The entrepreneurship literature pays increasing attention to the ethical aspects of the field. However, only a fragmented understanding is known about how the context influences the ethical judgment ...of entrepreneurs. We argue that individual socio-cultural background, organizational and societal context shape entrepreneurial ethical judgment. In our article, we contribute to contemporary literature by carving out the intersections between Ethics and Entrepreneurship. We do this by employing a two-step research approach: 1) We use bibliometric techniques to analyze 719 contributions in Business and Economics research and present a comprehensive contextual picture of ethics in entrepreneurship research by a analyzing the 30 most relevant foundation articles. 2) A subsequent content analysis of the 50 most relevant academic contributions was carried with an enlarged database out to augment these findings, detailing ethics and entrepreneurship research on an individual, organizational and societal level of analyses. By comparing the two analyses, this paper concludes by outlining possible avenues for future research.
Regular for-profit companies might claim social and environmental goals, beyond their primary economic objectives, but sustainability-driven for-profit hybrids explicitly design and implement their ...organizational activities to pursue social, environmental and economic goals equivalently, which typically generates tensions, inherent to their hybrid nature. The ability to address these tensions is key to these organizations’ success, yet the manner in which they do so remains poorly understood. In this case-based qualitative study, the authors explicate how specific individual and collective practices contribute continuously to alleviating hybridity-related tensions among for-profit hybrids and allow them to achieve success. With a micro-foundational perspective on for-profit hybrids’ dynamic capabilities, this study’s findings identify four central, dynamic capabilities of for-profit hybrids, supported by respective sets of micro-foundations. Nine of these micro-foundations contribute specifically to addressing central tensions, to different extents. This study thus highlights how for-profit hybrids embrace hybridity-related tensions to foster the creation of sustainable value.
The current refugee crisis has broad ramifications for societies. In the domain of tourism, such socio-political or human-made disasters raise questions about security, but may also affect ...perceptions of a destination's openness and hospitality. This paper discusses the relative importance of security and openness in terms of destination image and the willingness to visit a place affected by the refugee crisis. In an online scenario study, we studied these effects and explored country differences for four different countries (Austria, Germany, UK and USA; N = 2612) in this regards. Our results show that the perceived security of a place becomes a stronger predictor for destination choice during a crisis. Yet, contrary to our assumption, a crisis decreases the importance of a place's perceived openness. Thus, our study raises doubts that the refugee crisis benefits tourism by providing an opportunity to show openness and hospitality – as some researchers and practitioners had hoped.
•The current refugee crisis affects tourist behavior and destination image alike.•We discuss how the crisis affects the importance of perceived security and openness.•We use an online scenario study with four different countries (AT, GER, UK, US).•Perceived security becomes a stronger predictor for destination choice in a crisis.•Perceived openness only shows a stronger impact for two countries (AT, GER).
Literature increasingly acknowledges stakeholders’ voluntary involvement in formerly internal processes and structures of nonprofit organizations. This article contributes to extant literature by ...investigating how stakeholders get involved in and co-create brand strategy, a core intangible asset for nonprofit organizations. To this end, the article conceptualizes the process of nonprofit brand strategy co-creation from a strategy-as-practice perspective and empirically investigates this process in the context of a child care facility. The article identifies four processes characterizing strategic branding praxis—informing, relating, caring, and reassuring—that manifest in a variety of situated practices and foster the maintenance of a strategic status quo. The data further show a dynamic interplay of stability and adaptation shaped by individual, organizational, and market contexts. These findings provide the basis for proposing a model of brand strategy co-creation that synthesizes the social and contextual dynamics characterizing brand strategy development in a nonprofit context.
This article investigates the linkages between brand authenticity, brand trust, and SME growth from a CEO perspective. Brand authenticity is operationalized as consisting of three factors: brand ...consistency, brand customer orientation, and brand congruency. The hypotheses derived in this paper will be tested with new measures and data from 285 German SMEs using structural equation modeling. The results confirm that brand consistency and congruency foster brand trust, which in turn drives SME growth.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is changing the rules of branding but it is unclear how. While the literature offers a range of approaches seeking insight to how to manage CSR-related issues, ...practitioners are left in a state of confusion when having to decide on how to tackle CSR in a way that benefits both the corporate brand and society at large. Based on qualitative empirical research, this article offers a framework for companies to address CSR and their brands strategically, whether as entrepreneurs, performers, vocal converts, or quietly conscientious. We define these categories according to the level of involvement, integration, and the key initiator of the CSR focus. This article concludes with suggestions practitioners should keep in mind when aiming to balance stakeholder tensions and to achieve consistency in their corporate branding and CSR efforts.
Brand research increasingly recognizes the active role of multiple stakeholders in co-creating brand meaning and the importance of new social media supporting stakeholders in their co-creation ...efforts. However, empirical insights into the social process of online multi-stakeholder brand meaning co-creation are so far missing. This study contributes to existing research by illuminating the social dynamics that characterize multi-stakeholder brand meaning co-creation in a virtual environment. The authors undertake an online discursive inquiry focusing on stakeholders’ textual interactions regarding the UK Gate Gourmet brand crisis. The empirical study aggregates online stakeholder texts to illustrate (a) relationships between salient stakeholders and (b) discursive strategies and resources stakeholders apply to co-create brand meaning. The article concludes that brand meaning results from simultaneous interactions between interdependent stakeholders in a network (termed multi-log). Successfully managing brands requires management's active engagement in this multi-log.
With the global financial system having undergone vast changes since the financial crisis of 2007, scientific research concerning the investor’s point of view on sustainable investments has ...drastically increased. However, there remains a lack of research focused on the entrepreneur’s angle regarding sustainable oriented investments. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of sustainable financial markets by bringing together entrepreneurial and financial research. This paper provides a structured literature review, based on which the authors identify three relevant levels that they believe have an effect on the successful implementation of managerial sustainable practices; these are the individual, the firm, and the contextual levels. The results show that on the individual level sustainable entrepreneurs tend to derive their will to act more sustainably from their personal values or traits. On the organizational level, though, it can be concluded that an small and medium sized enterprise’s internal culture and the reconfiguration of resources are critical determinants for adopting a sustainable entrepreneurial orientation. Finally, on the contextual level, researchers have focused on a better understanding of how entrepreneurs can help society and the environment through sustainable entrepreneurship, and how they can act as role models or change agents in light of the fact that the choice of investing or financing based on sustainability is still in its infancy. By providing an overview on facilitating factors for responsible managerial practices on the entrepreneur’s side, this research contributes to a better understanding for both theory and practice on how sustainable practices can be implemented and facilitated.
Up till now, only few researchers have looked at the dynamics that develop when citizens' collective actions co-create and eventually co-destruct a city brand. This research paper analyzes the ...interplay between urban policies and grassroots city brand development during the refugee crisis that had its peak in autumn 2015 in Germany. We chose the city of Munich (Germany) as the case, because the city has managed to communicate itself as an open and tolerant place. However currently, this city has increasingly been jeopardized by the refugee crisis and thus constitutes an extreme case illustrating city brand co-creation and potential co-destruction dynamics. Based on our qualitative research, we derive three propositions about city brand co-creation and co-destruction which aim to stimulate future research. In doing so, this research is a highly relevant example for cities in crisis, where collective action is supporting as well as challenging the co-created meaning of a place (brand).
•We show that city brands are affected by urban policies and grassroots dynamics at the same time.•We discuss the impact of the current refugee crisis on the city brand Munich.•Hereby it is shown how the city brand is co-constructed by its residents.•Also the threat of a city brands' co-destruction by its residents is discussed.
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