Leadership marketing: an exploratory study

In an era when collaboration is the key to business prosperity, the ability to develop one truly coherent and agile brand lived by its employees and delivered to external stakeholders has become extremely challenging. Unity between the internal brand and a company’s external image, when change is the only constant, has almost ceased to exist. The marketing function is frequently underemphasised at board level and its role is often devalued in leading organisational change. This paper concerns how marketing can partner with organisational leadership for a mutually beneficial exchange of skills and capabilities to be able to reinvent organisations rapidly enough to cope with shifts in the external business environment and create a sustainable future for the business. This paper explores the concept of “leadership marketing” from an interpretivist perspective which challenges the conventional view of marketing and leadership as two separate fields and offers a holistic approach for business management and brand alignment.     

Caring and Conflicted: Mothers’ Ethical Judgments about Consumption

Literature on consumer ethics tends to focus on issues within the public sphere, such as the environment, and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic, and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically masculine understanding of morality, which foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating the importance of context to consumption decisions and articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation of care ethics provides both theoretical insights and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an ethical consumption orientation (representing impartial concerns) with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied more widely.     

Clarifying the Relationship between Involvement Variables and Advertising Effectiveness among Young People

Previous research has indicated the need for an in-depth investigation of the role of involvement variables in advertising information processing among young people, in view of the unsuitability of existing adult persuasion models for a young population, the inadequate consideration of involvement variables among young people and the unique characteristics of this population. This study examined the effects of advertising involvement and product involvement on advertising effectiveness among young people, using a quantitative study of 252 4–15-year olds. Results show that advertising involvement and product involvement had a positive direct effect on ad effectiveness. In addition, all endogenous variables—subjective product knowledge, peer and parent influence and age—had an indirect effect on ad effectiveness, via advertising involvement and product involvement. Interestingly, subjective product knowledge and peer influence had no direct effect on ad effectiveness, but rather only an indirect effect. This study presents a more accurate depiction of the complexity of the process and shows that advertising involvement and product involvement contribute to a better understanding of the process among young people.     

Financial Education and Counseling—Still Holding Promise

This article reviews the evaluation literature on financial education and counseling for adults in order to synthesize implications for research and practice. Most evaluations report positive impacts, but the findings are often small when compared with valid comparison groups. Many evaluations use self-reported measures, measure outcomes over short time periods and cannot rule out selection bias due to nonrandomized designs, all of which may bias results. Although future research and practice in this field hold promise, more attention to theory-based evaluations and further investment in randomized field experiments may be fruitful.     

Preventing motor vehicle crash injuries and deaths: science vs. folklore lessons from history

Abstract

Not long after the beginnings of motorization in the early 1900s, deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes became a problem in a number of high-income-countries (HIC)s, especially the United States. With the biggest problem the US led early efforts to address this issue, and for six decades these efforts were based on folklore (ie a body of widely held but false or unsubstantiated beliefs). They were not evaluated, but clearly were unsuccessful as crash deaths and injuries continued to rise. It was not until the 1970s that a broader range of countermeasures began to be adopted and was scientifically evaluated, and as a result, crash deaths and injuries declined. This history has important lessons today for many low-and-middle-income countries that have growing numbers of motor vehicle crash deaths and injuries, many of which are pedestrians and motorcyclists. This is because there continue to be advocates for many of the failed approaches (especially educational) that dominated the early efforts in HICs.     

Fiscal rule compliance,poverty and social exclusion in the Eurozone

This paper develops a simple model of the effects of fiscal adjustments on poverty. Our theory suggests that in richer countries the effects of fiscal adjustment are stronger the more complex is the poverty measure. By examining a panel of 16 EU countries in the period 2005–2015, the paper finds that structural public balance adjustments may harm the welfare of poorer individuals. The empirical estimation hinges on a comprehensive index of poverty and social exclusion, the AROPE index. The results suggest that rigid fiscal rules require specific alternative policies to sustain the welfare of poorer individuals during downturns.     

Managerial Views of Corporate Impacts and Dependencies on Ecosystem Services: A Case of International and Domestic Forestry Companies in China

A line of research is emerging investigating the private sector impacts and dependencies on critical biodiversity and ecosystem services, and related business risks and opportunities. While the ecosystem services narrative is being forwarded globally as a key paradigm for promoting business sustainability, there is scarce knowledge of how these issues are considered at managerial level. This study thus investigates managerial views of corporate sustainability after the ecosystem services concept. We analyse interviews conducted with 20 managers from domestic and international forestry companies operating with a plantation-based business model in China. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data, with a focus on four key areas: (1) interviewee familiarity with the ecosystem services concept; (2) their views of corporate dependencies and impacts on ecosystem services; (3) related business risks and opportunities; and (4) viability of existing instruments and practices that can be employed in detecting and addressing business impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services. Through an inductive approach to the empirical findings, we refined a framework that holds operational value for developing company response strategies to ecosystem services impact/dependence assessment, ensuring that all issues are addressed comprehensively, and that related risks and opportunities are properly acknowledged.     

The State Strikes Back: the end of economic reform in China? by Nicholas R. Lardy

Business Economics -     

The dramatic breakdown of the market orientation concept in the pharmaceutical industry: lessons from Vioxx

In this article we present an in-depth case study to better understand the underlying market orientation concept in relation to bringing new technologies to the marketplace. We use the case history of the anti-arthritis drug Vioxx, developed and marketed by the company Merck & Co. Inc that allegedly killed thousands of customers. The case shows how market orientation can take shape and how the key components may form an explosive cocktail prone to problematic behaviour rather than a synergistic set of orientations that creates value for customers. From the data covering 20 years, it is clear that a consumer orientation and competitor orientation, for example, are difficult to internalise and balance by employees. A competitive orientation seems to lead to tunnel vision regarding profit and market share outcomes. Implications for the fundamental market orientation concept, innovation management, together with management challenges are discussed.