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1 – 10 of 109Yiru Zha and Jiawei Jin
This study aims to investigate how environmentalism in photovoltaic (PV) substitution and nationalism in PV rivalry with the USA are associated with the trade-offs made by young…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how environmentalism in photovoltaic (PV) substitution and nationalism in PV rivalry with the USA are associated with the trade-offs made by young consumers in Lanzhou when selecting Chinese brand portable solar power banks.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the choice-based conjoint survey was conducted to investigate mobile power bank consumers aged 18–28 in Lanzhou urban districts. A total of 2,004 valid questionnaires were collected and 1,813 sample was used in analyses. Logit and ordinary least squares regression models were run for empirical analyses.
Findings
The research results show that consumers tend to sacrifice certain levels of affordability for moderate technological capability, a reputable brand, better portability and advanced charging functions or sacrifice certain levels of technological capabilities for a moderate price. Consumers with stronger environmentalism in PV substitution tend to prioritize median price levels, larger battery capacity and better portability, while being less sensitive to brand and showing less preference for advanced charging functions. Consumers with stronger nationalism in PV rivalry tend to prioritize reasonably higher prices, bigger brands, enhanced portability, more solar panels and advanced charging functions.
Practical implications
This research sheds light on consumer trade-offs between price, brand, portability, technological capability and charging function. It also explores how environmentalism and nationalism sentiments are associated with consumer decision-making. These insights carry valuable policy implications for fostering product innovation, supporting brand-building initiatives for small and medium-size enterprises, promoting market competition and preventing the weaponization of consumer nationalism.
Originality/value
As an emerging solar power product, the portable solar power bank holds significant potential for widespread adoption as a means to drive energy transition. Within the current context, two notable sentiments have surfaced: environmentalism, which pertains to the adoption of PV technology as a substitute for conventional energy sources and nationalism, which manifests in the PV rivalry between China and the USA. This research aims to investigate consumer preference related to this emerging product, specifically focusing on its relationship with these two sentiments.
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Shamita Garg and Sushil Sushil
The world is on the verge of entering the deglobalization age, and industrialized economies have ushered it in. However, there is still a scarcity of comprehensive and rigorous…
Abstract
Purpose
The world is on the verge of entering the deglobalization age, and industrialized economies have ushered it in. However, there is still a scarcity of comprehensive and rigorous studies in this field. This research has tried to analyze the evolution and characteristics of deglobalization research.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have employed bibliometric analysis for examining the existing evidence on accelerating deglobalization thinking based on a thorough analysis of articles published during a roughly 25-year span between 1996 and 2022. This study has used the TISM-P technique to study the relationship among the factors accelerating deglobalization thinking. This research reviews the articles on several dimensions of deglobalization using the “what”, “why”, “how”, “who”, “when” and “where” approaches.
Findings
The authors specify the critical factors, policy reforms, approaches and observed characteristics explored in this developing research area.
Practical implications
The authors have analyzed the factors accountable for rising deglobalization thinking and also suggested strategic recommendations based on the findings to minimize the adverse impact of globalization.
Originality/value
Although there is a wealth of literature on globalization, very little study has been done in the field of deglobalization. This is the first substantive review being done in the deglobalization domain. The contemporary research has used the bibliometric approach and the “5W and 1 H” framework to gain a comprehensive understanding of the changing paradigm.
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Michal Hisherik and Ilana Paul-Binyamin
Educators are recognized as key agents of social change, responsible for shaping future citizens. Beyond imparting knowledge, teachers are crucial in addressing societal…
Abstract
Purpose
Educators are recognized as key agents of social change, responsible for shaping future citizens. Beyond imparting knowledge, teachers are crucial in addressing societal challenges such as sustainability, democracy and social equality. This study aims to investigate the attitudes of Jewish and Arab students toward democratic values and how they perceive their role as educators in a multicultural society.
Design/methodology/approach
This study explores the attitudes of majority and minority group students in an Israeli teacher training college towards realizing democratic values and promoting shared citizenship. The sample included 382 Jewish and Arab students, who answered a questionnaire about attitudes regarding education for democracy and shared society, and their perception of their role in promoting this education.
Findings
The investigation delves into students’ civic perceptions, shedding light on the moderate and pluralistic stances held by both Jewish and Arab students. They advocate for cross-cultural exposure and interaction, with Jewish students demonstrating slightly more moderate views than the prevailing norms in Israeli society. Interestingly, Jewish students exhibited a willingness to engage in discussions on conflictual topics, whereas Arab students tended to avoid them.
Social implications
This study underscores the potential of teacher training colleges in shaping the upcoming generation of educators as advocates of tolerance, and democracy, and promoters of a shared society.
Originality/value
This research gains heightened relevance in a contemporary landscape where numerous nations, especially those comprising diverse cultures, grapple with surges of nationalism that threaten democratic values. Teacher training colleges hold the key to forging a more harmonious future by becoming beacons of transformative pedagogy. These institutions can shape a new generation of educators who are poised to catalyze authentic social change.
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From book challenges to anti–critical race theory and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning legislation, US English teachers have been on the receiving…
Abstract
Purpose
From book challenges to anti–critical race theory and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning legislation, US English teachers have been on the receiving end of a considerable amount of far-right conservative pushback. This study aims to explore the effects of conservative pushback on individual English teachers and their classroom practice. What pushbacks have individual English teachers faced? How has pushback impacted their teaching? What strategies have they developed for navigating pushback?
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study explores secondary English teachers’ reported experiences with conservative backlash as reported in 15 semi-structured interviews conducted between May 2022 and August 2023.
Findings
Participants reported feeling the pressure of increased levels of pushback, and many reported censoring their book selections to avoid additional public scrutiny. At the same time, they also described a range of strategies they have developed for protecting themselves and their practice, such as codifying curriculum, increasing transparency, formalizing review processes for challenging books and strengthening their resolve to resist.
Originality/value
This study offers a timely window on a pressing problem affecting the daily practice of English teachers in the USA.
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Liyana Eliza Glenn and Glenn Hardaker
This paper will identify and further explore the ideals versus realities of learning poverty and the consequential effects on our moral obligations and responsibilities. The…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper will identify and further explore the ideals versus realities of learning poverty and the consequential effects on our moral obligations and responsibilities. The wealthy nations are now under further pressure to recognise and realise their moral obligations to enabling social justice in the context of access, and distribution, of vaccines for the poorer nations. Learning poverty has always been a feature of our global economic, and institutional order, and has become an increasingly important factor in achieving justice.
Design/methodology/approach
The study focusses on a human rights approach to learning poverty and the ideals versus the realities of what we are beginning to see in the times of a global pandemic. The major challenges to justice is inherent to the recognition that wealthy nations continue to have a pivotal role in the reduction of poverty. The identified major challenges in the context of learning poverty are: “nation states and the global pandemic”, “international interactions and learning poverty” and “global institutions and learning inequalities”. In particular, the authors explore the concept of ideals versus realities through three “challenges”, which continues to challenge any semblance of justice in the current global vaccine distribution. Nation states and borders, international interactions and global institutions remain barriers in overcoming what is becoming a reality of learning poverty.
Findings
This paper seeks to look beyond the economics of vaccine trade and seek a way to accept a moral claim of justice for all. The authors consider how wealthy nations are active participants in the emergence of learning poverty for many nations.
Originality/value
By exploring the ideals versus realities of learning poverty, and human rights, the authors highlight some of the challenges, and wealthy nations moral obligations, through the emergence of a new dimensional indicator of poverty, learning poverty.
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İrem Taştan and Zeynep Ozdamar Ertekin
This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer communities in conjunction with ideological capacities.
Design/methodology/approach
The community of “presenteers” is conceptualized as a self-organized tribe with heterogeneous components that generate capacities to act. Netnographic observation was conducted on 18 presenteer accounts and lasted around six months. Real-time data were collected by taking screenshots of the posts and stories that these users created and publicly shared. Data were analysed by adopting assemblage theory, combining inductive and deductive approaches. Firstly, a qualitative visual-textual content analysis of the tribe’s defining components was conducted. Then, the process continued with the thematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the tribe’s enactments.
Findings
Findings shed light on the ways in which consumer communities interpret the entanglement of religious, political, and cultural ideologies in shaping their experiences. In the case of the presenteers tribe, findings reflect a novel ideological interplay between neo-Ottomanism, post-feminism and consumerism.
Research limitations/implications
The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.
Originality/value
The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.
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Christoph Barmeyer and Tobi Rodrigue
This paper aims to study historical intercultural transfer by examining the case of the Mouvement Desjardins, a Quebec, Canada-based cooperative bank founded in 1900 by Alphonse…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study historical intercultural transfer by examining the case of the Mouvement Desjardins, a Quebec, Canada-based cooperative bank founded in 1900 by Alphonse Desjardins. The aim of the cooperative was to support the hitherto marginalized French–Canadian population and to initiate their economic and entrepreneurial activities.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors focus on a historical single-case analysis. This conducts them to analyse primary data from letters exchanged between Alphonse Desjardins and European actors, as well as company documents of the Groupe Desjardins.
Findings
The intercultural transfer of the cooperative bank model and its implementation in North America as a successful, self-sustaining model is owing to recontextualization and strategic decisions of the social entrepreneur Alphonse Desjardins based on intensive written correspondence with European bank directors who promoted the cooperative system.
Research limitations/implications
This research instigates an impulse to extend our knowledge of intercultural transfer by looking into other historical cases to provide validation or add subtleties to our understanding of intercultural transfer dynamics.
Originality/value
This paper expands the current understanding of intercultural transfer and its powerful influence, namely, how an implemented cooperative bank system can contribute through successful recontextualization to institutional change and societal improvements. It also provides new insights into the creation and growth of social enterprises based on shared values within communities and coordinated strategic intentions across communities.
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Hsing-Hua Stella Chang, Cher-Min Fong and I-Hung Chen
This study aims to investigate the role of interpersonal influence on consumer purchase decisions regarding foreign products, specifically by exploring consumers’ social reaction…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the role of interpersonal influence on consumer purchase decisions regarding foreign products, specifically by exploring consumers’ social reaction styles (acquisitive and protective) when confronted with normative pressures and their subsequent impact on consumers’ purchase behavior in the context of situational animosity.
Design/methodology/approach
Three studies were conducted in China to empirically examine the proposed research model. The US–China Chip War of 2022 was used as the research context for situational animosity, while the Japan–China relationship representing a stable animosity condition was used for contrast.
Findings
This study establishes the mediating role of perceived normative pressure in linking animosity attitudes to purchase avoidance in situational animosity. It also validates that consumers’ social reaction styles (acquisitive and protective) help predict distinct behavioral outcomes, holding significant implications for advancing research in the field of product and brand consumption.
Originality/value
This research provides a novel perspective by exploring consumers’ social reaction styles when dealing with normative pressure in situational animosity. The distinction between acquisitive and protective reaction styles adds depth and originality to the study. Moreover, this study examines consumer behavior in two distinct consumption contexts: switching intentions to local products and purchase intentions for products from offending countries in hidden consumption situations. This dual perspective offers a comprehensive exploration of consumers’ purchase behavior under normative pressure, contributing to the novelty of this research.
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Ganimete Podvorica and Valon Murati
This paper aims to investigate perceptions of the employees on decent work and explore the path how employees, employers, social partners and public policymakers contribute to a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate perceptions of the employees on decent work and explore the path how employees, employers, social partners and public policymakers contribute to a united response to the implementation of sustainability dimensions to foster community cohesion and promote common vision.
Design/methodology/approach
The survey was conducted in country of Kosova and aimed to target respondents under employment relationship at the time of the survey administration. Respondents were categorized into two groups: those working in the public sector and the ones working in the private sector. The sample consisted of 580 respondents. Descriptive statistics, reliability measures and Person correlation coefficient were used for data analysis.
Findings
The results showed that strong positive correlation is found between having rights of employees protected and safety at workplace; equal treatment at workplace and receiving a fair pay; the positive impact of social partners and protection of employees; and finally, efforts of government to create conditions for decent work and its active support of decent employment.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research topic is among the first studies in country that has been developed at the Universum International College as one of the constituting research themes deriving from the Institution’s research plan on sustainability. It explains the multiform and multifold ways through which decent work may be promoted as common vision between employees, employers, social partners and public institutions.
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This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.
Design/methodology/approach
The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.
Findings
As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.
Research limitations/implications
This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.
Originality/value
This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.
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