CONSUMING CRAFT: THE INTERSECTION OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION IN NORTH CAROLINA CRAFT BEER MARKETS

Can consumer culture affect workplace identity? Asking such a question invites us to consider the linkages between social structures that produce goods or services, and those that facilitate their consumption. In recent decades, corporations have increasingly asked workers to draw on their identities as consumers to strengthen their effectiveness in the workplace. Corporations use the discourses of consumption to control workers. However, if we examine workplaces that are embeddedin the consumptive discourse, we may see a different pattern. In the craft beer workplaces of North Carolina, workers often use “beer talk,” to claim positive associations with their work—the same discourse that craft beer firms use to legitimate the consumption of beer. For workers, engagement with “beer talk” creates new opportunities for making work meaningful, transforming what could be considered “bad jobs” (i.e. servers and bartenders) into jobs that respondents truly enjoy. In this case, consumer culture can positively impact the workplace, since those social structures of production (or work) are closely embedded within structures of consumption. Implications for studying work in the post-Fordist period are discussed.Doctor of Philosoph

Advances in the sociology of trust and cooperation: theory, experiments, and field studies

The problem of cooperation and social order is one of the core issues in the social sciences. The key question is how humans, groups, institutions, and countries can avoid or overcome the collective good dilemmas that could lead to a Hobbesian war of all against all. Using the general set of social dilemmas as a paradigmatic example, rigorous formal analysis can stimulate scientific progress in several ways. The book, consisting of original articles, provides state of the art examples of research along these lines: theoretical, experimental, and field studies on trust and cooperation. The theoretical work covers articles on trust and control, reputation formation, and paradigmatic articles on the benefits and caveats of abstracting reality into models. The experimental articles treat lab based tests of models of trust and reputation, and the effects of the social and institutional embeddedness on behavior in cooperative interactions and possibly emerging inequalities. The field studies test these models in applied settings such as cooperation between organizations, informal care, and different kinds of collaboration networks. The book will be exemplary for rigorous sociology and social sciences more in general in a variety of ways: There is a focus on effects of social conditions, in particular different forms of social and institutional embeddedness, on social outcomes. Theorizing about and testing of effects of social contexts on individual and group outcomes is one of the main aims of sociological research. Modelling efforts include formal explications of micro-macro links that are typically easily overlooked when argumentation is intuitive and impressionistic Extensive attention is paid to unintended effects of intentional behavior, another feature that is a direct consequence of formal theoretical modelling and in-depth data-analyses of the social processe

Advances in the Sociology of Trust and Cooperation

The book identifies conditions for trust and cooperation. It highlights unintended consequences of individually rational behavior, and shows how trust and cooperation change dependent on social embeddedness. Such analyses inspire experimental tests in lab conditions, but also tests through empirical applications in field studies. The results of this mixed-method approach can in turn be used to inspire further theoretical work

Configuring the field of philanthropy in the age of social-mission platforms: A story of fragmented structuration and divergent boundary work

At the junction of private and public spheres, philanthropy is a social phenomenon open to controversies. That which constitutes giving private resources for public purposes evolves alongside societal developments. Philanthropy can be regarded as an issue field – that is, forming around the contested issue of what giving means and how to give. Given this issue-based nature and following digital evolutions, platform-based newcomers (i.e., social crowdfunding, -timing, and -sourcing platforms) have emerged at the fringes of philanthropy. This dissertation explores the configuration of philanthropy in this age of social-mission platforms. It focuses on the Belgian field of philanthropy. One feature of Belgian philanthropy is its fragmented infrastructure. The field lacks the meaning, operational and relational mechanisms to guide philanthropic organizations’ action and interaction. As a result, when facing newcomers, incumbent organizations did not offer a united front. This phenomenon is investigated through three papers. Considering the field infrastructure, the first paper documents field-structuring strategies and the unique role of “field-structuring actor”. Using a case-based approach, the second paper develops a typology of social-mission platforms. Finally, the third paper examines the relationship between incumbents and newcomers, and emphasizes in- population heterogeneity in boundary strategies. Overall, the dissertation contributes to both institutional theory, by explaining how divergent boundary work leads to a process of persistent, purposeful, and productive fragmented structuration, as well as to philanthropy studies, by documenting the heterogeneity of philanthropic organizations and the development of social-mission platforms

Regional Perspectives on Eco-Innovation: Actors, Specialisations and Transition Trajectories

Tackling human-caused global warming and ecological degradation requires rapid transformative change in production and consumption patterns. In this regard, eco-innovations represent a cornerstone for reducing environmental burdens and strengthening sustainability. However, recent global efforts to scale up eco-innovations are confronted with strong spatial differences in their development and application. Against this background, the growing literature on the geography of innovation-based transformative change particularly emphasises the importance of regional specificities emanating mainly from institutions, technologies and actors. While many studies have explored eco-innovations’ enabling and constraining conditions at the regional level, scholarly debates lack insights into the extent to which eco-innovation activities in regions are carried out by incumbents or start-ups. Put differently, little is known about regional specialisations, i.e. regional comparative advantages, with regard to these two types of eco-innovation actors. This dissertation therefore sets out to gain a regionally nuanced understanding of the contribution of incumbents and start-ups to eco-innovation activities and its development over time. To ensure a broad and comparative perspective on green regional development, this research focuses on both sector-specific and general eco-innovation activities in German regions. By systematically reviewing the extensive yet fragmented body of research that revolves around the geography of eco-innovations, this dissertation first reveals complementarities that harbour promising avenues for future research. These conceptual elaborations are then followed by empirical investigations on regional eco-innovation specialisations using a novel data set on green patents and green start-ups. The findings suggest heterogeneous and persistent specialisation patterns of regions, while it is rather the exception that eco-innovation activities in regions are driven by both established actors and start-ups. In order to foster eco-innovations, a sustainability-oriented innovation policy should take greater account of the heterogeneity and path dependency of regional actor specialisations

Opportunity development process in sustainability entrepreneurship

The concept of sustainability has become of major relevance in management literature and business education. It has crossed the boundaries of corporate social responsibility towards new perspectives that stress the necessity of a more holistic approach to entrepreneurial value creation. Although the field of sustainability entrepreneurship has advanced in proving a definition and description of its phenomenon, current literature has so far been unable to capture and explain, both conceptually and empirically, how and why particular individuals decide to pursue opportunities with social and environmental components concurrent with pursuing economic viability. This study tackles this challenge by examining the complex set of conditions that produce the different components of this particular opportunity development process, comprising the development of venture ideas, the organization of entrepreneurial actions and the formation of exchange relationships. Based on an inductive Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the opportunity process of 45 sustainable ventures, this study explores 13 different potential conditions for the above outcomes, upon which it identifies necessary conditions and sufficient configurations of conditions that lead to the integration of sustainability in the different stages of the opportunity process. The study provides refined knowledge and theoretical language on complex causation that facilitate the explanation of how this process unfolds based on the logic of necessity and sufficiency. It makes a broader contribution to both theorizing and research design in the study of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes by presenting a systematic and configurational view of entrepreneurial efforts and offering a basis for understanding the integration of sustainability in the development of venture opportunities

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia