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Companies changing their brand names are frequently reported in the business press but this phenomenon has as yet received little academic attention. This paper sets out to understand the drivers of the corporate rebranding phenomenon and to analyse the impact of such strategies on corporate brand equity.

A cross‐sectional sample of 166 rebranded companies provides descriptive data on the context in which rebranding occurs. Two case studies provide further detail on how the process of rebranding is managed.

The data show that a decision to rebrand is most often provoked by structural changes, particularly mergers and acquisitions, which have a fundamental effect on the corporation's identity and core strategy. They also suggest that a change in marketing aesthetics affects brand equity less than other factors such as employees' behaviour.

The paper proposes a conceptual model to integrate various dimensions of corporate rebranding. Analysing the rebranding phenomenon by assessing the leverage of brand equity from one level of the brand hierarchy to the other constitutes an interesting route for further research.

Managers are reminded that corporate rebranding needs to be managed holistically and supported by all stakeholders, with particular attention given to employees' reactions.

This paper is of value to anybody seeking to understand the rebranding phenomenon, including academics and business managers.

The extent to which Amartya Sen’s capability approach is prefigured in Karl Marx’s views comes into sharper focus when one notes that Marx and Friedrich Engels explicitly argued that the transformation from capitalism to communism would involve the development of “a totality of capacities”. Sen also cites the notion of “false consciousness” in developing his view of objectivity and claims a Marxian pedigree for the notion of “objective illusion”. He suggests that public discussion can make evaluative judgements better informed and less parochial, so that they connect more closely with what people have reason to value. The author argues that this line of argument is also closely related to views John Stuart Mill advanced in his discussion of the “competent judges” and in his defence of liberty of thought and discussion.

The approach used is conceptual analysis and discussion of historical texts.

The chief findings are that Amartya Sen’s works on capability and objectivity have deeper affinities with some of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ views than has been hitherto appreciated by scholars. However, some of the claims which Sen makes about objectivity and false consciousness are prefigured in the writings of J.S. Mill.

Because some of these affinities between the works of Sen, Marx and Mill have not previously been recognised, the paper’s elucidation of them is a new contribution to the literature.

The purpose of this study is to propose an effective mechanism of developing innovative ICT‐enabled services from the perspective of experiential marketing with the aim to utilize a commonly used product design model of Kano.

To illustrate the application of the integrative approach of mechanism, a case of innovative ICT‐enabled residential video surveillance is given to identify customer needs based on Bernd Schmitt's five strategic experiential modules (SEMs). Afterward, the Kano questionnaire is developed and used in an on‐line survey. Data from 668 respondents are collected and analyzed in light of Kano's method.

A total of 15 innovative service requirements is identified. Among them, seven requirements are attractive and eight are one‐dimensional attributes according to Kano's method of categorization.

Under the competitive situations that most of the ICT‐enabled service providers provide similar products and services, firms need to grasp customer needs and wants and convert them into deliverable services promptly. The result reveals that integrating Kano model with SEMs are good tools in exploring customer needs and wants for ICT‐enabled services.

To explore the experiential aspects of consumption has become the most important source for value creation. However, it is hard to find a systematic approach with common language for cross‐functional design team. This study aims to solve this problem by incorporating two well‐known models. Though the models used are widespread, it is rarely found in using Kano's model to explore the experiential aspects of consumption; likewise, SEMs are rarely implemented systematically.

Firms tend to transfer more knowledge in technology joint ventures compared to contractual technology agreements. Using insights from new institutional economics, this chapter explores to what extent the alliance governance association with interfirm knowledge transfer is sensitive to an evolving industry norm of collaboration connected to the logic of open innovation. The chapter examines 1,888 dyad-year observations on firms engaged in technology alliances in the U.S. information technology industry during 1980–1999. Using fixed effects linear models, it analyzes longitudinal changes in the alliance governance association with interfirm knowledge transfer, and how such changes vary in magnitude across bilateral versus multipartner alliances, and across computers, telecommunications equipment, software, and microelectronics subsectors. Increases in industry-level alliance activity during 1980–1999 improved the knowledge transfer performance of contractual technology agreements relative to more hierarchical equity joint ventures. This effect was concentrated in bilateral rather than multipartner alliances, and in the software and microelectronics rather than computers and telecommunications equipment subsectors. Therefore, an evolving industry norm of collaboration may sometimes make more arms-length governance of a technology alliance a credible substitute for equity ownership, which can reduce the costs of interfirm R&D. Overall, the chapter shows that the performance of material practices that constitute innovation ecosystems, such as interfirm technology alliances, may differ over time subject to prevailing institutional norms of open innovation. This finding generates novel implications for the literatures on alliances, open innovation, and innovation ecosystems.

First January 1973 will not only mark the beginning of a New Year but a year which history will mark as a truly momentous one, for this is the year that Britain, after centuries of absence, re‐enters the framework of Europe as one of the Member‐States of the enlarged European Community. This in itself must make for change on both sides; Britain is so different in outlook from the others, something they too realize and see as an acquisition of strength. There have been other and more limited forms of Continental union, mainly of sovereignty and royal descent. Large regions of France were for centuries under the English Crown and long after they were finally lost, the fleur de lis stayed on the royal coat of arms, until the Treaty of Amiens 1802, when Britain retired behind her sea curtain. The other Continental union was, of course, with Hanover; from here the Germanized descendants of the Stuarts on the female line returned to the throne of their ancestors. This union lasted until 1832 when rules of descent prevented a woman from reigning in Hanover. It is interesting to speculate how different history might have been if only the British Crown and the profits of Tudor and Stuart rule had been maintained in one part of central Europe. However, Britain disentangled herself and built up overwhelming sea power against a largely hostile Europe, of which it was never conceived she could ever be a part, but the wheel of chance turns half‐circle and now, this New Year, she enters into and is bound to a European Community by the Treaty of Rome with ties far stronger, the product of new politico‐economic structures evolved from necessity; in a union which cannot fail to change the whole course of history, especially for this country.

This paper aims to review and synthesize the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure literature in order to (1) develop a comprehensive definition of disclosure quality; (2) review the evolution of disclosure quality proxies used by accounting researchers; (3) describe the antecedents to disclosure quality; (4) describe the outcomes of disclosure quality; and (5) identify gaps in the current literature and offer suggestions for future research.

This study conducted a systematic review capturing articles examining CSR disclosure quality. The researchers first searched EBSCO, identifying all relevant articles by searching for “corporate social responsibility,” “CSR,” “ESG” and “sustainability reporting” anywhere in the article. Then, the results were filtered to focus on 23 of the most prominent accounting journals. The search resulted in 592 articles which were individually reviewed for relevance to the authors’ review. This study includes all articles that examine disclosure and provide insight into elements that influence disclosure quality or provide evidence of the effects of disclosure quality on user decision-making.

It is found that a comprehensive definition of CSR disclosure quality has yet to be developed and that proxies for CSR disclosure quality have evolved over time. This study synthesizes the literature on the antecedents of CSR disclosure quality, and how CSR disclosure quality affects users' decision-making and related outcomes. Overall, the review of this study suggests that assurance and a number of corporate features have important effects on disclosure quality. Also, high-quality disclosures are positively associated with many benefits to market participants.

This study complements Huang and Watson's (2015) CSR literature review by comprehensively reviewing and synthesizing the CSR disclosure quality literature that was only emerging when their review was published. Importantly, this study contributes to the CSR disclosure literature by developing a comprehensive definition of CSR disclosure quality that is grounded in the accounting literature and aligned with current frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a quality function deployment analytic hierarchy process (QFD‐AHP) framework to improve quality and competitive positioning within the financial services context. The applicability of the model is demonstrated through a case study.

Results of two empirical surveys were utilized to detect the “Voice of the Customer”. The first identified main bank selection criteria and questionnaires and exploratory factor analysis were employed. The second utilized structured interviews for the development of the first house of quality (HOQ), relating customer requirements to key market segments. The AHP was used to determine the intensity of the relationships within the HOQ.

In total, six key selection criteria were designated. Analysis incorporated customer needs and evaluations for the bank's current position, future goals related to specific market segments, and competition allocations. “Pricing” was the most important criterion, followed by “effective services” and “location”.

Data analysis was carried out with data from one relatively large organization. Future research might comprise additional financial institutions and possible comparative analysis regarding criteria and modeling alternatives. In addition, integration of tools such as fuzzy AHP to account for the volatility of bank selection criteria could be of great interest.

Prioritizing selection criteria is a valuable tool to help managers focus future improvement efforts and goals in a sector which faces important challenges due to the global financial crisis. As selection criteria and relative importance change due to turbulent financial situation, models such as the proposed allow adaptation, echoing the evolving voice of the customer in the key attributes and performance improvement priorities.

The paper develops a model that integrates the AHP and the QFD through which banks will identify key customer segments’ needs, as a first step in their effort to improve quality and performance. The authors emphasized the research design to foster face validity.

Food waste (FW) is widely recognized as a serious threat to global food security, the economy, and the environment. FW is a major contributor to the three global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste because it complicates waste management systems and worsens the magnitudes of food insecurity. If it were a nation, food loss and waste would be the third-largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as revealed by the Food Waste Index Report of 2021 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The growing countries in the South Asian region are not an exception to this major problem. Under this backdrop, the present study is aimed at investigating the long-term relationships as well as short-term causal interplays between FW and GHG emissions for the South Asian countries from 1990 to 2018. Employing time-series cointegration and Granger causality techniques, the results show that there is long-run relationship between these two variables in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and the results of the Granger causality test demonstrate that GHG is significantly influenced by FWs in Bangladesh, India, and the Maldives. So the governments in these countries should plan for minimizing the magnitudes of FWs so far as the goal of reaching sustainable development is concerned.