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The purpose of this paper is to better understand an increasingly widespread practice consisting, of a brand, in signaling the domestic origin of its products aimed at domestic consumers, that is, the “made in the domestic country” (MIDC) strategy. To this end, it is proposed to analyze the MIDC label as a cue interacting with the brand’s characteristics (brand equity and country of origin of the brand).

A between-subjects experiment is conducted among 293 French consumers on four different brands of pasta. The overall design is a 2 (with/without the MIDC label) × 2 (high/low brand equity) × 2 (domestic/foreign brand) mixed design.

The results show that intention to buy the product increases significantly with the presence of the MIDC label, but not so willing to pay. The positive effect on buying intention is greater when: the product has rather low brand equity, consumer ethnocentrism is high and/or consumers are strongly attached to their national identity.

The present research extends the literature on country-of-origin effects by taking into account the role of the brand equity of the product. However, the study focused on only one low-involvement product category (pasta) and one country (France).

This study shows that adding an MIDC label to the product is empirically justified.

While moderate or high scores on “patriotic” variables reinforce the positive impact of the MIDC label, low scores reverse the trend, that is, cause rejection.

To encourage sustainable consumer practices, public policy makers introduce new ecological measures, including mandatory programmes that require companies to provide environmental information about their products, even if the information is not flattering. Few academic studies consider the potential impacts of such mandatory eco-labels on consumer behaviour; the purpose of this paper is to seek to identify conditions in which a generalized eco-label in stores might modify consumers’ purchase choices.

Two quasi-experimental studies (n=333, 126) manipulate environmental information with a simple, traffic light – shaped eco-label. The measures focus on respondents’ choice or purchasing intentions, perceptions of the environmental harmfulness of each product, and individual characteristics (i.e. environmental concern, price sensitivity, familiarity with environmental information about the product category).

The presence of an eco-label influences consumers’ beliefs about products’ environmental harm and thus choice. The effect of perceived harmfulness on choice is moderated by environmental concern and price sensitivity, though combined effects arise for only one of the two product categories tested (dish soap, not yoghurt). With a third product category (paper towels), Study 2 confirms the influence of familiarity with environmental information.

Familiarity with environmental information accounts for some differences across product categories, but other factors also come into play. These results must be interpreted carefully due to the use of a fictive eco-label.

This paper examines the potential effects of a generalized, mandatory programme. It also addresses the lack of consistent label effectiveness across product categories, with a possible explanation based on perceived familiarity with environmental information.

Communicating a clear, precise, interpretable and unambiguous visual message usually relies on a cross-disciplinary team of professionals. Their complementary visions can uncover which information matter and how it could be visually displayed to inform, sensitize and encourage people to act toward sustainability. While design studies generally claim that this team has to come to a shared vision, the authors question this assumption, which seems to contradict the benefits of cross-disciplinarity. The purpose of this study is to reveal how simple visual representations displayed in a PowerPoint actively participate in the expression of various and sometimes divergent visions. Recognizing the agency of visuals also leads this study to propose the notion of (un)shared professional vision, which shows that the richness of visual representations can only reveal itself through the capacity of professional visions to maintain their differences while confronting each other.

Over a 20-month ethnography, this study documented its own cross-disciplinary reflective design process, which aimed to design collectively an experimental environmental label, focusing on interactions occurring between professionals and visuals displayed on five key PowerPoint slides.

This study first demonstrates how, in practice, a cross-disciplinary reflective design conversation with visuals concretely unfolds through boundary-objects. This study shows how these visuals manage to ex-press themselves through the multiple visions represented in the discussions, revealing their complexity. Second, this study introduces the notion of (un)shared professional vision which underlines that unsharing a vision nurtures the team’s collective capacity to express the complexity of a design situation, while sharing a vision is also necessary to confront these respective expressions to allow the professional uncovering of what should be visually communicated.

The Communication as Constitutive of Organization lens the authors chose to understand the reflective design conversation illustrates that, even though each collaborator’s vision was “(un)shared,” their many voices expand the understanding of the situation and lead them to develop an unexpected and creative environmental information ecosystem that can positively transform society through visuals.

The purpose of this paper is to optimize the design and power management control fuel cell/supercapacitor and fuel cell/battery hybrid electric vehicles and to provide a comparative study between the two configurations.

In hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), the power flow control and the powertrain component sizing are strongly related and their design will significantly influence the vehicle performance, cost, efficiency and fuel economy. Hence, it is necessary to assess the power flow management strategy at the powertrain design stage in order to minimize component sizing, cost, and the vehicle fuel consumption for a given driving cycle. In this paper, the PSO algorithm is implemented to optimize the design and the power management control of fuel cell/supercapacitor (FC/SC) and fuel cell/battery (FC/B) HEVs for a given driving cycle. The powertrain and the proposed control strategy are designed and simulated by using MATLAB/Simulink. In addition, a comparative study of fuel cell/supercapacitor and fuel cell/battery HEVs is analyzed and investigated for adequately selecting of the appropriate HEV, which could be used in industrial applications.

The results have demonstrated that it is possible to significantly improve the hydrogen consumption in fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles (FCHEVs) by applying the PSO approach. Furthermore, by analyzing and comparing the results, the FC/SC HEV has slightly higher fuel economy than the FC/B HEV.

The addition of electrical energy storage such as supercapacitor or battery in fuel cell‐based vehicles has a great potential and a promising approach for future hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). This paper is mainly focused on the optimal design and power management control, which has significant influences on the vehicle performance. Therefore, this study presents a modified control strategy based on PSO algorithm (CSPSO) for optimizing the power sharing between sources and reducing the components sizing. Furthermore, an interleaved multiple‐input power converter (IMIPC) is proposed for fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle to reduce the input current/output voltage ripples and to reduce the size of the passive components with high efficiency compared to conventional boost converter. Meanwhile, the fuel economy is improved. Moreover, a comparative study of FC/SC and FC/B HEVs will be provided to investigate the benefits of hybridization with energy storage system (ESS).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the workaholism phenomenon.

Workaholism was defined as the individual's steady and considerable allocation of time to work, which is not derived from external necessities. Subsequently, it was measured as time invested in paid work, controlling for the financial needs for such an investment. Workaholism is examined from a cross‐national perspective through representative samples of the labor force in Belgium, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, and the USA

The Japanese worked more hours per week than all other nationalities. The following findings have remained stable across nations: respondents with a high level of work centrality worked more hours per week than did those with a low level of work centrality. Men worked more hours per week than women. Married women worked fewer hours per week than unmarried women, while married men worked more hours per week than unmarried men. Private‐sector employees worked more hours per week than public‐sector employees.

The cross‐national comparisons are based on aggregated self‐reported data obtained from individuals. However, the present study makes three major contributions: applying a non‐biased definition of workaholism, indicating that the existing conceptualizations of workaholism as an attitude have underestimated the importance of sex‐roles in shaping work patterns and behaviors, and findings of similarities as well as of differences across nations on the phenomenon of workaholism.

Developing awareness of cultural variations concerning workaholism.

This is perhaps the only empirical study so far making a cross‐national comparison of workaholism, which also has high external validity.