Julia A.M. Reif, Katharina G. Kugler, Mariella T. Stockkamp, Selina S. Richter, Valerie M. Benning, Lina A. Muschaweck and Felix C. Brodbeck
Traditional approaches to business processes and their management consider the “people dimension” as an antecedent of process performance. The authors complemented this approach…
Abstract
Purpose
Traditional approaches to business processes and their management consider the “people dimension” as an antecedent of process performance. The authors complemented this approach by considering employees as process perceivers and thus taking an employee-centered perspective on business processes. The authors investigated dimensions of healthy business processes, that is, processes which, while promoting performance, foster employee well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a qualitative dataset and two quantitative studies, the authors developed and validated a scale for healthy business processes, interpreted it from a salutogenic perspective and tested relationships with people and performance outcomes.
Findings
The scale comprises four factors reflecting the three dimensions of the salutogenic concept “sense of coherence”: manageability was represented by the factors process tools and process flexibility; comprehensibility was represented by the factor process description; and meaningfulness was represented by the factor management support. The scale and its subscales were significantly related to people and performance outcomes.
Originality/value
The authors propose that health-oriented business process management and performance-oriented business process management are two components of an integrated business process management that favors neither a functionalist, efficiency-oriented approach nor an employee-oriented approach, but takes both approaches and their interaction equally into account in the sense of person-process fit.
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Exploring the “How?” and “Why?” of children’s agency through the employment of strategies to listen and to participate within parent interviews, this chapter addresses various…
Abstract
Exploring the “How?” and “Why?” of children’s agency through the employment of strategies to listen and to participate within parent interviews, this chapter addresses various “agency routes” children used in the effort to contribute their voices to adult conversations. The generational relationship between children and parents is tempered by children’s ownership claims to shared spaces within the home, which allowed them the room to defy parents’ directives to “Go Away!” Children utilized three different tactics of defiance (overt, quiet, and covert) in the attempt to listen and be heard, and in the process were motivated to participate in five distinct ways, which included: (1) informative, (2) corrective, (3) instructive, (4) investigative, and (5) expressive participation. Concluding with a call to recognize children’s voices as more than merely “background noise” when transcribing interviews, I encourage researchers in childhood studies to potentially revisit data collected in the effort to further theorize children’s agency as situated within generationality, contributing to a recontextualized framework of analysis.
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Carly Drake and Scott K. Radford
Purpose: This study seeks to determine the marketplace practices in which consumers engage with regard to masculine and feminine codes employed in product design. Since extant…
Abstract
Purpose: This study seeks to determine the marketplace practices in which consumers engage with regard to masculine and feminine codes employed in product design. Since extant consumer research argues that consumers prefer marketing stimuli that match their sex or gender identity, this study also asks how consumers’ practices inform this understanding of the possession-self link.
Design/methodology/approach: This study used semi-structured interviews with an auto-driving component to answer the research questions. Data from 20 interviews were analyzed using feminist critical discourse analysis and a poststructuralist feminist-informed theoretical framework.
Findings: Four consumer practices identified in the data show that interpretations and evaluations of product gender are sometimes, but not always, a reflection of the gendered self.
Research limitations/implications: This research shares a snapshot of a cohort of individuals that interact with the marketplace, but there are some perspectives missing. Future research must engage with individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as non-binary or gender nonconforming individuals, in order to enhance or even challenge these findings.
Practical implications (if applicable): Evidence from the marketplace demonstrates intense criticism of products that have been coded as masculine or feminine based on gender stereotypes or men and women’s perceived aesthetic tastes. Marketers are encouraged to use gender codes to differentiate products catered to men and women based on their ergonomic or biological needs.
Originality/value: This study complicates theory on the possession-self link to show cases in which that link is broken. Engaging critically with the topic of product gender from a poststructuralist feminist perspective also illustrates how marketing practices may help or harm consumers.
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Saleh Al Humaidan and Valerie Sabatier
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how strategic renewal occurs in large incumbent newspaper companies facing a specific context of environment scarcity (i.e. environmental…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how strategic renewal occurs in large incumbent newspaper companies facing a specific context of environment scarcity (i.e. environmental dissolution (the market gradually changing in size and scope)). Within the media industry, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) offers a particularly interesting research setting because the number of competitors in the regional market is regulated by the government; consequently, the incumbent firms face the same local environment. This situation offers the possibility to shed light on how the orientation of the top management team (TMT) of the firm influences the strategic renewal and the traditional business model of the firm.
Design/methodology/approach
The strategic renewal of the three largest incumbents of the print newspapers in KSA over 12 years (from 2000 to 2012) was analyzed with a qualitative approach (archival data and 30 interviews with the TMTs of each company and with external observers). A two-step analysis of within-case analysis and cross-case analysis was used.
Findings
Building on Schmitt et al.’s (2016) framework, it was empirically found that depending on the orientation of the TMT, the managerial perception of the firm’s environment within the same scarcity situation leads to different strategic renewal responses. The findings demonstrate that internally oriented TMTs engage in incremental business model changes, while externally oriented TMTs engage in disruptive business model changes. However, management’s attitude toward technology has been neglected in the literature so far, and it was concluded that technology plays a mediating role in strategy renewal.
Research limitations/implications
Recent research on strategic renewal in times of environmental scarcity has built on both population ecology and strategic choice literatures and has argued that varying CEO perceptions can lead to very different strategic responses. Other research on business models has started to explore the role of technology in business model evolution. In the context of environmental dissolution, it can be argued that the attitude of the TMT toward technology has a mediating role in business model evolution.
Practical implications
In times of environmental dissolution – the traditional market of the firm changes not only in size but also in scope – strategic renewal is conditioned by the orientation of the TMT and its attitude toward technology. When the traditional business model of the firm is put under pressure by such changes, teams with an external orientation or an appetite for technology will be more likely able to engage in business model disruption.
Originality/value
The authors have had the opportunity to conduct case studies on three large newspapers companies in a country where the regulation is very strong and press freedom is not comparable to other European or North-American countries.
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Liat Ben-Moshe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation, as part of a PhD in…
Abstract
Liat Ben-Moshe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation, as part of a PhD in Sociology and Disability Studies at Syracuse University, examined abolitionary demands to close down repressive institutions that house those labeled as criminals, mentally disabled, and mentally ill. Liat has written on topics such as the International Symbol of Access, inclusive pedagogy, academic repression, disability, anticapitalism and anarchism, queerness and disability, deinstitutionalization and incarceration, and the politics of abolition.
Valérie Hémar-Nicolas and Pascale Ezan
The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of what well-being means to children in the food context and to formulate recommendations about the way food…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of what well-being means to children in the food context and to formulate recommendations about the way food retailers may take actions to promote children’s food well-being (FWB).
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study based on a child-centric perspective is conducted with 25 French children aged 6–11 years. The data collection and analysis use both verbal and graphic data methods including focus groups and drawings in order to help children express their feelings and thoughts.
Findings
The findings put forward that according to children, the concept of FWB relies on five dimensions: sensory taste, health, commensality, empowerment and altruistic behaviours. Their discourses suggest that food practices contributes to objective, hedonic, eudaemonic and social well-being on the short and long term.
Practical implications
Based on children’s intrinsic needs for pleasure and empowerment, our recommendations highlight how food retailers might rethink their own-label offering, retail environment and communication to take into account young consumers’ FWB.
Originality/value
Drawing upon the concept of FWB and positive psychology, the authors do not only examine children’s food representations through a nutritional lens, but enlarge the scope to show how physical, emotional, psychological and social factors, involved in food context, contribute to different aspects of well-being.
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Mustafa F. Özbilgin and Cihat Erbil
We introduce the notion of rainbow burning and develop the concept of rainbow washing, which draws on the concept of genderwashing, to explicate the instrumentalization of…
Abstract
We introduce the notion of rainbow burning and develop the concept of rainbow washing, which draws on the concept of genderwashing, to explicate the instrumentalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+) inclusion. Rainbow burning happens when LGBT+ rights and visibility are targeted through hate to divert attention from economic, social, and political decline. For example, LGBT+ rights are unjustly blamed for the decline of the social and economic fabric. Rainbow washing happens when an organization uses or instrumentalizes LGBT+ concerns for commercial and social ends. We draw on examples from unsupportive and supportive capitalist market systems and explore how rainbow burning and washing manifest in each. This chapter explores the antecedents, correlates and consequences of rainbow burning and washing in unsupportive and supportive contexts. We identify regulatory, cultural and governance measures that can be taken against rainbow burning and rainbow washing to foster LGBT+ inclusion.