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This chapter and case study examine how and which structured elements of an employee-owned business contribute to building the economic security and asset wealth of the lowest-wage and skilled employees of the firm. It paves the way for greater understanding about how intentionally structured workplaces can address wealth inequality and economic security through income and non-income opportunity systems.

The study draws upon qualitative interviews with four members of management, two plant managers, and 12 low-income employee-owners. Company documents and confidential employee data were provided for direct research analysis. Interviews took place at company locations, and covered employees from all shifts.

Employee ownership structures provide an important tool for advancing policy support and management practices to rebuild the wealth building benefits of work for low-income workers.

To ensure confidentiality, the study is anonymized and does not directly draw on the worker-owner interviews. This limits the opportunity to demonstrate the effect of structure on workforce; nonetheless, the empirical data tell an important story.

Expanding wealth inequality and economic precarity among low- and moderate-income workers has raised broad debates about how shifts in the structure of work, through new business, capital, and ownership structures, may be contributing to these social problems.

The employee benefits of employee ownership are not fully studied. This case contributes to understanding how employee ownership may reduce gender and racial wealth gaps, build family well-being, and become a model for structuring opportunity for those traditionally left out of the economic mainstream.

As the cosmetic surgery industry grows and diversifies, societal beauty standards have shifted to include images of surgically enhanced bodies. With the increased use of influencer marketing, it is important for marketers to understand consumer perceptions of these modified appearances. This paper aims to use the lens of perceived morality (PM) to investigate consumer perceptions of cosmetic surgery services and the effect of enhanced body appearance on consumer interest in an endorsed brand. Interpersonal similarity (IS) is tested as a boundary condition.

A mixed-methods approach was taken with a qualitative study and two online experiments. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling (NStudy 1 = 133) and Amazon Mechanical Turk (NStudy 2 = 202; NStudy 3 = 270).

The themes uncovered in the qualitative study revealed that cosmetic surgery services were acceptable when internally motivated but may signal inauthenticity. The findings of Study 2 suggested consumer interest in an endorsed brand was negatively impacted by body enhancement (BE), with PM as the underlying mechanism. Study 3 results demonstrated IS moderated this effect. The indirect effect was significant only for those low in IS.

This research contributes to the underexplored area of cosmetic surgery services and its role in influencer marketing. The findings extend the literature on consumer attitudes and perceptions toward these services and provides insight into the intersection of BE and morality. The contribution is notable, as marketers increasing rely on social media influencers, many of whom have undergone cosmetic surgery services and enhanced their body appearance, to promote their brands.

This paper aims to examine consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions toward foods labeled as containing genetically modified (GM) (transgenic) ingredients across plant and animal-based categories. In light of marketplace changes (i.e. labeling requirements), we explore behavioral measures based on labeling options.

Three studies, one online projective survey using a convenience sample of consumers and two experiments conducted with Amazon mTurk adult US participants, are included.

Consumers have negative associations with GM products vs non-GM and are more likely to purchase unlabeled GM products. GM products may offer positive economic, societal and environmental benefits. However, the need for labeling overshadows these benefits and presence of GM labeling increased avoidance. Furthermore, changes in product opinion mediate consumers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay.

GM labeling negatively influences consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions. This is important for legislators and marketers concerned with counter-labeling effects (e.g. Non-GMO Project Verified).

Debates on efficacy of labeling, inclusion disclosure of ingredients, short-term risks and long-term implications are ongoing globally. Consumer reception and purchase intention can only be changed through governmental and corporate transparency.

Widespread misinformation about GM foods, presence in our food supply, impact on health, economy, environment and the marketplace still exists. The findings reflect consumers’ responses to changes proposed by the 2016 National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard legislation.

With the paucity of research on consumer response to the release of a GM animal product into the food supply, this work breaks new ground as the first to examine the impact of disclosure of GM animal-based food type.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between personal values and attitudes in an emerging market. And the authors verified whether the attitude plays a mediating role between personal values and the intention to purchase these products in the same market.

Two surveys were conducted with consumers of organic food in Brazil. The first study was conducted at two organic products fairs and obtained 385 responses. The second study was conducted on the internet and obtained 270 responses. The Portrait Values Questionnaire 21, plus attitude scales and purchase intent regarding organic food, was used. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

Significant relationships were found between personal values, such as openness to change (positive influence), conservation (positive), self-promotion (positive) and self-transcendence (negative). Significant relationships were also found between three personal values and the purchase intention of organic food (conservation – positive, self-promotion – positive and self-transcendence – negative), with all of them being mediated by attitude. The effect of openness to change on purchase intention was indirect, being mediated by attitude.

The authors noticed two theoretical gaps. The first involves the need to explore the attitude as a mediator in the relationship between the human values proposed by Schwartz (1992, 1994) and the intention to purchase organic food. Another perceived gap was pointed out by Steenkamp et al. (1999), Burgess and Steenkamp (2006) and Sheth (2011). These authors argue that consumption is different in emerging markets to that in more mature markets. This limits the ability to generalise consumer studies conducted in developed countries. This reasoning also applies to organic food.

This paper aims to investigate how the use of varying amounts of makeup by sales personnel influences perceived salesperson trustworthiness and downstream purchase intentions/sales effectiveness.

Two studies were run with female and male makeup usage examined separately. In each study, a between-subjects, scenario-based experiment was run on Qualtrics in which participants were randomly assigned to conditions representing a salesperson with varying levels of makeup usage (none to glamorous/extreme).

Using ANOVA, the authors find that the glamorous/extreme makeup condition led to significantly lower perceptions of trustworthiness. Furthermore, mediation models for both studies found that increased salesperson makeup predicted lower perceived trustworthiness, resulting in lower purchase intentions and sales effectiveness.

Managers and salespersons can benefit from these findings through increased awareness of the “masking” effect of wearing too much makeup and the insight that more is not always better when it comes to the use of makeup to increase salesperson attractiveness and effectiveness.

Much work has been done in the past on attractiveness of salespersons in general and the “beauty premium.” The present work expands on this literature by examining a specific strategy, yet to be rigorously examined, that sales personnel may use to increase their attractiveness – makeup, and by identifying an “optimal” level of makeup usage.

Research has consistently demonstrated that psychological capital (PsyCap) is an important predictor of various employee outcomes. Despite this, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding antecedents of PsyCap and the boundary conditions that influence PsyCap relationships. This study aimed to address these gaps by investigating how ethical leadership (EL) influences employee PsyCap, and in turn, predicts a range of desirable and undesirable employee attitudes. Furthermore, the study examined the moderating role of length of the leader-follower relationship (LLR) and organisational identification in these relationships in a novel moderated-mediation model.

Data were collected from 269 full-time employees in Australia via an online survey across two time-points.

The results show that PsyCap mediates the relationship between EL and employee attitudes. The results also indicate that LLR moderates these relationships, whereby these relationships are strengthened as LLR increases.

This study responds to calls for further investigation of antecedent and outcome variables related to PsyCap, as well as moderators of the relationships between PsyCap and antecedent and outcome variables. The findings also extend the application of social exchange theory to the context of EL and PsyCap.

Inaccurate product information on retail websites lead to dissatisfied customers and profit losses. Yet, the effects of product information failures (PIFs) remain under-explored, with the mobile commerce channel commonly overlooked. This paper aims (1) to investigate the negative effects of PIFs on shoppers' attitudes and behaviours in a mobile context. The authors further (2) evaluate the impacts of the cause and duration of a PIF, changes of expectations towards the retailer after a PIF occurred and how previous mobile shopping experience in general decreases the effects of PIFs.

The authors conducted a scenario-based experiment with a one-factorial between-subjects design. The six most common PIFs of an international leading online fashion retailer are operationalized and tested against a control group. The final sample consists out of 758 mobile shoppers from the UK.

The results demonstrate that the perceived severity of PIFs based on showing customers incorrect information is higher when key information is lacking. Further, when the cause of a PIF is attributed to the retailer, it results in higher recovery expectations towards them. The results also reveal that respondents who have shopped mobile before perceive PIFs as less severe than inexperienced ones.

This research expands the online service failure literature by examining PIFs and its effects in the specific context of mobile commerce. The authors also provide recommendations for a better management of PIFs like the incorporation of PIFs information into reporting packs.

Suicidal ideation (SI) is a serious public health concern among youth and young adults in the USA. It is critical to evaluate potential risk and protective factors associated with SI among young adults to develop prevention strategies that target novel mechanistic outcomes.

This study sought to evaluate the association between negative social exchange (NSE) and SI via the framework of the interpersonal theory of suicide. Participants were a diverse sample of N = 243 college students, with a mean age of 19.98 years (SD = 3.15). Participants were predominantly female (68.3%) and Hispanic/Latinx (39.5%), white (21.4%) or multiracial/multiethnic (24.3%). Participants completed survey measures to assess each of the constructs of interest.

Results indicated a significant indirect effect from NSE to SI via perceived burdensomeness, but not thwarted belongingness.

While individual-level interventions target emotional reactivity and managing emotional responses, larger public health–focused interventions on campus may wish to target reductions in NSE on campus. Future work should evaluate these associations using longitudinal study designs to further evaluate the statistical models.

This study aims to examine the following across a six-month period in post-graduate research (PGR) students: mental health and well-being; the effect of academic pressures on depression, anxiety and well-being; and the extent to which psychological resilience buffered against academic pressures.

This was a longitudinal questionnaire study with predictor variables of six types of academic pressure, outcome variables of depression, anxiety and well-being, and a moderator of resilience.

Well-being significantly worsened across the six-month timeframe, but levels of depression and anxiety remained relatively stable. Negative perceptions of academic challenges at baseline significantly predicted anxiety, but not depression or well-being, six months later. Negative appraisals of relationships with supervisors, other university staff and work peers were not predictors of anxiety. Social support resilience which was present at baseline buffered the relationship between perceived academic challenges and anxiety.

Higher education institutions have a duty of care towards PGR students, many of whom struggle with the escalating interactions between mental health problems and academic pressures. Actively nurturing psychological resilience related to social support is key at the level of individual students and the PGR community but more broadly at an institutional level.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of negative perceptions of multiple facets of academic life on depression, anxiety and well-being longitudinally. Additionally, it is the first study to investigate, and demonstrate, the extent to which psychological resilience can lessen the relationship between academic challenges and anxiety over time.