Search results

This study aims to investigate how the relationship factors, including equity, shared responsibility and relationship dependence leverage the value co-creation. The research studies the value co-creation process in a business-to-business (B2B) context between suppliers and customers and provides empirical evidence of the underlying effects.

Using social exchange theory, the research uses a mixed-method of in-depth interviews and questionnaire surveys. The sample of the survey has 123 business customers.

The findings suggest that equity not only positively affects but also mediates the effect of shared responsibility on value co-creation. The mediation effect is further moderated by the relationship dependence that buyers have on the seller.

The cross-sectional survey used cannot establish causality relationships. Although the goal was not to establish causality, it could limit the rigor of the study. The longitudinal design could be used in the future to better address this deficiency. While the paper is the initial step to analyze the factors influencing value co-creation empirically, more studies could examine other commonly discussed constructs.

This empirical study enriches the value co-creation literature by examining the antecedents’ detailed mechanism that facilitates value co-creation in a B2B context.

This paper extends Lawler's argument (in “An affect theory of social exchange”) that social exchanges can create a sense of shared responsibility to service settings, and predict that inseparability produces customer perceptions of shared responsibility for service outcomes, resulting in greater emotions. When emotions are positive, there should be increased loyalty to the service provider.

A questionnaire was used to obtain cross‐sectional data pertaining to our model's constructs: inseparability, shared responsibility, emotional response, and service loyalty. A structural equation model evaluated the strength of relationships between these constructs.

Support was found for the predicted relationships between inseparability and shared responsibility, shared responsibility and emotions, and emotions and service loyalty.

Inseparability and shared responsibility have not been measured before, and more research is needed to validate and test the scales we develop. Goods are seldom sold without some service attached, and anything that contributes to perceptions of inseparability and shared responsibility may affect emotional responses and brand loyalty for both services and goods.

Service employee training programs should emphasize the customer's role in the service experience to increase perceptions of shared responsibility and to create a positive emotional experience for customers.

This study contributes to the services marketing literature by viewing inseparability as a potential source of service brand loyalty, developing original scales for measuring inseparability and shared responsibility in a services setting, and applying a previously untested theory to a marketing context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers respond to a service provider’s invitation to share responsibility for the experience of an “impersonal” service that is not customized but available to all customers on an equal footing; specifically to assess the extent to which the tendency to psychological reactance moderates their responses.

Four studies investigate the effects of such invitations on perceptions of shared responsibility, the mechanism underlying that process, the effect of trait reactance on susceptibility to an invitation, and the extent to which a predisposition to reactance moderates the effect of an invitation on willingness to share blame for service failure.

Service customers are more likely to feel a sense of shared responsibility and less likely to experience reactance in response to a “reciprocal” invitation to participate in “co-creation” of the experience than to a more “unilateral” invitation. That heightened perception of shared responsibility was restricted to low-reactance individuals, who were also more willing to share the blame for service failure in response to a unilateral invitation and even more so when it was reciprocal. The willingness of high-reactance individuals was unaffected by the type of invitation.

Whereas the relevant literature has focussed mainly on person-to-person service transactions, the studies reported here show how customers may be converted into active partners in an “impersonal” service encounter.

This paper aims to address the viability of two recent initiatives proposed to address the important human rights issue of employee and building safety among manufacturers in the global supply chain: the recently proposed “Shared Responsibility Paradigm” now being considered by concerned stakeholders as a new approach to understanding human rights issues across global supply chains and the proposed International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 45001 comprehensive framework for management systems addressing occupational health and safety.

First, the paper establishes a theoretical foundation for these two initiatives as practical and implementable solutions for this human rights issue and includes a section addressing the results of recent academic research on social responsibility in global supply chains. The paper then provides a detailed description of the shared responsibility paradigm and the ISO 45001 health and safety standard, respectively, followed by a discussion of their viability, policy implications and directions for future research.

Recent developments pertaining to the implementation of the ISO 45001 standard and the unveiling of the World Economic Forum’s shared responsibility model offer aspirational hope for a multi-stakeholder solution to successfully addressing serious human rights issues related to employee safety in Bangladesh and other least developed countries.

This paper offers an early viability assessment of the two recent initiatives proposed to address the important human rights issue of employee and building safety among manufacturers in the global supply chain: the “Shared Responsibility Paradigm” and the proposed ISO 45001 standard for worker health and safety.

This paper aims to investigate whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts that are oriented toward shared value creation generate any perceptual advantages in terms of consumer product attributes evaluations compared with other types of CSR. The study also uncovers consumers’ pathways that channel the impacts of corporate associations on corporate and product evaluations and purchase intention.

This study uses a between-subjects experimental design. In all, 274 undergraduate students from a North American university participated in the 2 (low versus high corporate ability levels) × 4 (CSR types) study. The data were analyzed using the methodologies of path analysis and multiple group analysis in the context of structural equation modeling procedure.

The findings show that in the context of shared-value CSR, CSR image (i.e. consumer judgments on the moral aspect of the company) can spill over to product attributes evaluations, including perceptions of “product innovativeness” and “product social responsibility,” which, in turn, translate to purchase willingness. Meanwhile, perceived corporate trustworthiness mediates the effects of CSR image and corporate ability (CA) image on the overall corporate evaluation, which subsequently influences consumer product evaluation and purchase intention.

The research provides direct evidence showing that companies have the potential to improve their corporate brand and, in turn, their product evaluations by putting a stronger emphasis on the social responsibility components of their image and placing this at the core of their strategic agenda. Importantly, a contribution to the literature by identifying differential effects of CA image versus CSR image on consumer perception of product innovativeness within different CSR categories is made. The limitations of the research are discussed, which include the usage of a fictitious company and brand and a convenience sample.

The study offers guidance to managers in regard to their choice of different CSR practices to fulfill their company’s product-related strategic goals.

The present study takes a critical stance to show that previous experimental work investigating the impact of CSR image on product evaluations relied predominantly on bipolar manipulations of CSR practices (bad versus good) rather than bringing many shades of CSR into consideration. By incorporating a wide array of CSR formats, especially value-creating CSR, current research generates potential implications based on differential effects of various CSR focuses, which have not been captured by previous studies.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on corporate and leadership responsibility by proposing a relational business model for shared responsibility.

First, a literature review on corporate and leadership responsibility is presented and discussed. This is followed by an overview of existing public and private regulations and future perspectives that enforce and/or foster corporate and leadership responsibility. Based on the concepts of relational economics, relational leadership and proactive regulation, the theoretical foundations of a relational business model are derived. In addition, a decision model for the empirical application of the relational business model in ethical dilemma situations is developed and presented.

Theoretical elaboration of a relational business model and an associated relational decision-making approach.

This study contributes to a new way of doing business in terms of shared responsibility. Furthermore, corporate responsibility and leadership responsibility are usually researched as two distinct fields, with the former referring to the meso level and the latter to the micro level. A relational approach, which views leadership as a relational phenomenon, contributes to bridging both concepts.

This paper theorizes the role of shared responsibility in the development of affective group attachments, interweaving ideas from social exchange and social identity theories. The main arguments are that (1) people engaged in task interaction experience positive or negative emotions from those interactions; (2) tasks that promote more sense of shared responsibility across members lead people to attribute their individual emotions to groups or organizations; and (3) group attributions of own emotions are the basis for stronger or weaker group attachments. The paper suggests that social categorization and structural interdependence promote group attachments by producing task interactions that have positive emotional effects on those involved.

The purpose is to analyse the impact of team responsibility (the division of job regulation tasks between team leader and team members) on team performance. It bases an analysis on 36 case studies in The Netherlands which are known to have implemented team‐based work. The case studies were executed in 1997 by means of face‐to‐face interviews with HRM staff and line management. It concludes from the analyses that two different types of team responsibility prevail. In a “hierarchical team” team leaders take responsibility for decisions concerning work preparation, support and control, while in the “shared‐responsibility team” decisions are taken by the team members themselves. The analyses show that “shared‐responsibility teams” are thought to contribute more substantially to team performance outcomes than “hierarchical teams”. The analysis helped gain a better understanding of the relationship between HRM and organisation performance, as it is viewed in the “human resource‐based view of the firm”.

This chapter examines public versus private sector roles in addressing CSR/Sustainability issues in the United States. It provides an historical perspective on the primacy of market-driven corporate practice in the United States and recent moves by the state to “balance” private and public interests through both regulatory and non-regulatory means. A typology of government and business roles, based on “who leads” and “who makes the rules,” illustrates shared governance of CSR/Sustainability in a variety of multisector and public–private partnerships.

Case studies examine how the U.S. government interacts with business and NGOs and its varied roles in the shared governance of sustainability. Examples from field interviews with business leaders in global operator General Electric (Global Business Initiative on Human Rights), apparel maker-and-seller Patagonia (Aquatic “Hitchhikers”), electronics retailer Best Buy (product recycling), IBM (global corporate volunteering), and others illustrate varieties of shared governance between business and the state in operation today.

Depending on “who leads” and “who makes the rules,” there are variations in whether responsible actions by the private sector are regulatory versus voluntary and whether government’s role involves mandating, partnering, facilitating, or endorsing private sector efforts. Successful shared governance depends on business’s “license to cooperate” and the multiple parties’s sharing responsibility for their goals, operations, and results.

There is a substantial literature on multi-business CSR-related networks and on business–NGO partnerships. Less attention has been given to the role of governments in this space, particularly in the United States where, partly for historical reasons, a company’s relationship with and obligations to society have been regarded as discretionary more so than regulatory activity and where government intervention in markets and in the affairs of companies has been sharply resisted, particularly by business interests, and is suspect among the citizenry.