Stereotypical or just typical: how do US practitioners view the role and function of gender stereotypes in advertisements?

There is a long and diverse literature on gender stereotypes in advertising; however, US practitioners’ perspectives on the role and function of stereotypes in advertising remain unknown. Understanding professionals’ views on whether and how stereotypes communicate is important for anyone who believes it beneficial to reduce future stereotypical representations. Using qualitative interviews with 42 practitioners, this study detailed seven themes concerning professionals’ perceptions of the role and function of stereotypes in advertising, including beliefs that stereotypes are based in truth, are attractive to audiences, communicate quickly, simplify processing, prevent distraction, prevent thinking, and are the obvious solution. Practitioners felt stereotypes were used most appropriately when they were subverted or challenged in advertising messages. Stereotypes were most inappropriate when they reinforced negative perceptions. Four factors believed to drive the use of stereotypes in advertising are discussed.     

Moral Reflection Differences among Norwegian Business Students. A Presentation and Discussion of Findings

This article presents findings from aqualitative study among Norwegian businessstudents carried out in 1997. In this study thestudents were asked to write ¹/₃ to ³/₄ page essaysabout six moral dilemma scenarios inbusiness-life and in private-life contexts.After a summary of main results the responsesto two scenarios are examined more thoroughly,for identification of consequence vs. ruleorientation, personal vs. impersonal andnormative vs. non-normative orientation. In anext step, such response tendencies arecompared by gender and age (using comparableessays of managers as a point of reference).The conclusions focus on the potential use ofthe study for business ethics teaching.     

Why do firms delete brands? Insights from a qualitative study

Large consumer goods firms manage and market an assortment of brands and consistently deal with strategic challenges related to brand portfolio management, such as creating or acquiring brands, growing brand equity, managing brands in the portfolio and deleting brands. There is substantial research on several areas of brand portfolio management except in the area of brand deletion. This situation exists despite the fact that deleting weak brands has important implications for a firm and its brand portfolio. Therefore, it is critical to understand why firms delete brands from their portfolios. This research applies a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis in the context of firms that adopt a ‘house of brands’ brand architecture and presents findings guided by the strategic decision-making literature.     

水电工程建设征地补偿和移民安置社会稳定风险评估研究

基于系统性与综合性原则、科学性与可行性原则、人本原则、定性分析与定量分析相结合的原则,建立了水电工程建设征地补偿和移民安置社会稳定风险评估指标体系,并运用模糊评价方法,对所设计的几种方案进行了评估和分析,选择出了最利于社会稳定的方案。     

‘Consuming Responsibility: The Search for Value at Laskarina Holidays’

This paper provides an alternative theoretical conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to further our understanding of prosocial organisational behaviour. We argue that consumption provides a perspective that enables theorists to escape the confines of existing CSR literature. In our view the organisation is re-imagined as an arena of consumption where employees are engaged in a quest for value, constructing and confirming their identities as consumers. Using the award-winning tour operator Laskarina Holidays as an illustrative case, it is suggested that CSR can provide combinations of functional, social, emotional, epistemic and conditional value. This new perspective on CSR facilitates the coexistence of a plurality of values that are relativistically constructed and narrativised by organisational stakeholders. Our consumption paradigm provides a thought provoking means of reconciling divergent perspectives and encourages further interdisciplinary research. We argue that future research should begin, not by asking the question of why organisations assume responsibility, but by contemplating the notion of why organisations consume responsibility.     

The effects of online negative word-of-mouth on dissatisfied customers: A frustration–aggression perspective

Conceptualizing how customers construe online negative word-of-mouth (nWOM) following failure experiences remains unsettled, leaving providers with inconclusive recovery strategy programmes. This empirical study recognizes online nWOM as a co-created encounter between the complainant (i.e., the initiator of the online nWOM) and the recipient (i.e., the consumer who engages with the online nWOM), examining their idiosyncrasies to discern their understanding of the experience. It introduces frustration–aggression theory to online WOM literature, recognizing that it can support a higher-order understanding of phenomena. Through phenomenological hermeneutics, interviews and focus groups, data were collected from millennials in Albania and Kosovo that provided accounts of nuanced and distinctive online nWOM realities. The emerged insights extended extant theory to a three-fold online nWOM typology (i.e., lenient online nWOM, moderate online nWOM and severe online nWOM) recognizing the negative impact customers have on a provider, which is controlled by frustration–aggression tags. Frustration–aggression variations across online nWOM led to the construct of three types of customers that engage in online nWOM, namely tolerable online nWOM customers, rigorous online nWOM customers and confrontational online nWOM customers. Findings culminated with satisfactory recovery strategies aligned to customer inferences regardless of the nWOM context.