Strategic planning in many companies has become an impotent process, largely devoid of imagination. These companies must revamp their thinking if they are to create truly…
Abstract
Strategic planning in many companies has become an impotent process, largely devoid of imagination. These companies must revamp their thinking if they are to create truly innovative strategy embodied with the power to win. The author postulates four fundamental business laws that form the foundation for achieving outstanding results: the law of thinking first and thinking different; the law of anticipatory thinking and disciplined execution; the law of trusting in and respecting people; and the law of customer enthusiasm. The article includes specific corrective actions that an organization can take to alleviate current deficiencies.
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The purpose of this study is to explore how nationalistic appeals may affect consumers’ perception and purchasing of targeted brands. Qualitative historical data from old China…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore how nationalistic appeals may affect consumers’ perception and purchasing of targeted brands. Qualitative historical data from old China (1900–1949) reveal that social movement groups can adopt nationalistic appeals assisted by meaning framing – defined as a creative interpretation of symbols, designs, behaviors, social events and cultural identities to serve social and political goals – to shape consumers’ attitudes toward foreign brands. After examining the mechanisms and processes underlying consumer boycotts from 1900 to 1949, the responsive strategies of affected foreign companies are illustrated.
Design/methodology/approach
Critical historical research method is applied to historical data and historical “traces” from China’s corporate documents, memoirs, posters, advertisements, newspapers and secondhand sources documenting Chinese boycotts from 1900 to 1949.
Findings
Consumers may pursue interests beyond economic interests. Nationalistic appeals can mobilize consumer boycotts against foreign brands that were perceived to support or relate to targeted countries. Political framing of certain events shapes consumers’ perceptions and concomitant brand choices.
Research limitations/implications
Although differences between historical and current contexts may require tailoring past marketing strategies to current conditions, past strategies can inform current and future strategies.
Practical implications
Strategies adopted by foreign companies in old China (1900–1949) can help contemporary companies design effective marketing strategies for a hostile marketplace infused with nationalistic appeals and competing interests.
Social implications
Although local companies can adopt economic or political nationalism to realize their economic goals, it represents a double-edged sword that can harm national brands.
Originality/value
A historical analysis of nationalistic business appeals in pre-1949 China can inform the counterstrategies modern companies adopt to overcome consumer boycotts.
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Chris Riesch and Brian H. Kleiner
Despite laws like the Civil Rights Acts and the Americans with Disabilities Act, customers in restaurants are still faced with an inordinate amount of discrimination. The most…
Abstract
Despite laws like the Civil Rights Acts and the Americans with Disabilities Act, customers in restaurants are still faced with an inordinate amount of discrimination. The most prevalent forms of discrimination are race and disability based. Large restaurant chains such as the Waffle House and Cracker Barrel have learned nothing from the landmark Denny’s discrimination case as they face potentially larger class action suits today. Despite the bad news, there have been significant developments toward limiting restaurant discrimination. They are the industry wide impact of Denny’s diversity training programme and a recent court decision strengthening the ADA. The only true ways to limit and eradicate discrimination from restaurants is to continue educating our children about diversity, insist on expanding corporate diversity programmes, and increasing penalties on those organisations that do discriminate.
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Linda K. Stroh, Leslie E. Dennis and Tim C. Cramer
This study used a sample of 190 expatriates who worked for five multi‐national corporations to test part of a model of adjustment developed by Black, Mendenhall, and Oddou. The…
Abstract
This study used a sample of 190 expatriates who worked for five multi‐national corporations to test part of a model of adjustment developed by Black, Mendenhall, and Oddou. The model is based on the theory that high levels of uncertainty lead to lower levels of adjustment. The study found that several variables—premove attitudes toward an international move, job satisfaction, role novelty, management's views on the effect of an international assignment on one's career, assurance of a job upon return, the cultural toughness of the host country, and the spouses' adjustment—were significant predictors of the expatriates' general adjustment, showing support for Black, Mendenhall, and Oddou's model. Findings from the study suggest that organizations could have a positive impact on assignment completion and expatriates' adjustment by assessing their organizations' positions and policies related to these variables.
Clarence Brown and Brian H. Kleiner
In transcripts obtained by the New York Times, senior executives with Texaco Inc. are recorded on tapes referring to black employees as “black jelly beans” and using racial…
Abstract
In transcripts obtained by the New York Times, senior executives with Texaco Inc. are recorded on tapes referring to black employees as “black jelly beans” and using racial epithets. A federal jury in Richmond, Va. found that Circuit City Stores Inc. systematically discriminated against black employees in promotions in its corporate headquarters. Employees working for an Avis Rent A Car franchise stated on the CBS news programme 60 Minutes that they were told not to rent to blacks. Several black secret service agents responsible for protecting the President agreed in 1994 to a settlement to end a class action law suit against Denny's Restaurants for being refused service and racial discrimination.
Janina Seutter, Michelle Müller, Stefanie Müller and Dennis Kundisch
Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for…
Abstract
Purpose
Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for equality by donating money to affected people. This research examines how the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated social protest cycle after the death of George Floyd have influenced donation behavior for campaigns with a personal goal and those with a societal goal supporting the black community.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper follows a quantitative research approach by applying a quasi-experimental research design on a GoFundMe dataset. In total, 67,905 campaigns and 1,362,499 individual donations were analyzed.
Findings
We uncover a rise in donations for campaigns supporting the black community, which lasts substantially longer for campaigns with a societal than with a personal funding goal. Informed by construal level theory, we attribute this heterogeneity to changes in the level of abstractness of the problems that social movements aim to tackle.
Originality/value
This research advances the knowledge of individual donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding. Our results highlight the important role that charitable crowdfunding campaigns play in promoting social justice and anti-discrimination as part of social protest cycles.
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The idea of biculturalism or multiculturalism has come into sharper focus due to changing intra-national and international demographic shifts, expanding global economic markets…
Abstract
The idea of biculturalism or multiculturalism has come into sharper focus due to changing intra-national and international demographic shifts, expanding global economic markets, and persistent ethnic and religious warfare across many continents. These global political, cultural, and economic dynamics have forced us to deal with two intensely reverberating, and conflicting, cultural themes and tradition that threaten to unravel many social and political units deemed heretofore strong and unbreakable. One tradition supports and justifies a monocultural view of the world. This perspective asserts that a nation-state functions best when it is defined and controlled by one dominate cultural framework. The logic and justification for such a view is mirrored in the history and philosophy of societies and nation states which have waged relentless wars of conquest; in such wars, victors have attained and often maintained both political power and cultural hegemony over the defeated. Whether the initial causes of warfare were grounded in disputes over religious differences, land disputes, control of the seas, or overseas colonies, the reality is the victory of one nation or society over another would result in the submergence and subservience of one culture over another, as reflected in the victor's religion, language, political system, etc. The laws and rules of conquest and defeat reverberate throughout human history and whether in Africa, Asia, Europe, or North and South America and are deeply rooted in human, tribal, and clan differences. The various religions have historically justified the conquest by their zealots over non-believers, but it is only in recent history that a new and devastating logic was proffered to justify the domination of one group over another. The combination of European colonialism and imperialism, aided by the scientism of Social Darwinism and the nationalistic ideas of Manifest Destiny gave support to the ideals of White supremacy. Despite subtle political and religious differences between Western nations what they held in common was the belief that they represented the destiny of world civilization, and thus had an obligation to conquer the “uncivilized” world in order to save and perpetuate Western values and ideals. Thus, the growth and evolution of European and American social, political, economic and religious history and thought was not one in which conquering countries and groups sought to “understand” the conquered, nor would it be predicated on any cultural equality, or cultural equivalency between the victors and the vanquished. For example, in the United States the colonial government and the young republic fought Native Americans, the French, Spain (twice), the British (twice), then Mexico, for cultural, political, economic, and social hegemony over what is currently the landmass of the United States.
Shimikqua Elece Ellis and Christian Z. Goering
This study aims to explore the perceived barriers that a secondary English teacher faced when attempting to discuss racial injustice through young adult literature in Mississippi.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the perceived barriers that a secondary English teacher faced when attempting to discuss racial injustice through young adult literature in Mississippi.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors rely on Critical Whiteness Studies and qualitative methods to explore the following research question: What are the barriers that a White ELA teacher perceives when teaching about racial injustice through The Hate U Give?
Findings
The authors found that there were several perceived barriers to discussing modern racial injustice in the Mississippi ELA classroom. The participating teacher indicated the following barriers: a lack of racial literacy, fears of discomfort and an urge to avoid politics.
Originality/value
Much has been written about the urgent need for antiracist teaching practices in secondary English classes. This article explores the barriers a white ELA teacher perceived when attempting to discuss modern racial injustice through literature instruction in a white context of the “four pandemics” (Ladson-Billings, 2021).
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Williams was a black feminist pragmatist who contributed to and drew on the ideas and practices of the “Hull-House school of race relations” (HHSRR). This American theory unites…
Abstract
Williams was a black feminist pragmatist who contributed to and drew on the ideas and practices of the “Hull-House school of race relations” (HHSRR). This American theory unites liberal values and a belief in a rational public with a co-operative, nurturing, and liberating model of the self, the other, and the community, based on the historical ideas and commitments of abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln. Education and democracy are emphasized as significant mechanisms to organize and improve society, especially the relations between black and white people. This school had a distinct institutional influence, structure, and status (Deegan, 2002b). As an African American women who wrote and spoke using feminist pragmatism as it applied to the black experience viewed from her lived standpoint, she developed black feminist pragmatism (Deegan, 2002a). I concentrate here on her writings on biculturalism, especially her (Williams, 1907) essay on the perils of “a White Negro.” She wrote about this anomalous racial category in a number of other pieces that I also analyze here.