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Defines Certificates of Conformance, Calibration Certificates, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and National Accreditation for Measurement and Sampling (NAMAS). Shows how instrument users can be confident not only that their instruments are accurately calibrated, but also that they can be proved to be so, by using the services of NAMAS accredited laboratories.

This paper aims to theorise the concept of corporate brand covenant.

Christian theology is drawn on to define and identify the source of the notion of covenant. Similarly, a review of the literature on the meaning and management of corporate branding is presented. Following a thorough review of the literature, the notion of a corporate brand covenant is conceptualised and discussed. This is firmly supported by a semiotic deconstruction of a corporate advertisement from HSBC.

Six important findings emerged from the study. The first is the Christian theological insight into the notion of covenant. This finding drew the attention of corporate branding academics to the source of this phenomenon. Second, a total of six cardinal principles (initial scenario; a covenanter, a covenant and a covenantee; the covenant is binding on all parties; the covenant is perpetual; the covenant is irreversible; the covenant stems from God and is then handed on to man) were proposed. Third, a template highlighting how the biblical covenant is managed was conceptualised. Fourth, six mandatory components of corporate branding: firm's personality; corporate positioning; interactions; corporate communications; stakeholders; corporate reputation/image; were identified. Fifth, an integrative framework highlighting the points of linkages between the biblical covenant and the corporate brand‐oriented covenant was developed. Sixth, a new definition of corporate brand covenant was suggested and supported by a semiotic deconstruction of HSBC's corporate advertising campaign.

There is little literature devoted to corporate brand covenant. The majority of works addressing this concept have done so anecdotally. Thus, by addressing this phenomenon via a Christian theological lens, the study solidifies the corporate branding literature, which at the moment lacks a strong foundation in social science theory.

Practitioners are encouraged to remember that the successful management of a corporate brand begins with a thorough understanding of what a corporate brand covenant means. An understanding of this concept will enable managers to define and deploy strategies that will promote corporate branding issues.

The paper extends the frontiers of existing anecdotal discourse on corporate brand covenant. In so doing, a fuller and more robust understanding of the concept of corporate branding among academics and practitioners is achieved.

Drawing on research in the worlds of advertising, magazines and fashion, this paper discusses how celebrities mediate between different fields of cultural production. By focusing on celebrity endorsements in advertising, it also outlines how film actors and actresses, athletes, models, pop singers, sportsmen and women mediate between producers and consumers via the products and services that they endorse. As economic mediators, celebrities’ actions have important strategic and financial implications for the corporations whose products they endorse. As cultural mediators, they give commodities personalities and perform across different media, linking different cultural fields into an integrated name economy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a contextualized view of participants’ accounts of self-gift consumer behaviour (SGCB) throughout the consumption cycle, from the motivations to the emotions that follow.

This paper uses an interpretive approach, focused on participants’ constructions of meanings, using 99 critical incident technique interviews, which followed 16 in-depth interviews.

This paper identifies the following self-gift motivations: To Reward Myself (and Others); To celebrate; To remember or get closer; To forget or part; To feel loved or cheered up; and To enjoy life. It also uncovers a compensatory/therapeutic dimension in most self-gifts. The authors identify changes in emotional responses to SGCB over time, and suggest a relationship between these emotions and the contexts that drive self-gifts. Self-gifts are conceptualized as pleasure-oriented, symbolic and special consumption experiences, which are self-directed, or both self- and others-directed; perceived by the consumer to be justified by the contexts in which they occur; and driven and followed by context-dependent emotions.

This manuscript offers novel insights into participants’ uses of both SGCB and the act of labelling purchases “self-gifts”. It uncovers how consumers are concerned with accounting for indulgent spending and how this problematizes the concept of “self-gift”. It challenges the idea of a single context for SGCB, showing how interacting motivations explain it. It also introduces a temporal dimension to self-gift theory by considering emotional responses at different times. Finally, it offers a new conceptualization of and theoretical framework for SGCB.

Presents a conceptual framework for understanding the meanings of polychronic behavior for individuals. A “created” meaning perspective, arguing that cultural, social, and personality differences influence how the meaning of polychronic behavior is interpreted at the individual level is presented. These meanings through a phenomenological study of polychronic behavior in the workplace for both traditional, “mainstream” Americans and recent Latin American immigrants are explored. Implications for managers and workgroups are also explored.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

1. Maria Jarlstrom, Essi Saru, and Sinikka Vanhala, “Sustainable Human Resource Management With Salience of Stakeholders: A Top Management Perspective,” Journal of Business Ethics, 152, (2008): 703–724. 2. Benjamin A. Neville, Simon J. Bell, and Gregory J., “Stakeholder Salience Revisited: Refining, Redefining, and Refueling an Underdeveloped Conceptual Tool,” Journal of Business Ethics, 102, (2011): 357–378. 3. Mick Marchington, Fang Lee Cooke, and Gail Hebson. “Human Resource Management Across Organizational Boundaries,” Sage Handbook of Human Resource Management, (2009): 460–477.

This secondary source case is based mainly on three documents: the 20-page report by a labor union, Unite Here, titled “One Job Should Be Enough: Inequality at Starbucks”; and two reports by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and Covington & Burlington, LLP.

In February 2020, Unite Here, a labor union, released a damming report about employment practices at the airport Starbucks stores operated by licensee, HMSHost. Among other charges, the report identified several instances of racial and gender discrimination that HMSHost dismissed as a ploy by a union intent on organizing its employees. The adverse publicity, however, put Starbucks Corporation in the spotlight because of the company’s publicly stated commitment to workplace equality. The recently hired Nzinga Shaw, the company’s first-ever Global Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer, had to address the issue at HMSHost lest it adversely affect Starbucks’ reputation as a progressive employer.

The case is best suited for a graduate or undergraduate course in human resource management or labor relations. As diversity is typically covered in the first third of such courses, the ideal placement of this case would be in the early part of the course. As Starbucks is a well-known name, and it is very likely that students have had their own experience with Starbucks, as either a customer or an employee, the case is likely to draw their interest.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of using standardized visual images in global print advertising campaigns. In particular, it examines how visual images depicting social (in)activity are interpreted among students from the USA, Spain, and the Philippines. Hall's contextual typology and Brewer's social identity theory are used to conceptually explain variations in consumers’ implicature development. The results of the quasi‐experimental study suggest that high‐context audiences are more inclined than low‐context audiences to over‐read into the meaning of the visual, and that the types of weak implicatures created are positively related to the audience's perceived social identity.