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Any credible agenda that seeks to eradicate global poverty must seek to correct the structural injustices and inequities that cause and perpetuate endemic poverty. Such an agenda must aim not merely to aid the poor with grants, welfare, and subsidies (that indirectly perpetuate poverty) but seek to enhance self-sufficiency and productive skills of the poor by ensuring them comparable access to opportunities of the market economies to participate, on more equitable terms, in the dynamic process of overall economic growth. In this context, we apply critical thinking to identify and recognize the structured injustices of the market system, which not only cause poverty but also compromise human dignity via social inequalities and inequities arguably caused by the free market and corporate capital systems of the world. Global poverty that affects more than a quarter of the human population is a pernicious self-serving system connected to the injustices of the business and political systems of the world. The persistent nature of poverty is in direct proportion to our inability to eradicate it as a whole in the cosmic system. Eradication of global desperate poverty and its unjust structural causes can be achieved, we submit, by tracing the roots of global poverty to corporate and free enterprise capital systems and their unexamined structures of social injustice and social inequalities.

The purpose of this article is to meet Professor Paul T.P. Wong, PhD, CPscyh, who is based at the Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Wong represents an interesting case of how a racial/cultural minority could achieve success in a hostile environment consisting of the systemic biases of injustice, discrimination and marginalization. His life also epitomizes how one can experience the paradoxical truth of healing and flourishing in an upside-down world through the positive suffering mindset (PSM).

This case study is presented in two sections: a positive autoethnography written by Wong, followed by his answers to ten questions. The core methodology of positive autoethnography allows people to understand how Wong’s life experience of being a war baby in China, a constant outsider and a lone voice in Western culture, has shaped a very different vision of meaning, positive mental health and global flourishing.

Wong reveals how to live a life of meaning and happiness for all the suffering people in a difficult world. He has researched the positive psychology of suffering for 60 years, from effective coping with stress and searching for meaning to successful aging and positive death. According to Wong’s suffering hypothesis and the emerging paradigm of existential positive psychology (Wong, 2021), cultivating a PSM is essential for healing and flourishing in all seasons of life.

An expanding literature has been developed to illustrate why the missing link in well-being research is how to transcend and transform suffering into triumph. Wong reveals how this emerging area of research is still not fully embraced by mainstream psychology dominated by the individualistic Euro-American culture, and thus why, in an adversarial milieu, existential positive psychology is limited by its inability to attract more researchers to test out Wong’s suffering hypothesis.

The wisdom and helpful tools presented here may enable people to achieve mature happiness and existential well-being even when they have a very painful past, a very difficult present and a bleak future.

This autoethnographic case study offers new grounds for hope for all those who are injured by life, marginalized by systemic biases or tormented by chronic illnesses and disorders. It also provides a road map for a better world with more decent human beings who dare to stand up for justice, integrity and compassion.

Meaning as reflected in suffering is according to Wong the most powerful force to bring out either the worst or the best in people. The new science of suffering shows us how the authors can achieve positive transformation through cultivating a PSM, no matter how harsh one’s fate may be.

In marketing and consumer research, the study of Indigenous ideas and rituals remains limited. The authors present an Indigenous-informed study of consumption rituals co-produced with members of the Shipibo–Konibo Indigenous group of the Peruvian Amazon. Specifically, the authors worked with the Comando Matico, a group of Shipibos from Pucallpa, Peru. This study aims to investigate how Indigenous spiritual beliefs shape health-related consumption rituals by focusing on the experience of the Shipibos and their response to COVID-19.

Drawing upon the principles of Indigenous research, the authors co-produced this study with the Comando Matico. The authors collaboratively discussed the research project’s design, analysed and interpreted data and co-authored this study with members of the Comando Matico. This study uses discourse analyses. The corpus of discourse is speech and text produced by the Comando Matico in webinars and online interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic. The full and active participation of the Comando Matico informed the discourse analysis by ensuring Indigenous knowledge, and worldviews were infused throughout the process.

The authors foreground how Indigenous spiritual beliefs act as a force that imbues the knowledge and practice of health, wellbeing and illness, and this process shapes the performance of rituals. In Indigenous contexts, multiple spirits coexist with consumers, who adhere to specific rituals to respond to and relate to these spirits. Indigenous consumption rituals involve the participation of non-human beings (called rao, ibo, yoshin and chaikoni by the Shipibos) and this aspect challenges the traditional notion of rituals and ritual elements in marketing.

The authors demonstrate how Indigenous spiritual beliefs shape consumption rituals in the context of health and draw attention to how the acknowledgement of alternative ontologies and epistemologies can help address dominant hierarchies of knowledge in marketing theory.

This paper aimed to study business model innovation by a work-integration social enterprise (WISE). Specifically, the study investigated how the organization developed novel value propositions and created and delivered value for multiple stakeholders.

An in-depth qualitative study was conducted at Foreword, a for-profit organization that uses persons with disabilities, mental health conditions and special needs. Data was drawn from semi-structured interviews with stakeholders of the organization and several secondary information sources.

The authors’ inductive analysis revealed the existence of an innovative and powerful business model that is integrated by the organization’s overarching social mission and anchors its ability to deal with multiple conflicting logics such as economic, social, ecological sustainability and community development, to co-create value with and for multiple stakeholders.

The study underscores the need for business model innovation through enhancing value creation for multiple stakeholders for for-profit WISEs. Since the analysis and resulting model in the study are based on a single organization in a geographically small, affluent country with a hands-on government, they may need to be modified before applying in other contexts.

The study identifies several pointers for other social enterprises – specifically the need for managers to build business models appropriate for their organizational and environmental contexts.

The study’s originality stems from the adoption of a stakeholder lens to examine business model innovation. It also proposes an integrative conceptual model of the antecedents and outcomes of business model innovation.

The inclusion of esports as an official event in the Hangzhou Asian Games is an important step towards the institutionalisation of esports. The significance of this event marks that Asia once again takes a lead in the global esportisation. This chapter investigates a series of history events in the inclusion process of esports into the comprehensive Games in Asia using process sociology and actor network theory (ANT). This study will analyse the type characteristics of esports events in Hangzhou Asian Games, whilst examining how key stakeholders' interact and balance in the network composed of international sports organisations, host of the event, emerging esports organisations and esports game companies. The chapter also examines the functions of global game industrial economic geography, local cultural politics, esports geopolitics and Olympic values in esports sportization, aiming to reveal the implications of esports inclusion in the Asian Games on the debate of whether esports meets the criteria to be classified as a ‘sport’ and its enlightenment of digital strategy to the inclusion esports in the Olympics.

In the past 10 years, the scale of running events in China has increased dramatically, and the forms of running events have also become rich and diverse. Running is not only a social phenomenon but also a historical and cultural phenomenon as an organic part of human culture with its own sociological values in China. This chapter offers insight into the development of Chinese running culture and how this has emerged from ancient and modern Chinese running cultures based on Foucault's disciplinary power theory, biopower and the technologies of the self. This chapter argues that running culture in China constructs the subjectivity of the Chinese runners under the joint action of the technologies of power and the technologies of the self. The findings acknowledge how Chinese Runners present and express themselves by showing a ‘sense of presence’. Runners illustrate the implicit or explicit meaning and value of a particular way of life through running. Runners regard running as the technology of the self for self-expression and self-creation so that individuals can control their bodies and soul, thoughts, behaviours and ways of existence. Emerging technologies of power provide possibilities for the production of running culture in China, and the current policy under the technologies of power meets the needs of runners. In Chinese running culture, power was not oppressive but productive.

The COVID-19 pandemic found deliberate and idiosyncratic adoption of telecommuting and other flexibility practices across industries. With the pandemic waning, many organizations adopted various models for employee work locations. Based on Self-Determination Theory and Social Comparison Theory, the authors examine the impact of the dissonance between employee preference for their work location and enforced work location norms and its impact on general well-being and organizational commitment.

The authors’ empirical study is based on a sample of 881 respondents across multiple industries in India over six months of the COVID pandemic. The authors use PLS-SEM for data analysis to examine the model and the moderating influence of individual resilience on control at work.

The authors find that increased dissonance between work locations reduces general well-being, control and work. Further, higher individual resilience reduces the impact of this dissonance on control at work.

The study informs policy and practices that choice of work location is important for employees to feel a higher sense of control, impacting their affective commitment and general well-being. While implementation of policies across an organization for varying job roles and complexities presents a challenge, practitioners may ignore this need of employees at their peril, as employees are likely to demonstrate lower well-being, engagement and organizational commitment and eventually leave.

This study is significant as it provides relevant scholarship based on the COVID-19 pandemic, guiding practice on future ways of working. This study further supports the impact of an individual's sense of control on where work is done. The authors build a strong theoretical foundation to justify the impact of the lack of autonomy in the emerging working norms on employees' general well-being and organizational commitment.

This study investigates how the spiritual leadership style of a manager affects employees' intention to stay with the organization, taking into account the post-pandemic workplace and the expected economic downturn. Furthermore, this study aims to assess how employee voice behavior mediates the linkages between the spiritual leadership style and intention to stay and how this mediation is influenced by perceived interpersonal justice. Grounded on the self-determination theory of intrinsic motivation and social-exchange theory, this study seeks to advance the theoretical understanding of spiritual leadership and its associated outcomes.

The descriptive study included 379 frontline employees in India's tourism and hospitality sector. Responses were collected from selected employees using the snowball sampling method and met strict inclusion criteria. Self-reporting questionnaires were used to collect data from the participants. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using IBM AMOS 21.0, and hypothesis testing and drawing inferences were carried out using path analytic procedures with PROCESS Macro 3.0.

Consistent with the hypotheses presented in this paper, this study demonstrated a statistically significant indirect impact of spiritual leadership on employees' intention to stay with the organization, through indirect effects of employee voice behavior. Additionally, the conditional indirect effects of spiritual leadership on employees' intention to stay, mediated by voice behavior, were contingent upon the level of interpersonal justice as a moderator. Specifically, these effects were significant when the levels of interpersonal justice were low but not when they were high.

This study makes significant strides in developing and testing a pioneering model that examines the association between spiritual leadership and employees’ intention to stay with the organization. This research explores explicitly how this relationship is influenced by perceived interpersonal justice and employee voice behavior. The results of this study emphasize the criticality of cultivating a culture that inspires constructive criticism and elucidates its potential advantages, effectively bridging a gap in the existing scholarly literature.

The development of the next Web 3.0 digital generation will be built on a decentralized society and blockchain technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and “soulbound tokens” (SBTs). These technologies will enable a digital proof of personhood that would make it possible for people to differentiate themselves through their unique credentials and reputation. SBTs can include unique information relating to the user’s identity that can enhance consumer’s self-perception, uniqueness and reputation building. The literature remains scant on the underlying consequences of SBTs from a consumer behavior perspective, and consequently the implications for brands given rising egocentric consumer needs which this study addresses.

This study adopted an exploratory approach using in-depth interviews with experts to increase our understanding related to SBTs, and their potential impact on consumers’ behaviors and brands’ marketing strategies.

The findings unveiled an SBT-led egocentrism cycle comprising the following stages: penetration and proliferation of SBTs, consumers’ need for uniqueness and differentiation, brand’s reputation, brand’s personality matching, brand-based NFTs’ characteristics and shift in the competitive landscape for both consumers and brands.

This research is among the first to study SBTs and their potential impact in the Web 3.0 environment where digital identities and ownership are decentralized and authentic.

Tourism value chain (TVC) analysis has been widely used as an alternative approach for designing sustainable and inclusive programs for tourism development in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. This chapter looks at the experiences of three sustainable tourism initiatives in the Philippines to assess the strengths and limitations of the value chain as a framework for destination development. Short case studies describe the experiences of stakeholders in two popular destinations in the Philippines: the surfing town of San Juan, La Union, and the resort-island of Panglao, Bohol. The third case study shares the perspective of the Transforming the Tourism Value Chain (TTVC) project, a national campaign for more sustainable hotels, resort as well as meetings, conventions, incentives, and event (MICE) facilities in various destinations around the country. Stakeholders deeply involved in implementing these projects share their insights on the successes, challenges, and limitations of TVC-based approaches to resilient and sustainable destination development. The destinations' experiences suggest that the advocacy for sustainable management and operations may be comparable to a process of technology adoption or acceptance along the TVC. Practical and theoretical recommendations for leveraging the TVC toward more holistic and sustainable visitor economies are given at the end of this chapter.