Search results

This study aims to explore the range of sustainability-related discourses by the stakeholders within a particular Finnish Higher Education Institution (HEI); interaction between the discourses and the context of the HEI; and the extent to which different understandings of sustainability cause challenges for the implementation of the university strategy for sustainability. Specifically, the paper explores how the employees within the HEI make sense of sustainability in their teaching, research and daily life and the extent to which sustainability-related discourses are aligned with the university strategy.

This research draws upon collected qualitative and quantitative data. It focuses on individual discourses by executives, teaching and research staff within an HEI regarding their understandings of sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This paper illustrates the key challenges of sustainability and SDG implementation that may emerge in HEIs due to varied understandings. The results indicate a need for efficient HEI strategic vision communication and consideration of the stakeholders’ multiplicity of sustainability values.

This paper sheds light on the challenges involved in seeking to enhance sustainable development in an academic setting with multiple disciplines and categories of staff guided by academic freedom. The analysis thus advances the understanding of academic sustainability-related discourses and framings as well as mechanisms through which the implementation of sustainability-related efforts can be enhanced in such a context.

This study aims to explore how Russian-origin immigrant entrepreneurs manage to adapt their business-to-business (B2B) relationship management practices and moral concerns to the business ethics of their country of origin and of the host country via the prism of ethical relativism. By focusing on the ethical values of immigrant entrepreneurs in a business relationship context, the study aims to extend the currently limited understanding of these issues in the B2B marketing field.

A qualitative approach is applied to provide findings from eight in-depth interviews with first-generation Russian entrepreneurs living and doing business in Finland. A narrative approach to the data analysis is used, in particular by applying a thematic analysis of the collected interviews because of the focus on the personal experiences of the interviewees.

The results illustrate how the immigrant entrepreneurs adapt to ethical values and norms in Russia and Finland and how they enact those values in B2B relationship management in the countries. Immigrant entrepreneurs share several national and ethical backgrounds, which may influence their interaction in international markets, helping them adapt to country-specific business ethics.

The results imply that managers should acquire knowledge on ethical norms at the global level and at the national level, where they aim to expand their business. Productive business relationships involve the premises of honesty, transparency, fairness toward business partners and minimizing opportunism. However, business relations between developed and emerging markets may demand relativism when addressing ethical behavior.

This is one of the few studies that explore the ethical values of immigrant entrepreneurs in the context of international business relationships. The study contributes to the limited literature on ethics in the fields of B2B marketing and immigrant entrepreneurship. The authors encourage further research on ethical values adoption by immigrant entrepreneurs, which is an essential topic in times of increased workforce immigration.

This study aims to explore the challenges and complexities of interaction in international stakeholder networks within the context of projects focused on the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs). In particular, it examines the challenges faced by stakeholders in a network from a developed country during interaction in the context of a developing country.

Using a qualitative approach, this study analyses interview data collected from the key managers of an international consulting company in charge of a water supply and sanitation project in Nepal. The primary data is triangulated with secondary data, such as project reports and related academic articles.

This study illustrates how interaction in international stakeholder networks affects and is interrelated with SDGs, as well as how aiming to achieve one specific goal can stimulate the implementation of other sustainable goals. Further, this research shows how project managers from a developed country had to adapt to the specifics of the developing country context and how their sustainability project influenced the well-being of local communities by improving environmental and social sustainability.

The research suggests that challenges in stakeholder interaction may arise because of differences in process management methods used by the international stakeholders involved in the project and country-context specifics, such as corruption, imperfect national regulations, cultural specifics, effects of climate change, etc.

The paper contributes to the literature on international multi-stakeholder interaction between actors from developed and developing countries. Furthermore, it adds to the literature on stakeholder networking by highlighting the importance of engaging in a dialogue with local communities during the conceptualisation stages of both sustainability and SDG implementation because of diverging worldviews and practices.

This work aims to establish the relationship between painting art and sustainability, which allows for highlighting implications likely to improve sustainability for humanity's welfare.

To achieve this objective, painting art is measured by a composite index aggregating the quantity and quality represented by the market value. As for sustainable development, it is represented by a composite index comprising three variables: the climate change performance index (ecological dimension), the wage index reflecting distributive justice (social dimension) and the gross domestic product (economic dimension). The composite indices were determined through adjusted data envelopment analysis. In addition, two other methods are used in this work: correlation analysis and a neural network method. These methods are applied to data from 2007 to 2021 across the world.

The correlation method highlighted a perfect positive correlation between painting art and sustainability. As for the neural network method, it revealed that the quality of painting has the greatest impact on sustainability. The neural network method also showed that the most positively impacted variable of sustainability by painting art is the social variable, with a pseudo-probability of 0.90.

The relationship between painting art and sustainability is underexplored, in particular in terms of statistical analysis. Therefore, this research intends to fill this gap. Moreover, analysis of the relationship between both using composite indices computed via an original method (adjusted data envelopment analysis) and a neural network method is nonexistent, which constitutes the novelty of this work.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0006

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how trust develops between partner firms in the context of intercultural business relationships and how understanding of the business culture of a partner firm and adaptation to it can be a driving force for the beginning and maintaining of trust development with that partner.

The study is of a qualitative nature and employs “elite interviewing” methodology for the aims of data collection. The analysis is conducted through theoretically‐informed reading of interviews.

Managers constantly learn the business culture of the partner through interactions. Adaptation based on the acquired business culture knowledge is found to be as important for the development of trust between business relationships' parties. A “moderate” level of cultural adaptation is identified as most favourable for this development. Additionally, a categorization of cultural adaptation within business relationships is proposed.

The insufficient number of personal interviews within a specific industrial context does not allow a generalisation of the study outcomes.

Research which addresses the importance of cultural adaptation for trust development within business relationships, is scarce. This study attempts to fill in this gap. Furthermore, it shows the need to consider business culture, rather than national culture, while studying business relationships. Finally, the study provides interesting avenues for further research.

This paper aims to explore methods of teaching sustainability and business ethics, relevant to the modern demand for student’s skills and knowledge. The study explores the challenges of teaching a business school undergraduate-level course and argues that a constructivist pedagogy is a suitable epistemological approach for designing a course unit concerning sustainability and ethics.

The paper presents case study findings drawn upon course feedback and course reflections aimed at making sense of what the most effective pedagogic approaches were that influenced students’ learning.

Results indicate that students appreciate active forms of learning via practical assignments and discussions. As knowledge of sustainability and business ethics is important for the student’s future career path, students need to develop skills of applying conceptual knowledge to practice via constructive pedagogical methods.

This empirical study contributes to the literature of constructivist pedagogics, which is explored in the context of sustainable development and business ethics teaching. Practically, it contributes to the analysis of teaching methods and frameworks applied in the course emphasizing the necessity of engaging in interactive and personalized learning and teaching processes.

Issues of teaching ethics and sustainable development are known concerns, but they have to be addressed systematically because of the changing business environment. This study explores the constructivist pedagogy based on empirical evidence and highlights its value in the educational process.

Purpose – This chapter examines how the kollektiv, a form of workplace organization established in the Soviet Union, continues to shape cultural expectations of work in post-Soviet Russia.

Methodology/Approach – This chapter describes a workplace ethnography conducted in a college department in Novosibirsk, Russia in 1999–2000 and 2002, with follow-up trips in 2005–2006. Participant observation is combined with interviews of teachers and students in the department.

Findings – The kollektiv established in the Soviet Union has persisted in modified form in post-Soviet Russia. Instead of a means of Party control, the kollektiv became popularly associated with the group cohesion that arises from frequent social interaction. This sense of cohesion, accompanied by attendant habits of sharing holidays with work colleagues, has persisted to varying degrees among adults in Russia today. Furthermore, the structure of the kollektiv has been maintained for students in schools and colleges, so that new generations of Russian youth are raised to expect to work in cohesive small groups. Their behaviors and expectations contribute to the persistence of the kollektiv in Russian society in the present and near future.

Originality/Value of the paper – This chapter makes two unique contributions: (1) it adds a focus on white-collar work to the predominantly blue-collar and service occupations studied in Russia to date and (2) it presents workplace ethnography of academics, a group rarely studied ethnographically.