Browsing by Author "Wilson, Hugh N."

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    The challenge of communicating reciprocal value promises: buyer-seller value proposition disparity in professional services
    (Elsevier, 2017) Baumann, Jasmin; Le Meunier-FitzHugh, Kenneth; Wilson, Hugh N.
    This study explores the communication of reciprocal value propositions in buyer-seller interaction and examines whether each party's value proposition is congruent with the value sought by their respective counterpart. Through 31 in-depth interviews with customers and salespeople from six professional service organizations, it was found that while both parties deliberately articulate value propositions, thereby initiating the co-creation process, there are some surprising disparities in the value dimensions offered by the salesperson. Although the customer's value proposition is largely consistent with the value sought by the seller, a marked discrepancy was encountered in the reverse case (i.e. between the seller's value proposition and the buyer's desired value). These findings indicate a significant misalignment between the seller's value proposition and actual co-creative behavior that can impede the subsequent collaboration and resource integration between the two parties, which could lead to customer dissatisfaction and potentially even service failure.
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    Engagement logics: How partners for sustainability-oriented innovation manage differences between organizational logics
    (Wiley, 2024-07-23) Watson, Rosina; Wilson, Hugh N.; Macdonald, Emma K.
    Innovation partnerships frequently experience tensions due to differences in partners' organizational logics. The literature recommends that partners adopt collaborative, empathetic mindsets but even so, tensions can threaten outcomes and partnership continuation. Difficulties can be exacerbated when firms engage stakeholder organizations in sustainability-oriented innovation projects, where each partner is seeking their own combination of social, environmental, and economic objectives. This study explores strategic responses to these differences in logics through eight case studies of sustainability-oriented innovation engagements between a focal business and an external organization. The key finding is that partners can respond to their differing logics by shaping a new “engagement logic” that guides members of both (or all) organizations. A logic frame with four value-related dimensions—value salience, instrumentality, temporality, and language—allows a subtly idiosyncratic engagement logic to be created that is acceptable to both parties. This classification of ingredients of a logic frame forms a wider contribution to the institutional-logics literature. A complementary range of logic practices is identified, covering logic emergence, logic enactment, and boundary defining. The engagement logic aids the partnership by contributing to four partnership-level generative outcomes: partnership commitment, capability integration, scope flexibility, and system orientation. A notable finding is the presence of a logic boundary, specified in work, time, and space, enabling the engagement logic to co-exist with organizational logics; a research direction is whether this boundary also exists in logics at organizational and field levels. The study shows partnerships to be a new context within which novel logics can emerge, contributing to an understanding of how logics evolve.
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    An evaluation of styles of IT support for marketing planning
    (Emerald, 2001-08) Wilson, Hugh N.; McDonald, Malcolm
    IT support for marketing planning can aid in the use of marketing tools, facilitate group planning, and support moves towards continuous planning based on a live marketing model of the business. But, amongst other factors, achieving these benefits depends on the style of support provided by the system. After a review of relevant decision support system (DSS) literature, describes here the findings relating to support style from a qualitative evaluation of a system named EXMAR. The findings support Little’s classic rules of “decision calculus”, such as the importance of ensuring that managers understand and can control the system, rather than the objective influenced by management science of prescribing an optimal recommendation. Also emphasises the role of systems in enhancing mutual understanding in a cross-functional planning team, and hence in building commitment to the resulting plan.
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    Non-financial shareholder activism: A process model for influencing corporate environmental and social performance
    (Wiley, 2017-10-25) Cundill, Gary J.; Smart, Palie; Wilson, Hugh N.
    Shareholders have become increasingly active in endeavouring to influence companies’ environmental and social practices. In comparison with the mature field of financially motivated shareholder activism, limited enquiries have been carried out on its non-financial counterparts. This paper synthesizes the knowledge base through a review of the academic literature, exploring shareholder activism intended to affect corporate environmental and social performance. Theoretical perspectives appropriate to this phenomenon are critically appraised: in particular, insights from social movement theory, Hirschman's theory of exit, voice and loyalty and stakeholder salience theory, as well as the roles of signalling and symbolic management actions. Data from the literature are organized into a process model of non-financial shareholder influence. Underpinned by the influencing context, this conceptualization centres on three primary shareholder interventions: divestment, dialogue and shareholder proposals. These interventions are enabled through a range of actors and tools: coalitions, non-governmental organizations, codes and indices, the media and regulators. The interaction between interventions and the enabling actors and tools helps to determine managers’ perceptions of shareholder salience. These perceptions subsequently shape the organizational behaviours that affect companies’ symbolic and substantive environmental and social performance. An agenda to direct future research in this burgeoning field is articulated.
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    Policy for sustainable entrepreneurship: a crowdsourced framework
    (Elsevier, 2022-12-10) Watson, Rosina; Nielsen, Kristian Roed; Wilson, Hugh N.; Macdonald, Emma K.; Mera, Christine; Reisch, Lucia
    Sustainable entrepreneurship can contribute to sustainable development by seeking synergies between social, environmental and economic outcomes, turning market failures into commercial opportunities. However, institutional conditions often act to obstruct sustainable entrepreneurs. While policy is instrumental in shaping conditions for entrepreneurship, how policy can best support sustainable ventures specifically is under-researched. This study uses a novel crowdsourcing approach with multiple actors in the sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem to explore how policy can create conditions conducive to sustainable entrepreneurship. An emergent multi-level policy framework outlines six mechanisms by which this may be achieved: resource prioritisation, competency building, sustainable market creation, networked sharing, collaborative replication, and impact valuation. These mechanisms enable three interconnected policy objectives: enterprise creation, system transformation, and impact reorientation. The study thereby makes four main contributions to literature on sustainable entrepreneurship and policy. First, it reveals the importance of a ‘meso level’ of policy that supports the sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem, complementing micro-level supply-side and macro-level demand-side policies. Second, it proposes a policy focus not just on enterprises and how they are grown, but on sustainability-oriented innovations and how they are replicated. Third, it identifies the need for ‘impact re-orientation’ policies that track and optimise entrepreneurs' individual and collective triple-bottom-line impacts. Fourth, the study exemplifies a promising crowdsourcing method of co-creating policy.
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    Pride in my past: influencing sustainable choices through behavioral recall
    (Wiley, 2018) Rowe, Zoe O.; Wilson, Hugh N.; Dimitriu, Radu; Charnley, Fiona J.; Lastrucci, Giovanna
    Emotional appraisal research has demonstrated that recalling a past behavior and its associated emotions can influence future behavior. However, how such recalled emotions shape sustainable consumer choice has not been examined. This study examines the role of recalled pride and guilt in shaping sustainable purchase intentions, and the mediating role of anticipated pride and guilt. A conceptual model is proposed for motivating sustainable purchase intentions through the emotions associated with behavioral recall. The model is applied in two experiments with online consumers examining purchase intentions of low carbon cars. Recalling feelings of pride associated with a past sustainability-related behavior increases sustainable purchase intention, as opposed to a neutral recall. This effect occurs through the mediation of both anticipated pride at the prospect of a sustainable behavior choice, and anticipated guilt if the future choice is not sustainable. Similar hypotheses relating to recalled guilt at past unsustainable behavior were not supported. The study contributes to research on sustainable consumption, revealing an emotional route by which past behavior can influence future behavior. It also adds to emotional appraisal research by showing the role of specific self-conscious emotions in forming this route, as prior research has focused more broadly on emotional valence.
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    Tracking the impact of media on voter choice in real time: A Bayesian dynamic joint model
    (Taylor & Francis, 2018-01-15) Pareek, Bhuvanesh; Ghosh, Pulak; Wilson, Hugh N.; Macdonald, Emma K.; Baines, Paul R.
    Commonly used methods of evaluating the impact of marketing communications during political elections struggle to account for respondents' exposures to these communications due to the problems associated with recall bias. In addition, they completely fail to account for the impact of mediated or earned communications such as newspaper articles or television news, that are typically not within the control of the advertising party, nor are they effectively able to monitor consumers' perceptual responses over time. This study based on a new data collection technique using cell-phone text messaging (called real-time experience tracking or RET) offers the potential to address these weaknesses. We propose an RET-based model of the impact of communications and apply it to a unique choice situation: voting behavior during the 2010 UK general election, which was dominated by three political parties. We develop a Bayesian zero-inflated dynamic multinomial choice model that enables the joint modeling of: the inter-play and dynamics associated with the individual voter's choice intentions over time, actual vote, and the heterogeneity in the exposure to marketing communications over time. Results reveal the differential impact over time of paid and earned media, demonstrate a synergy between the two, and show the particular importance of exposure valence and not just frequency, contrary to the predominant practitioner emphasis on share-of-voice metrics. Results also suggest that while earned media have a reducing impact on voting intentions as the final choice approaches, their valence continues to influence the final vote: a difference between drivers of intentions and behavior that implies that exposure valence remains critically important close to the final brand choice.