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The purpose of this paper is to empirically test O’Reilly and Madill’s (2012) process model to assess social marketing elements of a multi-year partnership between Coca-Cola Canada and a physical activity microgrant program, known as Teen Challenge, managed by ParticipACTION, a Canadian not-for-profit organization that champions sport and physical activity participation. ParticipACTION’s Teen Challenge is a multi-year initiative that was developed in 2008 and involves over 5,800 community organizations (COs) and over 500,000 Canadian teens across the nation (ParticipACTION, 2016).

A series of ten hypotheses related to the evaluation are tested using longitudinal data from event participants over a five-year period from 2009 to 2013.

The study revealed that sponsor and sponsee shared objectives around sport participation, including the three found in this study. Practically, this is a positive result for sport participation properties who might now consider this as part of a sponsorship sales strategy. The research found that both Coca-Cola Canada and ParticipACTION have the following shared objectives in this particular sponsorship: motivate and support youth to get active and live a healthy life; remove barriers that youth face in getting physically active; and encourage more COs to be involved in the program. Conceptually, this finding extends the discussion of shared social marketing objectives in sponsorship proposed by Madill and O’Reilly (2010).

The findings support the sponsorship literature, in suggesting that shared objectives among sponsorship partners are important for the sponsorship to achieve successful outcomes (Cornwell et al., 2001). Shared sponsorship objectives can be utilized as a strategic tool for the sponsee to demonstrate the effectiveness of the program and to build a long-term relationship. The results of the logistic regression analysis indicate that COs which viewed partners’ collaboration as positive agreed that the Teen Challenge program made physical activity more accessible and affordable for youth.

This study provides several important implications for non-profit organizations that aim to establish an effective social marketing campaign. One way for non-profit organizations to build a strong relationship with sponsors was through positive collaboration where the two partners work together (e.g. activation) to maximize the sponsorship’s effectiveness. First, it increased youth participation in the Teen Challenge program and made it affordable for teens to participate in other physical activity programs. Second, it enhanced Coca-Cola’s image as supporters of active lifestyle in the eyes of COs. Finally, it affected the likelihood that COs would recommend the program.

Results of the survey of COs that are registered with the program provides us with another important finding that positive partner collaboration is only one component of overall effectiveness. Another component would be to take action to communicate to COs that positive collaboration indeed took place in the sponsorship. One way to achieve this goal is to demonstrate to COs the importance of funding that the sponsor provides as well as the impact of sponsorship partners’ positive collaboration on the overall program. The authors also found that sponsorship partners’ positive collaboration in the delivery of the Teen Challenge program played an important role in whether COs recommend the program to others.

The results of this research contribute to the evaluation of the sponsorship of a health-oriented social marketing sponsorship of a sport participation property or sponsee (ParticipACTION) and a major brand as sponsor (Coca-Cola).

The brand equity pyramid is a theory that explains how people develop loyalty and an attachment to a brand. The purpose of this study is to test whether the predictions made by the theory hold when applied to the brand of ParticipACTION, a Canadian non-profit organization that promotes active living. A secondary objective was to test whether this theory predicted intentions to be more physically active.

A research agency conducted a cross-sectional, online brand health survey on behalf of ParticipACTION. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis established the factor structure. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model.

A nationally representative sample of Canadian adults (N = 1,191) completed the survey. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis supported a hypothesized five-factor brand equity framework (i.e. brand identity, brand meaning, brand responses, brand resonance and intentions). A series of structural equation models also provided support for the hypothesized relationships between the variables.

Though preliminary, the results provide a guide for understanding the branding process in the activity-promotion context. The constructs identified as being influential in this process can be targeted by activity-promotion organizations to improve brand strength. A strong organizational brand could augment activity-promotion interventions. A strong brand may also help the organization better compete against other brands promoting messages that are antithetical to their own.

This is the first study to test the brand equity pyramid using an activity-promotion brand. Results demonstrate that the brand equity pyramid may be useful in this context.

The purpose of this research is to examine the organizational stages of change construct of the transtheoretical model of behavior change.

Data on organizational and individual stages of change for tobacco reduction, physical activity promotion, and heart healthy eating promotion were collected from service provider, senior management, and board level members of provincial health authorities across three data collection periods.

Results revealed significant correlations between individual and organizational stages of change for management level respondents, but inconsistent relationships for service providers and no significant correlations for board level respondents. There were no significant differences between respondent levels for organizational stage of change for any of the promotion behaviors. In general, changes in stage failed to predict whether there was a belief in an organization's capability of addressing any of the health promotion activities. There was also a large amount of variance between individual respondents for most health authorities in their reported organizational stages of change for physical activity and healthy eating.

Based on the results of the present study it is concluded that there is little evidence that the organizational stages of change construct is valid. The evidence indicates that assessing individual readiness within an organization may be as effective as asking individuals to report on organizational stages of readiness.

This paper reports on the validity of the organizational stages of change construct in a health promotion context and provides information for those who are considering using it.

This paper proposes a diagnostic framework useful to Trust managers who are faced with the task of devising and implementing strategies for improvements in clinical effectiveness, and is based on a recent study incorporating clinicians, managers, and professional staff in four NHS Trusts in the North Thames Region. The gap framework is inspired by the gap model developed by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry from their research into service quality and incorporates Dave Sackett’s schema as well as a personal competency profile needed for the practice of evidence based health‐care (EBHC). The paper highlights the four organisational and personal failures (gaps) which contribute to the fifth gap, namely the discrepancy between clinically relevant research evidence and its implement‐ation in health care. To close the gaps, Trusts need to set the goal and tackle the cultural, organisational, attitudinal and more material aspects such as investment in the information infrastructure, education and training of doctors. Doctors need to go through a process from awareness to action facilitated through a combination of personal and organisational incentives and rewards as well as training in the requisite skills. Researchers should take steps to improve the quality of the evidence and its accessibility and purchasers should reinforce the use of EBHC by withdrawing funding for care which has proved to be ineffective, inappropriate or inferior.

The purpose of this paper is to survey UAE legislative initiatives affecting whistleblowing. Many studies claim that whistleblowing is one of the most effective mechanisms in fighting corruption. Either done merely to satisfy regulatory requirements or in genuine efforts to counter internal fraud, many organizations around the world incorporate whistleblowing programs. However, a lack of comprehensive whistleblower protection remains the main impediment for reporting misconduct or wrongdoing. A country’s legislative framework and its cultural and socio-economic specifics impact the effectiveness of such protective measures. Moreover, in the absence of comprehensive, stand-alone whistleblowing laws, whistleblowers can become victims not only of employers’ retaliatory actions but also of criminal and civil charges.

This paper surveys the UAE law and regulations in regard to whistleblower protection. It also raises concerns regarding their effectiveness based on the county’s unique socio-economic and cultural environment and their interplay with other legislations, which can potentially make whistleblowing a criminal offense.

In the absence of stand-alone whistleblowing legislation, cultural aspects and other laws can serve as deterrents for whistleblowers. It is crucial for a jurisdiction to set up an effective legal and regulatory framework to enable synergy across different laws and agencies involved. Implementation of comprehensive, stand-alone whistleblowing legislation might help provide legal certainty and clarity.

In the absence of empirical studies on UAE whistleblowing, the researcher primarily relied on English translations of the country’s laws and regulations, official press releases and English media sources.

This study introduces relevant background to organizations establishing their own whistleblowing policies and employee training.

This paper examines the effectiveness of whistleblowing legislative initiatives through the prism of the country’s cultural, socio-economic and legal environment.

Although a need for innovative approaches to the strategic management of human resources (HR) has been identified, many firms continue to rely solely on their HR information systems instead of adapting to the digital consumer with innovative tools and digital HR management (d-HRM). This research aims to evaluate critically the degree of digital innovation of HR practices in the Irish hotel industry.

For this qualitative study, a total of 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key personnel at both corporate and property level HR in the two largest Irish hotel groups.

Findings show an overall lack of technological innovation and most of the principal HR activities are digitalised to a very limited extent. In addition, the perception of the degree of digitalisation varies significantly between the managers in both organisations.

In order to attract digital natives and to increase their competitiveness within the sector, Irish hotel corporations will need to invest significantly in innovation within their HR departments to capitalise on the strategic and operational advantages of d-HRM. Thus, a more strategic approach towards HR innovation is needed.

This chapter operationalises the concept of HR innovation in the context of the hotel industry; it analyses the key HR activities in hotel operations with regard to the extent to which they are digitalised; and it develops a model of HR digitalisation that can be applied to the hotel and other industries. This research, therefore, contributes to the existing body of knowledge on HR innovation with a specific focus on the hotel industry.

While there is a growing body of research demonstrating that HR Shared Services can offer a value-creating structure for HRM within organizations, there remains considerable room for improving our understanding of it. The premise of this chapter is that the mixture of HR Shared Services outcomes leans on the diversity of the governance structures, which rest in turn on several contingency factors. This means that every HRM Shared Services Model (SSM) is unique in its structure, and thus the value proposition of every HRM SSM is unique. Therefore, instead of promoting a standard package of values expected from HR shared services, organizations should develop unique value propositions that are contingent on their unique governance structures.

A common thread among the plethora of definitions of knowledge management is that its objective is to identify and leverage the collective knowledge in an organization to help organizations compete and survive. One potential lever is e‐learning, the creation and distribution of organizational knowledge through the online delivery of information, communication, education, and training. John Chambers, of Cisco Systems, said: “The two great equalizers in life are the Internet and education”, so why not fuse the two to provide an efficient way to empower a workforce with the skills and knowledge it needs to compete amid the rapid pace of change in business? In this paper we discuss the relationship between knowledge management and e‐learning and present a framework for employing e‐learning as a valuable tool for knowledge management. The framework encompasses the planning and implementation elements necessary for organizations to leverage existing technologies and implement new ones to promote organizational learning and contribute to the management of organizational knowledge.

We aim to understand what happens when larger social and cultural myths become the incarnate understanding of consumers within the firm. This paper uncovers the varied myths at play in one Finnish company’s status as an inadvertent cultural icon.

Through a qualitative inquiry of Finland’s largest dairy producer and by employing the theoretical lens of myth, we conceptualize the entanglement of broad cultural, social, and organizational myths within the organization.

Macro-mythic structures merge with everyday employee practice giving consumer understanding flesh within the firm (Hallet, 2010). Mythological thinking leaves organizational members inevitably bound up in a form of consumer knowing that is un-reflective and inadvertently effects brand marketing management.

Working through a nuanced typology of myth (Tillotson & Martin, 2014) provided a deeper understanding of how managers may become increasingly un-reflexive in their marketing activities. This case also provides a cautionary tale for heterogeneous communities where ideological conflict underscores development and adoption of contemporary myths.