Faith and Fair Trade: The Moderating Role of Contextual Religious Salience

Normative and historical arguments support the idea that religion potentially shapes decisions to support fair trade products. That said, the question of how religion influences organizational decision-makers to purchase fair trade products in a business-to-business context has remained largely unaddressed. This research examines the interactive effect of individual religious commitment and contextual religious salience on an individual's willingness to pay a price premium for a fair trade product, when buying on behalf of an organization. Findings from two experimental studies (involving 75 and 87 working individuals, respectively) reveal that the effect of a decision-maker's religious commitment on his or her willingness to pay a price premium, for the purchase of a fair trade product on behalf of an organization, is moderated by the contextual salience of religion. Specifically, when religion is highly salient in the organizational context, religious commitment is positively related to the decision-maker's willingness to pay a premium for the fair trade product; when contextual religious salience is low, religious commitment and willingness to pay a premium are unrelated. Implications for theory and practice are presented. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Management and Computer Science Synergies: A Theoretical Framework for Context Sensitive Simulation Environment

In the light of contemporary management trends and on the basis of the theory of “open innovation”, derives the concept of “crossfertilization”. Crossfertilization, i.e. profitable inter-group knowledge exchange facilitates the fusion of input from different disciplinary communities. In such a scenario, the study highlights the opportunities deriving from the cross-fertilization between management and computer science domains, and yields in terms of cognitive synergies results that exceeds by far the individual outputs of the parties involved. The approach we propose is a full mode generation of knowledge starting from the hypothetical assumptions relative to simulation using context data. A general workflow complementary Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is defining being the most appropriate mathematical technique for testing causal relationships between latent variables with Fuzzy Data Analysis techniques in order to tailor Decision Support System (DSS) to the context of application. The main contribution of our study is the definition of a theoretical framework to address contextual decision making concerning relations between commitment, loyalty and customer satisfaction

Selling and consuming the nation: Understanding consumer nationalism

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Consumer Culture and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540517690570In recent years, nations have regained prominence as central symbols of political unity and mobilization, and proved capable of serving political goals across the political spectrum. Yet, the current revival of the national extends well beyond the realm of politics; it is anchored in the logic of global capitalism, and has become inextricably intertwined with the practices of promotion and consumption. Our article seeks to map the interface between nationalism and economic life, and bring some clarity to the so far fragmented debate on the topic, which developed under diverse headings such as “economic nationalism”, “nation branding”, “consumer ethnocentrism” and “commercial nationalism”. We focus more closely on developing the concept of consumer nationalism, which received little sustained attention in cultural studies and in social sciences and humanities more generally. We offer a definition of consumer nationalism, situate it vis-à-vis the broader phenomena of economic nationalism and political consumerism, and propose an analytical distinction between political consumer nationalism and symbolic consumer nationalism. Drawing on existing literature we then consider a range of examples and examine how these two forms of consumer nationalism become involved in the reproduction of nationalism, taking into account both consciously nationalist discourses and practices as well as the more banal, everyday forms of nationalism

Exploring an archaeology of the Dutch war of independence in Flanders (Belgium)

The archaeology of the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648) in Flanders bears great potential in contributing to the European debate on early modern transformations and in raising public awareness of archaeology as a whole. Thus far, early modern features were however mostly incidentally found on multi-period sites and not as a result from specific research questions. An inventory of sites in the Zwin-Scheldt estuary illustrates the impact of the troubles on the archaeological record. These observations give rise to new research questions that, in turn, form the basis for the discipline to establish itself as a fully fledged academic research field and allow for it to be treated of equal value in the selections made by heritage officers