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This study aims to investigate the role of negative media coverage of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in deterring tax avoidance. Inspired by media agenda-setting theory and legitimacy theory, this study hypothesises that an increase in ESG negative media coverage should cause a reputational drawback, leading companies to reduce tax avoidance to regain their legitimacy. Hence, this study examines a novel channel that links ESG and taxation.

This study uses panel regression analysis to examine the relationship between negative media coverage of ESG issues and tax avoidance among the largest European entities. This study considers different measures of tax avoidance and negative media coverage.

The results show that negative media coverage of ESG issues is negatively associated with tax avoidance, suggesting that media can act as an external monitor for corporate taxation.

The findings have implications for policymakers and regulators, which should consider tax transparency when dealing with ESG disclosure requirements. Tax disclosure should be integrated into ESG reporting.

The study has social implications related to the media, which act as watchdogs for firms’ irresponsible practices. According to this study’s findings, increased media pressure has the power to induce a better alignment between declared ESG policies and tax strategies.

This study contributes to the literature on the mechanisms that discourage tax avoidance and the literature on the relationship between ESG and taxation by shedding light on the role of media coverage.

This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.

The empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.

This study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.

The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.

The findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.

This paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

Self-presentation is an important aspect of influencer marketing. Drawing upon self-presentation theory and source credibility theory, this study aimed to unravel how the self-presentation strategies of a layperson, opinion leadership and micro-celebrity influence source credibility (i.e. trustworthiness, expertise, physical attractiveness and social attractiveness) and how source credibility, in turn, affects brand responses.

An online experiment among female participants (N = 229) was conducted. Participants were shown a sponsored blog in which the influencer presented herself as either a layperson, an opinion leader or a micro-celebrity.

The study demonstrated that the presentation strategy of a layperson was more persuasive than a micro-celebrity presentation because of higher levels of (1) trust and (2) social attractiveness. In addition, opinion leaders were perceived as having more expertise than laypeople and, therefore, positively enhanced brand responses.

The current findings provide relevant insights into the theoretical mechanisms (i.e. expertise, trustworthiness and social attractiveness) that explain the effects of self-presentation strategies on brand responses.

Our findings imply that credibility perceptions determine the persuasiveness of the SMI. This study showed that layperson and opinion leadership self-presentation strategies are relatively more persuasive.

This study is the first to show that influencers’ self-presentation strategies determine how people respond to the brands that influencers promote. In addition, we show that these effects are explained by the influencers’ trust, social attractiveness and expertise.

This paper has a dual purpose. The first is to provide a thorough analysis of developments in international marketing in relation to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic; the second is to capitalize on these developments to set an agenda for future research in the field of international marketing.

This paper zooms in on and reviews the 18 papers published in International Marketing Review’s (IMR) Special Issue on “Covid 19: advancing international marketing theory and guiding practice” (2023, volume 40, issue 5). It also integrates recent research at the intersection of international marketing and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper highlights five areas that embody significant contemporaneous changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and affect international marketing practice. These include (1) shifts in consumer behavior, (2) digitalization and artificial intelligence, (3) disruptions in supply chains, (4) communication and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and (5) international dynamic marketing capabilities. In order to advance international marketing theory in relation to pandemics and other external crises, the paper establishes research directions for each of these areas.

The paper provides a novel and comprehensive categorization of fundamental shifts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and lays out a research roadmap to advance research in the field of International Marketing (IM). Important implications for practice are also discussed.

This research aimed to explore the commonalities and differences in the type of information provided on corporate websites in relation to their employment brand equity.

Mixed methods of content analysis, ANOVA and regression analyses were employed to answer the research questions. The data were collected from multiple sources, including the websites of a sample of forty companies listed as the US Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work in 2012 and information presented on Fortune’s website as well.

Employment brand equity hardly showed any significant impact on either company’s job growth or reputation in the ranking as an “employer of choice”.

The results indicated some practices to make a company’s employment brand outstanding and how its web presence reflected its “brand” and presence for potential employees. They are useful for HR practitioners concerned with building an employee brand. For example, the more highly ranked companies in the Fortune 100 tend to provide more forms of online support related to employment opportunities.

Using brand equity theory from the marketing arena and applying this within the human resources management area, this study suggests that “employment brand equity” became a major factor that many companies and organizations should focus on to enhance their standing with job seekers, particularly talented ones. Nearly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, the best companies to work for in the US had paid attention to digitalization via websites and social media, to attract talent (and support employees).

The aim of this paper, which analyses the use of sports celebrities in advertising discourse, is to understand the strategic use to which brands put them in their commercial and corporate communication on Instagram.

To this end, a content analysis was performed on the Instagram posts of the brands Santander, Movistar, Red Bull and Iberdrola during the period 2021-2022.

The results indicate that, strategically speaking, these brands use the celebrity endorsement strategy to pursue emotional objectives and to adopt a position depending on the type of user. Likewise, these findings show that they single out uniqueness as the principal celebrity characteristic, while also mainly leveraging sports values, especially competence. These values represented by sports celebrities are markedly social in nature, which implies that they enjoy a degree of public recognition that is transferred to the brand to which they lend their image.

The conclusions connect celebrity endorsers with strategic branding issues and aspects of sports.

An empirical approach is followed here to study the representation of sports celebrities in the advertising of well-known brands linked to the sports world.

Engaging in webcare, i.e. responding to online reviews, can positively affect consumer attitudes, intentions and behavior. Research is often scarce or inconsistent regarding the effects of specific webcare strategies on business performance. Therefore, this study tests whether and how several webcare strategies affect hotel bookings.

We apply machine learning classifiers to secondary data (webcare messages) to classify webcare variables to be included in a regression analysis looking at the effect of these strategies on hotel bookings while controlling for possible confounds such as seasonality and hotel-specific effects.

The strategies that have a positive effect on bookings are directing reviewers to a private channel, being defensive, offering compensation and having managers sign the response. Webcare strategies to be avoided are apologies, merely asking for more information, inviting customers for another visit and adding informal non-verbal cues. Strategies that do not appear to affect future bookings are expressing gratitude, personalizing and having staff members (rather than managers) sign webcare.

These findings help managers optimize their webcare strategy for better business results and develop automated webcare.

We look into several commonly used and studied webcare strategies that affect actual business outcomes, being that most previous research studies are experimental or look into a very limited set of strategies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have led to significant transformations across industries and society, including the field of education. The integration of AI in educational settings has the potential to improve students' learning experience and support their individual competencies when paired with non-AI methods. Despite the growing importance of AI in modern education, there remains a noticeable research gap regarding its use in entrepreneurship education and the effects of Chatbots on students' entrepreneurial competencies. To address this gap, an exploratory study was conducted on undergraduate students who were tasked with using ChatGPT to improve their business model canvas.

The chosen methodology aligned with the research purpose, aiming to explore the relationship between Generative AI and competencies. Due to the novel nature of the research problem, an exploratory study was conducted using a mixed methods approach. A survey with open- and closed-ended questions was designed, and statistical and text analyses were performed to interpret data and test identified propositions.

The findings of this study indicate that ChatGPT can enhance the types of students' entrepreneurial competencies considered in this study: spotting opportunities, creativity, vision, valuing ideas and ethical and sustainable thinking. The results show that ChatGPT can be particularly helpful to improve the ability of students of valuing ideas.

Overall, this study highlights the potential of adopting ChatGPT in experiential learning methodologies for enhancing students' entrepreneurial competencies and improving their learning outcomes.

This research aims to analyse the perceptions of practitioners in three regions regarding the challenges faced by their firms during the pandemic, considered a black-swan event. It examines the strategies implemented to mitigate and recover from risks, evaluates the effectiveness of these strategies and assesses the difficulties encountered in their implementation.

In the summer of 2022, an online survey was conducted among supply chain (SC) practitioners in France, Poland and the St. Louis, Missouri region of the USA. The survey aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19 on their firms and the SC strategies employed to sustain operations. These regions were selected due to their varying levels of SC development, including infrastructure, economic resources and expertise. Moreover, they exhibited different responses in safeguarding the well-being of their citizens during the pandemic.

The study reveals consistent perceptions among practitioners from the three regions regarding the impact of COVID-19 on SCs. Their actions to enhance SC resilience primarily relied on strengthening collaborative efforts within their firms and SCs, thus validating the tenets of the relational view.

COVID-19 is (hopefully) our black-swan pandemic occurrence during our lifetime. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from it can inform future SC risk management practices, particularly in dealing with rare crises. During times of crisis, leveraging existing SC structures may prove more effective and efficient than developing new ones. These findings underscore the significance of relationships in ensuring SC resilience.

Since previous literature provides fragmented and conflicting results about the use of digital data for product innovation, the article aims to comprehensively explore and shed light on how agri-food firms utilise external and internal digital data sources when dealing with different product innovations, such as incremental, architecture and radical innovation.

This paper adopts an exploratory multiple-case study and a theory-building process, focussing on the agri-food industry. We collected primary and secondary data from eight manufacturing companies.

The findings of this research show an empirical framework of six agri-food firms’ digital data utilisation behaviours: the supervisor, the passive supervisor, the developer, the passive developer, the pathfinder and the conjunction behaviour. These digital data utilisation behaviours vary according to a combination of data sources, such as internal data related to inside phenomenon measures (e.g. data generated by sensors installed in the production plan) or external data (e.g., market trends, overall sector sales), and innovation purposes.

This article offers guiding principles that assist agri-food companies when utilising internal and external digital data sources for specific product innovation outcomes such as incremental, architectural and radical innovation.

The significance of external and internal data sources in stimulating product innovation has garnered substantial attention within academic discussions, highlighting the critical importance of analysing digital data for driving such innovation. Nonetheless, the predominant approach is to study a single innovation outcome through the lens of digital technology. In contrast, our study stands out by adopting a fundamental perspective on data sources, enabling a more nuanced explanation of the overall product innovation outcomes within the agri-food sector.