From restricted to complex exchange and beyond: social marketing’s change agenda

ABSTRACT

The forward thinking body of social marketing knowledge, rooted in commercial marketing tools, suffers from two potentially interlinked crisis of identity. First, there is the question of behavioural change to address difficult social problems. This embraces the development of co-ordinated multi-domain approaches for large scale social transformation. Second, there is the concept of exchange, the defining characteristic of social marketing yet problematic and the least researched of its benchmark criteria. Recognising the centrality of exchange, we address the broadening social marketing discourse, suggesting a focus beyond restricted to complex exchanges. This paper presents the insights from the application of Interactive Management, a system-based methodology, embracing a systemic change and a complex exchange agenda. Our case study finds the contexts for restricted and complex exchanges through barriers as well as structural and influence maps. Understanding complex exchanges closes the gap between the theoretical and practical debates surrounding contemporary social marketing and the role and function of exchange theory.     

Diana: a symbol of women entrepreneurs’ hunt for knowledge,money, and the rewards of entrepreneurship

This article discusses the questions and issues that prompted the founding of the Diana Project, a multi-university research program aimed at identifying factors that support and enable high growth in women-led ventures. Despite the fact that women business owners comprise a significant portion of the economy, women face challenges in acquiring the resources needed to expand their businesses. This article details both the myths and realities associated with women’s entrepreneurship in their quest for growth. In particular, we examine the strategies that women entrepreneurs use to position their firms for growth, especially those strategies related to growth capital. Our results show that women seeking venture capital (VC) have degrees, graduate degrees, and experience that should not preclude them from obtaining financing. We also found that even though women-led businesses are frequently clustered in industries less attractive to financiers, women seeking equity funding are in the appropriate industries. Further, women spend a considerable amount of time using both formal and informal networks in their search for capital and in seeking capital. Because of the importance of the VC industry as a provider of growth capital and its reliance on its network for investment referrals, we also examined the participation and role of women as decision-makers in industry. Women’s participation in the VC industry has not kept pace with industry growth, and women have exited the industry at a faster rate than men, thus creating a significant barrier for women entrepreneurs in that it is less likely that their networks will overlap with the financial supplier networks, despite any effort they may expend networking and seeking capital.

Do Promotions Increase Store Expenditures? A Descriptive Study of Household Shopping Behavior

An important question for retailers is whether promotions induce households to increase their in-store expenditures or merely reallocate a predetermined shopping budget. Should expenditures be fixed, retailers might decrease their profitability when running promotions by displacing expenditures from high margin to lower margin products. Using household level store receipts and an extended AIDS model, we provide evidence that while household expenditures do increase with promotions, there is also a significant reallocation of expenditures among the different categories. This implies that retailers have to choose carefully which products are promoted, if promotions are to increase profits.     

The role of social networks and institutions in the internationalization of Russian entrepreneurial firms: Do they matter?

Drawing upon network theory and institutional theory, this paper examines the influence of networks on the internationalization of Russian entrepreneurial firms. Our case analysis suggests that within the context of the Russian environment, networks play a much less important role in the internationalization process than it is usually assumed in the literature. For the Russian entrepreneurial firms examined in our study, the most important factor in their internationalization was their engagement in honest business practices that established trust and commitment in their relationships with international business partners. This study underscores the importance of the institutional context of an entrepreneurial firm’s country.     

Women directors contribution to organizational innovation: A behavioral approach

This paper aims to analyze the relationships between women directors (a demographic characteristic) and organizational innovation (a predictor of firm performance) by considering the mediating role of the board’s decision-making culture. To scrutinize board processes and behaviors, we use survey data to test our hypotheses on a sample of 341 Norwegian firms. The results suggest that women directors contribute positively and significantly to organizational innovation. Furthermore, the positive relationship between women directors and the level of organizational innovation is mediated by some decision-making culture dimensions: the degree of cognitive conflict and the degree of preparation and involvement during board meetings. Implications for theory and practice and future research directions are discussed.     

CEO succession with gender change in troubled companies: The effect of a new woman CEO on firm risk and firm risk perceived

The replacement of the CEO is one of the first actions a troubled company may take to recover from a critical situation. In this paper, we analyze the change in firm risk and firm risk perception when women are replacing men as CEOs of troubled companies. The analyses are based on a comprehensive dataset covering all registered companies in Norway from 2005 to 2014. We argue that a new woman CEOs increase the chances of improving the risk situation of troubled companies. Building on CEO succession and social identity theories, we study the firm risk situation under the lenses of risk perception and firm risk, and we find that a newly appointed woman CEO, following a man, tend to decrease the level of risk of the company. Furthermore, we find counterbalancing effects on these changes given the moderation effect of women on the board.     

The Courts and College Football: New Playing Rules Off the Field?

A bstract . Oklahoma and Georgia, two outstanding college football contenders, challenged the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) long standing control over television sales of game broadcasts. The case, Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia Athletic Association vs. National Collegiate Athletic Association , alleged violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. ¹ It captured the attention of those involved in sports and of the legal profession but its significance is wider. It involved basic economic issues. Plaintiffs held that television was not a threat to ticket revenues, the NCAA structure gave control to colleges with little or no interest in football. and the arrangement did not achieve competitive balance. The NCAA's behavior is found to be that of a classic cartel and ending its control widened consumer choice and upgraded product quality.     

Union organising in ‘Big Blue's backyard

This article considers the effectiveness of recruitment and organising approaches during ISTC's successful recognition campaign at FCI Ltd, focussing in particular on the role of ‘shadow stewards’. The case study illustrates the positive impact of innovative grassroots campaigning associated with the organising model. However, it also highlights the real difficulties facing key union players in transforming successful recruitment and recognition into effective workplace representation and robust trade unionism.     

Multidimensional welfare distributions: empirical application to household panel data from Vietnam

This article explores the empirical application of theoretical multidimensional welfare distribution analysis techniques to real household welfare distributions. The article operationalizes recent conceptual developments in multidimensional distribution theory and assesses their usefulness for the measurement of multidimensional household inequality. The results strongly highlight the importance of bringing nonmonetary aspects of household welfare into the forefront of inequality analysis. Agreement over the various approaches to the measurement of multidimensional inequality entails, however, nontrivial decisions that may limit the practical usefulness of these measures. We suggest that the use of multidimensional inequality ranges and the application of restrictive dominance criteria to multidimensional welfare distributions may open significant scope for further developments in the empirical analysis of multidimensional inequality.