The four pillars of corporate responsibility: ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how to further embed CSR thinking and practice into corporations, particularly in emerging markets, by reviewing and drawing similarities between key issues faced by all senior managers, namely ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a conceptual exploration of global CSR practices using social psychology and overlays this concept with strategic and institutional theory in order to encourage new ways of thinking about CSR adoption, especially in emerging markets. Findings – The paper reveals the importance of shareholder needs on global corporate decision making and applies alternative conceptual models to help businesses to devise better CSR practices and individuals to align their actions to their own values. Originality/value – This paper strongly argues for blending different theoretical foundations from the management and organization literature in order to draw comparisons between current global CSR practice and the potential for its further adoption in emerging markets.

Introducing matrix management within a children's services setting - personal reflections

This article reflects on the introduction of ‘matrix management’ arrangements for an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) within a Children’s Service Directorate of a Local Authority (LA). It seeks to demonstrate critical self-awareness, consider relevant literature with a view to bringing insights to processes and outcomes, and offers recommendations regarding the use of matrix management. The report arises from an East Midland’s LA initiative: ALICSE − Advanced Leadership in an Integrated Children’s Service Environment. Through a literature review and personal reflection, the authors consider the following: possible tensions within the development of matrix management arrangements; whether matrix management is a prerequisite within complex organizational systems; and whether competing professional cultures may contribute barriers to creating complementary and collegiate working. The authors briefly consider some research paradigms, notably ethnographic approaches, soft systems methodology, activity theory and appreciative inquiry. These provide an analytic framework for the project and inform this iterative process of collaborative inquiry. Whilst these models help illuminate otherwise hidden processes, none have been implemented following full research methodologies, reflecting the messy reality of local authority working within dynamic organizational structures and shrinking budgets. Nevertheless, this article offers an honest reflection of organizational change within a children’s services environment.

The organization of emotionally autobiographical memories: How emotional knowledge for personal events is represented in autobiographical knowledge base?

The present study aimed to investigate the organization of autobiographical memory and to reveal how emotional knowledge for personal events is represented in autobiographical knowledge base. For these purposes, the event-cueing technique was employed (Brown & Schopflocher, 1998). Forty-six participants were provided eight retrieval cues and asked to generate a personal event related to each of them (i.e., cueing events). Following this, they responded to each cueing event by retrieving two personal episodes (i.e., cued events). The results indicated that cued events shared the life themes with cueing events, suggesting the thematic organization of autobiographical memory. We also found that the life themes of each personal episode determined types of emotional states with which they were associated. The implications for the affect and memory literature and the emotion regulation literature were discussed.

The history curriculum and its personal connection to students from minority ethnic backgrounds

Whereas history is seen by some as crucial in developing a sense of identity and fostering social cohesion, it is however, often based around narrowly nationalistic views of the past, and yet little is known about how students relate to the past they are taught. Thus, this paper focuses on the history curriculum and the ways in which students aged 12-14, from different ethnic backgrounds, relate to it. Moreover, the small-scale study which enabled this paper, focused, in particular, on whether students enjoyed and valued history and whether they felt any sense of personal connection to the topics studied. Drawing on survey data collected from 102 students and focus group discussions with 42 students, from two high schools, the findings indicate that although many students enjoy history, they fail to fully understand its value. Additionally most students, especially those from minority ethnic backgrounds, feel a lack of personal connection to the past, as they do not see themselves in the history they are taught.

The brand likeability scale: an exploratory study of likeability in firm-level brands

We develop a new measurement scale to assess consumers’ brand likeability in firm-level brands. We present brand likeability as a multidimensional construct. In the context of service experience purchases, we find that increased likeability in brands results in: (1) greater amount of positive association; (2) increased interaction interest; (3) more personified quality; and (4) increased brand contentment. The four-dimensional multiple-item scale demonstrates good psychometric properties, showing strong evidence of reliability as well as convergent, discriminant and nomological validity. Our findings reveal that brand likeability is positively associated with satisfaction and positive word of mouth. The scale extends existing branding research, providing brand managers with a metric so that likeability can be managed strategically. It addresses the need for firms to act more likeably in an interaction-dominated economy. Focusing on likeability acts as a differentiator and encourages likeable brand personality traits. We present theoretical implications and future research directions on the holistic brand likeability concept.

Exploring brand attachment, its determinants and outcomes

Brand attachment has been regarded as a powerful and salient construct in marketing, argued to predict favourable consumer behaviours. Nevertheless, research trying to understand what are the determinants and outcomes of it is still limited. Using semi-structured interviews and projective techniques, this work identifies that self-congruity, experience, responsiveness, quality, reputation and trust are found to be the determinants of strong brand attachment. The outcomes of brand attachment are intention to recommend, purchase, revisit, resilience to negative information and act of defending the brand. This research sheds light for marketers in understanding the conceptualisation of attachment from the consumers' perspectives, so adopting an important perspective largely under-researched. In addition, this study guides marketers in the important factors regarding how to build stronger attachment and benefit from its outcomes.

The dark side of brand attachment: a conceptual framework of brand attachment's detrimental outcomes

Brand attachment recently has received great attention among practitioners and academics alike. Scholars consider brand attachment a key requisite in consumer-brand relationships that create favourable consumer behaviours such as positive brand attitudes and brand loyalty. Few studies, however, examine the detrimental outcomes of brand attachment. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework that explores how brand attachment may explain detrimental consumer behaviours, such as oppositional brand loyalty and antibrand actions. We investigate consumers' trash-talking and schadenfreude in brand communities and their subsequent outcomes. Our framework reveals that the link between brand attachment and oppositional brand loyalty is driven by consumers' social identity and sense of rivalry. Furthermore, we put forward that brand attachment leads to anti-brand actions when relationships deteriorate. We identify two factors behind the deterioration: (1) companies' opportunism activities, and (2) incongruity between consumers' values and the brand's values. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed arising from our emerging 'dark side' brand attachment framework.

Coaching SME managers: business development or personal therapy? A mixed methods study

While a growing number of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are making use of coaching, little is known about the impact such coaching has within this sector. This study sought to identify the factors that influence managers' decision to engage with coaching, their perceptions of the coaching ‘journey’ and the kinds of benefits accruing from coaching: organisational, personal or both. As part of a mixed methods approach, a survey tool was developed based upon a range of relevant management competencies from the UK's Management Occupational Standards and responses analysed using importance-performance analysis, an approach first used in the marketing sector to evaluate customer satisfaction. Results indicate that coaching had a significant impact on personal attributes such as ‘Managing Self-Cognition’ and ‘Managing Self-Emotional’, whereas the impact on business-oriented attributes was weaker. Managers' choice of coaches with psychotherapeutic rather than non-psychotherapeutic backgrounds was also statistically significant. We conclude that even in the competitive business environment of SMEs, coaching was used as a largely personal, therapeutic intervention rather than to build business-oriented competencies.