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The purpose of this paper is to answer the question how important are privacy and communication and self-expression needs in social networks on the internet, especially in the case of uploading photos. Therefore, the existing privacy calculus model of Dinev and Hart (2006) will be enlarged with new constructs and checked for validation.

For the application and verification of the proposed research model, an online survey was carried out. Within the data analysis phase, several methods, for example, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, have been integrated, and the most important measures (e.g. Cronbach’s alpha and fit indices) have been calculated. This allows the existence of the requirements for important quality criteria for measurement models, for example, reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and model fit, to be checked.

The results confirm the fit of the proposed research model. The needs of all quality criteria are fulfilled. This indicates that the proposed research model helps to investigate the influence of privacy and communication factors on online behavior. In addition, the results show that the willingness to provide images on the internet is highly influenced by communication and self-presentation needs and the internet trust also has an influence on the willingness to provide images on the internet.

This paper is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, which considers privacy concerns and communication needs when analyzing the behavior of users of social network services, exemplarily for the case of uploading photos. This will give the growing research field of online services a new tool to properly take these important factors into account.

Companies have to consider people as one of the most important resources. Especially, the combination of demanding work and academic workers requires activities with regard to employer branding. An employer brand is an intangible asset that allows companies to look for motivated and capable employees (Hillebrandt, 2013). Consequently, the concept of employer branding can be used (Brickson, 2005; Heilmann et al., 2013). The purpose of this paper is to supplement the first empirical investigations with students as new employees (e.g. Daniel et al., 2015) by the perceptions of potential employees in less powerful, i.e. more rural, regions.

This paper summarizes existing findings and enhances two empirical investigations of 431 students of a technical university in a medium-sized city and 211 students of a university of applied sciences in a rural region in Germany. The data collection and analysis will focus on different methodical alternatives of identifying important drivers and dimensions of employer branding, as well as identifying different groups of potential employees and gender differences.

The paper highlights the need of the underrepresented but successful consideration of group specific analyses and following strategies in case of employer branding. The existing approaches of the establishment of an employer branding concepts can be improved through more suitable strategy elements when the addressees are better known.

The findings allow new insights, especially to smaller regions and companies and the awareness of group-specific analyses in general and in case of the development of an employer branding concept.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an approach to include the influence of design attributes (DA) into an early product development step. In general, the development of new products with market success is of high relevance for companies. Because of a relatively high-quality level in general, not the product quality itself but rather new issues as attributes with aesthetical values are becoming more and more important. However, the right consideration of these attributes is still one of the challenges.

The underlying investigation is based on an empirical data set resulting from a survey with motorcycles as research object. Motorcycles are a good example for a good with a certain relevance of DA for the buying decision of customers. The data collection and analysis will focus on a recommended presentation alternative of measuring perceptions and influences through customer evaluations, separating customer segments and identifying differences. Therefore, data analysis methods such as cluster analysis will be applied.

The findings are new for researchers from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. The results verify the use of pictorial stimulus presentation and emphasize the necessary integration of DA within the product development process.

Within the paper the usefulness of the consideration of design elements in case of gathering customer meanings is highlighted. Therefore, existing approaches of measuring design attribute influences and using pictorial instead of verbal descriptions of stimuli are adopted and enhanced through the use of additional information of the respondents.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to measure and to evaluate product descriptors which have a high relevance from customers’ point of view. When developing new goods, i.e. products and services, decision makers have to include consumer evaluations within their decision-making process. These evaluations should analyze the product descriptors, which are really relevant from the customers’ point of view and which can be totally different from simple physical or technical attributes in the case of material goods. Besides these several types of product characteristics, the evaluations should consider external influencing factors like the involvement.

In this investigation, an empirical data set resulting from a complex technical product-related survey is used. The products analyzed are smartphones and can be seen as representative examples with both objective physical features and subjective design-related attributes. The data collection and analysis will focus on subjective attributes, identifying factors and separating customer segments, e.g. using cluster analysis. Additionally, the existence of influence factors such as the involvement of the customers will be tested.

The results show relevant differences from the customers’ point of view with regard to product descriptors which are different for every customer and hard to describe. The investigation leads to five different respondent groups. Additionally, other external (customer behavior-related) influence factors – especially the involvement – can be identified as relevant. The analyses point out that there is a need to analyze the customers on an individual level and to consider influencing factors.

The investigation illustrates consequences of the usage of customer individual subjective elements as product descriptors which are relevant from the customers’ viewpoint. The resulting insights are new for researchers from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. The results verify, among others, the needs to analyze the customers on an individual level and to consider external (customer behavior-related) influence factors.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify, evaluate and structure the research that focusses on omni-channel retailing from the perspective of logistics and supply chain management; and to reveal the intellectual foundation of omni-channel retailing research.

The paper applies a multi-method approach by conducting a content-analysis-based literature review of 70 academic papers. Based on the reference lists of these papers, the authors performed a citation and co-citation analysis based on the 34 most frequently cited papers. This analysis included multidimensional scaling, a cluster analysis and factor analysis.

The study reveals the limited consideration of logistics and supply chain management literature in the foundation of the omni-channel retailing research. Further, the authors see a dominance of empirical research as compared to conceptual and analytical research. Overall, there is a focus on the Western retail context in this research field. The intellectual foundation is embedded in the marketing discipline and can be characterised as lacking a robust theoretical foundation.

The contribution of this research is identifying, evaluating and structuring the literature of omni-channel research and providing an overview of the state of the art of this research area considering its interdisciplinary nature. This paper thus supports researchers looking to holistically comprehend, prioritise and use the underpinning literature central to the phenomena of omni-channel retailing. For practitioners and academics alike, the findings can trigger and support future research and an evolving understanding of omni-channel retailing.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the relation between sustainability practices and financial and market performance, and also, the role of non-financial performance outputs in this relation. Corporate sustainability is a growing area of importance for organizational development. Managing sustainability practices successfully is an imperative in achieving competitive advantage.

Using empirical data based on a large-scale survey among organizations in five countries (i.e. Germany, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain), this paper utilized mediation analysis to estimate and test the mediated effects in a multiple mediator model. As such, the sizes of indirect effects of sustainability practices on financial and market performance through potential mediators were estimated.

The results showed that innovation performance exerts a mediation effect in the relation between sustainability practices and financial and market performance. The main conclusion is that a greater engagement in sustainability practices leads to an increased innovation performance, which in turn leads to financial and market performance.

This paper is one of the first attempts to empirically validate sustainability exploitation and sustainability exploration practices. Besides, the analysis of the direct and indirect effects of sustainability exploration and sustainability exploitation practices on financial and market performance has not been yet addressed to a great extent.

Muslimophobia, or prejudice toward Muslims, results in employment discrimination, social exclusion of Muslims, anti-Muslim hate crimes, and physical and verbal assaults, in the United States and globally. Moreover, anti-Muslim incidents are on the rise in many countries. In this chapter, we provide a review of Muslimophobia and its dynamics and consequences in the workplace. We also make suggestions for reducing prejudice toward Muslim employees, using social psychological perspectives, particularly intergroup contact theory, and research on prejudice reduction. It is also argued that leaders play an important role in the combating of Muslimophobia, including creating opportunities for personalized interactions with Muslim employees and disseminating more information about Muslims and Islam. This chapter concludes with practical implications and suggestions for future research directions. Although there is much work to be done in reducing Muslimophobia and discrimination against Muslims, social psychological research emanating from intergroup contact theory suggests that it is a viable path for researchers and practitioners to pursue.

Microfinance practitioners have emphasized that appropriate control mechanisms are critical for the success of a microfinance institution (MFI). The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of external governance mechanisms on MFIs' performance, whereby external governance is defined as the control exercised by stakeholders and markets, and accountability mechanisms that operate to enforce internal governance.

This paper uses a database of 108 MFIs operating in over 30 countries and analyzes their performance by adopting an empirical approach usually employed in cross‐country banking research on the impact of market forces and regulation on performance. MFI performance is measured by sustainability and outreach indicators and is modeled as a function of external audit, microfinance rating, and regulatory status and controls for MFI and country‐specific characteristics.

Results indicate that regulatory involvement and financial statement transparency do not impact performance, while some but not all rating agencies may play a disciplining role.

At the time of the study, available data are limited to 108 organizations and since then more MFIs have made their financial statements available, therefore, the hypotheses of this paper can be retested.

Stakeholders should be aware that external control mechanisms in microfinance are weak, thus adequate internal governance mechanisms are important.

This paper offers empirical evidence that external governance mechanisms have limited impact on MFI performance.