Search results

This study aims to investigate how a French multinational enterprise (MNE) is developing employee stock ownership (ESO) in its subsidiaries in Peru and Mexico, both Latin American countries with deep social and economic inequalities.

This is a qualitative case study which conducted interviews with representatives of the French MNE and its subsidiaries in Peru and Mexico.

The employee stock purchase plans offered by the company to its employees support the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) 1, 8 and 10 in these countries.

The authors argue that MNEs could become flagships in the SDG achievement in emerging economies.

By contributing to better workplace outcomes and enhanced corporate performance, ESO is in line with SDG 8. ESO also fulfills SDGs 1 and 10 by allowing employees to build up savings and wealth, whose lack is the main source of inequality and poverty. Reciprocity and binary economics theories explain these relationships.

The purpose of this study is to address the relationship between multinational corporations (MNCs) and grand challenges. Stressing the moderating impact of stakeholders and governments, it frames and introduces the six contributions of the special issue, equally divided into those illustrating how MNCs contribute to the existence of grand challenges and those exploring how MNCs contribute to addressing grand challenges.

Based on a review of the existing literature on the relationship between MNCs and grand challenges and recent developments in mainstream international business, the viewpoint emphasizes the need to move beyond a one-sided focus on the positive contributions of MNCs to grand challenges.

The special issue contributions reveal that even established MNCs are actively engaged in strategic efforts to perpetuate unsustainable practices and minimize the impact of societal rules and stakeholders. The contributions also highlight the complications when MNCs aim to tackle grand challenges.

Displaying positive practices of how MNCs contribute to the solution of grand challenges should not be considered a functional substitute for regulatory action, contrary to the frequent assertion of MNCs and their political representatives.

This special issue is the first one in IB to address the relationship between MNCs and grand challenges from an empirical vantage point.

The purpose of this study is to understand how narratives are generated in stores.

The study design is based on ethnographies documented in 10 sports stores in the Paris region. The ethnographic method enables a precise and in situ observation of how narratives are structured. Narrative structures develop from the accommodation of the narratives specific to retailers and narratives specific to the customer.

The findings of this study identified four main narratives in retail spaces (the serial, the tale, the epic, the legend), each of which is distinguished by the commercial/non-commercial orientation of the narratives and by a superficial/in-depth modification of the narratives produced outside the store. These four narratives are characterized by the vendors’ roles and by the distinct interactions between customers and retail stores.

The originality of this study is to propose a narrative framework for retail structures. It illustrates the fact that the narrative is not solely a product of experiential marketing, but that it may be found in any retail store. From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies.

From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies.

The original value of this study is to apply structural semiotics to analyse narratives in the store.

Using the behavioural perspective as a theoretical complement of rational models, this paper examines factors that influence the decision of producing organic wines.

Based on a quantitative analysis of 687 wineries belonging to Denomination of Origin in Spain, the authors empirically examine the sequential relationships between manager's personality and winery and institutional level factors, on organic wine production activity and winery export performance.

This paper investigates the direct and indirect sequential relationships between wineries' factors including an organic production activity and two dimensions of export performance, namely: volume-based and value-based performance. The results of a sequential model provide evidence that openness to experience, a manager's personality trait, has a positive causal relationship with organic wine production.

This paper offers richer insights into the factors leading wine production managers to change from conventional to organic production methods. Specifically, the study shows that wine production managers are susceptible to make decisions to whether produce organic wine or not that may not be consistent with the current theoretical models based on economic efficiency (i.e. comparing costs and benefits). Instead, these decisions are, in part, based on their personality traits. Future research could study how the functional attribute affects the willingness to produce organic wines.

This study contributes to a new strategic implication of organic wine production activity and export performance linkage in behavioural and traditional theoretical perspectives. These findings are valuable for policy makers in the wine sector, as they can better inform and guide policies directed to identify organic production support programs.

The purpose of the study is to present evidence on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption and earnings quality relationship on an emerging country context focusing on firm characteristics.

To measure loss avoidance, the earnings distribution approach is followed. Data includes all the nonfinancial firms listed on the Borsa İstanbul (BIST) for the period covering 1998–2010. The sample is divided into subsegments according to size and leverage, considering the potential impact of different financial reporting incentives. Furthermore, mandatory and voluntary adopters are examined separately.

The results indicate lower loss aversion in the post-IFRS period. Furthermore, we found that incentives dominate accounting standards in determining financial reporting quality. The decrease in loss aversion after IFRS adoption is more significant for large firms compared to small firms, low leverage firms compared to high leverage firms, and for mandatory IFRS adopter firms compared to voluntary IFRS adopters.

Research provides inconsistent evidence on the relationship between IFRS adoption and earnings quality. Turkey represents an interesting environment to test the impact of IFRS adoption, as the Turkish accounting system has followed a historical path from a Continental European accounting system to an Anglo-Saxon accounting system. The current Turkish accounting system exhibits features of both these systems. Additionally, IFRS adoption was optional in 2003 and mandatory in 2005 in line with EU regulations, and the changes in the reporting environment are supported by the regulatory developments and institutional changes in Turkey.

This study aims to understand the determinants of online pharmacy or epharmacy adoption among young consumers in Bangladesh using an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model.

A structured Google Docs questionnaire was sent out to 420 respondents using messenger service; 285 useable responses were finally extracted. Data were empirically validated using the two-staged structural equation model (SEM)-neural network analysis approach.

The robustness of the classical UTAUT model remains intact in the context of online pharmacy adoption. Among the integrated variables, while perceived trust and health literacy were found significant, perceived risk and personal innovativeness were found insignificant in determining consumers’ intention to adopt online pharmacy. The neural network analysis provided further verification of these findings derived from the SEM.

The findings of this study would facilitate in devising better strategies for entering or expanding online pharmacy business in developing countries such as Bangladesh.

The originality of the current study relates to the two-fold contributions of this study. First, while this study extended the classical UTAUT model by incorporating perceived risk, perceived trust, personal innovativeness and health literacy, the inclusion of the following two variables is fresh within the extant online pharmacy literature. Second, by using a two-staged SEM-neural network analysis approach, this study advances the past studies on e-commerce adoption in pharmaceutical settings and provides a general understanding of the customers of developing countries.

The available literature suggest that the research on radio frequency identification (RFID)-related issues is largely concentrated on technical, organizational and implementation aspects, and comparatively lesser attention has been invested in understanding the use aspect of such library management systems. The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding into the factors that influence the use of RFID systems in the library context by empirically testing the relevant constructs from the extended technology acceptance model (TAM).

A questionnaire-based survey approach was employed for collecting the relevant data from 197 respondents. The respondents were the active users of a RFID-based library system.

Findings from this study suggested that perceived usefulness and system quality positively influence the user attitude, and user attitude and system quality significantly influence the use of the RFID services. The paper concludes with outlining the salient points, limitations, and future research directions.

The paper evaluates the role of a set of innovation attributes on the acceptance of RFID integrated systems in libraries. Owing to the scant literature availability in empirical investigations on adoption of RFID systems in libraries, the findings from this paper add value to the existing literature in this field, and also to the literature on the TAM model, with the empirical findings being of use to the aspirant libraries looking toward integrating RFID enabled systems.

The purpose of this paper is to observe whether the entrenchment of managers can affect firms’ dividend disbursement decisions and investor sentiment in the Tunisia context.

The sample includes all non-financial listed stocks in the Tunisia stock exchange during the years 2004–2017. Moreover, the entrenchment of managers is measured by five proxy explained the managers rooting from all listed firms. The propensity to pay dividends is measured by the dividend yield.

The findings yield qualitatively consistent with the previous research. After controlling for the effect of a manager’s behavior and different entrenchment phase, the result shows that entrepreneurial the firm’s decision to pay dividends could be influenced by the managers’ entrenchment.

The result is limited at the level of the non-financial companies listed in the BVMT, but in future studies, the investigation with other countries can be compared.

Moreover, investors in Tunisia show their preference for a dividend to self-control and satisfaction and increase their profit, especially in an abnormal economic situation explained by the Tunisian political crisis.

The originality of this paper is to investigate both the important role of the entrenchment and cycle life of the manager on the decision to distribute dividends and the investor sentiment. Moreover, the author’s problem may be a reference for future investigation talking about the managers’ psychology like opportunism.

The development of self-service technologies, while intended to better serve customers by offering them autonomy, has created situations in which individuals may require additional help. The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of chat as an assistance channel, to identify its perceived role in a customer service environment.

In all, 23 semi-structured interviews held with both chat and non-chat users assessed perceptions of chat in an assistance encounter. A thematic analysis was used.

The findings highlight a paradoxical perception of chat in a customer assistance context. On the one hand, customers perceive live chat as mainly beneficial in a customer service context, alleviating embarrassment, perceived threats and potential dissatisfaction linked to assistance requests. On the other hand, the elusive nature of a chat conversation interlocutor (human or artificial) adversely affects how customers interpret assistance from companies.

This research underscores the perceived threats of assistance encounters and shows the ambivalent role of chat in such a context. It also highlights chat’s specific features that make it a relevant medium for assistance requests.

This study helps companies better understand customers’ perceptions of assistance requests and chat in that context. Companies can use the findings to develop better ways to address assistance needs and offer transparent and fully personalized human chat to provide an inclusive service.

This paper highlights the ambivalent role of chat as an assistance channel, easing assistance requests but also entailing a potential negative spillover effect, when negative chat perceptions of an artificial interlocutor have consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to offer some insight into how siblings aged between 4 and 12, engaged in a collaborative drawing activity at home, recall the shopping trips they have experienced.

Using a Vygotskian perspective, the data collection consisted of engaging 15 pairs of siblings in the production of a joint drawing of a shop of their choice. Drawing in pairs opens a Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978) where the younger child benefits from verbal guidance by the older one to achieve the common task. This situation enables the researcher to gain close access to children’s knowledge about stores and to the words they use to describe their personal shopping experiences.

This exploratory research reveals some constitutive elements of children’s “shopscapes” (Nicol, 2014), i.e. the imaginary geographies they actively elaborate through their daily practices and experiences with regard to retail environments. In their communicative interactions when elaborating a joint drawing of the shop they have chosen, children demonstrate that they master a considerable body of knowledge about retail environments. Surprisingly, recalling their shopping practices sheds light on various anxiety-generating dimensions.

The data collection is based on a remembering exercise performed at home and does not bring information about what children actually do in retail environments. Moreover, the children were asked to focus on buying a present for a friend’s birthday, therefore the information gathered essentially relates to toy stores.

This research underlines the necessity for retailers to endeavour to reduce some of the anxious feelings depicted and verbalized by children, by improving the welcome for children into their stores.

There are also opportunities for retailers to invest in the consumption education area by guiding young visitors so that they learn how to behave as apprentice consumers in retail outlets.

The child-centric perspective of the study reveals new and surprising insights about the way children report their memorised shopping experiences.