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The study employs two independent experimental studies to collect data. It focuses on the matching effect between advertising appeals and product types. The Elaboration Likelihood Model serves as the theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive processing involved in consumers' responses to these advertising appeals and product combinations.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising appeals on consumers' intentions to purchase organic food. We explored the interaction between advertising appeals (egoistic vs altruistic) and product types (virtue vs vice) and purchase intention. The goal is to provide insights that can enhance the advertising effectiveness of organic food manufacturers and retailers.

The analysis reveals significant effects on consumers' purchase intentions based on the matching of advertising appeals with product types. Specifically, when egoistic appeals align with virtuous products, there is an improvement in consumers' purchase intentions. When altruistic appeals match vice products, a positive impact on purchase intention is observed. The results suggest that the matching of advertising appeals with product types enhances processing fluency, contributing to increased purchase intention.

This research contributes to the field by providing nuanced insights into the interplay between advertising appeals and product types within the context of organic food. The findings highlight the importance of considering the synergy between egoistic appeals and virtuous products, as well as altruistic appeals and vice products. This understanding can be strategically employed by organic food manufacturers and retailers to optimize their advertising strategies, thereby improving their overall effectiveness in influencing consumers' purchase intentions.

Transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies is a fairly new concept with respect to new ventures in such challenging economic environments. Formal institutional voids are sometimes held up as a reason for the difficulties present in distressed economies, along with exogenous shocks and other upheavals. In this research, the authors seek to contribute empirically and theoretically as to ways in which formal institutions voids can be filled by a culture developed by transitional entrepreneurs. Indeed, in transition economies, formal institutions need to be enhanced by informal institutions to control corruption and other misbehavior by authorities. Iranian economists emphasize these essential reforms to be able to manage current difficulties, yet top down policies cannot help transitional entrepreneurs benefit from the country’s value-adding cultural heritage to informally address this. To study this, qualitative research methods were used to interpret transitional entrepreneurs’ ideology and ethical routines as the ingredients of a commercial culture that can establish soft law that substitutes for formal institutions. This helps to reduce the disfunctionality of formal institutions in distressed economies.

A thematic analysis interviewing key Iranian entrepreneurs and economists is conducted. Also based on an interpretive paradigm, a hermeneutic cycle has been carried out on selected texts. Results have been verified throughout related literature as to come up with a solid synthesized interpreted outcome.

This paper contributes to theory from a new perspective by discussing transitional entrepreneurship and navigating a distressed economy; in which, ideology and ethics as the ingredients of soft law (Newman and Posner, 2018) are discussed as the base to further develop a commercial culture that fills voids of formal institutions. The formal–informal institutional cycle in distressed economies as the major difficulty entrepreneurs face (Peng and Luo, 2000) is important, because they try to increasingly enhance their move toward a market orientation (Bruton et al., 2008). The authors contribute as to how transitional entrepreneurs can complete this process of adaptation and also the fact that those informal institutions do actually respond to those adaptations. The other contribution is to enrich theories about institutions from the point of view of culture. Knowing these facts helps transitional entrepreneurs, because in distressed communities, formal institutions’ function has an important effect on economic performance (Amorós, 2009). This research’s contributions shed light to help government leaders understand the pros and cons of their actions forced on the industry. As it has been characterized in this research, it can turn in to new formal set of legitimacies (Ahlstrom et al., 2008) to root out corruption and help set the economy on a path to innovation and new venture creation.

Transitional entrepreneurs can depend on the less formal cultural-cognitive aspect of ethics and ideology. These entrepreneurs can be working on the burgeoning private sector, who want to connect with the outside effectively to overcome an economy in distress. Transitional entrepreneurs may face governmental institutional intermediaries as a barrier. Formal intermediaries tend to benefit from inefficiencies caused by hierarchal orders and will improve informality in order to overcome difficulties. In this research, institutional theory from the third pillar of the cultural-cognitive sheds light on transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies, where inquiry is to fill voids of formal institutions as a process of possible linking between new generated soft law derived by beliefs, ideology and professional morality in order to influence (old) legitimacies. The research’s focus evolves on values transitional entrepreneurs utilize to build informal institutions and then impact further on formal institutions to handle distressed communities. This theoretical background expands on subsections to define conceptual building blocks for the study, essential aspects such as individuals as transitional entrepreneurs, the values they utilize to generate soft law, informal institutions and soft law, to manage voids in formal institutions and legitimacy building aspects in policy agenda setting for transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies.

This study aims to introduce an alternative model, “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), Virtue and Vice” (3V’s), to unleash leadership skills, promote organisational collaborative change and impact sales performance during an unprecedented crisis.

The methodology outlines action research based on the 3V’s model and its application in an international business-to-business sales organisation during Covid-19. It explores alternative paths informed by play-at-work and Plato’s philosophy applied to work-based-learning. Each action/iteration adds to the model, which becomes more likely appropriate for various situations.

The 3V’s boosted change implementation and improved sales performance. The 3V’s conceptualised an invitation to immerse oneself in the constant “river of change” (VUCA) and a means of understanding the role of leadership in navigating this change by embracing simple rules: searching for justice (Virtue) and overcoming the barrier of public opinion (Vice).

The 3V’s model is grounded in leadership literature and a sole application, providing real international data relevant to organisations and leaders. This has yet to be evaluated further.

3V’s can enhance the understanding of a leading collaborative change and re-frame team dynamics in post-pandemic times for the broader public.

The approach advocated is a practice of “swimming alongside the team”, which should enable empowerment and collaboration rather than a top-down direction. Focussing on leaders who are moral people, this approach becomes a differentiator in a digital world.

This study examines Plato’s philosophy, play-at-work and other leadership theories in a model which prepares organisations to respond to crisis by providing the ability to reflect on human aspects and straightforward, transferable skills.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a gender-sensitive analysis of economic agency in Islamic economic philosophy.

A critical review of classical ethics literature and the concept of khilafah is undertaken and discussed in conjunction with the current understanding of homo Islamicus.

Building on the principles of khilafah, the concept of homo Islamicus is a pious stand-in for the flawed homo economicus. Among its flaws is the complete absence of a discussion of women as economic agents. To remedy this the discipline must acknowledge explicitly the denial of women and gender from the discussion of moral agency and include gender as a category of analysis for economic agency. This is only possible by: (1) introducing a non-patriarchal reading of khilafah as the model of agency and (2) by operationalising taqwa as the cardinal virtue of the economic agent instead of neoliberal rationality.

If Islamic economic philosophy is to contend as an alternative mode of economics, it must consider gender and class dimensions in its micro-foundation discussion, economic agency is one of them.

This study reveals the patriarchal readings that are part of the foundation of the concept of the economic agent in Islamic economics, problematising it and providing a gender-sensitive concept of economic agency.

Business leaders are facing a change of role as digitalization continues to intensify in organizations. As technological change is bringing back supposedly old virtues of leadership, this study aims to explain the impact digital transformation has on leadership due to organizational size.

Cross-border study with experts from multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Austria and small and medium companies (SMEs) in Italy.

With increasing digitalization, leadership is becoming more important. In times of social distance, it is essential that leaders actively foster the management of relationships with their employees, manage social processes in their teams and shape change processes. This requires a bundle of skills consisting of effective leadership skills, strong change management skills and conceptual digitization skills.

Digital transformation is not mainly about implementing new technologies; it is about developing an appropriate strategy in which people are key. Organizations regardless of size need to recognize that digital transformation requires not less, but even more active shaping of the relationships between leaders and their team members. Consequently, they need active leaders who drive, communicate and implement technological change. As leadership and change require time, resources and, above all, attention, executive selection and qualification are critical for the broad integration of digitalization ideas into an organization.

People, not technology, drive digital transformation, and organizations require leaders, not necessarily technological specialists, to manage the complex changes that comprise an organization’s digital transformation. Technical and methodological skills can be substituted with the use of new technologies, but leaders’ interactional, social, strategic and conceptual skills are gaining in importance.

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how corporate volunteering (CV), as one form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), creates sustainable happiness in business organizations.

Theoretical knowledge of CSR and CV as well as the literature on happiness management was examined to form a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. The empirical section includes a qualitative multiple case study including two company cases of CV in Finland. The data were collected through qualitative interviews. Empirical analysis was made using thematical coding based on existing theory but also by allowing themes to emerge inductively from the data as well.

The study found that CV enables the emergence of sustainable happiness by allowing individual employee volunteers to transition from individual and rational mindsets to collective and emotional mindsets. A third transition was also identified, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life that the authors describe as “from actual to potential”.

The study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management by identifying the third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a state of being to becoming and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. The study also contributes to existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. This study concludes that companies' strategic activities that engage with society can create sustainable happiness for employees who participate. In order to achieve this, volunteering employees should have the chance to reflect on their experience and constant support from managers.

Upon graduating from university, many engineers will work in new product development and/or technology adoption for continuous improvement and production optimization. These jobs require employees to be cognizant of ethical practices and implications for design. However, little engineering coursework, outside the traditional ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) required Engineering Ethics course, accounts for the role of ethics within this process. Because of this, engineering students have few learning opportunities to practice and reflect on ethical decision-making.

This paper highlights one approach to integrating ethics into an engineering course (outside of engineering ethics). Specifically, the study is implemented within a five-week module with a focus on big data ethics, as part of a Supply Chain Management Technology course (required for Industrial Engineering Technology majors), using metacognition as the core assessment.

Four main themes were identified through the qualitative data analysis of the metacognitive reflections: (1) overreliance on content knowledge, (2) time management skills, (3) career connections and (4) knowledge extensions.

Three notable points emerged which contribute to the literature. First, this study showcased one example of how an ethics module can be integrated into an engineering course (other than Engineering Ethics). Second, this study demonstrated how metacognitive reflections can be used to reinforce student self-awareness of the learning process and connections to big data ethics in the workplace. Finally, this study exhibited how metacognitive reflection assignments can be deployed as a teaching and learning assessment tool, providing an opportunity for the instructor to make immediate changes as needed.

Considering the significant increase in researchers’ interest in human resource management (HRM) in the public sector domain, this study aims to focus on producing a scale of HRM practices customized for the context of public organizations.

Experts and semantic analysis were performed for the scale development (qualitative stage), and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis through structural equation modeling was conducted for the scale validation (quantitative stage).

The public HRM practices scale (public HRMPS) is composed of 19 items, distributed along four factors/dimensions, named training, development and education; relationship; work conditions; and competency and performance appraisal. The scale showed evidence of internal and construct validity (convergent, divergent, criterion-related and discriminant), as well as reliability and content validity.

The public HRMPS can be applied in relational studies to test structural models of prediction, mediation and moderation to evaluate relationships with organizational behavior variables, such as leader-members exchange, engagement at work, life quality at work and well-being at work, among others.

The public HRMPS may also serve as a useful diagnostic tool for the decision-making process made by public managers so they can promote a strategic, evidence-based HRM. Furthermore, the transforming role of strategic HRM can be operationalized by adopting practices gathered in the public HRMPS, advancing toward new HRM strategies to promote healthier and more productive work environments.

Healthier and more productive environments translate into real impacts for society, the first beneficiary of public services with more quality, efficiency and accountability.

The public HRMPS is the first attempt to produce an operationally valid and reliable measure to evaluate strategic HRM practices, responding to calls in the literature concerning the need for an integrated, comprehensive and customized HRM practices scale for the public service context.

Qualitative research that involves the use of human participants calls for the need to protect those participants to give their honest view during data collection. This is an important part of every primary data collection in qualitative studies using interviews. This paper aims to investigate all available ethical considerations that need to be observed by the researcher when conducting primary data collection through interview and to explore the theories that underpin the ethics in qualitative studies.

This paper systemically reviewed existing qualitative data on ethics and gathered information that were analysed and presented on the topic area.

The findings show that ethical considerations deal with the various approaches adopted by the researcher to make the participants feel safe to participate in any given researcher. During an interview process in qualitative research, the findings show that anonymity, voluntary participation, privacy, confidentiality, option to opt out and avoiding misuse of findings are ethical considerations that must be observed by the researcher. The outcome of the investigation also shows that deontology and utilitarianism, rights and virtue are the main theories that underpin ethical considerations in research.

The rights of the research participants need to be respected in qualitative research to assist in gathering accurate information to achieve the objectives of study. This and other ethical principles such as anonymity, privacy, confidentiality, voluntary participation and option to opt out guide the researcher to systematically adhere to data collection approaches that yield valid results in qualitative data collection using interviews.

Tourism recovery after the pandemic has failed to take the path leading to sensitivity and humaneness at destination level. This chapter argues that to open this path, we need to confront the belief that tourists are self-centred, fun-driven and cheating individuals. This view on tourists and more generally human beings is central to the neoliberal understanding of consumers. It has moreover taken a strong grasp on the mind of economists, politicians, academics and the public at large.

To counteract this idea, I call upon Aristotle's discussion of friendship. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes between three forms of friendship: of utility, of pleasure, and of goodwill. Utility implies a relationship where people befriend each other in virtue of some good or service that they get or expect to get from each other. Friendships of utility, therefore, imply reciprocation. Friendships of pleasure can also be understood as a form of reciprocal altruism. However, friendships of goodwill are different because they are felt for others for their own sake and not in expectation of a favour in return. Friendships of goodwill include therefore others who may not be able to reciprocate, such as tourists staying only a short time at a destination. Looking through the lens of friendships of goodwill, one could argue that all tourists, including short-stay visitors, will be friendly and caring towards their hosts.

This chapter explores the soundness of friendships of goodwill in the light of more recent research on human nature. It also discusses its implications for our understanding of human beings, the relationship between hosts and guests, and ultimately the opportunity to steer tourism along a more sensitive, human and sustainable path.