The Impact of Communicating Sustainability and Ethical Behaviour of the Cosmetic Producers: Evidence from Thailand

Purpose—This study aims to demonstrate the antecedent factors of consumers’ cosmetics purchasing behaviour in the emerging market of Thailand from the perspective of sustainability. Specifically, the study aims to quantitatively analyse the impact of three hypothesised antecedents of consumer behaviour: product quality, communicating sustainability, and ethical business behaviour. Methodology—A quantitative methodology is applied in the study, which collects survey data from Thailand. This study focuses on two cosmetic brands in Thailand, a domestic brand and an international brand. The total 800-sample dataset was analysed using Structural Equation Modelling to validate a conceptual model with measurements of three antecedent factors: quality, ethical behaviour, and communication sustainability. Findings—It is found that ‘ethical behaviour of the producers had a non-significant impact for all samples and the ‘domestic brand’, whereas communicating sustainability had a significant impact in all sample cases. The proposed measurement scales present a practical and pioneering tool for assessing consumer responses and behaviour towards cosmetic brands. The set of scales will also help cosmetics marketers to appraise their strategic planning and monitor their progress toward creating and identifying consumer loyalty to cosmetics brands via producers’ ethical behaviour and CSR messaging. Originality—The global market and inter-stakeholder communications have greatly changed the way people perceive, behave towards, and react to business suppliers. The understanding of consumer brand loyalty in the cosmetics industry and the business strategies focused on the impact of communicating sustainability with ethical behaviour remain limited, especially in the context of the emerging market. This research contributes to filling this gap with empirical analyses.

Student leadership programme: igniting the young minds

Learning outcomes This case will help students to understand the following: Develop a basic understanding of competency building processes. Learn about the mentoring process and its application in leadership development. Develop awareness about the methodology for assessment of the effectiveness of training. Case overview/synopsis Dr A. R. K. Pillai founded the Indian Leprosy Foundation in 1970 in response to the national call by late Mrs Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India, to the public-spirited people to take up leprosy eradication. It collaborated with international agencies to reduce leprosy drastically in India from four million, in 1982 to around a hundred thousand cases in 2006. In 2006, the Indian Leprosy Foundation was renamed as Indian Development Foundation (IDF) as the trustees decided to expand the work of IDF in the areas of health, children’s education and women’s empowerment. Dr Narayan Iyer, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IDF initiated a leadership development intervention called the Students’ leadership programme (SLP) for children in the age group of 12 to 14, from the urban poor households in 2014. It was a structured mentoring programme spanning over three months in collaboration with the schools. It aimed at incubating skills in the areas of leadership, teamwork, personality, behavioural traits and provided career guidance. It had a humble beginning in 2014 with a coverage of 50 students. Initially, IDF welcomed executives from the corporate sector as mentors. As there was a need to rapidly expand the scope of SLP to the other cities of India, IDF tied up with the graduate colleges and invited the students to be the mentors. The other objective behind this move was to create social awareness among the students from more affluent strata of society. IDF was able to dramatically increase the participation of the students through SLP by approximately up to 100,000 by 2020. However, rapid progress threw up multiple challenges. The teachers complained about the non-availability of the students for regular classes to teach the syllabus as the students were busy with SLP. The schools forced IDF to shorten the duration of SLP to two months. Also, many undergraduate mentors were unable to coach the participants due to lack of maturity and found wanting to strike a rapport with them. There was a shortage of corporate executives who volunteered for the mentoring, due to work pressures. Dr Narayan, CEO & National Coordinator and Ms Mallika Ramchandran, the project head of SLP at IDF, were worried about the desired impact of SLP on the participants and its sustainability due to these challenges. So, with the support of Dr Narayan, she initiated a detailed survey to assess the ground-level impact of SLP. The objective was to get clarity about what was working for SLP and what aspects needed to improve, to make the programme more effective. Overall feedback from the survey was very positive. The mothers had seen very positive changes in the participants’ behaviour post-SLP. The teachers had specific concerns about the effectiveness of undergraduate mentors. The need for a refresher course to inculcate ethical behaviour and the inadequacy of the two-month duration of the SLP to reinforce values were highlighted. Respondents also voiced the requirement to build responsible citizenship behaviours among the participants. Mallika was all for preparing a model to further enhance the effectiveness of SLP. Dr Narayan and Mallika embraced the challenge and they were raring to go to develop SLP as a cutting-edge leadership programme and to take it to new heights. Complexity academic level This case can be used in courses on human resource management in postgraduate and graduate management programmes. It can also be used in the general and development management courses and during executive education programmes to teach methodologies for evaluating the effectiveness of the training interventions, with emphasis on the voluntary sector. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

Responsible I(m)ovation in Asia Pacific regions

Over the past 20 years, a debate has developed on the differences between innovation and imitation strategies as mechanisms by which businesses operating in the Asia Pacific region may gain a competitive advantage. The current research contributes to this debate from a different perspective by exploring some of the challenges and opportunities associated with the combination of both strategies into what has been defined as imovation. Imovators and imovations do not stand alone in business ecosystems. Rather, they should be embraced in the context of sustainability-related virtues and emerging capabilities, such as ethical behaviour, co-responsibility and positive social impact. Taking dynamic capabilities as a theoretical lens, this paper conducts an empirical investigation of responsible imovation in a sample of 180 enterprises operating in the Asia Pacific market. In particular, this research evaluates the relationship between dynamic capabilities and imovation capabilities using a logistic regression analysis whereby we correlate the three main features of imovation strategies: strategic alliances, strategic decision-making and product innovations. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to focus on responsible imovation in the Asia Pacific market from an empirical perspective. The research highlights the key organisational and individual actions with the potential both to preserve existing capabilities and to create and integrate new ones. Our findings highlight the importance of technology adoption for responsible imovation to become more effective and accessible to imovators in the Asia Pacific business ecosystem. We conclude that responsible imovations combined with product-level innovations and core dynamic capabilities pave the way towards more rapid growth and a more sustainable competitive advantage.

THE ROLE OF ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND NORMS IN THE PROCESS OF PROFESSIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION OF STUDENT YOUTH IN TECHNOLOGY LESSONS

The article reveals the essence of ethical norms and principles, their importance for the objective and impartial process of professional self-determination of students in the process of technological training in general secondary education. The ethical principles of the career guidance process are identified and characterized. They are as follows voluntary actions of the optant; lack of evaluation labels on professional activities; the desire for a friendly understanding of personal needs; the confidentiality of the process and results of career guidance work; a combination of voluntariness and obligation while using methods of diagnosing professional intentions; in the interaction of teacher and student; observance of professional culture and dignity of the teacher. The main functions and tasks of ethical behaviour of the teacher in this process are the moral regulation of professional and personal relations, improving the professional skills of the teacher, developing his professionalism. We also identified and analysed the principles of designing methods of influencing (correction, development, improvement) on the personality of a teenager related to and integrated with moral and ethical principles and norms. In addition, the author describes the indicators of professional readiness of teachers to promote professional self-determination of adolescents, which are focused on solving problems of the student, polyreactivity of the teacher to personally significant problems of the student, realistic assessment of their capabilities by adolescents, constant awareness and consideration of the mutual influence of individuals in the process of professional self-determination, awareness of self-worth and human dignity, environmental friendliness of psychodiagnostic and developmental activities. Key words: professional self-determination of students; career guidance; ethics; ethical behaviour; ethical principles; teacher professionalism; technology teacher; personality.

Whistleblowers or Offenders? A Judicial Approach to Whistleblowing – The LuxLeaks Case

The aim of this article is to study the role of judges and their impact on the retaliation processes initiated by organisations against whistleblowers. More specifically, we question the normative logics used by judges to validate or invalidate such processes. To this end, we cross-check and analyse judicial data from the LuxLeaks case (2010–2018). Our results firstly enable us to establish a relationship between, on the one hand, the interpretative power of judges and their profile and, on the other, the attitude that judges may have at the end of the retaliation process towards whistleblowers, that is, retaliatory actors or protective actors. Our results also explain the normative dynamics that permeate the judicial retaliation process. They show that judges can challenge existing legal norms, clarify and operationalise others, and create new norms regulating ethical behaviour in organisations.

Towards an Ethics of Unity: An Ecological Approach to Overcoming Dispossession in Academic Libraries

Crisis narratives are stories meant to persuade that one exists in a state of emergency. Under extractive capitalism, crisis narratives frame the scope of ethical behaviour in response to crisis. Once set, these crisis ethics promote conformity in labour practices to avoid catastrophe. Surrendering the means to self-define priorities, values, and identity of the academic library profession creates a more pliable work force. This essay uses critical and philosophical methods to apply lessons learned from landscapes ruined by extractive capitalism to professional library practice fractured by alienation, diremption, and dispossession. A critique of the exploitation of ethics of fear and hope is offered, along with a method for identifying these as they appear in crisis narratives. The essay concludes with a recommendation to pursue an ethics of unity, predicated on promoting flourishing through professional mutualism, dedication to direct action, and a focus on sustainability.

The Belief-Desire-Intention Architecture of Sincere Software Agent Environment

Software agent is autonomous technology that helps a lot the human being in performing the task. The capability of agent to take actions on behalf of human is one of the reasons why researchers or developers of autonomous systems adapt the human characteristics either in the form of physical or behaviours. Sincerity is one of ethical human behaviour that can be instilled in software agent environment system. To instil the ethical behaviour such as sincerity, the belief-desire-intention (BDI) architecture should be designed. This paper explains the BDI architecture for sincere software agent environment system during performing task.

THE PLACE OF INTELLIGENCE IN THE PRODUCTIVITY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE ENTERPRISES (SMEs): A SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE PARADIGM

For so long, intelligence quotient and to a greater extent, social intelligence has dominated organizational discussions on intelligence and its implication on performance. This study, however examined the place of spiritual intelligence on the productivity of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Nigeria. The study was anchored on the Theory of Rational Intelligence. A survey research design was adopted for the study, with a population of 400 SME owners. A census method was deployed for the work. The source of data was primary, and the analysis was done using simple regression, and hypothesis tested at a 5% level of significance. The result revealed that a 74% change in the innovative capabilities of SMEs is influenced by changes in ethical behaviour. The study, therefore, concluded that spiritual intelligence affects the productivity of SMEs in Southeast Nigeria. Hence, it was recommended among others that the owners of SMEs need to give their ethical conduct and behaviour an important place in their operations, as people will tend to trust and appreciate their innovativeness more, if they are seen to be spiritually intelligent. Keywords: Spiritual Intelligence, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, Productivity, Innovative Capabilities and Ethical Behaviour.

The effects of neoliberalism: Teachers’ experiences and ethical dilemmas to policy initiatives within vocational education and training in Australia

Neoliberal policy reforms have had a marked influence on nearly every aspect of education, including the enrolment practices employed by institutions, teaching and assessment practices, and even the outcomes for students and society. There is a widespread expectation that teachers should contribute to quality outcomes for students along with their moral/ethical development and character formation while at the same time behaving ethically in the currently challenging environment of the education sector, including the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. However, this apparent pressure for maintaining quality education while simultaneously conforming to the ethicality of professional practices in the context of rapid policy changes of a neoliberal sort masks considerable controversy around the meaning of quality education with respect to both moral/ethical behaviour in education and the appropriate forms of practice that would constitute this area of education. A recent research project into the impact of the changing contemporary cultural context of VET on the creation of moral dilemmas facing VET teachers in their work has identified the VET teachers’ perspectives of the ethical dilemmas experienced, by identifying the tensions between competing values and the resulting interactions. The research design for the study drew primarily on exploratory and discursive interviews with 18 VET teachers in South-East Queensland, selected from those responding to a call for participation in the study. The study pointed to the value of dilemmas as constructs through which to generate knowledge of ethical conflicts arising from contextual changes in policy. Four drivers that they attributed to causing those dilemmas were identified: changing immigration rules, changing funding requirements, changing culture and philosophy of RTOs, and inadequate teacher preparation. In each of these respects, the ambitious business expectations engendered by neoliberal restructuring and reform in recent years can be seen as articulating or presupposing values pertaining to standards of practice and performance of the RTO, which in turn can be seen to compromise traditional norms associated with teacher professionalism. It is with these values and conflicts that we are concerned in this paper.

The Value of Large Scale Tourism in Samoa

<p>During the mid to late seventies serious questions were raised regarding the value of mass tourism. This lead to the creation of the alternative development paradigm with its preference towards small scale, local and community based and controlled projects which have gained wide acceptance within the field of development studies. This research looks to reopen and examine the case against mass tourism as a development tool under the following arguments: · The initial assessment was done in the late seventies and a combination of changes in business practices and consumer demands for ethical behaviour has potentially changed the development outcomes for host nations · Governments have a greater and more balanced awareness of the range of development issues and enterprises need to respond to this · Alternative development suffers from similar criticisms to those that have been directed at mass tourism as well as some unique issues · Labour force training has been largely overlooked as critical step in maximising potential development outcomes for host nations · Two major critiques around power inequality (Britton 1983) and empowerment (Sofield 2003) are external subjective judgements about development outcomes where feedback and conclusions from within host populations might add additional insight. A survey questioning the impact a large scale development had on people’s lives was central to the research. However, due to difficulties getting survey data from a large scale development in Samoa the research has focused on providing the arguments above from literature and on secondary research aims of seeking the governments views and strategies to deal with tourism and linking these strategies back to literature.</p>