The Moral Disillusionment Model of Organizational Transgressions: Ethical Transgressions Trigger More Negative Reactions from Consumers When Committed by Nonprofits

Journal of Business Ethics - We tested whether the impact of an organizational transgression on consumer sentiment differs depending on whether the organization is a nonprofit. Competing hypotheses...     

“This is a holy place of Ama Jomo”: buen vivir,indigenous voices and ecotourism development in a protected area of Bhutan

Common definitions of ecotourism address the need to benefit the well-being of local people; in reality, ecotourism is often supported or dominated by external agents. Local ideological, social and cultural values may be overlooked, thereby disenfranchising local and indigenous stakeholders. This paper examines indigenous perceptions of ecotourism and well-being, and how they relate to ecotourism practices in three Brokpa communities of the first protected area in Bhutan to become a special tourism destination. A range of methods (e.g. semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping) was used and data analysis was couched in the context of buen vivir (living well), an indigenous concept of well-being. Findings indicate that: (1) perceptions of ecotourism vary between community members and contrast with the official park definition; (2) well-being is conceived in diverse ways but corresponds to key features of buen vivir; (3) indigenous worldviews are pervasive, and shape social values and spiritual beliefs in connection to nature; and (4) indigenous cosmologies and traditional values may be strengthened through their integration into modern policies and institutions. This research contributes more non-Western voices to the literature, a concept and mode of analysis for well-being that embraces an indigenous ontology, and empirical insights on indigenous communities in protected areas.     

How school context and personal factors relate to teachers’ attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM

Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education is an emerging approach to improve students’ achievement and interest in STEM disciplines. However, the implementation of integrated STEM education depends strongly on teachers’ competence, which entails, among others, teachers’ attitudes. Nonetheless, not much is known about the factors that influence teachers’ attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM. Therefore this paper uses a survey method to get insight into the relationship between three groups of variables and teachers’ attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM: teacher background characteristics, personal attitudes and school context variables. The results of the multiple regression analyses reveal three variables that are positively linked with teachers’ attitudes: professional development, personal relevance of science and social context. Moreover two variables show a negative correlation: having more than 20 years of teaching experience and experience in mathematics. The results of this study provide valuable information about factors related to teachers’ attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM. Moreover, these results can be deployed by school administrators to guide them when implementing integrated STEM education in their school.     

Fijian culture and the environment: a focus on the ecological and social interconnectedness of tourism development

Understanding the complex and adaptive nature of Pacific Island communities is a growing yet relatively unexplored area in the context of tourism development. Taking an ethnographic research approach, this study examines how over 40 years of tourism development have led to complex and multi-scale changes within an Indigenous Fijian village. The study establishes that tourism development has brought a range of ecological shifts that have, over time, spurred far-reaching changes within the embedded sociocultural constructs of the community. The development of the Naviti Resort, a water catchment dam, a causeway and a man-made island have created substantial changes in totemic associations, livelihood approaches, and traditional knowledge structures within Vatuolalai village. The emergence of internal adaptive cycles, and new behaviours, practices and values that redefine the cultural landscape will be discussed. This paper demonstrates the interconnectivity of nature, society and culture within Indigenous communal systems and asserts that ecological changes introduced in one part of a community stimulate complex, non-linear responses in other elements of the socio-ecological system of a Fijian village.     

Invasive species management in a spatially heterogeneous world: Effects of uniform policies

The spread of invasive species (IS) is an inherently spatial process, and management of invasive species occurs over spatially heterogeneous regions, but policy constraints can restrict management responses to be homogeneous across regions. Using a spatial bioeconomic model that includes a representation of invasive species ecology based on heterogeneous environments that are linked across space and time by human and ecological pathways, we compare optimal spatially heterogeneous policy to spatially uniform policy. We explore the magnitude and pattern of the policy differences with emphasis on the influence of different types of underlying heterogeneity across locations.     

Socialising employees’ trust in the organisation: an exploration of apprentices’ socialisation in two highly trusted companies

We present here our investigation into how corporate employers deliberately seek to foster and build employees’ trust in the organisation through socialisation tactics. Interestingly enough, such deliberate development of employees’ trust in the organisation has hitherto rarely been addressed in academic research. Using qualitative case study research methods, we have closely observed the trust socialisation process experienced by entrant employees, namely apprentices in two separate and highly trusted German companies. Our findings are consistent with former trust socialisation research in that they indicate the importance of high levels of perceived organisational support and of a convincing communication of organisational values and principles. However, our research emphasises further aspects of trust socialisation, such as psychological empowerment, the efficacy of formal organisational rules and especially sensegiving activities.     

Patterns of multi-agent land conservation: Crowding in/out,agglomeration, and policy

Private agents make large contributions to networks of conserved land, but little is known about how private agents’ decisions might be altered by government actions. This paper explores the impact of public conservation and public policy on the quantity and configuration of private land conservation and the extent to which the social optimum is reached. Because land conservation benefits often have thresholds and spatial characteristics, we consider the impact of different land conservation benefit functions on the patterns of conservation created by the interaction of private and public agents. We find that public conservation crowds private conservation in or out depending on whether marginal conservation benefits increase or decrease with total acreage, and crowding out is mitigated by the presence of budget constraints. We show how land conservation agents might interact strategically in space depending on preferences over fragmentation, and we explore that spatial strategic interaction in a case with a regional land trust and a case with hot-spot parcels. We identify when government policies, such as agglomeration bonuses and mitigating coordination costs, are most likely to increase the social benefits provided by private land conservation agents.