The effects of power on consumers’ evaluation of a luxury brand's corporate social responsibility

This paper examines how power affects consumers’ responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of luxury brands. The results of three studies show that high‐power individuals evaluated a luxury brand's CSR campaign more positively than low‐power individuals. High‐power individuals viewed CSR activities as being more fluent than low‐power individuals. This study further demonstrates that power influences consumers’ responses to nonluxury brand's CSR activities. Low‐power individuals, who are more receptive to warmth, evaluated nonluxury brand's CSR more favorably rather than high‐power individuals.     

Policy Uncertainty and the Dual Role of Corporate Political Strategies

Firms use active political strategies not only to mitigate uncertainty emanating from legislative activity, but also to enhance their growth opportunities. We find that a firm's systematic risk (beta) can be hedged away by employing various political strategies involving the presence of former politicians on corporate boards of directors, contributions to political campaigns, and corporate lobbying activities. The hedging effect is greater when firms operate in more uncertain industries. In addition, active political strategies are associated with greater firm heterogeneity and make real options more value relevant as potential drivers of competitive advantages in uncertain environments.     

Plausible versus implausible tensile price claim: Selective accessibility model approach

Retailers frequently use exaggerated price discount advertisements with a tensile price claim (TPC; e.g., “Save up to 70%”) to attract consumers because they expect that once consumers enter a store, they will purchase low‐ or medium‐discounted products. Drawing on the selective accessibility model, this study investigated the way in which an implausibly high maximum level of savings stated in a TPC influences consumers’ expected price discount (EPD) and perceptions of actual price discounts across different types of TPCs (i.e., TPC stating a maximum level and TPC stating a range of savings). This study also investigated two situations in which consumers have previous knowledge of a product’s price discount versus when they have less or no knowledge of the discount. For both conditions, a single‐anchor TPC (i.e., “Save up to Y%”) that stated an implausible maximum level of savings led to a higher EPD and lower perceptions of the deal (i.e., perceived savings, price fairness, and perceived value) with respect to the actual price discount than did a TPC with a plausible maximum level of savings. In contrast, when the TPC stated two anchors (i.e., “Save X–Y%”) and consumers had knowledge of the price discount, their EPDs assimilated only toward the plausible anchor (X), and ignored the implausibly high maximum price discount (Y), resulting in a lower EPD and higher perceptions of the deal of the actual price discounts than a TPC that stated a plausibly high maximum level of savings. In contrast, when consumers had no knowledge of the price discount, their EPDs only adjusted toward the more plausible anchor (X), regardless of whether they perceived the maximum anchor as plausible or implausible. Thus, there was no difference in consumers’ perceptions of “Save X–Y%” between implausibly and plausibly high Y%.     

Evidence of a glass ceiling for arts and culture professionals in Korea

Using the five available waves of the Wage Structure Survey data, this study employs quantile decomposition to investigate the existence of a glass ceiling among Korean professionals. The decomposition results for all professional workers show an inverse U-shape, which implies no evidence of a glass ceiling. However, we find a monotonically increasing pattern for arts and culture professionals, indicating strong evidence of a glass ceiling on their labour market. This result implies that, as the wage quantile moves from lower to higher levels, female professionals in arts and culture jobs face significant barriers to career advancement. This analysis supports the recent assertion of UNESCO that gender equality in culture is not immune to inequalities and discrimination.     

Determinants of students’ entrepreneurial intention to compete in a fast-pitch competition

Despite the heightened popularity of entrepreneurship education, there remain open questions regarding best practices in co-curricular programs. Using the theory of planned behavior, the authors examine how students’ intention is shaped to increase the likelihood of participation in entrepreneurship co-curricular programs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the relation between entrepreneurial identity and entrepreneurial intention theory. They find the popular personality trait, openness, is related to ambition, which reveals the interaction between personal elements (personality/identity) and contextual elements (aspirations to success/intention), a novel finding in the literature. This further illustrates the interconnectedness between the theory of planned behavior and the entrepreneurial event model     

Business ethics,economic development and protection of the environment in the new world order

The end of the cold war has elevated environmental issues to the highest level of concern for humanity while creating a world order dominated by the United States of America and other Western nations. This new power structure may likely lead to increased business activity in many parts of the world, as nations formerly preoccupied with the cold war turn their attention to economic development. This paper examines the linkages among ethics, economic development and protection and restoration of the environment in The New World Order.Emily F. Carasco is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Windsor. Her research focus is on international law and family law.Jang B. Singh is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of Windsor. His research focus is on ethical issues involved in the management process.     

Pandemic risk disclosure in integrated reports: after COVID-19 is hindsight 2020?

We examine whether, and to what extent companies disclosed pandemic risk and likely impact as part of their key risks or material matters immediately prior to 2020. The integrated/annual reports of 489 companies from six global regions were examined, finding that despite clear warnings from multiple fronts that highlighted the inevitability and imminence of a global pandemic, only 15.5 percent of companies disclosed anything related to pandemic risk. Of these, 71.1 percent were boilerplate in nature, providing minimal useful information to stakeholders. This study contributes to our understanding of integrated reporting, specifically regarding the adequacy of the disclosure of material risks.