Search results

This paper aims to understand how fashion-based social enterprises (FSEs) navigate the marketing communications of fashion products alongside those of their social mission. The authors use the theoretical lens of Consumer culture theory, Collin Campbell’s “Romantic ethic” and the work of Eva Illouz to explore how FSEs weave the emotional appeals of fashion consumption with those of contributing to a greater social cause. The melding of these theoretical approaches to consumer behaviour enables a thorough analysis of FSE marketing strategies.

Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 founders, marketing directors and managers of FSEs. Open-ended questions were used, and key themes were established through inductive analysis.

The findings show that FSEs use a form of brand storytelling in their marketing communications; they view their social mission as a unique selling point; FSEs could further incorporate product quality/aesthetic value into brand storytelling; and they could sharpen brand storytelling by further engaging with the positive emotional responses they elicit from consumers.

This research has both theoretical and practical implications in that FSEs that focus on explicit altruistic messaging at the expense of aesthetic hedonism may limit their appeal to mainstream fashion consumers. Accordingly, a promising approach may be to effectively incorporate and link the positive emotional responses of both altruistic and aesthetic value. This approach could similarly apply to other areas of social enterprise retail marketing, particularly for those seeking to attract consumers beyond ethical shoppers.

Migration has become a challenging issue in the field of education and an ongoing crisis for many countries. The migration crisis and education have a reciprocal relationship in that the influx of migrants puts a strain on educational systems, particularly regarding resources, funding, and linguistic and cultural differences. However, education can play a crucial role in addressing some of the challenges associated with migration, such as the need to integrate, skill acquisition and cultural awareness in host countries, as well as brain drain in the countries of origin. It is crucial to investigate how education can both address the problems caused by migration and maximise its potential for sustainable development. This chapter targets analysing relevant scholarship and aims to illustrate the broad patterns of relevant scholarly sources on migration in the field of education indexed in the Web of Science between 2015 and 2022, explore their collaboration trends, and reveal the conceptual structure of these studies in the context of international sustainable development. A bibliometric methodology is employed for the exploration and analysis of the publications; 991 studies on migration in the field of education are descriptively analysed in terms of distribution of publications with their citations, topics at the micro level, journals, and the number of authors contributing to these papers. The results contribute to picturing the characteristics and collaboration trend of the scholarly sources on migration in the area of education as a challenging disabler or a driving force that contributes to societal development within the scope of international sustainable development.

This chapter shares the experiences of two graduate students as they navigated higher education during the pandemic. Engaging in graduate study during the pandemic shaped their socialisation experiences, challenged their understanding of themselves as scholars and impacted their relationships with mentors. This chapter shares personal reflections of their experiences and explores their sense of professional identity and aspirations for the future.

The past two decades have witnessed exponential growth in the use of mindfulness-based programmes within professional workplace cultures. From digital media giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook, to Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, universities, and government departments, many contemporary workplaces now offer mindfulness-based programmes as a remedy for workplace challenges such as low productivity, employee stress and staff attrition. Using Google’s Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute as a case study, this chapter adopts Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism’ as a critical framework for re-evaluating the affective and relational experiences of mindfulness within the contemporary neoliberal workplace. Specifically, it considers the ways in which corporate mindfulness initiatives commonly use the rubric of ‘employee wellbeing’ and ‘self-care’ to pathologise employee experiences of boredom, dissatisfaction and stress while downplaying the social, political and economic factors that contribute to workplace dissatisfaction and employee burnout.

The continuing development of digital technologies creates expanding opportunities for information transparency. Consumers use social media to provide online reviews that are focused on changing levels of consumer trust. This study examines the effect of perceived risk that prompts consumers to search for online reviews in the context of food safety.

Commitment-trust theory forms the theoretical lens to model changes in consumer trust resulting from online reviews. Consumer-based questionnaire surveys collected data to test the structural model, using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings show when consumers perceive high levels of risk, they use social media to obtain additional product-related information. The objective, unanimous, evidential and noticeable online reviews are perceived as informative to consumers. Perceived informativeness of positive online reviews is found to increase consumers trust and, in turn, increase their purchase intentions.

The findings contribute to the knowledge of online review-based trust literature and provide far-reaching implications for information system (IS)-practitioners in business.

This paper examines the state’s accountability to its citizens, in particular the First Peoples of settler colonial nations such as Australia, and how these responsibilities may be enacted via a process of compensatory justice in Native Title claims. We focus on the landmark Timber Creek ruling and the impacts of racialized preconceptions on the accountability outcomes of the case.

This study draws on critical race theory to reveal embedded racialised perspectives that perpetuate exclusion and discriminatory outcomes. Court documents including hearing transcripts, case judgements, witness statements, appellant and respondent submissions, expert reports and responses from First Nations leaders, form the basis of our analysis.

The case highlights how the compensation awarded to Native Title holders was based on racialised assumptions that prioritised neoliberal values, commercial activities and reaching a “socially acceptable” judgement over valuing Aboriginal uses of land. A critical analysis of court documents reveals the pervasiveness of presumed “objectivity” in the use of accounting tools to calculate economic value and the accountability implications of a process based on litigation, not negotiation. These findings reveal the hiding places offered by calculative practices that equate neoliberal priorities with accountability and reaffirm the importance of alternative accountings to resist inequitable distributive outcomes.

Novel insights, drawing on First Nations peoples’ connections to land and their perspectives on accountability and justice, are offered in this study. Our analysis of Native Title holders’ submissions to the courts alongside historical and anthropological sources leads to the conclusion that compensation decisions regarding Native Title land must be approached from the perspective of Aboriginal landowners if accountable outcomes are to be achieved.