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With the growing market for luxury fashion rental, we aim to examine how renting luxury fashion is related to consumers' construction of the material self, based on material self-framework. We propose that consumers adopt luxury fashion rentals to construct and manage the personal and social aspects of the material self and that their belief in brand essence facilitates the mechanism.

A total of 296 responses of US female participants collected from Cloudresearch were analyzed to test the relationships between constructs in the proposed model.

The results, using structural equation modeling analysis, supported the expected relationships. Specifically, whereas the social material self directly increased adoption intention, the personal material self indirectly increased such intention via the belief that rented luxury items preserve brand essence.

Our findings advance the literature by showing how the self is constructed and managed in collaborative luxury fashion consumption, from self-identity perspective. The current research reveals the important roles of two aspects of material self that respectively contribute to consumers' adoption of luxury fashion rentals.

This study empirically tests the material self theory in the context of luxury fashion rental and demonstrates the processes of how consumers regard a luxury fashion rental as a tool to construct their identity. This study not only validates the two-structure model of material self (social and personal), but also incorporate the role of brand essence in revealing how the two facets of material self differently facilitate luxury fashion rental adoption.

The role of family business staffing practices in their ultimate success remains largely unknown. The purpose of this paper is to test the notion that firms with greater family essence manifest their commitment by leveraging referrals as a recruitment source, which in turn is associated with higher performance. The hypothesized model posits that reduced agency costs from hiring through owner referral utilization (ORU) provide high-family essence firms with stronger performance.

The study draws upon a sample of 194 small and medium-sized family business owners.

Findings from OLS regression and the PROCESS model in SPSS support the hypothesis that recruiting nonfamily employees from referrals helps lessen agency conflicts and serves as an intervening mechanism in the relationship between family firm essence and firm performance.

This study draws on agency theory to shed light on how family firms successfully bring nonfamily employees into the fold despite their human resource limitations. The results extend theory on family businesses by demonstrating that those with higher degrees of family essence are more likely to attract applicants via ORU. Leveraging this recruiting practice allows family businesses to hire nonfamily employees who share the values and goals of the family firm, thus lowering agency costs and fostering higher performance. More broadly, the findings offer insight into the role of staffing practices in family firm success.

This paper attempts to investigate the effect of corruption on the real and accrual earnings management of target firms in the process of mergers and acquisitions.

The sample includes target firms from the European area that participate in mergers or acquisitions announced during 2010–2020. The preliminary empirical part estimates the level of earnings management during the period two years before the deal's announcement to identify whether the sample follows the manipulation behavior that the literature suggests for target firms. The primary empirical analysis focuses on the impact of corruption on real and accrual-based earnings management proxies, employing regression models and two alternative proxies for corruption. The existing literature points out that the combination of low levels of corruption and an integrated legal system reduces earnings manipulation.

The findings provide strong evidence for systematic downwards accounting manipulation practices, whereas the findings for real earnings management are not significant. The findings of the main empirical part show that corruption is positively associated with accrual-based manipulation and negatively related to real earnings management. In essence, in economies with a high level of transparency, managers adopt the manipulation of operating activities as a less detectable practice of earnings management instead of engaging in accounting procedures.

This study contributes to the literature highlighting the diversification of these firms' manipulation strategies according to the national level's corruption status.

The case of Africa is important in understanding the growth of research management as a profession. Africa has rapidly increased its research output in recent years, and its institutions are increasingly in demand as research partners. Yet research management structures have developed from a very low base, and need not be confined by past practice. Through the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA), it has been represented since the origins of International Networks of Research Management Societies (INORMS). Several external donors have sought to help build research management structures on the continent, and the success (or otherwise) of these initiatives can tell us much about the potential for common research management structures globally.

This chapter does not provide a comprehensive account of progress over the past two decades, or a complete list of relevant initiatives. Rather, it reflects on whether international assistance and collaboration have made a meaningful contribution to the progress that has been made, and its strengths and limitations. It considers how far growth would have happened regardless of funder intervention, or indeed whether international partners have inhibited progress by prioritising their own norms and priorities. It asks uncomfortable questions for funders about the way in which they plan and evaluate their work.

This study aims to present radical abolition studies, which encourages us to (re)member that the abolition of institutions and systems is incomplete without the abolition of their attendant epistemes of domination. The authors draw on the etymology of the word radical to encourage abolitionist praxis to grab systemic harm at its epistemological roots. Within radical abolition studies, this study presents Black abolition theory, which aims to make explicit a theorization of Blackness and works to abolish the episteme of anti-Blackness.

This paper offers Black abolition theory within radical abolition studies to reground abolition in its Black theoretical roots and to interrogate the concept of anti-Blackness and other epistemes of domination in abolitionist study and practice. Using a close reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction, and subsequent books and articles in abolition studies and educational studies that reference it, the authors highlight Du Bois’ original conceptualization of abolitionism as an ultimate refutation of a racial-social order and anti-Blackness. The authors then put Michael Dumas and kihana ross’ theory of BlackCrit into conversation with abolitionist and educational theory to push forward Black abolition theory.

Radical abolition studies and its attendant strand of Black abolition theory presented in this paper encourages scholars and practitioners to go beyond the dismantling of current instantiations of systemic harm for Black and other minoritized people – such as the school as it currently operates – and encourages the questioning and dismantling of the epistemes of domination sitting at the foundation of these systems of harm.

Black abolition theory contextualizes abolition in education by rooting abolitionist educational praxis in Black lineages. More generally, radical abolition studies encourages further research, study and collaboration in partnership with others who have historically participated in the fight against being labeled as subhuman to upend all epistemes of domination.

The teaching of teaching is sophisticated work although it is often viewed simplistically. To challenge simplistic approaches to teacher education, teacher educators need to actively articulate the specialist knowledge, skills, and abilities that underpin expertise in teaching and to do so through their practice with their students of teaching. In schools, teachers do not commonly experience a workplace culture whereby the explicit discussion and critique of pedagogical purpose and reasoning occurs. Therefore, it is all the more important that teacher educators bring such thinking to the surface in their teaching about teaching. Teaching is not just about the “doing” of teaching; it is also about the “why” – which leads to the development of informed and meaningful practice to enhance student learning. This chapter considers some of the principles that underpin thinking about teaching as more than transmission and therefore shapes what teacher educators need to know and are able to do.

The competition in the academe has always been tough, but today, the academe seems to be more like an industry than an academic community as academics are evaluated through quantified and economic means.

This article leans on Heidegger’s thoughts on the essence of technology and his ontological view on being to show the dangers that lie in this quantification of researchers and research.

Despite the benefits that information systems (ISs) offer to people and research, it seems that technology has made it possible to objectify researchers and research. This has a negative impact on the academe and should thus be looked into especially by the IS field, which should note the problems that exist in its core. This phenomenon of quantified academics is clearly visible at academic quantification sites, where academics are evaluated using metrics that count their output. It seems that the essence of technology has disturbed the way research is valued by emphasising its quantifiable aspects. The study claims that it is important to look for other ways to evaluate researchers rather than trying to maximise research production, which has led to the flooding of articles that few have the time or interest to read.

This paper offers new insights into the current phenomenon of quantification of academics and underlines the need for critical changes if in order to achieve the academic culture that is desirable for future academics.

Spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in the open acknowledgment of the importance of teaching and learning praxis that is grounded in compassion, understanding, cocreation, community, and flexibility. This is especially so for ‘traditional’ university spaces, in essence questioning and resisting the many established dynamics that face-to-face teaching and learning took for granted within many neoliberal and neocolonial higher education contexts. In this chapter, I propose positioning a love ethic as a primary point of departure for all educational engagements, a foundational shift in ontology (way of being) of the university. By focusing on love as liberation and justice, and teaching as an act of love, I draw on critical, engaged, and feminist pedagogies, as well as my experience as a lecturer in a social justice– and global citizenship-oriented program at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, where I positioned a love ethic as central to my pedagogical approach. I argue that when we begin to view love as more than mere emotion, but as an ideological position that informs values and praxis within higher education (and our university “classrooms” in particular), we may move toward new and exciting ways of envisioning the decolonized university of the 21st century. A love ethic, as defined by bell hooks, offers possibilities for an approach to critical transformation that is not merely motivated by the change of institutional structures, but by the reform of values guiding teaching and learning and ways of being within higher education institutions.

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, the authors analyzed how a major Canadian university sport brand was interpreted by its stakeholders and why the perception was so negative. Second, the researchers investigated how a dormant university sport brand could be revitalized.

A mixed-methods approach was designed. During the first year, a qualitative methodology was established. Researchers conducted 14 different focus groups, with students-athletes, students, coaches, university administrators, support staff and professors. In the second year, based on the initial findings, the researchers elaborated a quantitative protocol and built a multidimensional questionnaire which was administered to groups that were gravitating around the varsity brand. There were a total of 1,757 completed questionnaires.

The conclusions highlighted the weakness of the varsity brand and the limitations in leveraging the latter for the benefit of the institution. Contradictions in the marketing and branding decisions were noted, for which strategic recommendations were formulated.

In essence, the contributions of the paper relate to the strategic management of the brand and the mixed-methods approach borrowed in this research. Understanding how a brand is perceived is essential for managers in elaborating their strategy and, therefore, being able to connect effectively with their audience.

The potential strategic leverage of branding for universities becomes even more valuable as these institutions are increasingly using their varsity programs to compete with one another. This study specifically analyzes the case of a Canadian varsity brand whose values and resources differ greatly from other North American institutions.