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1 – 10 of 21Matthew M. Lastner, David A. Locander, Michael Pimentel, Andrew Pueschel, Wyatt A. Schrock, George D. Deitz and Adam Rapp
This study aims to examine the applicability of Hartmann et al.’s (2018) service ecosystem framework to the day-to-day management of the modern sales force. The authors provide a…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the applicability of Hartmann et al.’s (2018) service ecosystem framework to the day-to-day management of the modern sales force. The authors provide a review of the framework, acknowledging its strengths, while also indicating areas for advancement. The authors conclude with recommendations to the framework and indicate opportunities where future research could advance sales theory.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of the theoretical underpinnings of the service ecosystem framework is weighed against the established roles and responsibilities of the modern sales force in the literature.
Findings
The ability of the framework to capture the multi-level, multi-actor and dynamic aspects of sales represents an improvement in the conceptualization of selling is critical. Suggestions around the refinement for meso-level sales interactions and a more pliant application of service dominant-logic are offered.
Research limitations/implications
The suggested extensions of the framework continue the advancement of novel theorization for the field of sales. Priorities for future research include consideration of ethical implications of the framework and formulations of new management strategies reflective of the broad and dynamic properties of the ecosystem conceptualization.
Practical implications
This paper provides managerial guidelines and implications tied specifically to the thick and thin crossing points and how they may impact employee decision-making.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to pointedly examine the service ecosystem framework with respect to established principles of managing a modern sales force.
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Julie Nichols and Quenten Agius
Embedded in built environment discourse, this chapter examines the traditional knowledge and resilience of the Ngadjuri Nation Peoples through an Elder’s narrative of…
Abstract
Embedded in built environment discourse, this chapter examines the traditional knowledge and resilience of the Ngadjuri Nation Peoples through an Elder’s narrative of reconciliation as well as resistance in their subsisting colonial settlement. Removed from ‘Country’ in the 1840s, Ngadjuri Aboriginal community endured colonial industries of open-cut copper mining and large-scale pastoralism as irreparable destruction to their cultural landscapes. European processes in the resources sectors reshaped natural topographies, deconstructing Ngadjuri Songlines and Ancestral Dreaming stories. Burra’s colonial stone buildings of settlement, painstakingly cut and composed from materials of the surrounding ecological terrain, prompted new narratives from Ngadjuri as a way of alleviating scars. Broadly speaking, this chapter aims to show how cultural heritage of two communities is provocatively and conceptually unpacked through the vernacular buildings’ cross-cultural foundations. That is, an under-reported narrative was unwittingly bestowed on the colonial-built forms with hidden meanings that deserve further investigation. This chapter offers a counternarrative to colonial histories revealing Ngadjuri’s methods for reconnecting to Country and culture after generations of disempowerment. It explores how within the materiality of colonial structures, the Ngadjuri entwined their remediated storylines – revealing a data curation that had avoided popular discourse in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector representation. This example implies there are bodies of knowledge in built cultural heritage hidden elsewhere on our Aboriginal Nations and the challenges it presents GLAM in their Indigenisation processes.
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This paper aims to study antiques enthusiasts’ perspectives on the recent stagnancy in the antiques market, along with their suggestions on how the antiques trade can forge a more…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study antiques enthusiasts’ perspectives on the recent stagnancy in the antiques market, along with their suggestions on how the antiques trade can forge a more secure path forward.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative analysis approach through netnography, this paper examines archived comments of antiques enthusiasts on a “r/antiques” subreddit.
Findings
This research studies connoisseurs’ insights into the reduction in antiques sales experienced by a wide cross-section of sellers, particularly independent and small business retailers. Specifically, the results of this paper’s discourse analysis show that technological advances on one hand and socioeconomic factors (e.g. income, family structure and lifestyle) on the other hand have had a significant negative impact on demand for antiques. In addition, specific attributes such as authenticity and sustainability emerged as potential key marketing elements for invigorating the broader public’s interest in purchasing antiques.
Originality/value
Despite their significant insights into the antiques market, antiques enthusiasts have not received the academic attention they deserve. Through discourse analysis of comments in an online antiques community, this paper draws attention to the vulnerabilities of antiques markets to a protracted climate of slow sales, while highlighting potential strategies on how to turn the tide for struggling antiques stores.
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James A. Meurs, Graham H. Lowman, David M. Gligor and Michael J. Maloni
Supply chain has long faced a persistent workforce shortage. To help both organizations and the field create environments that are more conducive to employee retention, the…
Abstract
Purpose
Supply chain has long faced a persistent workforce shortage. To help both organizations and the field create environments that are more conducive to employee retention, the authors investigate the outcomes of supply chain employee trust in their supervisor.
Design/methodology/approach
Applying person-environment fit theory, the authors evaluate the well-established antecedents to trust in supervisor ability, benevolence and integrity (ABI) relative to person-job (P-J) fit and person-vocation (P-V) fit of US supply chain employees.
Findings
Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that ABI is best modeled as dimensions of a second-order formative trust construct rather than as its antecedents. However, PLS-SEM provides somewhat unconvincing support for the impacts of ABI-trust. Instead, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) delineates that all three ABI dimensions are not always needed for P-J and P-V fit in supply chain. Some employees respond to affective-based (i.e. benevolence) trust and others to cognitive-based (i.e. ability and integrity) trust.
Practical implications
The QCA results offer specific recommendations for supply chain organizations to enhance employee trust in supervisors to succeed in the struggle for labor.
Originality/value
The results counter extant trust theory, encouraging scholars to consider ABI as distinct dimensions of trust. The study also demonstrates the importance of considering QCA in supply chain research to meaningfully expand contributions to theory and practice.
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Melanie Moore Koskie and William B. Locander
This paper aims to explore how motivations to stand out and fit in through consumption affect consumers’ perceptions of subcultural and popular brand coolness. Importantly, how do…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how motivations to stand out and fit in through consumption affect consumers’ perceptions of subcultural and popular brand coolness. Importantly, how do perceptions of brand coolness affect consumers’ formations of hot, emotional brand attachments and their willingness to pay more?
Design/methodology/approach
This study incorporates survey data from consumers regarding cool brands. A structural equation modeling approach is used to assess the relationship between the variables of interest.
Findings
Susceptibility to influence is positively related to desire for unique consumption. While this desire may be fulfilled by both subcultural and popular perceptions of brand coolness, only subcultural coolness has a positive relationship with the willingness to pay more. The importance of an emotional brand attachment is established between both dimensions of brand coolness and price premiums.
Research limitations/implications
This study is based on cross-sectional survey data. As brand coolness is often transitory, longitudinal research on trends focusing on different elements of brand coolness may shed light on the cool brand lifecycle.
Practical implications
Firms wanting to position brands as cool should emphasize how the brand can help consumers stand out. If a cool brand is already well-known, resources should be allocated to building hot, emotional attachments to command price premiums.
Originality/value
This research contributes to a nascent body of literature empirically exploring brand coolness. It builds on past literature that notes the tension between standing out and fitting in conceptualizations of coolness by assessing individual differences. Significantly, it examines specific attributes of cool brands to explore the differences in how subcultural and popular perceptions of brand coolness relate to important marketing outcomes.
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Michael K. Muchiri, Ancy Gamage and Ataus Samad
This paper aims to integrate the extant literature on the impact of positive leadership on organisational outcomes within the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) organisations…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to integrate the extant literature on the impact of positive leadership on organisational outcomes within the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) organisations, identifies existing gaps in the literature and proposes a framework capturing feasible pathways for future research on positive leadership in NFP organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a systematic review of the existing literature on positive leadership and external/environmental factors and organisational values as applied to Australian NFP organisations mainly based on journal articles.
Findings
This paper proposes a plausible conceptual framework postulating how Australian NFP organisations could attain superior performance outcomes when there is a perfect alignment between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values. We explain the conceptual framework through testable research propositions explaining interrelationships between positive leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.
Research limitations/implications
The review focused on two positive forms of leadership (i.e. transformational and servant) and could benefit by including other closely related leadership styles and behaviours (like authentic and ethical leadership). In addition to the positivist paradigm and quantitative approach adopted by this paper, interpretative and critical paradigms and related qualitative approaches may also lend themselves well to exposing pertinent issues and relationships that have not been imagined before in the under-researched NFP sector.
Practical implications
Leaders within NFP organisations need to understand when and how to align positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values to maximise limited resources available to Australian NFP organisations.
Originality/value
This systematic review adds to the limited literature exploring the impact of positive forms of leadership within Australian NFP organisations. The proposed framework offers unique insights into the relationships between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.
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Patrick Brown and Marci D. Cottingham
In this chapter we apply a range of insights drawn from social science studies of hope amidst contexts of illness, and studies of hope emerging from the sociology of emotions, in…
Abstract
In this chapter we apply a range of insights drawn from social science studies of hope amidst contexts of illness, and studies of hope emerging from the sociology of emotions, in critically considering social processes of hoping amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. While much of the health sciences literature on hope emphasises positive outcomes in terms of coping and motivation, we also draw upon various perspectives which denote a dark side of hoping, whereby inequalities and injustices are tolerated, or where feeling rules insidiously coordinate collective hopes in ways which serve various political-economic interests. Reflecting this ambivalence across different literatures, our examples and analyses suggest that hoping as a social process is itself inherently conflicted, dissonant and rife with tensions. As we explore the contradictions of hoping amidst a pandemic, the tensions between expectations and desire, tragedy and optimism, aspiring to act and fatalistic acceptance make apparent that emotions of hope can be neither neatly delineated nor disentangled from a ‘messy’ web of related feelings and framings. We extend our emphasis of these blurry, dissonant and messy aspects of hoping through work on ‘tragic optimism’, following Frankl, wherein wider lifeworlds or imaginaries pertaining to deeply embodied and implicit notions of self and a good life are central to maintaining hope amidst heightened vulnerability and uncertainty. We close by laying out a post-formal approach to hope, which methodologically and conceptually focusses on contradictions and dissonance in narratives of hope, whereby living hopefully always involves living awkwardly with these tensions.
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Laura K. Taylor and Celia Bähr
Over 60% of armed conflicts re-occur; the seed of future conflict is sown even as a peace agreement is signed. The cyclical nature of war calls for a focus on youth who can…
Abstract
Purpose
Over 60% of armed conflicts re-occur; the seed of future conflict is sown even as a peace agreement is signed. The cyclical nature of war calls for a focus on youth who can disrupt this pattern over time. Addressing this concern, the developmental peace-building model calls for a dynamic, multi-level and longitudinal approach. Using an innovative statistical approach, this study aims to investigate the associations among four youth peace-building dimensions and quality peace.
Design/methodology/approach
Multi-level time-series network analysis of a data set containing 193 countries and spanning the years between 2011 and 2020 was performed. This statistical approach allows for complex modelling that can reveal new patterns of how different youth peace-building dimensions (i.e. education, engagement, information, inclusion), identified through rapid evidence assessment, promote quality peace over time. Such a methodology not only assesses between-country differences but also within-country change.
Findings
While the within-country contemporaneous network shows positive links for education, the temporal network shows significant lagged effects for all four dimensions on quality peace. The between-country network indicates significant direct effects of education and information, on average, and indirect effects of inclusion and engagement, on quality peace.
Originality/value
This approach demonstrates a novel application of multi-level time-series network analysis to explore the dynamic development of quality peace, capturing both stability and change. The analysis illustrates how youth peace-building dimensions impact quality peace in the macro-system globally. This investigation of quality peace thus illustrates that the science of peace does not necessitate violent conflict.
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