Dawn M. Michaelson, Boowon Kim and Veena Chattaraman
This study examines whether design typicality and the communication of the zero-waste concept as a sustainable practice impact consumers’ aesthetic preferences and purchase…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines whether design typicality and the communication of the zero-waste concept as a sustainable practice impact consumers’ aesthetic preferences and purchase intentions for zero-waste apparel.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employed a 2 (dress design: typical vs atypical) × 2 (dress length: long vs short) × 2 (zero-waste concept communication: present vs absent) mixed factorial experimental design with an online survey of 137 female consumers, ages 19–34.
Findings
Respondents rated typical zero-waste design dresses significantly higher than atypical dresses for aesthetic preferences and purchase intentions. Further, the zero-waste design concept did not affect this typicality-based preference or purchase intention for zero-waste dresses. They also demonstrated greater overall aesthetic preferences for long than short zero-waste dresses. Design typicality moderated this effect such that aesthetic preferences and purchase intentions were greater for long than short-length dresses when the zero-waste dress design was typical. When the design was atypical, purchase intentions were greater for short than long dresses.
Research limitations/implications
Typicality is critical in consumers’ aesthetic preferences and purchase intentions for zero-waste apparel.
Originality/value
The study focused on zero-waste dress typicality as a critical factor in consumers’ preference formation and purchase intentions. Additionally, it investigated dress length preferences within typical and atypical designs.
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Pawan Budhwar, Andy Crane, Annette Davies, Rick Delbridge, Tim Edwards, Mahmoud Ezzamel, Lloyd Harris, Emmanuel Ogbonna and Robyn Thomas
Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce �…
Abstract
Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.
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Seyed Ali Alavi and Mahdi Azizi
This paper aims to enumerate the factors influencing the process of decision-making, those which are mostly related to personality affected by cultures and sub-cultures dominating…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to enumerate the factors influencing the process of decision-making, those which are mostly related to personality affected by cultures and sub-cultures dominating the individual’s life, such as possessing internal and external control agents, tolerating or avoiding ambiguities and its comparison with a belief in fatalism or free will and the effect of these beliefs and traits on the personality.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper demonstrates that these beliefs would result in the formation of different personal characteristics; for instance, active and passive individuals and those who are keen to discover problems to solve them and change the existing state of affairs to the desired ones. Some individuals can make decisions and some cannot.
Findings
The researcher has tried to make a comparative study and address the genuine Islamic culture as manifested in the Quran, Prophet’s Tradition and Shiite way of life. In this relation, the case studies are the Battle of Uhud and the Quranic verses related to the research to demonstrate that a Muslim manager, by dismissing fatalism while trusting in God’s blessing, could be distinguished from others.
Originality/value
This study adds to our knowledge that managers can make sound decisions by relying on their Shiite culture, self-confidence, rational thinking, consulting the wise people and above all trusting in God.
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Using the canvas of the author’s sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat, this study aims to exhibit reflections on how spaces can be categorized as more sacred…
Abstract
Purpose
Using the canvas of the author’s sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat, this study aims to exhibit reflections on how spaces can be categorized as more sacred or less sacred according to a specific religious worldview. The paper extends the conversation on Mary Douglas’s concepts of purity and danger by sharpening the focal lens on place in Douglas’s theoretics. The paper also proffers the idea of a sojourn as a vehicle of purification.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper depicts findings from the author’s multi-sited ethnographic field notes carried out from a 40-day sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan.
Findings
The study unveils the concept of relative sacredness or how some spaces can be considered more sacred than others. The differential sacred status of these variegated spaces, each with its own etiquettes, meaning and consumption rituals is a means for purification for sojourners.
Originality/value
This paper prioritizes a focus on place in Mary Douglas’s arguments on purity and impurity in a religious consumption context. The thesis argues that place is a significant concept associated with metaphorical cleanliness/sacredness, which in religious terms guides consumer action.
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Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry…
Abstract
Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.
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Lorcan Dempsey and Rachel Heery
This paper describes emerging metadata practice and standards. It gives an overview of the environments in which metadata is used, before focusing on metadata for information…
Abstract
This paper describes emerging metadata practice and standards. It gives an overview of the environments in which metadata is used, before focusing on metadata for information resources. It outlines an approximate typology of approaches and explores different strands of metadata activity. It discusses trends in format development, metadata management, and use of search and retrieve protocols. It concludes by discussing some features of future deployment of metadata in support of network resource discovery.
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Kuldeep Singh and Madhvendra Misra
This paper takes a critical look at the meaning of corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on the available literature on the subject matter. As CSR is an evolving concept…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper takes a critical look at the meaning of corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on the available literature on the subject matter. As CSR is an evolving concept both in meaning and practice, this study aims to highlight CSR actions of the world's six largest organizations (Google, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, ExxonMobil and Walmart). The purpose of choosing these organizations and their CSR adoption was to examine the business-society relationship and the role of key stakeholders in establishing this association.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examined CSR through the case study approach and provides valuable insights by showing that CSR is a connecting link between business and society. Specifically, the authors took a crucial look at various contentious, often ambiguous definitions, theoretical framework, brief historical development, issues and controversies surrounding it, the role of CSR in community development and summing it up with the future direction and managerial implications.
Findings
This study observed that there are some developmental strategies taking place today which are relevant to the issue at stake, such as: contributing to the world economy, corporations donating or engaging in a wide range of philanthropic gestures now than ever and contributing to the beauty of the society by meeting rising community expectations.
Originality/value
By analyzing the worlds' 6 largest companies' CSR initiatives, this study provides valuable insights by showing that CSR is a connecting link between business and society and is based on win-win collaborations between civil society, business, investors and government. These companies' CSR initiatives have been mostly unexplored in past studies.
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This paper argues that a new theory of community industrial relations is needed that recognises fewer boundaries between work and family. The theory needs to recognise a mutual…
Abstract
This paper argues that a new theory of community industrial relations is needed that recognises fewer boundaries between work and family. The theory needs to recognise a mutual exchange between the traditional “actors” in the industrial relationship (unions, employers and the government) and “interactors” in the community rather than continue to assume a separation between the external and internal industrial environment that has underpinned traditional industrial relations theory. More importantly the theory needs to be gender inclusive and recognise the important role played by women as a link between industrial actors and the community. The paper presents examples of community‐union activity to illustrate the reality of the decrease in separation between community and industrial parties. In so doing the paper draws on the experiences of female partners of male unionists in traditional male workplaces. The paper proposes a new gender inclusive model of community industrial relations. Based on this model the paper proposes a new theory of community industrial relations in which interchange occurs between the traditional industrial relations actors and various groups of interactors within the community within the broader social/cultural, economic, political, and legal environment, for mutual advantage of all parties. This theory is in its formative stage and this requires further testing before it can be claimed as a general theory.
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Many innovations have taken place in the teaching‐learning strategies for organisational behaviour (OB), in the School of Management over the past 18 months. This paper describes…
Abstract
Many innovations have taken place in the teaching‐learning strategies for organisational behaviour (OB), in the School of Management over the past 18 months. This paper describes the impetus for these changes (i.e. budget pressures) and the search for alternative teaching‐learning strategies suitable for organisational behaviour. It documents the journey of lecturers, part‐time staff and students who took part in this adventure. The change process involved a team of eight full‐time and ten part‐time staff members and over 800 students in a multicultural environment. During the first meeting, students had to negotiate their roles, desirable group norms and the gradations of penalties they would use if these ground rules were not adhered to. Each week the roles of facilitator, facilitator’s buddy, time‐keeper and scribe were rotated. Students learnt to work with “dominators”, “quiet members”, “social loafers”, “poor timekeepers”. Some learnt to confront conflict, others decided to ignore it. Student assignments included a creative learning log and a report describing in depth what they learnt themselves and working in groups and relating their experiences to models and theories of organisational behaviour.
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Considers the relations between warfare, gender and marketing, and asks “Are we witnessing the feminization of marketing?” Draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) conception of…
Abstract
Considers the relations between warfare, gender and marketing, and asks “Are we witnessing the feminization of marketing?” Draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) conception of warfare to illustrate contemporary patriarchal organization of society, war and marketing. Some might argue that a shifting balance of power in society and in marketing is reflected in developments such as relationship marketing and postmodern marketing which signal a shift away from “male” values, and that we are currently witnessing the resurgence of more “feminine” values. Concludes that despite these grand claims, prevailing “patriarchal” relations of power are still intact.One could argue that such developments are further acts of appropriation of the “female” space. That said, this space can never be totally appropriated. To locate the “female” principle, one must look beyond the regulating structures of society and the academy to the fringe, for this is the domain of the war machine, a territory which cannot be fully occupied by the forces of the social.