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This study aims to understand the normative expectations of travelers on the services and experiences provided by Buddhism-themed hotels as well as how service providers perceive such expectations. The growth of religion-themed hotels in China follows a larger and more generalized global marketing trend in terms of providing tourists and consumers with “themed” experiences.

Using the service quality model, this study investigates these expectations of Buddhism-themed hotels in China. The Delphi method was used with two expert panels, namely, travelers and tourism/hotel practitioners. Preliminary interviews revealed 98 normative expectations from Buddhism-themed hotels. Two sets of Delphi questionnaires were used to compare tourist expectations with practitioner perceptions.

Results show a wide range of expectations of travelers staying in Buddhism-themed hotels. They also reveal how the expectations of the two groups aligned as well as differed.

This study extends the application of the service quality model to the context of religion-themed hotels. As this study adopted the Delphi technique through criterion sampling, future studies should use a larger random sample to verify the results of this study.

The results help religion-themed hoteliers to understand their customer expectations better.

Given the lack of studies on religion-themed hotels, especially on the gap between tourist expectations and service providers’ perceptions, this study is a timely contribution to improve the understanding on the needs and expectations of customers when visiting religion-themed hotels.

Local government budget processes have changed substantially since the early 1990s, due in part to an expanded emphasis on performance accountability and the availability of information technology. We present evidence that local government budget outcomes also have changed over the same time period when disaggregated at the functional level. Though we do not assert a causal relationship between the two, our findings indicate that the normative-descriptive gap in budget theory described by Rubin (1990) deserves new scholarly attention. Our profession’s attraction to incrementalism may have blurred the success of budget reform in local government.

This paper aims to demonstrate the specialty of the elderly issues and acknowledge the existence of their specific human rights that propose for a special treatment to be given or shown to them as priority as women or children, etc. Indubitably, the very issue is timely in all perspective. Because it is now axiomatic that the fastest growing elderly population becomes a challenge for the whole world for manifold reasons. They include, inter alia, the lack of a social security apparatus or if any, they are insufficient; the weakening of traditional family bonding; almost no explicit references to elderly people in existing international human right laws; and mere stand-by of soft law addressing the rights of the elderly over time. Consequently, these all have probably failed to meet the most urgent needs of this growing demographic.

This paper is an effort made to recognize the “particular vulnerability” of the older persons and with identification of “specific rights”, advocate for special treatment for them and, optimally, the realization of their rights with respect.

In addition, this treatise attempts to focus on the nature and constitutional importance of elderly rights with the aim of providing the elderly with social security and prioritization; and more particularly, scrutiny of the impending and timely imperative for formulation of new legal instrument so as to adequately address the issue globally.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why multi-tier apparel suppliers integrate social sustainability practices into their supply chains and what barriers these suppliers encounter while embedding social sustainability practices.

This study employs a qualitative research design, drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 46 owners and managers from 33 multi-tier apparel suppliers in Bangladesh, an important outsourcing hub for the global apparel industry. To corroborate research findings, the views of owners and managers were triangulated by further interviewing 11 key representatives of institutional actors such as third-party auditors, a donor agency, industry associations, regulatory agencies and a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The authors' findings suggest a range of divergent institutional drivers and barriers – coercive, mimetic and normative – that determine the implementation of multi-tier suppliers' social sustainability practices. The key reported drivers were buyers' requirements, external stakeholders' expectations, top management commitment and competition. Conversely, cost and resource concerns and gaps in the regulatory framework were identified as key social sustainability implementation barriers. In particular, owners and managers of second-tier and third-tier supplier firms experienced more internal barriers such as cost and resource concerns than external barriers such as gaps in values, learning and commitment (i.e. compromise for mutual benefit and non-disclosure of non-compliance) that impeded effective social sustainability implementation.

Social sustainability in supply chain management has received significant attention from academics, business practitioners, governments, NGOs and supranational organisations. However, limited attention has been paid to investigating the drivers and barriers for social sustainability implementation from a developing country's multi-tier supplier perspective. The authors' research has addressed this knowledge gap.

The evidence from the authors' study provides robust support for key assumptions of institutional theory and has useful implications for both managers and policy-makers.

The authors' study contributes to the embryonic research stream of socially sustainable multi-tier supply chain management by connecting it to the application of institutional theory in a challenging institutional context.

Mining is surrounded by controversy, in spite of corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. This study aims to explore the theory on CSR and shared value (SV) and identified a gap in an approach to implementing CSR and SV. Perceptions of multi-stakeholder relationships in the South African mining context were elicited.

A qualitative research design included 17 semi-structured interviews with 3 stakeholder groups, including members of the community, government representatives and mining management and secondary data of company documents on CSR.

The qualitative research revealed important gaps between CSR and SV theoretical frameworks, normative ethical approaches and operationalizing of these at the mine to the detriment of effective multi-stakeholder relationships.

Mines have to engage with the community and government stakeholders proactively and build relationships.

Ethical normative approaches have to be considered. Government has to take note of this study’s findings with regards to negative consequences of institutionalized CSR for trust between mines and communities.

The literature review differentiates theoretically between normative and instrumental stakeholder theory, philanthropic and business case CSR, SV and their implicit normative ethical approaches. The semi-structured interviews revealed legacy issues and lack of engagement between mine and community as main barriers to multi-stakeholder relationships and raised important questions on normative ethical approaches to CSR and SV. The direct and indirect barriers by government, community and mine management are identified and differentiated.

From the optimistic to the critical, the post‐structural to the market rational there are varied perspectives on normative control at work. The purpose of this paper is to describe a tactical evolution in normative control practices and explore how this development sits with each perspective.

The paper is based on a six month participant ethnography incorporating 75 interviews and document analysis. Data are presented from human resources, executives, managers and employees.

This paper presents an account of a leading, listed, global firm's attempt to align employees to the organisation's goals through fashioning an ideal employee identity based on the organisation brand. Perspectives are provided on the desired role and ultimate failure of this employee branding initiative. Indeed, branding may be a normative step too far. The paper demonstrates how the workplace comprises of a variety of experiential forces and employees are capable of deciding which are the most substantive. However, the existence of varied perspectives on normative control within the workplace can account for both its failure and perpetuation.

The findings highlight the variety of forces that interact to shape perspectives of normative control within a workplace. Consequently, future research may benefit from adopting a more holistic analytical approach to avoid over or under estimating the role of normative control.

The novelty of this paper comes firstly from the account of a tactical normative development and secondly from the demonstration of the value of considering the role and impact of normative control from a variety of theoretical perspectives.

The current study extends previous research by comparing empirical data on ipsative and normative versions of the 30‐scale Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ). Participants were randomly assigned to “honest” or “faking” groups. Results support the proposition that when the number of scales is large, the measurement dependency problem associated with the ipsative format is negligible. There was satisfactory convergent validity between ipsative and normative forms in both groups. On both forms, the distance between an ideal profile and participants' ratings were narrower in the faking group than in the honest group. The results suggest that though ipsative measures were not completely free from faking, they were relatively more effective in guarding against faking than more commonly used normative measures.

This paper builds on previous research in information systems (IS) project management by focusing on key antecedents proposed to play important roles in influencing normative commitment within the IS project environment. The study also further investigates the influence of normative commitment on intentions to continue.

To collect data for this study, a field survey was administered online, and individuals were selected for participation by a member of upper management from Fortune 500 companies located in the United States. Two-hundred and thirty two (232) survey responses were collected. The model was analyzed using PLS-SEM.

The results indicated that personal investment, personal responsibility, voluntariness, project-specific self-efficacy and problem-solving competency were all significantly related to normative commitment. Project-specific self-efficacy, problem-solving competency and normative commitment directly influenced intention to continue. Additionally, problem-solving competency moderated both the relationships of project-specific self-efficacy to normative commitment and project-specific self-efficacy to intention to continue. The resulting model explains 63% of intention to continue and 58% of normative commitment.

The findings from this study contribute to commitment theory and enhance one’s understanding of IS project environments by exploring specific antecedents related to developing normative commitment. Additionally, the impact of normative commitment on intention to continue was enhanced by examining key moderating relationships to the model.

Reports a study conducted to determine whether or not there were differences between descriptive and normative social responsibility values for managers who assume roles in different functional department clusters. The research findings support a conclusion that differences in CSRV profiles exist among three functional clusters: accounting/finance managers, marketing/distribution managers and general strategy/human resources/operations managers. These differences have implications for career and employment professionals in enhancing managerial recruitment, selection, placement, development and appraisal now and in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question how multinational corporations (MNCs) can respond to different domains of formal voids associated with informal institutions in emergent markets.

The author advances the institution-based view of international business strategy by developing a framework and six propositions. The theoretical distinction of informal institutions as an additional aspect when disrupting formal institutional voids are instrumental in developing a refined understanding of how MNCs can respond to institutional voids.

By emphasizing the notion of informal institutions that are associated with formal institutional voids, the author moves away from a unidimensional toward a multidimensional view of substituting formal voids. The presented response variety includes a variety of substitutes.

Further research can apply qualitative research to further examine where, when and why social innovations can be used efficiently to address institutional weaknesses or absences. The author suggests further research opportunities in the implication section.

Constituting substitutive formal institutions with complementary informal institutions can help strategic managers navigate business activities in emerging markets. Institutional weaknesses can be used as opportunities to create legitimacy and serve social needs. To help facilitate such impacts public policies need to be developed accordingly.

The paper provides a new and critical perspective on how MNCs can use institutional voids as opportunities. The author’s key contribution is to highlight specific substitutive actions from MNCs to institutional voids when different cultural-cognitive and normative circumstances apply in emerging markets.