Workshop Description:
In this workshop, the focus was on faculty motivation as a major driver for the integration of sustainability into higher education institutions. For instance, discussion groups with students at the University of St. Gallen suggest that faculty’s authenticity in presenting sustainability issues is of major importance in order to fully integrate sustainability into higher education curricula. However, in order to reach this authenticity, faculty need to be convinced by the goals and content of education for sustainability.
In the workshop, we started out with a student’s point of view on good and bad practices of teaching at the University of St. Gallen. As a next step, we asked the participants to reflect on what they perceive as key challenges regarding motivation and ability to integrate sustainability in higher education. Working with these challenges, 3-4 groups became experts on certain motivational issues and worked out recommendations for the other groups on particular questions, such as
Which good practices regarding the integration of sustainable development in the curriculum can we communicate to our faculty?
What are drivers for faculty to integrate sustainable development into their curriculum?
What kind of support is needed by faculty? What measures/tools/ideas do exist?
The systematic integration of sustainable development into Higher Education curricula remains a challenge for many universities. Among other aspects, faculty motivation to include sustainable development into their courses seems to be crucial. However, empirical research regarding faculty motivation in the context of sustainable development is scarce. Based on the motivational systems theory, this paper aims to provide insights into how faculty can be motivated. This study is based on a literature review on faculty motivation and an interview study. Results include faculty’s motivators as well as obstacles to integrate sustainable development into their curricula. For instance, faculty’s capability and context beliefs are important levers for faculty motivation. This research contributes to the theory of integrating sustainable development into Higher Education and advances our insights into faculty motivation. From a practical viewpoint, it also provides insights into possible support
measures for faculty.
When confronted with the decision of how to pass on ownership and management, incumbent family business owners can choose between two different justice principles: Equality and equity. While equality typically represents the justice principle that prevails in the family sphere, equity is the prevalent justice principle in the business sphere. Our paper investigates which justice principle incumbents intend to choose when passing on the business within the family, and how the related preferences alter depending family influence in ownership and management. Based on survey responses of 1’258 owner-managers, we found that ownership and management are passed on according to different justice principles. Surprisingly, an increased family influence in ownership leads to a preference for the equity principle in management and ownership succession. With our study, we contribute to the literatures of family business succession, justice and governance.
Given the importance of the entrepreneurial founding team (EFT) at the top of a venture and the frequently observed turnovers within those teams, we investigate how EFT entries and exits impact new venture growth post transition. As turnovers have a negative impact on team members’ relational embeddedness and cohesion, we hypothesize that turnovers negatively impact venture growth. We further hypothesize that this negative relationship changes when the transition occurs for dyadic versus triadic teams. Employing a database on German start-ups, we find a negative succession-growth relationship which is greater for triadic teams. With our research, we contribute to the literatures on firm growth and entrepreneurial teams.
As family firms are often portrayed as path-dependent failing to implement organizational change, succession can act as a path breaker or amplifier affecting post-succession organizational change. We provide a model that investigates the power of the incumbent in the pre- and post-succession period as important determinants for organizational change post-succession.
We present the results of an empirical study, in which we analyze the ability of the Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) operator to model actual preferences in a multi-attribute ranking task. We compare the OWA to a competing model (Simple Additive Weighting SAW), and we also study whether its characteristic feature, the ability to represent different attitudes toward compensation among attributes, is reflected in the preferences provided by subjects. We find that in general, the OWA model fits slightly less well to empirical data. Subjects whose preferences are better explained by the SAW model are also more consistent in their choice behavior. Our results furthermore indicate that preferences of most subjects are not fully compensatory. Thus the ability of the OWA operator to represent different attitudes toward compensation can be a useful feature in modeling actual preferences. The structure of the weights estimated for the OWA operator also suggests that it might provide a good approximation to certain types of decision heuristics.
Based on literature review on private labels (PL), co-branding and celebrity branding, a conceptual framework is developed in which a celebrity brand is used in a co-branding setting as a quality signal for a premium PL product. Similar to previous studies that are limited to PL and national brands (NB) as brand allies in a co-branding setting, we propose that the improved consumer evaluations of a celebrity co-branded, chain-labeled PL product will spill over to the first brand ally. That is the retailer and more specifically his brand image. Since previous research indicates a positive effect of retailer’s brand image on consumer evaluations of its PL, we also suggest that a celebrity co-branding strategy will indirectly (via retailer’s brand image as a mediator), improve consumer evaluations of an individual retailer’s PL product of any tier. The goal of the research is to contribute to the calls for more research on private label and branding as well as on retailer brand equity. This study provides the foundation for and should encourage further research in this area.
Retailers have used celebrity endorsement (CE), an advertising strategy, for several decades to advertise the retailer’s brand or their private labels (PL); however, the emergence of celebrity co-branding (CCOB), a branding strategy, in combination with PL is a relatively new trend worldwide. Evidence from practice indicates that the most successful co-branded premium PL are the ones offering a wide range of products. Apart from superior brand management, this trend might be a result of consumers’ perceived impact of CCOB increasing with the number of products co-branded by the same brand allies. The existing CE, CCOB, and traditional co-branding literature have not yet addressed the effect of multiple applications of any of these strategies on a range of products within the same brand (i.e., celebrity application frequency). However, applying existing findings on the effect of one endorser recommending many different brands to our research context, we hypothesize a negative impact when a spokesperson endorses multiple products within a brand. We propose that consumers perceive CE and CCOB differently when the number of endorsed or co-branded products increases. Indeed, our experiment reveals an interaction between celebrity application type and celebrity application frequency but no main effects. This finding indicates that when either strategy is applied multiple times within the same brand, product evaluations increase in the case of CCOB and decrease in the case of CE.
