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Secondary research

Victoria’s Secret, a lingerie retailer founded by Roy Raymond in 1977, is the largest retailer in women’s intimate apparel in North America. Nevertheless, the business has been under fire in the recent past for failing to be inclusive and diverse, declining revenues and engaging in high-profile controversies. Victoria's Secret has experienced competition from emerging lingerie brands including Savage X Fenty, which Rihanna established in 2018, ThirdLove and Aerie by American Eagle & Knix. Victoria's Secret tried to reinvent itself in reaction to these difficulties by altering its marketing approach, switching out its “angels” for more diversified models, and launching a new range of cozy, informal loungewear. However, there were conflicting reactions to these initiatives, and the company's sales have been declining.

Executive training programs, upper level undergraduate and graduate MBA students in strategic, marketing and general management. Students should understand the basics of strategic management and marketing before undertaking to analyse this case.

This paper aims to compare the effects of social procurement policies on companies in the Victorian and Scottish construction industries. Scotland and Victoria have led the way in the recent revival of social procurement.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 27 organisations and 28 participants who have experience of implementing social procurement policies into the construction industries of both jurisdictions.

Findings contribute important new comparative insights from multiple stakeholder perspectives, into the effects of social procurement policies on firms operating in the construction industries of the two jurisdictions. Findings indicate an increasing awareness of social procurement in the construction industries of both Scotland and Victoria. However, differences in policy design determine the nature and extent of this awareness, the level of empowerment felt by actors and the social impact these new policies have in practice. It is concluded that to maximise the social impact of social procurement policies into major industries like construction, policymakers need to carefully consider supply-side limitations, the political context into which social procurement is being implemented and the way they prescribe what types of social value they want to create and for whom.

Successful social procurement policy implementation into the construction industry can have significant positive social implications for the communities in which the industry builds due to the large numbers of people it employs and its large multiplier effect into the wider economy.

By investigating the effects of social procurement policies on a cross-section of organisations from across the construction industry supply chain, this international study, contributes new comparative insights to the emerging bodies of research on the impact of public procurement on companies in major industries like construction.

This paper provides an insight into the left and career of the sculptress Victoria Claire, told in her own words.

This is a lived experience narrative.

Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at the age of 19, Victoria’s life was turned upside down. Plunged into the depths of despair, it was her love for and practice of sculpture and music which saved her and gave her purpose. Years of therapy have helped her to understand and love herself as beautiful imperfection.

The vast majority of us inhabit a “sighted world”. Victoria helps us to understand how many of the things we take for granted are so much harder for the visually impaired.

We all need to be sensitive to helping those with sensory difficulties navigate our social world.

When you look at the amazing sculptures that Victoria creates, you cannot help but be impressed that she can create such works of art using her hands, her sculpting tools and her imagination. We can gaze at the beauty of her creations. She cannot.

Drawing on crisis management theory and complexity theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a prolonged COVID-19 induced lockdown on tourism small and medium enterprise (SME) operators’ well-being.

A mixed methods approach was used, with survey data from 226 SME tourism operators located in Victoria (Australia) and 33 interviews with a cross-representative selection of tourism stakeholders.

The findings of this study show that planned resilience, adaptive resilience, government communication (i.e. Roadmap to Recovery announcement) and revenue status are positively linked to well-being.

The cross-sectional nature of this study is not able to provide evidence of a temporal relationship between exposure and outcome, as both are examined at the same time. This study is restricted to one Australian State and may have limited generalisability.

The findings identify strategies to improve tourism SMEs resilience and their operator well-being. Programs designed to meet the needs of tourism SME owners and enhance access to well-being services, while training for SME tourism operators should focus on improving the diversification potential of the business.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies applying crisis management and complexity theories as theoretical lenses to explore the joint effect of organisational resilience and government communication on SME tourism operators’ well-being. The inclusion of communication on SME well-being is an area hitherto unexplored in the tourism literature.

The COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdowns forced us all to spend more time online. This chapter compares in-person and online community building as a business support tool for women creative entrepreneurs. Four cycles of action research collected qualitative data and tested different iterations of a peer-coaching training programme, with two cycles held in person pre-pandemic and two held online peri-pandemic. Communities were created during the structured sessions and benefits are considered in the context of social capital generation. The affordability and accessibility of in-person and online support is also assessed. Results show online participants developed close bonds and rapport with their new community as quickly as participants at in-person sessions. These relationships were long-lasting, with several groups continuing to meet months after the study ended. The peer-coaching training approach provided a low-cost option for business support and the move to online increased accessibility. Putnam’s theory of bridging social capital explains why community building between diverse individuals is useful for entrepreneurs, as it introduces new perspectives and expands connections. Participants found underlying commonalities in their personal values and entrepreneurial experiences, which helped them build these connections. This study presents a comparison between the in-person and online sessions and proposes that online structured peer-coaching sessions can provide business support to women creative entrepreneurs by helping them increase their social capital.

This study aims to investigate the influence of the service concept on customer acquisition and when the relationship is moderated with manager’s experience in Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOS) within Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania.

The study adopts a cross-sectional research design and utilizes simple random sampling to select 226 respondents, all of whom are managers of SACCOS in Tanzania. Data were collected through a questionnaire and analyzed using a partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings indicate that service concept have a highly statistically significant impact on customer acquisition, with a p-value of less than 0.05. Conversely, managers’ experience also influences customer acquisition by the p-value of less than 0.05. The result also confirms the significance influence of positive moderating effect of manager’s experience on the relationship between service concept and customer acquisition, with a p-value of less than 0.05, therefore it shows that manager’s experience facilitate the influence of service concept to customer acquisition.

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for SACCOS aiming to thrive and attract more customers. By understanding the nuances of service concepts, these institutions can refine their strategies for customer acquisition effectively.

The study’s insights into the composite effect of service concepts hold significance for SACCOS seeking to enhance their customer acquisition strategies enhanced by manager’s experience. These findings contribute new perspectives to the SACCOS and other related financial services sector, offering fresh insights into innovation and customer-centric approaches.

The New Zealand city of Christchurch provides a leading example of post-disaster rebuilding in a Central Business District (CBD) area. In its rebuilding programme, the city has given emphasis to the greening of hospitality and traditional retail space through a combination of development of shared pedestrian spaces (with traffic exclusion and calming) and the integration of greening within the streetscape design. This paper aims to assess whether the development of greened pedestrian areas leads to higher retail spending and, thus, retail rental rates.

This study uses pedestrian movement data collected from several CBD locations, as well as spending data on retail and hospitality, to assess relationships between pedestrian movements and spending. This study explores retail spending in greened pedestrian shared spaces, and explores how this differs from retail spending in traditional street areas within the Christchurch CBD.

Spending patterns are location-related, depending on the characteristics of pedestrian space in the selected area. Greened shared pedestrian areas have the highest spending per measured pedestrian for retail and hospitality, whereas traditional street areas have lower spending for retail and hospitality per measured pedestrian, demonstrating the benefits in redeveloped central city areas.

The scope of smart data continues to develop as a research area within urban studies to develop an open and connected city. This research demonstrates the use of innovative technologies for data collection, use and sharing. The results support commercial benefits of greening and pedestrianisation of retail and hospitality areas for CBDs and providing an example for other cities to follow.

Victoria is one of the most diverse states in Australia. With emerging refugee communities such as the Chin community, it is important to consider steps to support and increase productivity of Chin community members to be active citizens. This study therefore aims to understand one of the most essential and fundamental aspect of living a productive life: Wellbeing.

Through the review of previous literature on refugees’ wellbeing including Chin people around the world, an interview method prevailed as the ideal method of data collection. A total of five active Chin community leaders across south-east and north-west of Melbourne were recruited as participants to represent more than ten thousand Chin(s) residing in Melbourne. Through the assistant of guiding questions prepared by the researcher, participants were interviewed individually via Zoom.

Responses across the five participants produce similarity yet unique results. Findings shows that a complete positive state of wellbeing is still a working process for settling Chin community members as negative appears to outweigh positive factors. Nonetheless, it is recommended that community workers, local councils and government to further strengthen their assistant and support in barriers and issues impacting the overall health and wellbeing of Chin community members.

The sample in this study strictly focuses on the responses of five Chin community leaders and workers across Victoria and therefore it is difficult to generalise about the impact on the overall Chin community population in Melbourne. The majority of participants in this research revealed that they wore more than one hat in their service to the Chin community. For example, some community leaders were also serving as active and current volunteers and leaders in their Church groups. Due to this, it is uncertain whether this impacted the responses of participants such as prioritising religious perspectives above community perspectives.

Future studies will be appreciated to build on this research to further elaborate and identify other elements of wellbeing that could increase productivity and participation amongst Chin community members to improve their overall wellbeing.

Paramedics have played a critical role in the health care system response to the COVID-19 pandemic as frontline responders. However, in comparison to other health care workers (i.e. nurses), less research has been conducted on how paramedic work has been undertaken and how they manage their resources in the context of high workloads. This study examines several factors that deplete paramedic resources as well as the importance of family support in buffering the effects of low levels of resilience that can impact paramedic intention to leave and promotive voice.

Data were collected from 648 paramedics employed by Ambulance Victoria, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine five hypotheses: (1) resilience mediates the relationship between role overload and intention to leave; (2) resilience mediates the relationship between role overload and promotive voice; (3) family support moderates the relationship between role overload and resilience; (4) family support moderates the indirect effect of role overload on intention to leave via resilience and (5) family support moderates the indirect effect of role overload on promotive voice via resilience.

We found that when family support was low, the impact of role overload on turnover intention via resilience was significant. When family support was low, the negative impact of role overload on promotive voice via resilience was significant. When family support was high, such a negative indirect effect was not significant in predicting employee promotive voice via resilience.

We suggest that organisations should focus human resource management (HRM) policies and practices on family-friendly initiatives to further enhance family support resources to benefit individuals, families and organisations.

Our findings demonstrate the importance of family support as a buffer to the negative effects of role overload on employee resilience and promotive voice. There is clear importance of the contextual elements of family support as a resource, and its absence may result in resource depletion and can act as a catalyst in a resource depletion spiral. This demonstrates the importance of organisations understanding and learning to utilise external resources to complement organisational and individual resources to reduce intention to leave and support promotive employee voice. We suggest that organisations should focus HRM policies and practices on family-friendly initiatives to further enhance family support resources to benefit individuals, families and organisations.

Arising from the concept of a Smart City, Smart Heritage has emerged as a significant aspect of heritage conservation. It is viewed as a means to enhance cultural sustainability by strengthening the identity of heritage precincts. Nevertheless, the adoption of Smart Heritage solutions in Australian heritage precincts for the purpose of identity development is still relatively limited. This study focuses on Chinatown Melbourne as a case study to unveil how Smart Heritage can influence a heritage precinct’s identity and to identify the enablers and challenges of such implementation.

The study involves interviews with eight professionals in community development, practitioners in the built-environment discipline and experts in heritage conservation in Chinatown Melbourne.

The outcomes of this study offer practical insights for facilitating the development of Chinatown Melbourne as an urban heritage site, along with providing recommendations for other heritage precincts considering the adoption of Smart Heritage as part of their conservation strategy.

This study offers a novel examination of Smart Heritage implementation in an urban heritage precinct, addressing both the practical enablers and challenges. It advances the discussion by focusing on how Smart Heritage can enhance cultural identity, an aspect underexplored in Australian heritage studies and provides a framework for future global comparisons.