Search results

The main data used to develop this case were remote, synchronous interviews with the three characters in the case. The authors conducted two interviews with the main character in the case, Geoff Brown, specifically: (1) an initial 30 min interview to determine the fit and focus of the case and to help create the interview protocol for the full case interview (this initial interview was conducted on March 12, 2024); and (2) an hour-long interview to ask targeted questions to fully develop the case narrative (this interview was conducted on March 28, 2024). Geoff Brown was also involved in reviewing drafts of the case, approving the final version of the case and reviewing the assignment questions in this instructors’ manual (IM).

This case focuses on Geoff Brown, Executive Director at Alberta Chicken Producers (ACP), which is a not-for-profit organization in Alberta, Canada, that is responsible for representing 250 regulated chicken producers. Brown is grappling with what to do with the remote/hybrid work policy at ACP. Part of the impetus for reconsidering this policy was the comments from ACP’s long-tenured Office Manager and Executive Assistant, who had been asking Brown to bring this policy forward to a staff meeting for discussion throughout the past year. Brown now feels ready to move these discussions forward but is unsure of how to proceed and what the best practices would be to ensure that the policy in place for remote work is beneficial for work engagement, individual and organizational work performance, work–life balance, employee relationships and fairness perceptions.

The target audience for this case is undergraduate and graduate students taking a course in the disciplines of human resources management or organizational behavior. This case will be especially relevant for a human resources management course when studying the topics of employee benefits (e.g. work–life balance), health and safety (e.g. stress) and work design (e.g. telecommuting), and this case will be especially relevant for an organizational behavior course when studying the topics of motivation (e.g. fairness), communication, organizational culture and decision-making.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are crucial in sustainable development. To this end, they must infuse sustainability into all their endeavors. This study aims to delve into the unique vertically integrated project (VIP), a project-based learning approach and its impact on students’ skills and the surrounding community.

The research design was collaborative, reflecting the spirit of the VIP. Step 1 involved an action research approach, where students and instructors worked closely with municipal representatives to identify challenges and devise solutions for local economic development. In Step 2, students' voices were heard through a survey. Step 3 encompassed presentations in scientific and nonscientific events, capturing the community’s perception as a valuable feedback loop.

The authors identified the most effective policies implemented by municipalities that excelled in indices related to the business environment. VIP enhanced students’ soft skills, including critical thinking, teamwork and community spirit. The outcomes of the VIP were effective in identifying public policies aimed at social transformation.

This study’s findings offer significant insights for HEI managers, guiding them in adopting interdisciplinary pedagogical practices. These practices, in turn, foster sustainable development within both internal and external communities. Furthermore, the empirical study’s focus on improving local community governance can potentially enhance the local business environment.

Literature emphasizing the social dimension of sustainability in HEIs is scarce, particularly those practices related to teaching, research and extension linked to projects aimed at community sustainability. This study introduces interdisciplinary practices encouraging student involvement in addressing tangible issues and searching for solutions to community problems.

The paper explores the notion of worker voice in terms of its implications for supply chain justice. The paper proposes the value of the recognition perspective on social justice for framing workers’ experiences in global supply chains and identifies opportunities for the advancement of the worker voice agenda with recognition justice in mind.

The paper adopts a conceptual approach to explore the notion of worker voice in supply chains in terms of the recognition perspective on social justice.

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) scholarship has considered worker voice in terms of two key paradigms, which we term communication and representation. To address recognition justice for workers in global supply chains, the worker voice agenda must consider designing worker voice mechanisms to close recognition gaps for workers with marginalised identities; the shared responsibilities of supply chain actors to listen alongside the expectation of workers to use their voice; and the expansion of the concept of worker voice to cut across home-work boundaries.

The paper offers conceptual clarity on the emerging notion of worker voice in SSCM and is the first to interrogate the implications of recognition justice for the emergent worker voice agenda. It articulates key opportunities for future research to further operationalise worker voice upon a recognition foundation.

March 2020 signaled school closures and moves online for many institutions, but an online EdD program at a midsize, Christian university featured fewer than-expected programmatic changes. Because of its modality, program operations continued with relatively few changes. Although COVID-19-related campus closures did not interrupt these students’ scheduled courses, they substantively impacted their personal and professional lives. As a result, the authors in the program-specific writing center serving these students found themselves helping them navigate not only stresses related to the already-strenuous task of writing a dissertation but also personal and professional anxieties related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to explore and reflect on the strategies employed by a program‐specific writing center to support doctoral students during the COVID‐19 pandemic, focusing on relaxed scheduling policies, emotional support beyond writing, and fostering deeper interpersonal connections to address the unique challenges students faced during this period.

The authors conducted an autoethnographic exploration of their experiences to consider and examine effective strategies for supporting students in times of stress. The authors guided this inquiry by reviewing logs, notes and video recordings of sessions held or rescheduled in Spring 2020.

The authors identified three major themes in how they adjusted their approach to considering the pandemic: relaxed scheduling policies, emotional support beyond the writing process by permitting students to set the writing aside while they focused on the more immediate concerns emerging from the rapid onset of pandemic life and intentionally using the opportunity to form deeper interpersonal connections with students in their home environments.

As institutions reflect on lessons learned during pandemic stresses, closures and mandates, intentional exploration and reflection allow for a greater understanding of what improvements the authors can make to future practice. This uniquely positioned study offers a valuable perspective on supporting students through crisis.

Whereas belongingness and its proximate constructs have been explored in various contexts, an understanding of what it actually is in organisational contexts remains elusive. This paper aims to explore employees’ experiences of belongingness at work to better understand what belongingness means in a work context.

Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 12 participants in the United States and New Zealand over two time periods. Grounded theory methodology was used to develop themes and categories to understand the structure of the data.

The data revealed an overarching theme of “self” represented by three categories: identified as the “unveiled-self,” the “relational-self” and “the seen-self.” The data further reveals how employees covertly survey the organisational environment for cues of belongingness and moderate their behaviour accordingly.

This study’s small, culturally homogenous sample may limit generalisability. Future research could explore cross-cultural differences in belongingness at work using diverse samples. Examining belongingness and self-concept could provide further insights into authenticity and fitting in at work.

Organisations should promote authentic interactions, meaningful recognition and psychological safety for self-expression. Informal conversations strengthen relationships, but efforts must feel genuine. Encouraging authenticity, recognising contributions sincerely and creating opportunities for organic social interaction can cultivate a culture of belonging.

The three dimensions of “self” illuminate the importance of authenticity, meaningful workplace relationships and recognition as unique components of belongingness at work.

In addition to business stresses, small business owners (SBOs) face moral conflict and moral identity challenges when providing services during a crisis, such as a natural disaster, war or global health issues. This netnography study explores SBOs as they leverage online service communities to modify practices, sustain services and manage the resulting moral conflict.

We employ a netnographic approach, including engagement with a global forum, online surveys and interviews. Data were collected from virtual reality photographers working in residential real estate at the height of the pandemic crisis.

The netnographic data reveal that the crisis threatened their businesses and caused these SBOs to question whether their services were essential or merely capitalizing on the crisis, creating moral tension and role conflict. We find that online service communities offer a social alliance and verification that can promote a co-creative process, leading to creative business practices. Additionally, the community interactions inspire SBOs to adopt a moral identity, which assists in bringing normalcy to the delivery of their service while keeping others safe.

This study utilized netnography innovatively, including incorporating open-ended surveys and broad-reaching member checks. This yielded insights during a time-bound crisis context within an online service community. Additionally, using social identity and organizational identity theories, we introduce the concept of SBO identity and investigate the owners’ journey through early crisis management.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors influencing the resilience of innovation ecosystems and propose strategies for proactively managing disruptions to ensure their continued viability. Enhancing resilience within innovation ecosystems is a fundamental prerequisite for ensuring their sustainable development. The resilience of such ecosystems is commonly associated with their capacity to recover from disturbances. Consequently, to ensure their continued viability, innovation ecosystems must proactively manage disruptions by identifying the factors that influence resilience.

Given the relatively limited attention afforded to indicators impacting the resilience of innovation ecosystems thus far, this article endeavors to present a framework for assessing resilience within such ecosystems, drawing upon the metaphorical understanding of resilience in natural ecosystems. To achieve this objective, the present research adopts the metaphor research method, which involves delineating the research problem and elucidating the origin of the metaphor.

Subsequently, through content analysis, the indicators for evaluating resilience in natural ecosystems are identified, and corresponding indicators and components are derived for the innovation ecosystem. These indicators are categorized into five dimensions, encompassing ecosystem capabilities, ecosystem interactions and structure, ecosystem status, ecosystem capacity and ecosystem environment.

This article endeavors to present a resilience framework for innovation ecosystems, drawing on the metaphorical concept of resilience evident in natural ecosystems. Through the method of metaphor research, the article first elucidates the research problem and selects ecology as the primary source of metaphor. Subsequently, evaluation indicators of resilience in natural ecosystems are determined using theme analysis.

The purpose of this study is to revisit the conventional wisdom about a key contribution [i.e. strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis] in the field of strategic management. The societal context and the role of academics, consultants and executives is taken into account in the emergence of SWOT analysis during the 1960–1980 period as a pivotal development within the broader context of the satisfactory, opportunities, faults, threats (SOFT) approach. The authors report on both the content and the approach, so that other scholars seeking to invigorate indigenous theories and/or underreported strategy practices will thrive.

Applying a historiographic approach, the authors introduce an evidence-based methodology for interpreting historical sources. This methodology incorporates source criticism, triangulation and hermeneutical interpretation, drawing upon insights from robust evidence through three iterative stages.

The underreporting of the SOFT approach/SWOT analysis can be attributed to several factors, including strategy tools being integrated into planning frameworks rather than being published as standalone materials; restricted circulation of crucial long-range planning service/theory and practice of planning reports due to copyright limitations; restricted access to the Stanford Research Institute Planning Library in California; and the enduring popularity of SOFT and SWOT variations, driven in part by their memorable acronyms.

In the spirit of a renaissance in strategic planning research, the authors unveil novel theoretical and social connections in the emergence of SWOT analysis by combining evidence from both theory and practice and delving into previously unexplored areas.

Caution is advised for scholars who examine the discrete time frame of 1960–1980 through mere bibliometric techniques. This study underscores the risks associated with gathering incomplete and/or inaccurate data, emphasizing the importance of triangulating evidence beyond scholarly databases. The paradigm shift of strategic management research due to the advent of large language models poses new challenges and the risk of conserving and perpetuating academic urban legends, myths and lies if training data is not adequately curated.

In response to the growing popularity of brands’ using social media as a customer service channel (webcare), this research examines how companies redirect consumers from the public social media feed to a private channel. The purpose of this paper is to understand how to redirect consumers using service failure apologies and to discuss personalization’s role in these service recoveries.

A text mining study reveals how companies use redirection on social media. Then, two experiments test the impact of redirection types and personalization on consumer perceptions and intentions.

Service representatives frequently require consumers to initiate the first message after redirecting them from the public social media feed (a consumer-responsible redirection). Personalizing webcare apologies increases repurchase intentions and relational advocacy regardless of the redirection strategy used. Consumers are more likely to publicly respond to companies that initiate the first message in a private channel (a company-responsible redirection).

Although most service providers require consumers to co-produce service recovery redirections (consumer-responsible redirection), this requirement may not be optimal. If a consumer-responsible redirection must be used, then personalization may improve consumers’ perceptions of webcare apology’s sincerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test different types of redirections in webcare. The authors extend the literature on personalization and webcare apologies by examining how these webcare components operate with redirections. The need to prevent public complaints’ spiraling out of control contributes to this research’s timely value.

This paper aims to propose the sensory stimulation spillover effect phenomenon, defined as the process by which sensory stimulation in one area generates positive impressions and favorably impacts opinions in other areas. Specifically, this paper demonstrates that the spillover effect of sensory priming via an advertised brand impacts the viewer’s self-brand connections (the mental representation of a brand connected to an individual’s self-concept), brand attitude and brand purchase intention.

Across six experiments, 883 participants considered advertised brands from diverse product categories (food snacks, electronics and detergent). The multisensory prime in Studies 1–3 uses positively valenced sensory imagery and text, whereas the multisensory prime in Studies 4–6 is a sensory imaging task. Studies 1–4 examine the spillover effect of the multisensory prime on consumers’ self-brand connections, as well as downstream brand-related variables. Studies 5 and 6, respectively, examined the moderating roles of advertising appeal, regulatory focus (promotion vs prevention) and cognitive versus affective tone.

Results provide robust evidence of the proposed sensory stimulation spillover effect. Sensory priming strengthens self-brand connections and positively impacts brand attitude and purchase intention; self-brand connections mediate the relationship between a multisensory prime and brand attitude and purchase intention. The sensory stimulation spillover effect is stronger when advertisements have a promotion (vs prevention) focus and particularly for participants with a stronger intrinsic promotion (vs prevention) orientation, as well as for advertisements with an affective (vs a cognitive) tone.

The authors manipulated sensory stimulation using visual images and text as well as using a multisensory-imaging task. Future work can explore the use of actual sensory stimulation, and retail spaces or public venues may provide opportunities for field experiments to study sensory stimulation in situ.

The research focuses on spillover effects in an advertising context with broader implications for consumers’ in-store shopping experiences based on multisensory store architecture and atmospherics, as well as online shopping that is impacted by multisensory information.

This paper introduces the phenomenon of sensory stimulation spillover effect, the process by which sensory stimulation in one area generates positive impressions and favorably impacts opinions in other areas and demonstrates that multisensory priming strengthens self-brand connections and downstream brand-related variables, with self-brand connections as the mediator. The results are robust across multiple product categories and are contingent upon the type of advertising appeal. The research focuses on spillover effects in an advertising context with broader implications for consumers’ in-store shopping experiences based on multisensory store architecture and atmospherics, as well as online shopping which is impacted by multisensory information.