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This study examines how entrepreneurial marketing dimensions (proactiveness, opportunity focused, leveraging, innovativeness, risk taking, value creation, and customer intensity) are related to qualitative and quantitative outcome measures for the SME and the entrepreneur (including company success, customer success, financial success, satisfaction with return goals, satisfaction with growth goals, excellence, and the entrepreneurʼs standard of living). Using factor analysis, three success outcome variables (financial, customer, and strong company success) emerged together. A separate factor analysis identified satisfactory growth and return goals. Stepwise regression revealed entrepreneurial marketing impacts outcome variables, particularly value creation. Implications for entrepreneurs and areas for research are included.

During the great post–World War II economic expansion, modernization theorists held that the new American capitalism balanced mass production and mass consumption, meshed profitability with labor's interests, and ended class conflict. They thought that Keynesian policies insured a near full-employment, low-inflation, continuous growth economy. They viewed the United States as the “new lead society,” eliminating industrial capitalism's backward features and progressing toward modernity's penultimate “postindustrial” stage.⁷ Many Americans believed that the ideal of “consumer freedom,” forged early in the century, had been widely realized and epitomized American democracy's superiority to communism.⁸ However, critics held that the new capitalism did not solve all of classical capitalism's problems (e.g., poverty) and that much increased consumption generated new types of cultural and political problems. John Kenneth Galbraith argued that mainstream economists assumed that human nature dictates an unlimited “urgency of wants,” naturalizing ever increasing production and consumption and precluding the distinction of goods required to meet basic needs from those that stoke wasteful, destructive appetites. In his view, mainstream economists’ individualistic, acquisitive presuppositions crown consumers sovereign and obscure cultural forces, especially advertising, that generate and channel desire and elevate possessions and consumption into the prime measures of self-worth. Galbraith held that production's “paramount position” and related “imperatives of consumer demand” create dependence on economic growth and generate new imbalances and insecurities.⁹ Harsher critics held that the consumer culture blinded middle-class Americans to injustice, despotic bureaucracy, and drudge work (e.g., Mills, 1961; Marcuse, 1964). But even these radical critics implied that postwar capitalism unlocked the secret of sustained economic growth.

Discusses how corporate advertising has attracted increased attention during recent years, especially in service industries. Addresses the issue of corporate advertising in relation to financial services. Uses a case study to illustrate a successful integration of corporate advertising with product advertising.Concludes with managerial implications and recommendations, finding that corporate advertising should be an integral component of the marketing communications programme of a financial services institution.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the (advanced) brand concept maps (BCM) approach to reinvestigate previous findings on feedback effects resulting from brand extension information (BEI) and to explore whether this information affects the structure of a brand’s associative network.

This research builds on the associative network memory model, as well as Keller’s conceptualization of customer-based brand equity, and uses a series of empirical studies with a total of 839 respondents in two different countries.

The findings reveal that BEI has no significant impact on the structure of the parent brand’s associative network at the individual level. Furthermore, key brand image dimensions (i.e. favorability, strength, and uniqueness of brand associations) are not affected.

By applying the (advanced) BCM approach, this paper is able to address shortcomings that are incorporated with the use of Likert scales for measuring a brand’s image and for investigating feedback effects in the field of brand extension. As the results indicate that the identification of feedback effects might be influenced by the approach used to measure a brand’s image, this paper calls for further investigations of feedback effects on a brand’s image.

Data from three empirical studies provide insights into the cognitive processing of BEI and their impact on a brand’s associative network.

The primary goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of meso ethics from a corporate governance perspective, and the strategic process of integration between corporate and individual ethics for the creation of an ethical culture. A secondary aim is to identify the organizational behavior variables that are affected by the ethical congruence between employee ethics and the prevailing corporate ethical climate.

By first situating organizational ethics within the broader phenomenon of business ethics, the authors then more aptly examine corporate ethics at the upper and lower permeable meso boundaries where a shared ethic is negotiated. This conceptual paper tries to capture through a phenomenological approach how strategic governance level (macro) and individual ethics (micro) interact in a complex and dynamic way at the organizational level (meso).

Normative literature suggests that organizations require more than ethical safeguards to ensure ethical conduct. For example, ethics training programs are demanded and perceived as effective by employees. Recent empirical studies on “ethical fit” have converged and support the assertion that it is in an organization's best interest to continually look for ethical congruence between their workforce and the ethical climate that they intentionally foster. Furthermore, these studies show that perceived ethical congruence positively affects an individual's affective commitment to an organization, and reduces turnover intent.

There is a general lack of consensus, cohesion and empiricism in the current literature. Few studies deal with meso ethics, which have wide‐ranging implications for current and future research.

Demand for business ethics is on the rise as is its corporate response commonly defined as corporate social responsibility (CSR). Standard responsive measures taken by executives are shown to generally be unsubstantiated or insufficient for ethical conduct to truly take root in an organization.

The scope of the paper, with its phenomenological approach, identifies the complexities of corporate ethics for academics and managers alike, where traditionally fragmented organizational levels are herein understood to be permeable and dynamic. The meso perspective of this study provides a new foundation for the study of corporate ethics. Its phenomenological approach provides a conceptual common ground and facilitates convergence in the field. Moreover, the conceptual framework of this paper can enable practitioners to formulate the appropriate strategic intent and governance strategy for their organization.

This paper seeks to report historical research into McDonald's public communication strategies as the corporation responded to the rising tide of “political consumerism” that accompanied its global market expansion (1960‐2005).

Reviewing the brand's public relations strategies, through a content analysis of news coverage, the paper analyzes the way communication strategists took account of the anxieties about youth labour practices, community relations, globalization, environment and obesity which forced the brand to acknowledge the lifestyle risks associated with children and youth.

The case study portrays McDonald's as a figurehead of US entrepreneurial multinational capitalism. It reveals how addressing public opposition through the courts can backfire on a brand strategy so keen on defending its honour. The case study also finds that listening and engaging with critics is as effective as suing them for McDonald's.

The paper contributes to the historical recognition of the role that corporate communications professionals play – particularly marketing and public relations specialists – in transforming corporate practices by acknowledging consumers' growing anxieties about industrialization.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

We advance theory of how founder identity affects business model (BM) design during new venture creation and contribute to the cognitive perspective on BMs. We look at BM design as a longitudinal process involving a variety of cognitive work that is co-shaped by the founder identity work. Based on an in-depth nine-year process study of a single venture managed by three founders, we observed that a novelty-centered BM design resulted from cognitive work co-shaped by founder identity construction and verification processes. Yet, more remarkably, we noted that founder identity verification decreased over time and observed a process that we labeled “identity-business model decoupling.” It meant that the founders did not alter their founder identity but, over time, attentively grew self-aware and mindfully disengaged negative identity effects to design an effective BM. Our results provide a dynamic view on founder identity imprinting on ventures’ BMs and contribute to the identity, BM, and entrepreneurship literatures.

In a previous monograph a discussion took place on stages one and part of stage two of the three stage process in an unfair dismissal action, namely the employee having to show that he has been dismissed (stage one), and some of the reasons for dismissal which fall within the statutory categories, namely the employee's capability and qualifications; misconduct and redundancy (part of stage two). In this monograph an analysis is proposed on the two remaining reasons, these being the contravention of a duty imposed by an enactment and some other substantial reason. There will then follow a discussion on the test of fairness as constituting the third of the three stage process and on the remedies available when the tribunal finds that the employee has been unfairly dismissed.