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Enterprise, Strategy.

This case study is about a used car retailer in an African country, specifically Ghana. Lessons drawn from the case could be applied in societies which are highly socialised; not individualistic.

Ghana is one of the first African countries to be hooked up to the internet. However, there has been a very slow uptake of “traditional” e-commerce applications due to a number of critical factors including a legal framework, and electronic payment system. Despite these challenges, some firms are making strides to use the power of the internet to enhance their operations. For example, the case firm uses social relationships to sell its first stock of cars and to re-design its website. Other findings and lessons from this case could be applied to similar contexts.

An understanding of how society influences business operations, especially in an African or Ghanaian context. Learners can also draw lessons that could be applicable to enhancing and growing the e-commerce capabilities of offline firms.

Teaching notes.

Online technologies have, in recent times, revolutionized the process of relationship building between firms and their customers. Nonetheless, there is a limited focus and theorization when it comes to explaining the link between online relationship marketing (ORM) activities and their impact on firm relationship marketing (RM) objectives. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the signaling role of ORM activities in generating online trust and customer loyalty, through the lens of the signaling theory.

Data for the study were gathered through a survey of 429 Ghanaian retail bank customers. Results were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques.

The paper highlights the signaling role of engagement and interactivity online in influencing banks’ RM outcomes per the signaling theory. It concludes that bank’s online relationship activities, over and above the online tools utilized, need to communicate appropriate and useful signals in order to positively influence online trust and loyalty among customers.

The study, in its uniqueness, utilizes the signaling theory to explain the role and impact of online RM activities in the banking industry.

The burgeoning practice of peer-to-peer breastmilk sharing in the United States conflicts with public health concerns about the safety of the milk. In-depth interviews with 58 breastmilk sharers highlight the ways in which these respondents counter widespread risk narratives. These caregivers deploy existing social values such as self-reliance, good citizenship, and “crunchy,” or natural, mothering to validate their milk-sharing practices. However, because of stratified reproduction, in which society encourages White motherhood while it disparages motherhood among poor women and women of color, these discourses are more accessible to milk sharers who are White and from middle-class. Black and Latinx milk donors and recipients offer additional rationale for milk sharing that includes reclaiming their legacies as worthy mothers and elevating milk sharing to justice work. In rejecting and reframing risk, all of these milk sharers work toward flattening the good mother/bad mother binary.

This paper focuses on the relatively unexplored link between international experience and academic careers. Drawing on a study of 30 British academics in four countries, it reports how they accounted for their decision to take an overseas appointment and how they evaluated that appointment. The contemporary career literature is used as a framework for analysis connecting the findings with “traditional” and “new” career themes. The desire to travel was found to be a key driver in taking the overseas appointment. When it came to evaluating the overseas appointment, however, upward career mobility in the context of increasing internationalisation was a major concern. The paper offers a number of key concerns for managers in institutions of higher education, particularly those concerned with the management and recruitment of international faculty.