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In the light of the case and the accompanying case questions, the students should understand:1. The theoretical underpinnings of the brand positioning and brand repositioning.2. Critical evaluation of marketing communication material in the light of theoretical underpinnings.3. The nuances of operating in emerging markets in technology-driven sectors.4. The intricate link between the business goals and communication goals5. The application of the attention-interest-desire-action model and the brand media wheel when translating business strategies into communication strategies.

It was in June 2016, when Asad Haroon, the young head of brands at Ufone, a Pakistani originated telecom operating company, was posed with a challenge of dwindling subscriber identity module card sales, deteriorating average revenue per user and an exponential increase in customer churn. The telecom industry itself was in a flux due to various factors such as changes in the regulatory frameworks and technological shifts.Asad felt that the reason for the brand’s decline might be the lack of synergy between the business strategy and the brand’s communication strategy.Asad knew that he would have to make some unpopular choices and review his brand’s communication strategy which had not yet proved to create a harmony between communication goals and business goals. However, he was unsure about how and if at all he should go about changing a marketing legacy and the brand’s positioning which had reigned the minds of his peers and his customers for so long.

This case is aimed toward undergraduate students enrolled in courses of principles of marketing, marketing communications and corporate media strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing

This paper empirically investigates whether female CEOs (She-E-Os) have an effect on firm innovation among Chinese listed firms based on patent data. This study also delved further by looking at whether the internal corporate environment moderates the effect of female CEOs on innovation, that is, state ownership. Finally, this study investigates an additional test of financial constraints to examine whether financial constraints also moderate the impact of female CEOs on firm innovation.

This study used the data of all A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for the period from 2008 to 2017. The authors use ordinary least squares regression as a baseline methodology, along with firm-fixed effect, lagged measure of female CEOs, alternative measures of innovation, Heckman two-step model and negative binomial regression to check and control the possible issue of endogeneity.

The authors’ findings show that CEO gender plays an important role in producing higher levels of innovation output by improving the governance structure. However, female CEOs have no effect on state-owned enterprises' (SOEs) innovation activities, which suggests that the main goal of SOEs is achieving sociopolitical objectives. Furthermore, female CEOs' influence on innovation output is weaker in firms with financial constraints.

This study adds to the emerging global discussion on gender diversity. Many legislative bodies require a quota for women on corporate boards due to gender inequality. This study's findings reinforce such guidelines by emphasizing the economic benefits of including women in top management positions.

This study provides new insights by highlighting the role of female CEOs in increasing firms' innovation activities. Additionally, this study provides evidence on whether the internal corporate environment (state ownership and financial constraints) moderates female CEOs' effect on innovation.

Considering the growing global significance of intellectual capital, we explore the impact of foreign directors on the effectiveness of intellectual capital.

Using 21,352 firm-year observations of Chinese-listed firms, for 2006–2020, we employ a modified value-added intellectual coefficient model to evaluate intellectual capital efficiency. The author use ordinary least squares regression as the main method, with a variety of methods for endogeneity and ensure robustness, including the fixed-effects method, propensity score matching, Two-step system GMM and Heckman’s two-step model, as well as other techniques.

Our findings indicate that foreign board directors significantly increase aggregate intellectual capital and its components, including capital employed efficiency, human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency, and relational capital efficiency. Further, foreign directors have more impact on the intellectual capital efficiency of non-state-owned versus state-owned enterprises. We also observe that the impact becomes significantly greater with the presence of three or more foreign directors. Our findings hold up to various measures of board internationalization and a battery of robustness tests.

The research results show that the foreign directors on boards are related to IC efficiency, and IC efficiency is crucial to enterprises' value creation and competitive advantage in the era of the knowledge economy. Our findings are useful for companies and governments that are interested in improving the performance of IC.

This study provides novel evidence by using the MVAIC model to investigate foreign directors on boards and their relationship with IC efficiency among Chinese companies, while most previous studies have linked IC efficiency to financial performance. The findings also suggest that the influence of nationality diversity differs concerning ownership structure and their threshold.

This study investigates the impact of board gender diversity and foreign ownership on innovation in Chinese firms.

The authors use data for Chinese manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, for a sample over the period 2008–2017. Ordinary least square (OLS) is used as the baseline methodology, with cluster OLS, two-stage Heckman test, Blau index and Shannon index used to address endogeneity issues.

The results show that gender diversity on the board has a positive effect on corporate innovation as measured by the total number of patent applications, invention patent applications, utility model patent applications and design patent applications. Our findings also provide support for the critical mass participation of female directors on the board being associated with more innovation. They also reveal that innovation output does not vary across state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. These outcomes reveal that SOEs' advantages, such as easy access to funding and more support of government, are likely offset by their disadvantages, such as different goals and having more agency issues. Because of intense political power and networks in Chinese firms, qualified foreign institutional investors (QFIIs) are less motivated to enhance innovation activities.

This study highlights the role of board gender diversity in enhancing innovation among Chinese manufacturing firms. Our findings provide support for regulatory bodies' role regarding women's participation on the board.

This research adds to literature by addressing the largely ignored questions of whether providing a gender-diverse board enhances innovation, whether critical mass participation has a greater effect on improving firm innovation and whether the influence of women directors varies with ownership structure.

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of how organizational dehumanization affects employees’ creative performance. We propose the self-esteem threat as a mediator in the relationship between organizational dehumanization and employees’ creative performance. We also examine how work locus of control moderates the relationship between organizational dehumanization and creative performance.

Through convenience sampling, online and face-to-face surveys, multisource time-lagged data (N = 257) were collected from full-time employees and their supervisors in Pakistani organizations in the information technology, media industry and oil and gas sectors.

Organizational dehumanization negatively affects employees’ creative performance, and threats to self-esteem mediate this relationship. Work locus of control moderates the effect of organizational dehumanization on creative performance, and this negative relationship is attenuated when individuals have an external work locus of control.

This study provides novel insights into the process underlying the relationship between organizational dehumanization and creative performance by revealing the mediating role of threat to self-esteem and the buffering role of work locus of control.

The purpose of this research is to examine whether board gender diversity reduces the agency costs of firms in the context of Chinese listed firms.

This paper uses a large sample of 23,340 firm-year observations of Chinese listed companies during 2004–2017. The authors use ordinary least squares regressions as the primary methodology with a wide range of methods to control for endogeneity and to check robustness, including the fixed-effect method, instrumental variable approach, lagged gender diversity measures, propensity score matching, Blau index, Shannon index and industry-adjusted measures of agency costs.

The evidence reveals that the participation of female directors in corporate board reduces agency costs, which correlates with conflicts of interest. Moreover, gender-diverse boards are more effective in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), in which agency issues are more severe. Female directors also provide better monitoring roles in more-developed areas. Finally, corporate boards that have a critical mass of female directors have a greater tendency to reduce agency costs as compared to their token participation. Overall, all findings support the validity of agency theory.

This study shows the economic benefit of female directors in the boardroom by reducing agency costs and by improving firms' governance structure. Regarding the government, which is gradually introducing board gender diversity policies, this study provides valuable pragmatic information for Chinese regulators on this issue.

This study extends the literature by providing evidence that gender diversity in boardroom matters for shareholders' wealth maximization. It provides novel evidence that a critical mass of female directors is more effective in reducing agency costs compared to a single female on the board, and that the effect of gender diversity varies in relation to ownership structure and region.

The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effects of mindfulness on the relationships between work stressors (perceived organisational politics [POP] and effort–reward imbalance [ERI]) and work outcomes (job burnout [JBO] and job satisfaction [JS]).

Time-lagged data were collected from public sector employees in France and Pakistan. The final samples (France, N = 204; Pakistan, N = 217) were tested using multiple moderating regression.

Mindfulness moderates the relationship between work stressors and work outcomes. Mindfulness serves as a personal resource for employees: it mitigates the negative influence that POP and ERI have on JBO and JS.

This study extends current knowledge on the relationships between work stressors and work outcomes across cultures by testing mindfulness as a valuable personal resource.

Artificial intelligence (AI) integration in the workplace yields positive outcomes, yet its impact on employees remains incompletely understood. This study aims to examine employee viewpoints regarding AI and its influence on employee career attitudes, behaviors and skill enhancement. The author examines how employees perceive AI and its impact on their career adaptability within the context of career self-management.

The researchers conducted hypothesis testing using AMOS; data was collected from 255 software house employees working in Pakistan. This study is time-lagged in nature. Data on AI perception was collected at time 1. After three weeks, data was collected for hypotheses related to mediation, and employees filled out a questionnaire related to career adaptability at time 3 with the interval of three weeks.

This study indicates a strong correlation between beliefs about AI dominance in the job market and increased career adaptability. The researchers discovered that career insecurity and skill development are pathways that elucidate employees’ perceptions of AI dominating their decisions regarding career adaptability.

This study demonstrates that AI perception has the potential to influence employees, motivating them to enhance their abilities and pursue adaptable career trajectories. The study indicates that employees’ unfavorable perceptions of AI can result in behaviors associated with career adaptability.

This study aims to investigate the impact of organizational mistreatments, such as workplace bullying and ostracism, on task performance. Additionally, it explores the mediating role of cyber loafing and the moderating role of negative reciprocity beliefs.

Adopting a positivism research philosophy and a deductive approach, this study focuses on the petroleum sector-related organizations where enterprise resource planning requires active Internet use, potentially leading to cyber loafing. Data were collected from employees using purposive sampling techniques, resulting in a sample size of 248. The data analysis was conducted using AMOS and SPSS software.

The results indicate that cyber loafing fully mediates the relationship between workplace bullying and ostracism on task performance. Additionally, negative reciprocity beliefs significantly moderate the relationship between workplace bullying, ostracism and cyber loafing.

This study presents a moderated-mediation model of organizational mistreatments and task performance, elucidating the mechanisms through the mediating role of cyber loafing and the moderating role of negative reciprocity beliefs.

The pervasive issue of employee exploitation has surfaced as a salient ethical quandary within the context of modern-day workplaces, thereby demanding expeditious and imperative deliberation and redressal. This research endeavor aims to meticulously investigate the ramifications of employee exploitation on the proclivity to partake in the act of cutting corners within the workplace. This analysis encompasses the sequential mediating variables of negative emotions, namely resentment, anger, and frustration, as well as moral disengagement.

A purposive sampling technique and self-administered questionnaires were utilized in this study of 132 SME sector personnel. The current study is time-lagged in nature and uses the Amos software, the data were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, as well as structural equation modeling.

According to the results, employee exploitation has a strong positive impact on cutting corners. This effect is mediated progressively by negative emotions (resentment, anguish, frustration), as well as moral disengagement. According to the findings, organizations should prioritize addressing employee exploitation to build a healthy work environment that promotes employee well-being and encourages employee voice.

This study’s novelty comes from its analysis of the sequential mediation of negative emotions, as well as moral disengagement, in the relationship between employee exploitation and cutting corners. The study’s findings add to the body of literature concerning management development, conflict handling, and employees’ attitudes and behaviors by offering a thorough grasp of the detrimental effects of employee exploitation on cutting corners as well as useful recommendations for businesses looking to promote productive workplaces.