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This paper aims to explore the landscape of sustainability goals set by large firms.

Sustainability reports were content analyzed using the triple bottom line framework.

This study identified 389 goals among 22 firms. The most common goals focused on the natural environment. On average, the firms list 18 sustainability goals. These included an average of eight “planet” goals, seven “people” goals and three “overarching” goals.

This research should be useful to sustainability professionals who are setting goals for their firms and seek to understand the current landscape of goals set by large firms.

Although previous research has analyzed the content of sustainability reports, this is the first paper to explore sustainability goals. Given the importance of goal setting in strategic management, this paper fills an important gap in the intersection between sustainability and strategy.

The resource-based view of the firm and strategic groups research are two of the most investigated frameworks in strategic management. Historically, assumptions behind these two views have seemingly put them at odds. The resource-based view of the firm argues that sustained competitive advantage is best attained when firms have unique resources, while strategic groups research argues that a number of firms within the same industry can achieve sustained profitability with strategies that are similar to one another, but distinct from other industry members. The two views focus on different levels of analysis and each largely ignores the other’s focal level. Yet neither offers any propositions that are incompatible with the tenets of the other. Thus, conceptual integration that crosses levels of analysis is possible and potentially fruitful. Indeed, some strategic groups research has begun to bridge the gap between these two theories by suggesting that firm differences exist both within and between strategic groups. This article adopts a multi-level view by developing propositions concerning contingencies when firm differences, group processes, or both may lead to sustained competitive advantage. Implications for practitioners as well as suggestions for future theory building and empirical tests are also discussed.

The commentaries offered by Professors Joyce and Michael on our chapter, “Multilevel influences on firm performance: Implications from the resource-based view and strategic groups research,” provide a number of suggestions for incorporating levels of analysis into studies of firm performance. In this rejoinder to their comments, we note the need to include managers’ cognitions in studies, emphasize the role of theory in studying strategic groups, describe the value of creating conceptual clarity regarding strategic groups, and offer suggestions for studies that might emanate from the ideas in the commentaries in juxtaposition to our original work.

Purpose: The aim of the study is to consider the use of the Internet as a potential facilitator of positive health-related perceptions. Specifically, we propose that online health information seeking fosters positive perceptions of health. Using path modeling, we theorized several mechanisms through which information seeking could be conducive to positive health perceptions, which we conceptualized into the following four dimensions: (1) sense of empowerment in managing health, (2) self-reported ability to take better care of health, (3) sense of improved health-related quality of life, and (4) self-reported improvement of health.

Methodology: Our sample consisted of respondents who have used the Internet as a resource for health information (n = 710), drawn from the largest national probability-based online research panel. Our comparison subsample consisted of older respondents (age ≥ 60; n = 194). We used Internet-specific measures and employed structural equation models (SEM) to estimate the direct, indirect, and total effects of health-related use of the Internet on subjective health perceptions. Based on our review of the literature, competent health communication with healthcare providers and sense of empowerment in managing personal health were modeled as mediator variables. We assessed whether the proposed mediational relationships, if significant, differed across our indicators of positive health perceptions and whether any differential associations were observed among older adults. We run parallel models for each indicator of positive health perception.

Findings: Provider-patient communication informed by the Internet resources were perceived to impart a greater sense of empowerment to manage health among our respondents, which in turn, was associated with perceived contributions to better self-reported ability to provide self-care, increased health-related quality of life, and improvement in self-reported health. The SEM results revealed a good fit with our full sample and subsample.

Research Implications: Conceptualization of the multidimensional aspects of online health information seeking with separate multi-indicator analyses of the outcome variable is important to further our understanding of how technology may impact the pathways involved in influencing health perceptions and as a result health outcomes.

The issues surrounding the scholarship on children-inclusive events management are explored in depth to provide a context for this chapter. Focus then turns to the city of Winchester in the United Kingdom as a case study for potential events aimed at this age group. Through a synthesis of the findings from a thorough new research study along with emerging theories in narrative and storytelling as experience co-creation, a proposed design for a new event is put forward. It is hoped that this approach in the academic literature will encourage other researchers to include innovative proposals in their synthesis and conclusions. Finally, additional considerations of integrating city branding with a wider regional branding are explored through ethnobotany. Lessons are drawn from an example of brand management based on a city event for children in Scotland.