Marketplace Accessibility:A Service-Provider Perspective

Purpose: This study explores the strategies that service providers use to facilitate marketplace accessibility, and identifies the key challenges in that process. We do so to develop a roadmap towards improved accessibility and disability inclusion in the marketplace.Methodology: We conducted eight semi-structured interviews with service providers (curators, visitor service coordinators, access managers) at museums who run access programmes for customers with visual impairment (VI), along an embodied duo-ethnography of those programmes.Findings: Service providers foster autonomous, embodied, and social access. Resource constraints, safety concerns, and exposed differences between customers compromise access. To overcome these challenges service providers engage in three inclusionary strategies - informing, extending, and sensitizing.Original/ Value: This study contributes: i) A service provider perspective on marketplace accessibility that goes beyond removing ‘disabling’ barriers towards creating opportunities for co-creation. ii) An approach towards marketplace accessibility that fosters inclusiveness while considering the inherent challenges of that process. iii) An illustration of posthumanism’s empirical value in addressing issues of accessibility in the marketplace.Practical Implications: We offer a roadmap for policy makers and service providers on: i) which types of access should and can be created, ii) what challenges may be encountered, iii) how to manage these challenges, and, thus, iv) how to advance accessibility beyond regulations.Research Limitations: Our service provider- and VI-focus present limitations. Future research should: i) consider a poly-vocal approach that includes the experiences of numerous stakeholders to holistically advance marketplace accessibility, ii) apply our marketplace accessibility findings upon different disabilities in other marketplace contexts

Intermediaries driving eco-innovation in SMEs: A qualitative investigation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the role intermediaries can play in an small to medium‐sized enterprise's (SME's) pursuit for corporate sustainability with a focus on eco‐innovation. The research identifies drivers and barriers for eco‐innovation, and highlights effects induced through collaboration between SMEs and local authorities, on the one hand, and consultancies, on the other.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on an exploratory qualitative interview study among German SMEs of the metal and mechanical engineering industry that have participated in “Ecoprofit”, an intermediary based program that aims at introducing organizations to the concept of sustainable development through implementation of eco‐innovations.FindingsThe key findings are that first, the proactive approach by a public intermediary (here local authority) is one essential push factor to trigger eco‐innovations in SMEs with low absorptive capacity. Second, it is found that SMEs may need facilitation for eco‐innovation from different types of intermediaries (public and private) with different levels of support, which can range from customized and individual to more loosely held support, such as networks.Originality/valueThis study discusses the challenges of corporate sustainability with a focus on eco‐innovations for SMEs and proposes a “complex intermediary” consisting of a local authority and consultancies as one means to engage SMEs in sustainability. Moreover, it focuses on SMEs in the B2B context, organizations that are often overlooked despite their vast impact. Furthermore, by using a single industry approach, in‐depth findings for the metal and mechanical engineering industry are presented.</jats:sec