The Class Dynamics of Food Sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador

This paper examines the class dynamics of food sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador. It argues that the nature of contemporary demands for food sovereignty is heavily influenced by the outcomes of peasant movements’ historical and ongoing internal class dynamics. Processes of class differentiation within peasant organizations in both countries have led to the interests of certain classes predominating over or at the expense of others. Despite La Vía Campesina's projection of ‘unity in diversity’, incorporating sometimes conflicting class interests into the movement is particularly challenging. As such, class analysis must be brought back into debates around food sovereignty in order to gauge (and potentially further) the movement's transformative potential.     

Schadenfreude: The (not so) Secret Joy of Another’s Misfortune

Despite growing interest in emotions, organizational scholars have largely ignored the moral emotion of schadenfreude, which refers to pleasure felt in response to another’s misfortune. As a socially undesirable emotion, it might be assumed that individuals would be hesitant to share their schadenfreude. In two experimental studies involving emotional responses to unethical behaviors, we find evidence to the contrary. Study 1 revealed that subjects experiencing schadenfreude were willing to share their feelings, especially if the misfortune was perceived to be deserved (i.e., resulting from unethical behaviors). Study 2 extends this work by incorporating schadenfreude targets of different status (CEO versus employee). Consistent with the “tall poppy syndrome,” subjects were more willing to share schadenfreude concerning high status targets than low status targets when the perceived severity of the target’s misconduct was low. This status effect disappeared at higher levels of perceived deservingness, however. Reported willingness to share schadenfreude was strongest at these levels but did not differ significantly between high and low status targets. These findings build on the social functional account of emotions, suggesting that sharing schadenfreude may signal normative cues to others regarding workplace behaviors that are deemed to be unethical.     

Disentangling location-based advertising: the effects of location congruency and medium type on consumers' ad attention and brand choice

Research on location-based advertising (LBA) suggests that the merits of LBA lie in the fact that consumers can be targeted with location-congruent ads on their personal mobile devices. However, LBA consists of two underlying constructs: a mobile (vs. point-of-sales) advertising medium and location congruency (vs. location incongruency). This study aims to disentangle these underlying constructs by showing that they differentially affect the efficacy of an ad. Using a virtual reality lab experiment, this study shows that location-congruent ads result in increased choice for the target brand as compared to location-incongruent ads, independent of medium type. However, in location-incongruent situations, mobile ads attracted more attention than point-of-sales display ads. The advantages of LBA thus do not seem to emanate from medium type, but rather from the congruency between the ad and product location. When the ad is received at a different location than the product, the mobile medium is able to enhance consumers' ad attention.     

Foreign direct investment via M&A and domestic entrepreneurship: blessing or curse?

There are conflicting predictions in the literature about the relationship between FDI and entrepreneurship. This paper explores how foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, measured by lagged cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), affect entrepreneurial entry in the host economy. We have constructed a micro-panel of more than two thousand individuals in each of seventy countries, 2000–2009, linked to FDI by matching sectors. We find the relationship between FDI inflows and domestic entrepreneurship to be negative across all economies. This negative effect is much more pronounced in developed than developing economies and is also identified within industries, notably in manufacturing. Policies to encourage FDI via M&A need to consider how to counteract the prevailing adverse effect on domestic entrepreneurship.     

Relevance of Fundraising Charities’ Content-Marketing Objectives: Perceptions of Donors,Fundraisers, and Their Consultants

Many fundraising charities invest heavily in content marketing, often using consultants to direct their content-marketing efforts. Thus it is vital to establish whether certain key aims of content marketing suggested by literature in the field actually match the aspects of content marketing deemed most important by charity donors. This paper examines the significance attached by samples of charities, donors, and content-marketing consultancies to four possible major objectives of content marketing—the attainment of high–search-engine-results-page rankings, image enhancement through impression management, the stimulation of public perceptions of organizational transparency, and the creation of messages that “go viral.” Several major differences in perceptions emerged among the three groups, with substantial implications for how fundraising charities should manage their content-marketing programs and activities. Charity managements need to consider carefully and critically the possible returns on large-scale expenditures intended to pursue the putative aims of content marketing that are routinely advocated by practitioner and academic literature.     

Carbon information on vegetables: How does it affect the buying process?

Information on the climate impact of a food product has practically not been communicated in Germany, even though it could provide important acknowledgement of producers’ actions in low‐carbon production. So far, carbon labelling has predominantly been discussed without taking into account German consumers’ opinions (proven by empirical data) on this issue, even though involving the consumer in the considerations of a Carbon Label is essential for its success. Especially the question, if information on the product carbon footprint is a considerable factor within the search process of a purchase decision, was of special interest in this work. To answer these questions, we analysed consumers’ information‐seeking behaviour using an information display matrix (IDM) experiment with 232 participants. The IDM is a process tracing technique which allows to track the information search in a buying process. Our results show that basically the place of origin is the most important criterion for the purchase decision, followed by price and production method (conventional/organic). In contrast, the sustainability information (i.e., carbon footprint and water consumption) are at a low level of importance. Comparing two locally produced products with the help of a multinominal logistic regression‐model, it seems that the group of consumers preferring organic products is influenced in the purchase decision by the carbon footprint information. In summary it can be stated that although some people may be basically interested in carbon labelling of fresh food, the purchase decision would probably be hardly influenced by a carbon label on vegetables at present. The majority of people are more concerned about factors like origin and price so that Carbon Labelling would only be a viable option for a small group of consumers.     

Can tourism be part of the decarbonized global economy? The costs and risks of alternate carbon reduction policy pathways

Global leaders agree on the need to substantially decarbonize the global economy by 2050. This paper compares potential costs associated with different policy pathways to achieve tourism sector emission reduction ambitions (?50% by 2035) and transform the sector to be part of the mid-century decarbonized economy (?70% by 2050). Investment in emissions abatement within the tourism sector, combined with strategic external carbon offsets, was found to be approximately 5% more cost effective over the period 2015–2050 than exclusive reliance on offsetting. The cost to achieve the ?50% target through abatement and strategic offsetting, while significant, represents less than 0.1% of the estimated global tourism economy in 2020 and 3.6% in 2050. Distributed equally among all tourists (international and domestic), the cost of a low-carbon tourism sector is estimated at US$11 per trip, equivalent to many current travel fees or taxes. Exclusive reliance on offsetting would expose the sector to extensive and continued carbon liability costs beyond mid-century and could be perceived as climate inaction, increasing reputational risks and the potential for less efficient regulatory interventions that could hinder sustainable tourism development. Effective tourism sector leadership is needed to develop a strategic tourism policy framework and emission measurement and reporting system.     

Integrating Customer Requirements into Product Designs

Despite all best efforts, the design process often leads to the introduction of products that do not meet customer expectations. Although the design team typically applies customer-related information from several sources, the product design somehow fails to satisfy customer requirements. Clearly, we need to develop a better understanding of the process by which designers in large development organizations transform information about customer requirements into the final design specification. To improve our understanding of this process, Antonio J. Bailetti and Paul F. Litva examine design managers' perspectives on the sources of customer requirement information. During the evolution of a product design, the design team applies information that is endorsed by marketing and product management. Common sources of such information include commercial specifications, inferences from existing products and services, deployment studies, and external standards. When this management-endorsed information is deemed inadequate, designers supplement it by creating and sharing their own customer-related information. This local information includes the results of benchmarking function and performance, the designers' perceptions of a service provider's installed base of equipment, and validations of intermediate designs. Marketing and product management cannot easily review the local information that designers create and share in evolving a final design. This article highlights the importance of creating mechanisms for ensuring that customer requirement information from various sources is internally consistent. To meet this goal of consistency, organizations must ensure that customer requirements information produced by marketing satisfies the information processing requirements of the design community. In addition, the knowledge that designers actually apply to produce a design must incorporate customer requirement information endorsed by marketing and product management at all stages of product development.     

Why Mortgage Borrowers Persevere: An Explanation of First and Second Lien Performance Mismatch

Borrowers with a pair of mortgages collateralized by the same property sometimes continue to make payments on one while defaulting on the other. We articulate a framework for understanding this performance mismatch that emphasizes two types of borrowers: those with stable equity positions who perceive they are facing moderate or temporary liquidity shocks, and those facing severe financial stress in combination with negative equity. The former have an incentive to enter mismatch and subsequently cure, while the latter would default on both contracts. Our empirical analysis using newly available, national samples of matched first‐ and second‐lien mortgages supports this view.