Protests against objectionable business practices have moved to the online environment. In this article, we launch research on the morality of online business protest tactics. Our work is positioned within the stakeholder approach and specifically addresses the legitimacy of stakeholder influences. We argue that online business protest tactics are irresponsible and thus morally illegitimate if they violate property rights or are unjustifiably deceptive. We present a framework for stakeholder managers’ responsible responses to online business protests and business protesters responsible use of online protest tactics.

This research investigates buyer–supplier relationships in international markets. Research and practice have shown that buyer–supplier relationships benefit when partners to the relationship exhibit a long-term orientation. The extant literature suggests that a buyer's trust of a supplier and the supplier's performance affect the buyer's long-term orientation toward the relationship. We propose that the relative effects of trust and performance on long-term orientation are moderated by culture – specifically the individualism/collectivism dimension. Hypotheses are tested on data from two individualist and two collectivist cultures, using responses from over 600 purchasing professionals in the United States, Anglophone Canada, Francophone Canada and Mexico. Taken together, empirical findings suggest that cultural differences warrant consideration in developing successful purchasing strategies.

While entrepreneurial activity has been an important force for social and ecological sustainability; its ef␣cacy is dependent upon the nature of market incentives. This limitation is sometimes explained by the metaphor of the prisoner's dilemma, which we term the green prison. In this prison, entrepreneurs are compelled to environmentally degrading behavior due to the divergence between individual rewards and collective goals for sustainable development. Entrepreneurs, however, can escape from the green prison by altering or creating the institutions—norms, property rights, and legislation—that establish the incentives of competitive games. We provide a variety of evidence of such entrepreneurial action and discuss its implications for theory and practice.

Current business strategies of increased responsiveness to customer needs and reduced costs through offshoring result in the need for faster and more frequent shipments over extended distances. This has an enormous negative impact on the environment. But are the top global companies addressing this impact, and if so, how? We examine the practices of a sample of the Fortune 500 and find that a small percentage is attempting to undertake initiativees to reduce the impact of their transportation in various ways. The initiatives follow a progression with many establishing a foundation for improved practices followed by implementing activities to reduce the company's footprint. The next level of progression is for these practices to spread to the supply chain. The final level is for firms to approach environmentally sustainable supply chain transportation strategically. We did not find any firms at this level in our study; however there are some that demonstrate the practices and commitment to make this a reality in the near future.

Purpose – Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in supply chains, particularly in those that function in highly competitive industries. The purpose of this paper is to understand more deeply the role sustainability plays within supply chains based on a qualitative study conducted in the New Zealand wine industry. Design/methodology/approach – This research followed a grounded theory methodology which used in-depth interviews with managers from wineries, retailers, and restaurants; observations of operations; and interpretation of field documents/artifacts. Findings – The findings show that managers within the New Zealand wine supply chains are trying to find ways to leverage sustainability-related competencies for competitive advantage in what is now a highly competitive industry. Within this context, the emergent theme of searching for advantage through sustainability involves: pursuing and leveraging sustainability; telling a story that involves sustainability; managing supply chain relationships around sustainability; and experimenting with sustainability initiatives. Research limitations/implications – The research is limited to the context and participants of the study. As a qualitative inquiry, findings are exploratory. The research implications, however, involve deeper studies into how wine industry firms in other nations and regions of the world are treating sustainability and searching for competitive advantages. Further validation of the models that emerge can be accomplished through future research, which would draw on aggregate data. Originality/value – The approach and context within which sustainability is explored is unique. By seeking deep insights from managers on the cutting edge of sustainability initiatives, we are able to get close to strategic thinking and explore the impact on distribution relationships.

Organizations have long struggled to find ways to reduce the occurrence of unethical behaviors by employees. Unfortunately, time theft, a common and costly form of ethical misconduct at work, has been understudied by ethics researchers. In order to remedy this gap in the literature, we used the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to investigate the antecedents of time theft, which includes behaviors such as arriving later to or leaving earlier from work than scheduled, taking additional or longer breaks than is acceptable, and on-the-job daydreaming. We surveyed 135 employed undergraduate business students regarding the TPB variables at Time 1. Two months later, participants reported the frequency they engaged in time theft since Time 1. Results indicate that behavioral, normative, and control beliefs significantly predicted attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, respectively. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, in turn, were significantly related to time theft intentions, which predicted later enactment of time theft. Thus, employers can decrease time theft by primarily focusing on altering employees’ attitudes toward time theft, followed by reducing social pressures to engage in it, and lastly, by implementing organizational practices that make it difficult to commit time theft.

This article reports on an experiment conducted that tested anti-tobacco advertising strategies aimed at a bicultural Mexican-American youth audience. The direct effects of three advertising themes (negative health consequences, social norms against smoking, and tobacco industry manipulation) and three language executions (English, Spanish, and “Spanglish”) on adolescent Hispanics’ evaluations of the advertisements were examined using a multilevel modeling approach. Additionally, participant-level measures for acculturation and tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors as potential moderators were included. Although all the tested advertisements were viewed favorably, results suggest that a negative health theme may be most effective in a community-wide campaign because it evokes the least amount of counter-arguing among smokers while, at the same time, eliciting positive evaluations from nonsmokers. Results also support the use of either Spanglish or English in the design of anti-tobacco advertising aimed at Mexican-American youths. The study contributes to practical knowledge by examining these factors in stimuli with a high level of ecological validity.

In this paper we uncover how status consumption operates amongst the middle classes in less industrialized countries (LICs). We believe this is particularly consequential today given the rapid emergence of a “new consumer” class in these countries-estimated at over 1.2 billion people, bigger than the West already, and expanding much more rapidly (Myers and Kent 2004). This emergent global class has discretionary purchasing power approaching Western levels and so they are able to pursue a consumption-focused lifestyle. These new consumers pose a crucial challenge in the global struggle to manage climate change. To the extent that they identify with and seek to emulate the carbon-intensive Western lifestyle, the challenge of addressing global warming becomes that much harder. Globalization research suggests that Bourdieu’s status consumption model, based upon Western research, does not provide an adequate explanation for status consumption in these countries. And what we call the global trickle-down model, often invoked to explain LIC status consumption, is even more imprecise. We study the status consumption strategies of upper-middle class Turkish women in order to revise thereof Bourdieu’s most important concepts –cultural capital, habitus, and consumption field- to propose a theory specific to the LIC context. We demonstrate that cultural capital is organized around orthodox practice of the Western Lifestyle myth, that cultural capital is deterriotalized and so accrues through distant textbook-like learning rather than via the habitus, and that the class fraction with lower cultural capital indigenizes the consumption field to sustain a national social hierarchy.