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This case requires students to evaluate alternative dual-share-class corporate structures that allow companies and entrepreneurs to pursue profit with purpose. The case explores Impact Makers, an IT consulting company based in Richmond, Virginia. While original founders of the firm hold all voting rights, the cash flow rights belong to two nonprofits setting the stage for a Newman's Own model of management consulting. The case discusses whether and how the alternative corporate structure aids the firm's overall strategy to attract top-quality employees, pay them competitive salaries, and provide superior service to its clients while donating 100% of its lifetime value to charitable causes, largely through partnerships with various nonprofit organizations. More importantly, the case asks students to evaluate how such a dual-share-class and dual-purpose company can raise capital to fund continued growth.

The case opens with CEO Michael Pirron reminding himself of all the questions he had run through to execute a strategy to further grow Impact Makers' consulting business both through expanding a menu of services and through conquering new geographical markets. To do either, or both, the company needed a cash infusion. Internal cash was limited, as up to 40% of it flowed to charitable partners, demonstrating Impact Makers' commitment to its mission. Raising debt for a company without fixed assets was challenging and time consuming. Complicating it all was that being structured as a nonstock corporation rendered equity raising difficult. Could Impact Makers raise money to grow and stay true to community values at the same time?

This paper investigates the dynamics between state affect and trusting cognitive beliefs on post-adoptive information technology (IT) use behaviors in the form of intention to explore and deep structure usage. That state affect can influence behaviors is recognized in practice. In fact, some studies examine the impact of affective constructs, but the way state affect impacts how individuals use IT remains largely unexplored. The authors theorize that state affect, in the form of positive and negative affect, will influence trusting cognitive beliefs regarding an IT artifact (in terms of perceived helpfulness, capability and reliability) and, more importantly, directly influence intention to explore and deep structure usage.

The authors test the model using a sample of 357 IT users. Survey items were derived from established measures, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results of this study suggest that positive affect and negative affect impact trusting cognitive beliefs. Trusting cognitive beliefs positively impact intention to explore with an IT and deep structure usage of an IT. Even in the presence of trusting beliefs, though, positive affect directly impacts intention to explore. Positive affect and negative affect both also have various indirect, mediated effects on intention to explore and deep structure usage.

In order to maximize value from workplace IT, the results suggest managers foster an authentic, positive work environment in order to harness or redirect employees' emotional energies.

Disasters and other emergencies are increasing, with millions of people affected by events like earthquakes, fires and flooding. The use of mobile emergency alert systems (MEAS) can improve people’s responses by providing targeted alerts based on location and other personal details. This study aims to understand the factors that influence people’s willingness to share the personal information that is needed to provide context-specific messaging about a threat and protective actions.

Drawing on protection motivation theory (PMT), this study proposes and tests a model of willingness to use personalised MEAS that incorporates key factors related to an individual’s appraisal of a potential threat (i.e. perceived vulnerability and severity) and coping capacity (i.e. response efficacy and self-efficacy), with deterrents like response cost and privacy concern. This study uses survey data from 226 respondents in New Zealand and SmartPLS to assess the model.

The results show how willingness to use MEAS is influenced by people’s appraisal of an emergency threat and their perception of how using MEAS would help them to cope effectively. Fear and perceived severity are significant motivators of MEAS use, along with coping appraisal. However, when the negative influences of privacy concern and response cost are strong enough, they can dissuade use, despite knowing the risks.

The study addresses a gap in research on the use of alert systems like MEAS, which require sharing of personal information and continuous engagement such as the real-time disclosure of one’s location. It confirms the significance of factors not studied in prior research, such as privacy concerns, that can dissuade use. This study also extends the application of the PMT in the context of emergency management.

Prior research suggests that collaboration is key to sustainable community development and environmental management, and peer-to-peer learning (P2PL) may facilitate community building and collaborative learning skills. This study aims to examine the effect of P2PL on the enhancement of environmental management and sustainable development skills, community building and social capital (i.e. connectedness) and understanding of course learning objectives.

Quantitative and qualitative longitudinal survey data was collected in a sustainable development focused course offered at a large American public university that uses P2PL to explicitly facilitate community building and collaborative skills. Safety precautions and changing locational course offerings due to the COVID-19 pandemic in years 2020, 2021 and 2022 provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact of P2PL on these skills during both virtual and in-person formats. Additionally, this study compared in-course student evaluations with students taking other sustainable development-related courses with collaborative learning aspects to understand the wider effectiveness of this course structure.

This study finds that course format (virtual vs in-person) overall made no difference in either connectedness or conceptual understandings, and that students in both formats felt more connected to others than students taking other courses with P2PL. Scaffolding P2PL and supplemental peer support can yield improved connectedness and learning among students taking environmental coursework.

Sustainable development requires group collaboration and partnership building skills. Issues are consistently raised about the challenges to teaching these skills in higher education. The students and instructors in this research study identify P2PL strategies to address these challenges for in-person and virtual classroom settings.

A recent study reported Black women are frequently labeled unprofessional due to hair presentation, 1.5 times more likely to be sent home citing “unprofessional hair,” and 80% likely to alter their natural hair texture (Dove, 2019) through chemicals or heat to fit into organizational norms. Meanwhile, conversations about hair discrimination and bias remain whispers in The Ivory Tower. Despite this study, contemporary research regarding higher education and the politics of Black women, Black hair, and hair texture is sparse. The lack of representation in higher education organizations and lack of literature suggest that Black, higher education professional women are at risk of experiencing chilly work environments that could impact belonging, career trajectory, and earning potential. Some individuals outside the African Diaspora may consider the notion of a physical characteristic, like hair, to be insignificant, let alone a salient identity for Black women. However, my experience as a higher education practitioner and scholar states differently. I assert higher education institutions continue to perpetuate and reproduce oppressive dynamics that specifically target Black women and Black hair when hair discrimination and bias are left out of the conversation to address diversity and inclusion concerns. This chapter introduces a historical context of Black hair discrimination; explores my lived experiences navigating Black hair, hair texture, and professionalism in higher education; outlines challenges for higher education institutions and prioritizes Black women alongside diversity and inclusion efforts.

As Australians experience more fierce and frequent natural disasters, there are urgent calls for businesses to meaningfully respond to climate change. Australian financial and professional services employees occupy an ambiguous space as climate mitigation measures have different economic implications for their clients. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Australian professionals experience climate change and respond to the issue within their workplace.

This mixed methods study applies a systems thinking framework to investigate: how do professionals’ experiences of the issue of climate change and the workplace influence their cognitions, emotions and behaviour? And in particular, what psychosocial antecedents precede voicing climate concern?

Firstly, a survey of professionals (N = 206) found social norms, perceived behavioural control and biospheric values, but not attitudes, significantly predicted prohibitive green voice. Middle managers were significantly likely to voice climate concern, whereas senior managers were significantly likely to express climate scepticism. Ten professionals were then interviewed to gain a contextualised understanding of these trends. Interpretive phenomenological analysis identified five interrelated themes: (1) active identity management, (2) understanding climate change is escalating, (3) workplace shapes climate change response, (4) frustration and alienation and (5) belief that corporations prioritise profit.

Findings are discussed in relation to how employees may both embody and adapt their organisations. These results have implications for understandings of workplace meaningfulness and organisational risk governance.

There remains a critical issue in sport management scholarship in that the field lacks a well-defined framework for delineating practical implications in research. This research aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What types of practical implications can be identified in sport management research? (2) How can sport management research frame the practical implications of the study in a way that is both theoretically sound and useful for practitioners?

Through a scoping review and within the lens of Jaworski (2011)'s framework for managerial relevance, the study examined 427 articles from European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Management and Sport Management Review published between 2000 and 2020.

This study presents a five-pronged framework that identifies target managers, organizational tasks, time horizons, philosophical impact and desired outcomes. Furthermore, the current research offers suggestions for how to present managerial implications in sport management research.

The findings shed light on the managerial relevance of the recent sport management body of work, developing an important framework for practical implications for the field to reflect and incorporate into future studies. With a theoretical understanding of how to frame the practical implications of sport management research, the gap between academia and industry can continue to narrow, and the relevance to the industry may be more pertinent than ever before.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations manage and integrate exploration and exploitation across the innovation project portfolio. Such ambidextrous capabilities are required for organizations to innovate and succeed in today's rapidly changing competitive environment. Understanding how exploration and exploitation projects are integrated can illustrate ways to enhance ambidexterity and boost learning for the benefit of both approaches.

A multiple-case study approach was used to explore innovation portfolio management in six large organizations that emphasize innovation in their strategies.

The findings draw upon concepts of paradox and contingency to reveal that the inherent tension between formality and flexibility in managing innovation project portfolios is aligned with the need for organizational ambidexterity that maintains effective exploitative innovation while supporting explorative innovation capabilities. Four integration mechanisms are identified that enhance ambidexterity across the innovation portfolio by embedding processes for transition from exploration to exploitation and cross-fertilizing knowledge to build innovation capability across both exploration and exploitation.

Managers may find inspiration on ways to enhance learning by bridging exploration and exploitation projects from the four types of integration mechanisms. Recognizing the paradoxical nature of the tension between formality and flexibility in project and portfolio management may also help guide organizations to effectively develop ambidextrous approaches to enhance overall innovation outcomes.

In contrast to perspectives which suggest that paradox and contingency approaches represent disparate perspectives, the authors demonstrate how they can complement each other and work together through innovation portfolio management to support ambidexterity at the portfolio and project levels.

Aesthetic labour explains how employees are required to look and sound the part in many contemporary workplaces. That such corporeality affects workers' employment prospects, including career progression, is now well documented in research. As such, it can result in employment discrimination based on physical features, more commonly known as ‘lookism’. However, very few jurisdictions proscribe lookism, and little is known about the efficacy of those that do. Based on archival research, this chapter examines the procedures and operation of physical features inclusion in an Equal Opportunity Act in one jurisdiction that does proscribe ‘lookism – the state of Victoria in Australia. As the first analysis of such laws, the chapter provides an important opportunity to assess the efficacy of legal attempts to address employment discrimination based on employee appearance. In so doing, it draws out lessons about the legal challenge to lookism.