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Business-society relations have weakened in recent years due to evidence of greenwashing and misleading corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, resulting in a lack of trust and interest amongst the stakeholders regarding CSR efficiency. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse the major antecedents and customer-related outcomes of perceived CSR authenticity. In addition, the study provides an integrated model of CSR authenticity and empirically validates the model in Indian settings.

A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data from 250 bank customers living in a major city situated in the northern part of India. The analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling.

The findings of the study demonstrate that extrinsic motives, intrinsic motives, CSR impact and corporate reputation significantly influence CSR authenticity, while CSR fit was reported to exhibit no significant influence on CSR authenticity. Additionally, the results of the mediation analysis indicated that CSR authenticity had no direct effect on customer loyalty; rather, this effect was found to be mediated through customer trust.

This study/research adds insight into the concept of CSR authenticity, which is relatively under-researched, especially in the Indian context. Furthermore, the study focuses on less-explored antecedents, including CSR impact and corporate reputation. In addition, the paper also examines the mediating effect of trust between CSR authenticity and consumer loyalty, which has not been explored yet in the context of CSR authenticity. The analysis also delved into the moderating effect of gender and age on CSR authenticity.

Many individuals start a new firm each year, mainly intending to become independent or improve their financial situation. For most of them, the first years of operations mean a substantial investment of time, effort and money with highly insecure outcomes. This study aims to explore how entrepreneurs running new firms perform financially compared with the established ones and how this situation influences their well-being.

A questionnaire survey was completed in 2021 and 2022 by a representative sample of N = 1136 solo self-employed and microentrepreneurs in the Czech Republic, with dependent self-employed excluded. This study used multiple regressions for data analysis.

Early-stage entrepreneurs are less satisfied with their financial situation, have lower disposable income and report more significant financial problems than their established counterparts. The situation is even worse for the subsample of startups. However, this study also finds they do not have lower well-being than established entrepreneurs. While a worse financial situation is generally negatively related to well-being, being a startup founder moderates this link. Startup founders can maintain a good level of well-being even in financial struggles.

The results suggest that policies should focus on reducing the costs related to start-up activities. Further, policy support should not be restricted to new technological firms. Startups from all fields should be eligible to receive support, provided that they meet the milestones of their development. For entrepreneurship education, this study‘s results support action-oriented approaches that help build entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy while making them aware of cognitive biases common in entrepreneurship. This study also underscores that effectuation or lean startup approaches help entrepreneurs develop their startups efficiently and not deprive themselves of resources because of their unjustified overconfidence.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the financial situation and well-being of founders of new firms and, specifically, startups. The personal financial situation of startup founders has been a largely underexplored issue. Compared with other entrepreneurs, this study finds that startup founders are, as individuals, in the worst financial situation. Their well-being remains, however, on a comparable level with that of other entrepreneurs.

By 1901, New Zealand had the first national government-controlled department of tourism in the world. This was the vehicle used to acquire and control tourism assets. In 1954, the hotel assets were consolidated as the Tourist Hotel Corporation of New Zealand (THC). Whilst hotel consolidation was not unique in the world, comparatively little has been written about the establishment of the THC. The following contributes to this ongoing history.

The research used relevant archival records held within the Archives New Zealand. Altogether 195 files were accessed. Information was analyzed and sorted into themes. The following involves one of those themes, conflict.

The establishment of the THC was the result of corporatist ideology based around the need to preserve the importance of tourism to New Zealand. The legislative requirements relating to the management and governance of the THC led to conflict between the THC CEO and the government. Such conflict has been placed within an institutional context. This conflict may have “got in the way” of effective running of the THC.

There is a large volume of data still to be analyzed. Subsequent work on the later years, and demise of the THC could add further context to the overall history of the THC. The extent to which institutionalism was at the root of conflict between the management of the THC and the controlling government department are explored.

Very little has been written about the establishment of the THC. The following contributes to the discussion on the establishment and problems that emerged in the early management of the THC.

Firms seek to improve their decision-making and enable more “fact-based” decisions by using business analytics. While the benefits of using business analytics to monitor, develop and improve daily operations have been reported by many scholars, using it in more complex top management decisions has received less attention. Building on the resource-based view of the firm, this study aims to investigate top management perceptions of using business analytics for making decisions on firm resources.

This study uses semi-structured interviews to collect perceptions of 12 top managers in large firms on when and why they use business analytics in their decision-making.

Top managers use business analytics output as their main source of information for monitoring ongoing business performance against set targets and taking corrective actions. Concerning future-oriented planning and strategic decision-making involving more complex changes on the firms’ resource base, top managers proactively complement knowledge derived via business analytics with other sources of knowledge, such as stakeholder and expert opinions. Moreover, top managers use of business analytics depends on their own expectations of its value potential and on the expectations of their organization.

This study adds to the extant literature on the business value of business analytics by outlining the purposes and reasons for top management business analytics use. By demonstrating when and why top managers apply business analytics when making decisions on the firm’s current and future resource base, this study contributes to the discussion on the resource-based view and decision-making practices of the firm.

Despite growing interest in smart sustainable city models, empirical evidence on progress, public perceptions and major adoption obstacles remains sparse. This study aims to assess the readiness of the world’s largest urban agglomerations, including megacities and metacities, to transition towards smarter and more sustainable models, while also exploring the primary challenges and obstacles to this transformation.

Drawing from pragmatism as a theoretical standpoint, a mixed methodology utilizing an online survey as an instrument of exploration was employed to investigate the perspectives of 400 residents of large urban centers globally regarding their city’s readiness to transition towards a smart sustainable city model.

Participants prioritize sustainability over intelligence, focusing on quality of life, environmental benefits and resource efficiency in smart sustainable city initiatives. Key considerations include sustainable urban planning, resource management and smart buildings. Challenges persist in energy management, waste reduction, economic development and education. While policies support sustainability, gaps remain in education, political will, funding, collaboration and technology infrastructure. The study highlights a global trend towards smarter, more sustainable cities and a strong correlation between participants' prioritization of sustainability and their commitment to sustainable practices.

By exploring residents’ viewpoints, priorities and aspirations, this research provides empirical evidence for decision-makers, urbanists and others involved in shaping future cities.

This research contributes to urban studies by exploring the emerging trend towards smart sustainable cities, aligning with perspectives from futurists and urban theorists. Future research should focus on predictive analysis and enhancing collaboration across government, private sector and civil society to accelerate this transformative process.

The paper deals with battlefield tourism and war monuments in the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Poland. The care of these monuments and their use in tourism today takes place separately and it is interesting to see how the same potential can be used in different ways. One of the aims of the paper is to draw attention to this fact and at the same time to present the possibilities of how to improve the use of this heritage by mutual cooperation.

It is based on field research of the care of military-historical monuments. At the same time, it presents, in the form of retrospective studies, basic experiences from abroad – specifically the construction of thematic trails in Slovakia, Slovenia (The Walk of the Peace) and Poland (The First World War's Eastern Front Trail).

The paper points out aspects such as the care of battlefield tourism sites, cross-border cooperation in the creation of tourism products, the creation of a strategic conceptual framework for the protection of World War I monuments, their presentation to tourists, cooperation between the state, local government and the third sector.

There was no systematic research in this area in Central and Eastern Europe.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused significant disruption to the global labor market, resulting in a rapid transition toward remote work, e-commerce and workforce automation. This shift has sparked a considerable amount of public discussion. This study aims to explore the online public's sentiment toward remote work amid the pandemic.

Based on justice theory, this paper examines user-generated content on social media platforms, particularly Twitter, to gain insight into public opinion and discourse surrounding remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing content analysis techniques such as sentiment analysis, text clustering and evolutionary analysis, this study aims to identify prevalent topics, temporal patterns and instances of sentiment polarization in tweets.

Results show that people with positive opinions focus mainly on personal interests, while others focus on the interests of the company and society; people's subjectivities are higher when they express extremely negative or extremely positive emotions. Distributive justice and interactional justice are distinguishable with a high degree of differentiation in the cluster map.

Previous research has inadequately addressed public apprehensions about remote work during emergencies, particularly from a justice-based perspective. This study seeks to fill this gap by examining how justice theory can shed light on the public's views regarding corporate policy-making during emergencies. The results of this study provide valuable insights and guidance for managing public opinion during such events.

The extensive brand associations research lacks organisation when it comes to the used information cues. This paper aims to systematically map and categorise the brand knowledge associations’ components and develop a typology applicable to any brand.

Using the restaurant and hotel industries in four different European cultural clusters as contexts, this work uses well-established systematic qualitative analysis approaches to categorise, code and model pictorial content in two studies. A four-stage sampling process identified Instagram brand-posted signals (photos), 243 from 26 restaurants in Madrid, Paris and Rome for study one and 390 from 29 hotels in Moscow, Berlin and Stockholm for study two. Adhering to relevant guidelines, the manual coding procedures progressed from 246 for restaurants and 231 for hotels initially generated free information coding inductive codes to a theory-informed categorisation. Quantitative analysis complemented the qualitative analysis, revealing the information cues relative utilisation.

For both studies, the analysis produced a typology consisting of two high-level and five lower-level brand knowledge association categories, namely: (a) brand characteristics consisting of the brand as a symbol, the brand as a product and the brand as a person, and (b) brand imagery consisting of user imagery and experience imagery. The five lower-level categories comprise of sub-categories and dimensions, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the brand associations conceptual structure relevant to brands operating in any industry.

Researchers can use this typology to holistically encapsulate brand associations or design projects aiming to deepen brand knowledge association aspects/dimensions understanding.

Managers can use this typology to portray brands. Some of the identified lower-level categories and/or sub-categories and dimensions are likely to need customisation to fit specific contexts.

The suggested categorisation offers a solid, comprehensive framework for effectively categorising and coding brand knowledge associations and proposes a new theory in the form of a typology.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of transformational leadership on learning organization and nurses' innovative behavior. Furthermore, this study aims to explore the mediating role of learning organization in the relationship between transformational leadership and nurse innovative behavior in the healthcare context. As there is a paucity of research examining these relationships, this study bridges the research gaps in the literature.

A cross-sectional survey was used. Using convenience sampling, the data of 228 nurses from 5 public hospitals in Vietnam were collected via questionnaires. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to empirically test the hypotheses.

The findings show significant positive effects of transformational leadership on learning organization and nurses’ innovative behavior. Furthermore, a significant positive relationship between learning organization and nurses’ innovative behavior was also supported. Finally, the partial mediating role of learning organization is significant in this study.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this article is the first of its kind to identify the minimal literature available on the impact of transformational leadership on learning organization and nurses’ innovative behavior. This article also contributes to extending knowledge about the mediating role of learning organization in the healthcare context. Highlighting the importance of transformational leadership, the findings offer guidance for healthcare organizations that aim to strengthen nurses’ innovative behavior.

This paper investigates how stockist brand equity is created in the unorganized pharma retail sector in emerging markets despite the absence of any proactive brand-building efforts by distribution firms (stockists). In addition, this study also aims to unravel the sources of stockist brand equity.

Drawing from grounded theory, a qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews was conducted, and a theoretical saturation approach was used for this purpose. The retailer–stockist (business-to-business [B2B]) relationship in the Indian pharmaceutical market context was used as the study context.

The findings show that in the absence of any brand-building activities, stockists’ sales representatives play an important role in creating stockist brand awareness. In addition, word of mouth from other retailers also plays a minor role. Rational and emotional brand associations which are strong, favorable and unique are created 1) directly by the services provided by stockists, which includes product availability, deliverability, accuracy in billing and batch numbers, credit facilities and discounts, handling issues such as product expiry, and 2) indirectly by the services provided by stockists’ sales representatives which includes their frequency of visits, proactive customer orientation rather than sales orientation, fulfilling commitments and relationship with retailers. The strength of the retailer–stockist (B2B) relationship also depends on retailer-driven factors and other external factors discussed in this study.

Strong stockist brand equity helps build trust and loyalty with pharmacies, ensuring a consistent and timely supply of medicinal products, which will benefit their end consumers or society.

This study identifies the antecedents determining the strength of the retailer–stockist (B2B) relationship, a precursor for establishing retailer-based stockist brand equity in the unorganized sector. This study also highlights the consequences of establishing strong retailer-based stockist brand equity.