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The purpose of this paper is to examine Nationwide Training Limited’s development an ILM middle manager leadership and management programme for Action for Blind People.

This paper presents an overview of designing the programme.

The programme has received excellent feedback and is oversubscribed for future attendees. There have been a number of internal successes already with a number of appointments to key internal roles from those on the scheme, reinforcing action’s commitment to develop, nurture and retain staff, as well as showing the influence of the programme in terms of helping individuals become ready for more strategic positions within the organisation.

This paper points to best practice for similar projects.

The purpose of this study is to understand how employees of an organization build and maintain successful business relationships by analyzing major antecedents of relationship quality and relationship commitment.

In this study, the authors develop a conceptual framework and formulate hypotheses regarding the relationships between demographic homophily, interpersonal communication, trust and dependent variables of perceived relationship quality and relationship commitment. This paper tests hypotheses presented in this study with the help of a structural equation model, based on a data sample from South Korea.

Unlike common thinking, demographic homophily does not directly increase the perceived relationship quality. The authors find a significant direct effect of interpersonal communication on relationship commitment but no effect of commitment on perceived relationship quality. Both seem to play independent roles but are positively influenced through the emergence of trust.

By applying demographic homophily and interpersonal communication as antecedents and trust as mediator and main driver, the authors research effects on perceived intra-organizational relationship commitment and perceived relationship quality. In detail, the authors confirm the hypothesized centrality of trust in intra-organizational relationships between demographic homophily, interpersonal communication and dependent variables of perceived relationship quality and relationship commitment. Nevertheless, the authors surprisingly find neither significant evidence that demographic homophily increases the perceived quality of a relationship, nor does it lead to higher communication intensity directly, even in an environment (i.e. Korea), where it would be expected.

Based on the findings of this study, there are several practical implications. Understanding the interpersonal relationship characteristics in an intra-organizational setting enables managers to optimize organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Intra-organizational relationships between employees’ are highly dependent on mutual trust as an indicator for relationship quality and relationship commitment. Organizations can also benefit from the understanding of the mechanisms of demographic homophily and interpersonal communication for the establishment of interpersonal trust as well.

Research about the effect of demographic homophily and interpersonal communication and the central role of trust in an intra-organizational approach to business relationships on perceived relationship quality and relationship commitment is scarce. The mutual testing of the effects and interaction of established constructs like demographic homophily, interpersonal communication and trust on perceived relationship quality and commitment constitutes the main contribution of this study to the literature on management and business relationships. The insights of this study about interpersonal bonding help companies to establish long-term business relationships.

The authors examine the effect of greenhouse gas (ghg) assurance on cost of debt, and the effect of board gender diversity on cost of debt, for an international sample of listed companies.

Utilizing firm-level data and a quantile regression approach, this study examines the effects of greenhouse gas assurance and board diversity on cost of debt by employing an international sample of firms during 2015–2021.

The authors find that in firms with a relatively low cost of debt the external assurance of greenhouse gas emissions and gender diversity could significantly contribute to a reduction of cost of debt. Furthermore, other measures of board diversity that are linked with independent directors and skilled directors seem to contribute to an increase of firms' cost of debt in the lower end of distribution. Drawing from the agency theory, the authors showcase the fact that ghg assurance reduces information asymmetry and therefore agency costs such as borrowing costs and signals to the stakeholders a long-term commitment to excellence.

This study is the first that provides insights on the relationship between ghg assurance, board diversity and cost of debt.

The objective of this study is to determine the impact of GHG assurance on firms’ carbon emissions performance (CEP) regarding curbing carbon emissions and the effect on such by the GHG assurance provider’s affiliation and reputation. It also explores whether the affiliation and reputation of GHG assurance providers imply the relationship between GHG assurance and the firm’s CEP. Further, this study examines the moderating effect of the country’s development level on the relationship.

Based on a sample of international firms from 56 countries spanning the period from 2012 to 2020, this study utilizes the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. We also run the OLS regression at times t+1 and t+2 to verify the baseline results. To address the endogeneity concerns arising from self-selection bias and the causality effect, this study applies the generalized method of moment (GMM) and the Heckman test.

This study finds that GHG assurance leads to better CEP by firms. We also find that engaging with accounting assurance providers leads firms to a better CEP than non-accounting assurance providers. Our results show that Big Four auditors can help firms decrease carbon emissions. We also find that the positive effect of GHG assurance is prevalent in firms operating in developed countries.

Our study only considers the influence of the assuror’s reputation and affiliation on CEP without examining other factors that may influence the quality of assurance services provided.

Our study provides a practical implication related to the influence of a GHG assurance provider’s affiliation and reputation globally by providing evidence that accounting and Big Four assurance providers do play a significant role in a firm’s carbon emission performance. This study offers great insights into the GHG assurance impact on CEP with the interplay between the assuror’s affiliation and reputation and the country’s development.

This paper enriches the limit evidence on GHG assurance and CEP by providing novel evidence on the relationship between GHG assurance and a firm’s CEP. Moreover, this study provides insights into the implication of a country’s development level on the role of GHG assurance in CEP.

For many years, one of the central ambitions of shifting Danish governments has been to maintain the position as an e-government frontrunner. The overall dream of administrators has been and remains to produce personalised social services efficiently. Shifting Danish governments have followed a centralised, party-neutral and consensual path to digitalisation. The efforts have been based on a centralised civil registration number system (CPR) established in 1968. However, the quest for efficient, personalised services has also stimulated debate in Denmark as to whether the state is obtaining too much personalised information and risks violating the privacy of its own citizens. Digitalisation efforts, especially the out-of-office efforts, cannot be pushed without public legitimacy attached to the process. Furthermore, Danish legislation must be changed substantially to pave the way for the increased use of advanced digital tools. Algorithmic tools cannot be trusted to solve all tasks. These dilemmas illustrate that the days of high political consensus in the Danish digitalisation efforts may very well be over. Other countries can learn four overall lessons from the Danish experiences: (1) although a high level of digitalisation can be reached using a top-down, nonpartisan approach, digitalisation will always be political, (2) experimentation and the failures attached to digitalisation can come at a very high cost, (3) effort will benefit greatly from citizen trust, especially in out-of-office efforts and (4) the public legitimacy of digitalisation must be based on strong mechanisms of social and political accountability.

This conceptual paper diagnoses the fundamental tensions between the social temporality of sustainability and the individual temporality of marketing in the Dominant Social Paradigm. We propose the notion of ‘existentialized sustainability’ as a possible way forward.

We take the Heideggerian perspective that death may bring individual and societal time into a common framework. From here, we compare anthropological and consumer culture research on funerary rites in non-modern societies with contemporary societies of the DSP.

Funerary rites reveal important insights into how individuals relate to their respective societies. Individuals are viewed as important contributors to the maintenance and regeneration of the group in non-modern societies. In contrast, funerary rites for individuals in the DSP are private, increasingly informal, and unconnected to sustaining society at large. This analysis reveals clear parallels between the goals of sustainability and the values of non-modern funerary rites.

We propose the metaphor of a funerary rite for sustainability to promote consciousness towards societal futures. The idea is to improve ‘quality of death’ through sustainability – in other words, the ‘existentialization of sustainability’. This opens up a possible strategy for marketers to actively contribute to a societal shift towards a New Environmental Paradigm (NEP).

The Heideggerian approach is a novel way to identify and reconcile the epistemic contradictions between sustainability and marketing. This diagnosis suggests a way in which marketing can address the wicked problem of global sustainability challenges, perhaps allowing a new spirituality in consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate relationships between five energy efficiency programs and electricity intensities in the US commercial buildings sector.

Regression methods analyze state-level secondary data from 2006 through 2009 to identify significant energy program drivers of electricity efficiency.

Combined, the five programs studied account for approximately nine percent reduction in commercial electricity intensity.

Outcomes will inform stakeholders’ decision-making regarding adoption or continuation of energy programs.

Electricity efficiency gains will help reduce negative environmental aspects and the present dependence on foreign oil.

Very little research has considered the impact of multiple programs on commercial electricity efficiency within their complex implementation environment.

The authors present concepts developed at University of Naples Federico II (Italy), where the Challenge Based Learning methodology (CBL) is utilised in a programme aimed at software development for the Apple technology ecosystem. The collaborative and self-guided, inquiry-based learning method focusses on intrinsic motivation of learners, working on real world problems organised in projects (Challenges in CBL) with an experiential and progressive approach. As entrepreneurship is best promoted through practice, the programme is a guided immersion into reality that is entrepreneurial in nature, rather than a simulation of hypothetical projects, and requires learners to take ownership of entrepreneurial skills to complete the course. Academic research has shown that use of storytelling is beneficial to learning and can foster engaging and more formative experiences. Additionally, scholars have developed systems to design unscripted narratives within educational contexts using emergent narrative concepts. This conceptual chapter describes an educational experience design system that encourages unscripted, emergent narratives for experiential education. It categorises the components for designing an educational experience that allows the learning progression to be affectively driven by learners. By focussing on setting parameters and giving learners autonomy as co-authors, the model describes mechanisms that allow powerful, unscripted narratives to emerge based on intrinsic motivation. The Emergent Narrative System developed by the authors is a contribution to innovation in entrepreneurship teaching and intends to empower learners towards building entrepreneurial and twenty-first century skills complementary to software development education in a conducive and experiential learning environment.

The purpose of this paper is to enlarge the debate concerning the influence of leadership on environmental sustainability implementation in European public healthcare organisations.

This paper is a viewpoint. It is based on preliminary analysis of European standards dedicated to environmental sustainability and their spread across Europe in public healthcare organisations. Viewpoints concerning leadership are then discussed and asserted.

This paper found a limited implementation of standards such as Green Public Procurement criteria, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme and ISO 14001 in public healthcare. Some clues indicate that the lack of implementation is related to leadership and management commitment.

For the first time, this paper investigates relationships between leadership and environmental sustainability in European public healthcare opening further avenues of research on the subject.

In the information and technology age, where the “physical” world is merged with the “digital” world, the nature of social conditions, relations, citizenship and the flow of information has shifted from a moral and legal approach to a digital approach. Nowadays, the functioning, dissemination, conduct and governance of organisations and their members are regulated by techno-ethical and digital principles. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the study hypothesises that techno-ethical orientation predicts corporate ethical values (CEV) through the moderation of digital citizenship behaviour (DC). The study further proposes that each dimension of DC: online respect (OR) and online civic engagement (OCE), moderates the hypothesised relationship.

546 respondents from India participated in the study. The responses were captured using structured and well-established questionnaires. The analysis was performed using robust measures of correlation, regression, reliability (Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability) and validity (convergent and discriminant validity). The moderation influence of DC was tested and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS).

The regression findings of the study revealed that the techno-ethical orientation positively predicts the CEV. R-square values showed a 24.1% variation in corporate ethical value was explained by techno-ethical orientation. It indicates that a positive techno-ethical orientation establishes the ethical context and corporate values. Besides, the moderation analysis using SEM AMOS indicates that at both low and high levels of OR and OCE, the relationship between techno-ethical orientation and CEV is positive and significant.

This study demonstrates a new facet of technology ethics that promotes the institutionalisation of CEV through DC. This study is the first to explore the interaction between techno-ethical orientation and CEV. Even though various former factors concerning ethical conduct have been examined, the results of the techno-ethical conduct of employees within the scope of an organisation have not been explored so far.