Organizations driving positive social change:a review and an integrative framework of change processes

Academic and practitioner interest in how market-based organizations can drive positive social change (PSC) is steadily growing. This paper helps to recast how organizations relate to society. It integrates research on projects stimulating PSC – the transformational processes to advance societal well-being – which is fragmented across different streams of research in management and related disciplines. Focusing on the mechanisms at play in how organizations and their projects affect change in targets outside of organizational boundaries, we 1) clarify the nature of PSC as a process, 2) develop an integrative framework that specifies two distinct PSC strategies, 3) take stock of and offer a categorization scheme for change mechanisms and enabling organizational practices, and 4) outline opportunities for future research. Our conceptual framework differentiates between surface- and deep-level PSC strategies understood as distinct combinations of change mechanisms and enabling organizational practices. These strategies differ in the nature and speed of transformation experienced by the targets of change projects and the resulting quality (pervasiveness and durability), timing, and reach of social impact. Our findings provide a solid base for integrating and advancing knowledge across the largely disparate streams of management research on Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship, and Base of the Pyramid, and open up important new avenues for future research on organizing for PSC and on unpacking PSC processes

Social capital and deceased organ donation

This chapter examines the link between deceased organ donation and social capital from a theoretical standpoint.In this chapter, the theoretical links between deceased organ donation and social capital theory are examined and evaluated

Sustainability by Default? Nudging Carbon Offsetting Behavior in E-Commerce

The continuous rise of e-commerce and the resulting global transportation activities lead to an increased environmental load, specifically in the form of carbon emissions. While carbon offset donations offer the potential to mitigate the ecological harm, these voluntary options are not yet prevalent among e-commerce customers. Prior research has shown that information systems (IS) can be utilized to encourage more sustainable behavior by digitally nudging people into offsetting their carbon emissions. Therefore, this study intends to examine the influence of defaults on carbon offsetting in e-commerce checkout processes. A digital experiment with 125 participants revealed that higher default donation values significantly increase people’s carbon offset contributions in an e-commerce checkout process. Participants in the treatment group (high default) donated, on average, 33 percent more for carbon offsetting compared to the control group (low default). As a result, this research contributes to the fields of behavioral economics in IS, digital nudging as well as green IS and has valuable implications for IS practitioners and designers

To boardrooms and sustainability: the changing nature of segmentation

Market segmentation is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity are grouped into smaller homogeneous segments of more ‘similar’ customers. A market segment is a group of individuals, groups or organisations sharing similar characteristics and buying behaviour that cause them to have relatively similar needs and purchasing behaviour. Segmentation is not a new concept: for six decades marketers have, in various guises, sought to break-down a market into sub-groups of users, each sharing common needs, buying behavior and marketing requirements. However, this approach to target market strategy development has been rejuvenated in the past few years. Various reasons account for this upsurge in the usage of segmentation, examination of which forms the focus of this white paper. Ready access to data enables faster creation of a segmentation and the testing of propositions to take to market. ‘Big data’ has made the re-thinking of target market segments and value propositions inevitable, desirable, faster and more flexible. The resulting information has presented companies with more topical and consumer-generated insights than ever before. However, many marketers, analytics directors and leadership teams feel over-whelmed by the sheer quantity and immediacy of such data. Analytical prowess in consultants and inside client organisations has benefited from a stepchange, using new heuristics and faster computing power, more topical data and stronger market insights. The approach to segmentation today is much smarter and has stretched well away from the days of limited data explored only with cluster analysis. The coverage and wealth of the solutions are unimaginable when compared to the practices of a few years ago. Then, typically between only six to ten segments were forced into segmentation solutions, so that an organisation could cater for these macro segments operationally as well as understand them intellectually. Now there is the advent of what is commonly recognised as micro segmentation, where the complexity of business operations and customer management requires highly granular thinking. In support of this development, traditional agency/consultancy roles have transitioned into in-house business teams led by data, campaign and business change planners. The challenge has shifted from developing a granular segmentation solution that describes all customers and prospects, into one of enabling an organisation to react to the granularity of the solution, deploying its resources to permit controlled and consistent one-to-one interaction within segments. So whilst the cost of delivering and maintaining the solution has reduced with technology advances, a new set of systems, costs and skills in channel and execution management is required to deliver on this promise. These new capabilities range from rich feature creative and content management solutions, tailored copy design and deployment tools, through to instant messaging middleware solutions that initiate multi-streams of activity in a variety of analytical engines and operational systems. Companies have recruited analytics and insight teams, often headed by senior personnel, such as an Insight Manager or Analytics Director. Indeed, the situations-vacant adverts for such personnel out-weigh posts for brand and marketing managers. Far more companies possess the in-house expertise necessary to help with segmentation analysis. Some organisations are also seeking to monetise one of the most regularly under-used latent business assets… data. Developing the capability and culture to bring data together from all corners of a business, the open market, commercial sources and business partners, is a step-change, often requiring a Chief Data Officer. This emerging role has also driven the professionalism of data exploration, using more varied and sophisticated statistical techniques. CEOs, CFOs and COOs increasingly are the sponsor of segmentation projects as well as the users of the resulting outputs, rather than CMOs. CEOs because recession has forced re-engineering of value propositions and the need to look after core customers; CFOs because segmentation leads to better and more prudent allocation of resources – especially NPD and marketing – around the most important sub-sets of a market; COOs because they need to better look after key customers and improve their satisfaction in service delivery. More and more it is recognised that with a new segmentation comes organisational realignment and change, so most business functions now have an interest in a segmentation project, not only the marketers. Largely as a result of the digital era and the growth of analytics, directors and company leadership teams are becoming used to receiving more extensive market intelligence and quickly updated customer insight, so leading to faster responses to market changes, customer issues, competitor moves and their own performance. This refreshing of insight and a leadership team’s reaction to this intelligence often result in there being more frequent modification of a target market strategy and segmentation decisions. So many projects set up to consider multi-channel strategy and offerings; digital marketing; customer relationship management; brand strategies; new product and service development; the re-thinking of value propositions, and so forth, now routinely commence with a segmentation piece in order to frame the ongoing work. Most organisations have deployed CRM systems and harnessed associated customer data. CRM first requires clarity in segment priorities. The insights from a CRM system help inform the segmentation agenda and steer how they engage with their important customers or prospects. The growth of CRM and its ensuing data have assisted the ongoing deployment of segmentation. One of the biggest changes for segmentation is the extent to which it is now deployed by practitioners in the public and not-for-profit sectors, who are harnessing what is termed social marketing, in order to develop and to execute more shrewdly their targeting, campaigns and messaging. For Marketing per se, the interest in the marketing toolkit from non-profit organisations, has been big news in recent years. At the very heart of the concept of social marketing is the market segmentation process. The extreme rise in the threat to security from global unrest, terrorism and crime has focused the minds of governments, security chiefs and their advisors. As a result, significant resources, intellectual capability, computing and data management have been brought to bear on the problem. The core of this work is the importance of identifying and profiling threats and so mitigating risk. In practice, much of this security and surveillance work harnesses the tools developed for market segmentation and the profiling of different consumer behaviours. This white paper presents the findings from interviews with leading exponents of segmentation and also the insights from a recent study of marketing practitioners relating to their current imperatives and foci. More extensive views of some of these ‘leading lights’ have been sought and are included here in order to showcase the latest developments and to help explain both the ongoing surge of segmentation and the issues under-pinning its practice. The principal trends and developments are thereby presented and discussed in this paper

A new track for technology: Can ICT take care for healthier lifestyles?

The paper takes a look on potential contribution of Information and Communication Technologies to abate public health challenges caused by demographics and lifestyle. From the current convergence of mhealth, and sport market products emerge targeting normal athletes to control their training in a quantified manner. The resulting feedback and transparency foster a healthier lifestyle. These products and services help overcome limitations to innovation typical to the health care market. The paper is based on research by the European Commission's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies on Integrated Personal Health/Care services. --eHealth,Integrated Personal Health/Care services,sport,training,lifestyle related disease,innovation

Learning and the Law: Improving Behavioral Regulation from an International and Comparative Perspective

Various disciplines are increasingly discovering the power of learning. However, the potential and the complexities of learning theory in decision-making contexts have so far been neglected by scholarship in law and economics as well as behavioral law and economics: either learning is uncritically assumed to occur and to mitigate biases, or it is generally claimed that learning is insufficient to overcome cognitive biases. Even where learning is considered, the scope is merely limited to individual or social learning. Learning by and across institutions, a crucial factor for effective regulation, is largely ignored. That type of learning should be paramount, however, as an increasing number of institutions at the international and domestic level are adopting behavioral regulation, which prides itself on facilitating “smart decisions.” This Article argues that legal analysis should tap the precious resource of learning to facilitate lasting and beneficial real-world effects. It draws on social and cognitive psychology, behavioral game theory, and organizational science to show that there are vast effectiveness and efficiency gains to be made from an integration of learning theory into regulatory and private law contexts. Interdisciplinary learning theory suggests that such gains can be made through learning by doing, observational learning, as well as recursive and generative learning. These learning methods can be used at the individual, social, team, and institutional level, which is demonstrated using case studies from international law, as well as American and European Union law. As an overarching category subsuming these forms of learning, the Article develops the concept of systemic learning. It suggests that the law should introduce systemic learning patterns in public and private law contexts through feedback loops and institutionalized systemic learning facilities. Finally, it proposes the institutionalization of an Agency for Systemic Learning Management. Having ignored learning theory in the past, future behavioral regulation should put learning efforts center stage as it unfolds on a global scale

Mean-Field-Type Games in Engineering

A mean-field-type game is a game in which the instantaneous payoffs and/or the state dynamics functions involve not only the state and the action profile but also the joint distributions of state-action pairs. This article presents some engineering applications of mean-field-type games including road traffic networks, multi-level building evacuation, millimeter wave wireless communications, distributed power networks, virus spread over networks, virtual machine resource management in cloud networks, synchronization of oscillators, energy-efficient buildings, online meeting and mobile crowdsensing.Comment: 84 pages, 24 figures, 183 references. to appear in AIMS 201

Just in Time: The Beyond-the-Hype Potential of E-Learning

Based on a year of conversations with more than 100 leading thinkers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs, this report explores the state of e-learning and the potential it offers across all sectors of our economy -- far beyond the confines of formal education. Whether you're a leader, worker in the trenches, or just a curious learner, imagine being able to access exactly what you need, when you need it, in a format that's quick and easy to digest and apply. Much of this is now possible and within the next decade, just-in-time learning will likely become pervasive.This report aims to inspire you to consider how e-learning could change the way you, your staff, and the people you serve transfer knowledge and adapt over time

Boost: Improving Mindfulness, Thinking, and Diversity

Many important decisions can be difficult; require focused, cognitive attention; produce delayed, noisy feedback; benefit from careful and clear thinking; and quite often trigger anxiety, stress, and other strong, negative emotions. Much empirical, experimental, and field research finds that we often make decisions leading to outcomes we judge as suboptimal. These studies have contributed to the popularity of the idea of nudging people to achieve better outcomes by changing how choices and information are framed and presented (also known as choice architecture and information architecture). Although choice architecture and information architecture can nudge people into better outcomes, choice architecture and information architecture also assume implicitly or explicitly that people’s decision-making competencies are immutable or too costly to improve and, therefore, choice architecture and information architecture fail to improve people’s decision-making competencies. This Article advocates boosts to improve mindfulness, thinking, and diversity. Boosts differ from nudges in that boosts aim to improve decision-making competencies, instead of just decisionmaking outcomes. Mindfulness involves paying attention to life in an intentional way as it unfolds moment to moment. Mindfulness improves decision-making through many pathways, including by reducing stress and negative emotions. Recent economic research demonstrates that many cognitive biases exemplify lack of mindfulness about particular aspects of life. Thinking boosts include thinking technologies and diversity. Thinking technologies involve computer or digital technologies to assist people in their thinking. Examples of novel, fun thinking technologies include a financial entertainment computer video game where a player is a vampire managing a blood bar and planning for retirement, and video adventure games designed to teach players to recognize and mitigate their cognitive biases. Diversity creates bonuses for organizations by improving decision-making, creativity, innovation, prediction, problem-solving, and productivity