a learning culture from an interactional perspective. Furthermore, literature on learning organizations considers self-directedness as a whole, considering self-directed learning as a characteristic and a process sharpens thinking. On methodological concerns, the authors used a dual qualitative approach with interviews and Delphi for the first time in research on learning organizations.