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Brodart Automation offers a wide range of services and products from microcomputer to online. In July 1985, Brodart introduced the first CD‐ROM‐based public access catalog, which was designed to compete with COM and online catalogs. Currently, Brodart is applying its creativity to adapting library services to global networks. Its vision and commitment are reflected in the team approach to product development and support.

In the 1990s, von Krogh, Roos, and Slocum (1994) and Venzin, von Krogh, and Roos (1998) began discussions centered around epistemology and knowledge management, focusing mainly on the varied sources and backgrounds for knowledge management. Since 2000, we have seen a much wider debate on several issues that are related to the development of a knowledge economy. The main task became the establishing of a conceptual framework for further discussion of epistemological categories, using three keywords: cognitivism, connectionism, and autopoiesis. One objective of this book is to analyze the progression to a more knowledge-based economy by linking these keyword perspectives together, and the intention of this chapter is to present a fundament for these epistemological discussions.

The purpose of this paper is to review the 1985-1991 project called “The Consumer Behavior Odyssey”, including a retrospective assessment of its context and role in influencing consumer research paradigms.

The study is based on personal recollections, introspective fieldnotes from the Odyssey and various publications and videos that emerged from the project. It also reflects on several subsequent “inside” and “outside” accounts of the project and its impact.

The paper concludes that the Odyssey was a critical event within a nexus of other critical events that helped precipitate what is now widely called Consumer Culture Theory. It was a highly visible project that acted as a lightning rod that attracted both supporters and opponents at the time, but that ultimately helped carve out a place for interpretive, qualitative, visual and ethnographic consumer research within business schools.

Although there were a number of methodological and research outputs from the Odyssey during the 1980s and early 1990s and there have been several recent “outside” appraisals of its influence since then, there has been only one subsequent “inside” account of its ontological and epistemological impact − a 2011 video made for the 50th anniversary of the major funding organization for the project, the Marketing Science Institute. This paper offers a more extensive appraisal by one of the project’s leaders.

This paper aims to trace the roots and development of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) through the eyes of major participants in this field of study.

The report is a qualitative essay based on data accumulated and integrated from several directions: the CCT literature, reminiscent versions by significant scholars, and participant/observation by the author.

The CCT conferences began in 2005, sparked by the contribution of Eric Arnould and Craig Thompson. However, earlier versions are traced through the growth of interest in the study of consumer behavior starting in ancient times and spurred by the surge of post-World War II prosperity and technological advances. The expansion of consumer studies through the Association for Consumer Research (ACR), the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), and the Heretical Consumer Research (HCR) were precursors of CCT. Perspectives are provided by Shankar and Patterson, Mark Tadajewski, Russell Belk, Fuat Firat, and Markus Geisler, with a special emphasis on early roots by the author.

The paper is novel in its application of The Rashomon Effect which shows how different scholars perceive a particular historical phenomenon. It is also a useful example of the qualitative orientation of CCT culture and style in studying situations, both contemporary and historical, to gain holistic insights.

This study aims to validate a model of organizational performance embedding corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance (CG) and sustainability concepts at a strategic level. The model has been created in response to two significant global influences: global challenges and sustainable development (SD).

To validate the model created, executives from 10 of Thailand’s leading companies that have received CSR, CG, or sustainability awards during 2010-2015 were asked to complete a questionnaire and were later interviewed.

The findings indicate the appropriateness of the model in addressing the two significant global influences and highlight the critical issues in its implementation.

Types of interviewees who are information sources, organization’s features such as size and industry and culture, appear to be critical factors in affecting the research findings and in limiting the interpretation and applications of the research model. All of those limitations have been explained in the research paper so that future research could be improved.

The model presents additional knowledge in relation to SD, business strategy, organizational performance and organizational sustainability. It shows how businesses can participate and respond to SD by embedding CSR, CG and sustainability concepts at the strategic level. It also shows that the outcome of such an approach will help business organizations sustain their existence by balancing financial, social and environmental dimensions.

Business is one of the three key players (government, business and citizens) in managing global challenges and promoting SD. A business sector contains huge valuable resources (e.g. physical; financial; human; technology) for development capabilities. Therefore, this research shows a model which helps business organizations understand their significant role in SD.

Due to increased human population, climate change and deterioration of natural resources, social thinkers all around the world have been warning the seriousness of global challenges and the importance of SD. However, not many studies combine and connect the key concepts of global challenges, SD, CSR, CG and sustainability, all together to address the important role of business organizations. This research answers/gives such overall picture through a field research work for validation.

This paper reflects on the development of Consumer Culture Theory, both as a field of research and as an institutional classification, since the publication of Arnould and Thompson (2005).

This paper takes a conceptual/historical orientation that is based upon the authors’ experiences over the course of the 10-year CCT initiative (including numerous conversations with fellow CCT colleagues).

The authors first discuss key benchmarks in the development of the CCT community as an organization. Next, the authors highlight key intellectual trends in CCT research that have arisen since the publication of their 2005 review and discuss their implications for the future trajectories of CCT research.

The paper by Arnould and Thompson (2005) has proven to be influential in terms of systematizing and placing a widely accepted disciplinary brand upon an extensive body of culturally oriented consumer research. The CCT designation has also provided an important impetus for institution building. The 10-year anniversary of this article (and not incidentally the CCT conference from which the papers in this volume hail) provides a unique opportunity for the authors to comment upon the broader ramifications of their original proposals.

Once the domain of theologians, sociologists and (religion) anthropologists, we have seen more recently how consumer researchers have enriched the study of spirituality and religion. Researching the sacred can be fraught with challenges, in and out of the field. Russell Belk, Samuelson Appau and Diego Rinallo address key questions, issues and conceptualisations in the scholarship on sacred consumption, contemplating the past and mapping future research avenues. A reading list is also included for those interested in joining the authors in this collective discovery of the sacred.

Contributors answered the following four questions: How has the study of sacred consumption evolved since you started researching the field? What would be the critical methodological issues that researchers need to consider when approaching the “sacred”? What are some of the key authors that have influenced your thinking? What do you think will be the key questions that researchers will need to focus on?

Rinallo, Belk and Appau’s reflections on studying the sacred provide food for thought for both novice and weathered researchers alike. Researching the sacred both shapes and is shaped by our positionality: by our insider/outsider status, our gender and race and our cosmovisions as believers or sceptics. Researchers should be mindful and reflective of their subject positionings as they approach, enter and leave the field. Researching the sacred requires an open mind as we broaden our vision of what constitutes the sacred. Such research calls for scholarly as well as phenomenological curiosity. Reading widely and across disciplines to better familiarise ourselves with our sacred context helps to craft novel and meaningful research.

This paper provides a multivocal genealogy of consumer culture work on religion and spirituality, methodological advice and reading resources for researchers.

Work environments, which are widely acknowledged to exert strong influences on employee attitudes and behavior, have been studied since the initiation of formal work entities. Over this time, scholars have identified myriad impactful internal and external factors. Absent though are investigations examining economic downturns despite their acknowledged pervasiveness and destructive effects on worker performance and well-being. To address this theoretical gap, a multistage model acknowledging the impact of recessions on workplace responses, response effects, and environmental considerations is proposed. Inherent in this discussion is the role of economic decline on reactive change processes, the nature of work, and the structure and design of organizations. These significant changes affect employee attitudes and behaviors in ways that increase the political nature of these work environments. Organizational factors and employee responses to heightened recession-driven politics are discussed. Additionally, theoretically relevant intervening variables capable of influencing work outcomes are described. The chapter is concluded by discussing the implications of this theoretical framework as well as directions for future research.

To date, research on sponsorship in general, and sport sponsorship in particular, has focused on sponsorship effects (Business-to-Consumer) and the managerial uses of sponsorship. This paper addresses a gap in the sport sponsorship literature by examining sport sponsorship from a Business-to-Business (B2B) perspective, and the use of sport sponsorship as a Critical Sales Event to help the B2B sales force move customers through the relationship life cycle stages proposed by Dwyer, Shurr and Oh (1987). The authors propose and discuss a framework for implementing Critical Sales Events into the relationship marketing life cycle using sport sponsorship; discuss how sport sponsorship can impact buyer-seller relations at pertinent stages of the life cycle; and provide recommendations for future research.

Persistent change has placed considerable pressure on organizations to keep up or fade into obscurity. Firms that remain viable, or even thrive, are staffed with decision-makers who capably steer organizations toward opportunities and away from threats. Accordingly, leadership development has never been more critical. In this chapter, the authors propose that leader development is an inherently dyadic process initiated to communicate formal and informal expectations. The authors focus on the informal component, in the form of organizational politics, as an element of leadership that is critical to employee and company success. The authors advocate that superiors represent the most salient information source for leader development, especially as it relates to political dynamics embedded in work systems. The authors discuss research associated with our conceptualization of dyadic political leader development (DPLD). Specifically, the authors develop DPLD by exploring its conceptual underpinnings as they relate to sensemaking, identity, and social learning theories. Once established, the authors provide a refined discussion of the construct, illustrating its scholarly mechanisms that better explain leader development processes and outcomes. The authors then expand research in the areas of political skill, political will, political knowledge, and political phronesis by embedding our conceptualization of DPLD into a political leadership model. The authors conclude by discussing methodological issues and avenues of future research stemming from the development of DPLD.