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People decide what is good or bad, or what they should or should not do, based on the values they cherish. Someone's values create the feeling that something is important for him or her, and then motivate him or her to take action. Therefore, personal values are important psychological aspects that serve as predictors of many types of human behaviour. The use of values to evaluate, to predict or to assess behavioural choices and their outcomes has received increasing attention in psychology in recent years. An important psychological insight is that similarities between personal values and values provided by the context (e.g., not only values cherished by the people who are close to us but also values embedded in the brands that are relevant for us or in the communication messages we are confronted with) have an impact on subjective well-being. This psychological insight makes values relevant for other domains as well. This chapter explores the use of values in communication, and introduces mechanisms through which values can be used to stimulate communication effectiveness.

Drawing on the trust literature and research on sociocultural integration in mergers and acquisitions (M&As), we develop a model of the antecedents and consequences of trust dynamics in acquisitions. The model proposes that target firm members’ perceptions of the acquiring firm management's trustworthiness are affected by the relationship history of the firms, the interfirm distance, and the integration approach taken by the acquirer. Ability, benevolence, integrity, and value congruence perceptions are proposed to converge into a generalized trust judgment or result in a state of ambivalence, depending on whether the trustworthiness attributions are consistent or conflicting. The model explains the mechanisms by which trust and ambivalence may affect a variety of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. A number of testable propositions are derived from this model, and the implications for M&A research and practice are discussed.

In an educational landscape fraught with demands and limited finances, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) of teachers are a coveted resource. In this regard, transformational leadership (TL) is often attributed with the achievement of such organizational outcomes. This conceptual essay considers the relationship between teacher culture, teacher OCBs, and TL, arguing that the characteristics of teacher culture predispose those who become teachers to perform OCBs. Furthermore, due to its participatory style, TL may result in either a motivating or de-motivating influence on teacher OCBs depending on the perceived values congruence between teacher culture and leadership goals and behavior. Implications and suggestions for practice are offered.

Digital influencers, besides being a personal branding phenomenon, constitute, nowadays, important partners for brands in the digital environment. Despite the benefits for both parties, the brand and the endorser, there is a risk when the individuals or the brand take part in some scandal or questionable activity, which causes a loss of credibility and reputation. The contagious effect of personal or corporate brand crisis with the partners is well reported in the literature. However, there are no studies about such occurrence in the digital environment, considering that the phenomenon of digital influence has some particularities differing from traditional celebrity endorsement. This chapter focuses on the research of the consequences of a change in the credibility of influencers or brands, after the occurrence of a negative situation, and the way in which this change affects the two parties involved, the brand and the influencer. We conducted a netnographic study of the social media pages of three digital influencers and the social media pages of a recognized fast fashion brand recognized in the digital world. We analyzed 1500 social media comments from their audiences and found that influencers suffer from a loss in sympathy and credibility by scandals while crisis communication strategies in corporate brands can prevent such damages. Strategic implications for brand managers and digital influencers managing their endorsements are addressed in the discussion.

In a study of merger-evoked cultural change in three organizations, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from individuals at all employment levels in both merger partners within each organization. Results were that most individuals perceived that the merger had impacted significantly on them personally. There was, however, a perceived lack of congruence between the organizational cultures of merging partners, resulting in culture clashes and significant changes to the organizations’ organizational cultures. More specifically, outcomes for both individuals and the subsequent acculturation following the mergers were related to the approach adopted to manage the merger process: incremental, immediate, or indifferent.

The purpose of the current study is to examine how employees from different cultures respond to participative budgeting when the budget planning horizon is congruent or incongruent with their cultural time orientation. We conducted a 2×2 quasi-experiment in which cultural time orientation (short term or long term) was measured and budget planning horizon (short term or long term) was manipulated. A total of 164 employees participated in the experiment – 87 from China and 77 from the United States, representing long-term and short-term cultural time orientations, respectively. The results indicate that satisfaction with participative budgeting was greater when cultural time orientation and budget planning horizon were congruent, relative to incongruent. Also, the differential reaction between congruence and incongruence was less extreme for the Chinese participants than the U.S. participants, which is consistent with Confucian thought of “The Doctrine of the Mean.” The results of this study contribute to participative budgeting literature and suggest that managers who operate in different countries should be cognizant of cultural differences when employing participative budgeting processes.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

Human resources are of great importance to provide competitive advantage in tourism, which is a labour-intensive industry. It is seen that the level of organizational commitment of the individuals who have similar values with the organization they work for and who can fulfil the roles and duties they undertake and who can meet all their needs in return increases. Their level of alienation is also observed to decrease. Population of the study, which purposes to reveal whether organizational culture has any impact on the employees' perception of person-organization fit and their level of organizational alienation or not, constitutes 4- and 5-star hotels in service in the central district of Izmir province. According to the results, it was seen that hotel businesses had two types of organizational culture such as hierarchy and clan culture. In the hotels with clan culture, demands-abilities fit levels of the worker were higher than value-congruence and needs-supplies dimensions. It was seen that workers alienated on meaninglessness dimension mostly. Similarly, in the hotels with hierarchy culture, demands-abilities fit levels of the worker were higher than value-congruence and needs-supplies dimensions. Workers alienated from their organization on meaninglessness dimension mostly.

There is growing evidence that managers perceive the general environment inaccurately, but very few studies have looked at the accuracy of specific strategic issue probability estimates, and at whether or not managers are aware of the accuracy or inaccuracy of their perceptions, something referred to as knowledge miscalibration. I explore perceptual inaccuracy and knowledge miscalibration in the form of overconfidence, in the context of demographic ageing, an issue currently affecting the tourism and hospitality industry. Using data from a survey of hotel managers, I find a high prevalence of perceptual error and evidence of a relatively large minority of respondents displaying knowledge overconfidence. Furthermore, I find a link between accurate environmental perceptions and strategic issue importance, suggesting that managers are better at accurately perceiving an issue when it is strategically important for their business. The same link does not exist with overconfidence, lending support to scholars arguing that overconfidence may be a trait, rather than being question-specific.

Purpose – When organisations behave irresponsibly, a question remains: Can they use a messaging strategy based in the organisation's commitment social responsibility to effectively respond to the crisis? The purpose of this chapter is to analyse stakeholder attitudes and their antecedents in such a case. Because of its scope, magnitude and use of a response strategy based on messages of social responsibility, the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico serves as an excellent case for measuring the effectiveness of such a messaging strategy.

Methodology/approach – The present study drew from two data sources: a content analysis of interactions on BP's Facebook page (N=1,515) as well as an image survey of BP (N=749).

Findings – BP's messaging strategy had limited positive effects in terms of (1) being viewed as a ‘socially responsible’ organisation and (2) creating significant good will towards the company. However, these data also reveal that BP has effectively opened lines of communication between stakeholders and the company.

Practical and social implications – This study has two central implications. First, for both organisations and activists, personal investment and the relevance of issues are both critical in order to change stakeholder attitudes about organisations. Second, based on this research, we can begin to develop stakeholder profiles based on age, sex and political identity.

Originality/value – In the last couple of years, considerable attention has been paid to describing and analysing the response strategies that organisations deploy; however, scant attention has been paid to measuring stakeholder evaluations of those crisis response strategies.