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Many familiar global corporations have well-developed corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies that enunciate socially caring values that include the dignity and well-being of their employees. Yet opposition to independent employee voice from companies with trumpeted CSR credentials indicates an uncomfortable contradiction between rhetoric and reality in the treatment of employees as valued stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to explore these contradictions using the lens of a libertarian tradition.

The CSR statements of three companies are examined to provide the context for their espoused values towards employees. Media, trade union and academic publications on each of the companies are then considered to identify systematic evidence of anti-union practices.

The paper illustrates the paradox of companies with espoused CSR policies advocating the dignity and well-being of their employees with often explicit coercive anti-union practices. These practices are a constraint on the negative freedom/liberty of employees in the libertarian tradition and amount to unethical behaviour on the part of the firm.

The paper offers important insights into the disconnection common in many firms between normative ethical claims in CSR statements to treat employees as valued legitimate stakeholders and the reality in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived organizational support (POS) moderates accountability's relationship with job satisfaction.

Self-report data were collected from one organizational sample from the USA and one organizational sample from Sweden.

The results support the hypothesis that POS moderates the relationship between accountability and job satisfaction in the two samples. Specifically, the findings show that accountability relates positively to satisfaction under high support conditions and, in one sample, negatively to satisfaction under low support condition.

The current results suggest that social context is vital to a more informed evaluation of how accountability relates to work outcomes. Organizations should show their employees that they care about them. This can be achieved through starting, maintaining, and nurturing those initiatives that are interpreted positively by the employees.

Scandals represent examples of accountability failures. The implications of these scandals are not merely limited to individual companies and their employees. The wellbeing of the employees is part of the wellbeing of the society.

This study offers new insights on the relationship between accountability and job satisfaction. First, it demonstrates how organizational support perception functions as a moderator of this relationship. Second, it reports replicable results from two organizational samples – one from North America and one from Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way in which fiction written in English has portrayed establishments which provide accommodation and food: namely inns and hotels. This personal mental portrayal contributes to the image of hotels by readers of fiction and ultimately to hospitality and tourism buying behaviour.

The author reviews the increasing visibility of inns and hotels in fiction in the last 700 years and focuses upon six selected texts which the researcher considers important.

The paper offers some conclusions as to the way in which authors perceive the way in which inns and hotels operate: people, places, plots, products and principles.

There may be few direct practical implications which might follow immediately from this exploratory study. The paper seeks to explore some of ways in which the image of inns and hotels is expressed in fictional literature, so as to better understand and market hospitality and tourism products more effectively in future.

This is a topic which has, to date, been little, if ever, researched. Fiction is increasing in popularity and it has influenced the way in which readers think, feel and react. This paper addresses this gap and opens the field for more interdisciplinary research.

Focuses on the workforce characteristics of the German and UK operations of McDonald’s Corporation. The UK workforce is characterised by predominantly young workers with very limited work experience, the German workforce is much older and mostly foreign workers. The analysis suggests that despite these differences and differences in labour market regulation, there is a key similarity between the workforces. The corporation is able to draw on similarly “weak” and marginalised segments of the labour market and these segments are likely to be particularly acquiescent to managerial prerogative. National institutional arrangements can still constrain the employment relations policies of multinational enterprises (MNEs). However, this analysis supports the notion that there is a growing diversity within national systems increasingly explained by MNE policies and practices. This does not necessarily mean that national systems are becoming redundant, but that there is a dynamic relationship between such systems and the needs of MNEs.

Research has shown accountability can produce both positive and negative outcomes. Further, because of inherent environmental uncertainty, perceptions of organizational politics often interact with accountability to produce negative effects. However, using uncertainty management theory, the purpose of this paper is to argue that employees can use proactive voice to exercise control in the ambiguity of highly accountable and political environments.

This two sample study of graduate school alumni (n=211) and insurance employees (n=186) explored the three-way interaction of felt accountability×politics perceptions×proactive voice on work performance, job satisfaction, and job tension.

As hypothesized, high levels of felt accountability and politics were most strongly associated with favorable outcomes when coupled with increased voice behavior. Conversely, felt accountability and politics were related to negative outcomes in settings associated with low proactive voice. Results supported in Sample 1 were then constructively replicated in Sample 2.

All employees are held accountable to some degree, and all work in potentially political settings. Often, these environmental features are dictated to employees, leaving only employee reactions in direct control. One possible response is voice. As demonstrated in the present research, employees who engage in proactive voice appear to exercise some degree of control over their environment, resulting in more positive outcomes than their less active counterparts.

The present research extends understanding regarding the effects of accountability in organizations by demonstrating that contextual factors (e.g. politics) and individual difference variables (e.g. in levels of proactive voice) differentiate favorable vs unfavorable outcomes of accountability.

Accountability is ubiquitous in social systems, and its necessity is magnified in formal organizations, whose purpose has been argued to predict and control behavior. The very notion of organizing necessitates answering to others, and this feature implies an interface of work and social enterprises, the individuals comprising them, and subunits from dyads to divisions. Because the nature of workplace accountability is multi-level as well as interactive, single-level conceptualizations of the phenomenon are incomplete and inherently misleading. In response, this chapter sets forth a meso-level conceptualization of accountability, which develops a more comprehensive understanding of this pervasive and imperative phenomenon. The meso model presented integrates contemporary theory and research, and extends our perspectives beyond individual, group, unit, or organizational perspectives toward a unitary whole. Following this is a description of challenges and opportunities facing scholars conducting accountability research (e.g., data collection and analysis and non-traditional conceptualizations of workplace phenomenon). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as are directions for future research.

This paper aims to examine the third-place phenomenon, within a fashion context, through the theoretical lens of servicescape and experiential retailing. It identifies third places’ typologies, evolution and adoption and explores the opportunities third places offer to retailers when attempting to connect better with consumers.

Taking a qualitative approach, research was conducted using secondary data sources, observation of 98 retail stores and the shopping-with-consumers technique with 42 informants. Manual thematic analysis and magnitude coding was conducted.

Third-place fashion practices are prevalent and growing. Their predominant functions include sociability, experiential, restorative and commercial. Variances inherent in third places are expounded and a third-place-dimensions model is proposed.

Due to the chosen research approach, the results are limited in terms of generalizability to other settings. Several research directions are elucidated, including exploration of fashion third places on consumers’ place attachment within specific sectors; the impact of differing age, gender and geographies on third place meaning; virtual and hybrid forms; retailer motivations; and third-place alliances.

The preliminary study serves to support managers to understand how consumers perceive and experience the fashion third place and the potential of the third place to enhance consumer engagement.

The research makes a valuable contribution to the dearth of extant literature on third place within the fashion field. It offers a new theoretical perspective on form, function and benefits of third places as a conduit of social-, experiential-, and commercial-experience consumption.

To investigate the impact of the working time regulations (WTR) in the hospitality industry and dynamics of the employment relationship within the case study firms.

A qualitative case study approach was used, interviewing 18 respondents over two case study organisations. Line managers, personnel specialists, employees and trade union representatives were interviewed in each case.

Both case studies were largely unaffected by the WTR. This was due to both the high amount of numerical and temporal flexibility afforded by large part‐time workforces and to harmonious employment relations. The design of the Regulations also brings the Government’s commitment to the WTR into doubt. On rare occasions where there was a departure from the basic regulations these were generally accounted for by the many derogations contained within the legislation and were with the full consent of employees.

It is hard to generalise from this research alone which is relatively small‐scale. The study suggests reasons for the unproblematic nature of the WTR which could be tested using large‐scale statistically representative methods. The occurrence of “accidental compliance” is of particular interest for future research.

Identifies the way in which the WTR allow “accidental compliance” and would be useful for review by policy makers.

The WTR remains relatively under‐researched and the study draws interesting comparisons with earlier research. The qualitative approach allows the role of the actors to be identified in determining the effect of the dynamics of the employment relationship on compliance patterns, which covers an empirical “gap” in the literature.

Social marketing theories have habituated to a theoretical and methodological focus that is criticised for being myopic and stigmatising. Following recommendations to redirect focus theoretically, the purpose of this paper is to apply an observational methodology to understanding how project stakeholders interact to examine whether consideration of stakeholders can identify factors facilitating or impeding farming practice change.

More than 48 events involving as many as 150 people including project stakeholder meetings, one-on-one consultations and annual events were observed over more than 100 h by between one and five researchers. Field notes were gathered, and thematic coding focussed on understanding how stakeholders facilitated or impeded practice change.

Observations identified limited provision of information about the project by on ground project stakeholders to targeted individuals (farmers). On the rare occasions where information sharing was observed, communication was delayed making it difficult for individuals to connect actions with outcomes observed. Participating stakeholders did not freely support delivery of activities needed for individual practice change.

This study indicates the value of wider process and outcome assessment encompassing stakeholders to identify factors impeding and facilitating farming practice change.

Approaches that centre attention on individuals fail to acknowledge the inputs, activities and outputs delivered by project stakeholders within a system of change. By redirecting evaluation focus, shared responsibility is gained and stigmatisation of one stakeholder group can be avoided.

This study demonstrates how observations can be used to redirect focus to consider actions and interactions occurring between on ground project stakeholders. A stakeholder evaluation approach extends monitoring and evaluation focus beyond individuals targeted for behaviour change. Implications, limitations and future research directions are outlined.