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This study aims to determine whether socially friendly business strategy impacts social sustainability performance and, if so, whether social management process and spiritual capital act as mediators and moderators of the relationship.

This study uses a comprehensive research framework consisting of the mediation and moderation relationship among four constructs, namely, socially friendly business strategy, social management process, spiritual capital and social sustainability performance. A total of 433 owners/managers of micro, small and medium-sized firms (MSMEs) in the Indonesian province of East Java took part in this study, and the data were gathered using a survey method. The resource-based view, stakeholder theory and partial least squares structural equation modelling are all used in this study to evaluate and explain the hypotheses.

The results show that both socially friendly business strategy and social management process positively affect social sustainability performance. Further analysis reveals that spiritual capital moderates the effect of socially friendly business strategy on social sustainability performance. Second, social management process mediates the influence of socially friendly business strategy on social sustainability performance in part.

The current study has limitations. First, it restricts the scope of its sample to MSMEs in Indonesia’s East Java Province. As a result, it also restricts its generalizability, and care must be used if the findings are applied to other types of organizations and geographic areas. Second, some survey participants needed help to complete the online questionnaire. As a result, collecting the data were less successful than anticipated. This study has significant implications for the development of the stakeholder theory, particularly in elucidating the mechanisms by which socially responsible corporate strategies, social management practices and performance in terms of social sustainability are affected.

The findings provide a comprehensive guidance for owners/managers in reorienting their business strategy, managing the social management process and building their spiritual capital to achieve social sustainability performance. It provides materials for researchers and students who are interested in studying the subject matter.

MSMEs have a significant role in society. The welfare of society will therefore increase if social sustainability performance is successful. The overall model of social sustainability performance improvements and its antecedents are presented in this study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first attempts to explore the general model of improving social sustainability performance using four constructs that are rarely used in previous studies. It also uses a new data set and research setting in Indonesia as one of the emerging countries.

This study aims to propose an integrated model to examine the impact of knowledge governance, knowledge sharing and absorptive capacity (ACAP) on project performance in the context of project-based organizations (PBOs). This study also examines the moderating role of social processes on the relationships among these variables.

To test the proposed model, cross-sectional data were collected regarding projects from 133 PBOs in Pakistan’s information technology/software industry. The data were analyzed using the partial least squares – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method and PRCOESS tool. Finally, this study also uses causal asymmetry analysis to check asymmetric relationship in the key constructs.

The results generally support the proposed model. Knowledge governance and knowledge sharing are important antecedents for improving the ACAP of the project, which in turn significantly improves project performance. Additionally, social processes positively moderate the relationship between knowledge sharing and ACAP, as well as between ACAP and project performance.

The findings suggest that PBOs should invest in developing a knowledge governance system that guides and stimulates knowledge sharing within and between projects. This would boost the ACAP of projects and lead to superior project performance.

This study addresses the important issue of knowledge management in IT/software projects. It proposes a unique model that integrates the key constructs of knowledge management and describes their effect on project performance.

While strategy was traditionally perceived as exclusive, and limited to small groups within organizations, recently a shift toward greater openness through inclusion of a larger number and variety of actors is emerging. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a social network perspective to develop a theoretical framework on how this increased openness has a varying impact in the different phases of the strategy process.

The author suggests that the strategy process is shaped through social interactions between individuals. Specifically the author conceptualizes how introducing openness affects individuals’ structural and relational characteristics, which impact generating new strategic ideas (variation), and selecting (selection), and integrating them into the existing set of routines (retention).

The framework shows that benefits and costs of increased openness balance differently. While substantial benefits may be realized in the idea generation phase, costs may outweigh the benefits in the selection and retention phase.

Based on the framework, implications can be drawn on how openness should be introduced in the different phases of the strategy process. Specifically the author discusses appropriate open strategy tools based on social technologies, which organizations can use to benefit from openness in the different stages.

Open strategy is a newly emerging phenomenon, which seems to fundamentally change the strategist’s work. More open, inclusive ways of strategizing offer new benefits but also create costs in the strategy process. This paper deepens the theoretical understanding of the consequences of openness in the strategy process.

For social marketers to become effective change agents, evaluation is important. This paper aims to expand existing evaluation work to empirically respond to Gordon and Gurrieri’s request for a reflexive turn in social marketing using reflexive process evaluations: measuring more than “what” worked well, but also evaluating “how” and “why” success or indeed failure happened.

An online survey, adapting Dillman’s tailored design method empirically assesses 13 reflexive process hypotheses. With a response rate of 74 per cent, regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the proposed hypotheses and to identify the significant predictors of each of the reflexive process relationships under investigation.

The study empirically examines and shows support for three reflexive process evaluation constructs – relationships, knowledge and networking. Network involvement and reciprocity; two process dimension constructs do not exert any impact or predict any relationship in the conceptual framework.

This paper expands evaluation theory and practice by offering a conceptual framework for reflexive process evaluation that supports the logic to be reflexive. It shows support for three reflective process evaluation constructs – relationships, knowledge and networks. Another unique element featured in this study is the empirical assessment of Gordon and Gurrieri’s “other stakeholders”, extending evaluations beyond a traditional client focus to an interconnected assessment of researchers, clients and other stakeholders.

Indicators of economic and social phenomena can be useful descriptive and analytical inputs for public policy. The “social indicators movement” has emerged in the last decade and is devoted to the measurement of widely‐ranging dimensions of human welfare. For the most part, questions of systematic measurement for public policy are explored here. Drawing initially on some traditions of measurement in economics, the principal aim is to provide a broad theoretical frame of reference for policy indicator design. Questions of indicator development necessarily involve ideas of suitability or validity of indicators designed for a purpose. Approaches to indicator design for the purpose of enhancing collective decision‐making—including formal model building approaches—are subsumed as special cases once a more general theory is espoused in sections II and III.

Theory remains underused in social marketing despite many potential benefits that may arise if theory is concretely and consistently applied. In response to ongoing calls for standardised frameworks and methods, this study aims to present a four-step theory application process with the aim of supporting improved theory use across the entire social marketing process.

The role and importance of theory application in behaviour change is outlined alongside an integrative review and critical analysis of theory application in social marketing. To address key challenges impeding rigorous theory use, the theory selection, iterative schematisation, theory testing and explicit reporting of theory use (TITE) four-step theory application process is proposed. Evidence-based guidance, current best practice examples, and a worked example are provided to illustrate how the TITE process may be initially followed.

Low levels and poor quality of theory use suggest social marketing researchers and practitioners need further support in rigorously applying theories across the life of an intervention. The TITE process leverages the known benefits of theory use and capitalises on the reciprocal relationship that may be enacted between theory selection, iterative schematisation, theory testing and explicit reporting of theory use.

The TITE process delivers a standardised framework that aims to stimulate rigorous theory application and explicit reporting of theory use in social marketing. Clear theory application and reporting will permit a more fine-grained understanding of intervention effectiveness to be established by shifting away from a simple dichotomous view of effectiveness (success or failure) to unpacking the “active ingredients” contributing to observed outcomes.

The evidence-based guidance and best practice examples provided for each step of the TITE process will increase the accessibility and usability of theory among practitioners. With time the TITE process will support practitioners by delivering a robust theory base that can be reliably followed to further extend on social marketing’s effectiveness.

This paper draws on interdisciplinary methods and resources to propose a standardised framework – the TITE process – designed to support rigorous theory application and explicit reporting of theory use in social marketing. Refinement, uptake and widespread implementation of the TITE process will improve theory use and support the creation of a shared language, thereby advancing social marketing’s cumulative knowledge base over time.

This study aims to explore the role of the linguistic style used in the brand-posted social media content on consumer engagement in the Fintech domain.

A total of 3,286 tweets (registering nearly 1.35 million impressions) published by 10 leading Fintech unicorns in India were extracted using the Twitter API. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary was used to analyse the linguistic characteristics of the shared tweets. Negative Binomial Regression (NBR) was used for testing the hypotheses.

This study finds that using drive words and cognitive language increases consumer engagement with Fintech messages via the central route of information processing. Further, affective words and conversational language drive consumer engagement through the peripheral route of information processing.

The study extends the literature on brand engagement by unveiling the effect of linguistic features used to design social media messages.

The study provides guidance to social media marketers of Fintech brands regarding what content strategies best enhance consumer engagement. The linguistic style to improve online consumer engagement (OCE) is detailed.

The study’s findings contribute to the growing stream of Fintech literature by exploring the role of linguistic style on consumer engagement in social media communication. The study’s findings indicate the relevance of the dual processing mechanism of elaboration likelihood model (ELM) as an explanatory theory for evaluating consumer engagement with messages posted by Fintech brands.

This conceptual paper focusses on climate change as a social issue and therefore as a social scientific problem. According to young climate activists, Greta Thunberg being the most widely known, climate change is specifically a problem of generations. Typically, the discourse on responsibility focusses on the technical and philosophical questions posed by the study into “intra-” and “inter-generational justice”. It is the purpose of this paper to present sociological conceptual tools with which to both analyze and propose solutions to specific social problems caused by current generations that will affect future generations.

Figurational process sociology develops and tests models of long-term, unplanned developments, which produce the conditions in which short-term practices of informing and planning social interventions are bound up.

The paper reveals the significance of sociological models that can describe and explain social processes and long-term developments in human habitus that have important explanatory value for understanding contemporary social problems such as human-caused climate change.

The concepts and analytical frames of reference provided by figurational process sociology provide crucial insights into the problem of generations and can help reveal how this social dynamic contributes to challenges facing young climate activists calling for rapid “ecologization” processes and increased human restraint with regard to the natural environment.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Review of Literature Social responsibility is a fairly old concept which took on new life in the 1960s. Corporate critics who questioned corporate performance, and even the legitimacy of corporate business, called for and got increased government control of business. Social responsibility became the “self‐control” alternative as criticism of business continued to grow. In general, social responsibility means that a private corporation has responsibilities to society that go beyond the production of goods and services at a profit (Davis, 1960; Starling, 1984). Many definitions go beyond this one and require more specific activities from corporations. Acceptance of social responsibility as an appropriate description of the business‐society relationship implies that the corporation's broader constituency includes not only stockholders but also other societal groups such as customers, employees, suppliers, and neighbouring communities.