1,721,005 research outputs found
Understanding and Responding to Climate Change: An Analysis of the Sundarbans World Heritage Area
Full text linkExamining the understandings of and responses to anthropogenic climate change is important to help climatically vulnerable communities enhance their resilience. Lack of climate change understanding is an obstacle to appropriate climate response. Social understandings of climate change consist of general awareness, knowledge, and risk perceptions. Responses to climate change are derived from the understandings of the members of a society about the impacts and risks of climate change. The typical strategies in response to climate change are mitigation, adaptation, and resilience building. Responding to climate change is necessary at every scale to enhance the resilience of social and ecological systems. Climate change responses driven by management agencies are often helpful for vulnerable marginal communities, but not all the management interventions contribute to resilience equally.
This research addresses the highly climatically vulnerable UNESCO World Heritage Sundarbans mangrove forest area (Bangladesh and India) as the study context. The mangroves biodiversity of the Sundarbans is important for buffering climate events, as well as for forest resource collection and tourism. The existing literature about the understandings of climate change of different key stakeholder groups of the Sundarbans is very limited. The available literature informs that awareness of climate change is low in the vulnerable Sundarbans area. The effectiveness of existing response strategies, particularly for adaptation to climate change, needs to be understood in relation to the efficient use of limited resources of those developing countries. It is also unknown how the Sundarbans World Heritage helps local people to think about and act in response to climate change.
To fill these knowledge gaps, the aim of this thesis is to examine the social understandings of climate change and responses of management agencies to climate change in the Bangladesh Sundarbans including how the Sundarbans World Heritage Area is managed by Bangladesh and India. In doing so, a constructivist research paradigm is adopted aligning with a relativist ontology, subjectivist epistemology and qualitative methodology to explore understandings of and responses to climate change in the Sundarbans. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 42 stakeholders including community people, conservation and management agencies, tourism management organisations, tourism business operators, and tourists. Thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the qualitative materials of the interview programme. A range of documents including policy papers is analysed to validate and enrich the empirical materials.
The findings of this research indicate that the stakeholders of the Bangladesh Sundarbans believe that climate change is anthropogenic, they have the first-hand experience of changes in the weather system. The degree of climate risk perceptions of the stakeholders can be defined by their relative vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity. The core response to climate change in the Bangladesh Sundarbans is adaptation where sustainability depends on how the adaptation interventions contribute to resilience. In the cross-border comparative analysis, this research finds that both Bangladesh and India focus on conserving the forest ecosystem in response to climate change, but legal enforcement systems, politics, and governance systems are shaping the success of conservation management. Overall, the thesis argues that the social resilience and ecological resilience of the Sundarbans are highly related, and tourism can be utilised for resilience building in the vulnerable World Heritage area.
This thesis addresses several theoretical and empirical knowledge gaps in the current literature in the context of developing nations. Firstly, it expands the theoretical components (awareness, knowledge, and risk perceptions) with related attributes of the social understandings of climate change. Secondly, it examines the effectiveness of climate adaptation functions based on their relative contribution to building resilience. Thirdly, it utilises a cross-border analysis between Bangladesh and India to critically examine the climate change management actions by the management agencies of the Sundarbans in terms of local vulnerabilities, forest biodiversity, World Heritage and tourism; and proposes three dimensions – community, forest, wildlife - of biodiversity conservation for resilience. These contributions have implications beyond the Bangladesh and Indian contexts, with application to a range of scenarios where researchers are seeking greater insights into understandings of and responses to climate change
Behind the Unbox: Conceptual and Netnography Explorations of the Tensions and Implications for Child Toy Unboxers
No full textChild toy unboxers are a popular and unique type of child influencer who unboxes and plays with toys for their online viewers. Sponsored child toy unboxing content embodies play and strategic promotion, suggesting that child toy unboxers are exposed to nuanced experiences that are different to the traditional form of child stars. Current research is yet to explore the nuances of child toy unboxing and its implications on the child influencer also considering child influencer parents and advertisers who make up the ecosystem of the sponsored toy unboxing world. This thesis aims to conceptualise the behind-the-scenes tensions within the multifaceted child toy unboxing industry using paradox theory, managed fun and consumer socialisation which are explored across two papers, structured as Chapters 4 and 5. The first manuscript (Chapter 4) is a conceptual paper using the theory of synthesis as the methodology and presents three main paradoxes: labour-play, autonomy-control and privacy-online success which are identified as features in child toy unboxing using the paradox theory. Each paradox has a research agenda aimed at encouraging scholars to further explore child toy unboxers and to consider methodological approaches to advance our knowledge in this area. The findings from the conceptual research paper are carried forward to the second manuscript. Chapter 5 empirically investigates child toy unboxers complex practices by using a netnographic approach through the lens of managed fun and consumer socialisation. Through a triangulation of online interviews with child influencers, their parents, corporate bodies and online participant observations, and using reflexive thematic analysis to code the data, there are three key themes: authentically performative, independency in co-dependency and thriving in boundaries. The findings reveal that child influencers balance the demands of fun and managing expectations from other stakeholders whilst teaching the norms of consumption to their viewers. Both papers collectively present a framework for understanding child toy unboxing practices, contributing theoretically by extending paradox theory to the child toy unboxers context, identifying the role of the multi-level actor dynamics between child influencers, their parents, and advertisers in conjunction with managed fun and consumer socialisation. The findings also offer guidance for government bodies in developing policies that recognise the tensions of their practice in hopes of balancing empowerment and protection for influencer children
Consumers and Their Brand Love Relationships
Full text linkThis thesis contributes to the concept of consumer brand love relationship building. This thesis frames the consumer-brand love relationships in two forms: Firstly, the brand love relationship is similar to a close interpersonal relationship. Love is featured as closeness with brand love relationships, and this closeness is analogous to the closeness they experience in their close interpersonal relationships.Secondly, there is a correlation or a parallel that can be drawn between the brand love relationships and the spiritual relationship. Love is featured as spirituality in brand love relationships, and this corresponds with the features of spirituality in spiritual relationships. Consumers’ love of a brand is a desire and an emotional yearning for a special and unique brand relationship, which can help consumers expand themselves by including their brands in themselves. Consumers develop and maintain relationships with their loved brands by expanding their sense of self in conjunction with their loved brands’ functions, and also by expanding their cognitive abilities, their social identities and personal identities, and their awareness of their life purpose and the meaning of their life. In the meantime, culture is one of the influential factors in consumer brand love relationships, and it is considered in this thesis
International Opportunity Discovery and Creation by Internationalising SMEs: Implications for Firm Performance
No full textAccording to the International Entrepreneurship (IE) perspective, internationalisation is considered as exploration and exploitation of international opportunities, in which networking and learning from experiences play a vital role. By internationalising Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) they learn how to convert discovered and created opportunities into exploited opportunities through learning by doing, within their networks.
SMEs take different paths to internationalisation. While some SMEs rely on prediction and market analysis (causation) to discover already existing opportunities to enter foreign markets, others rely on their existing resources and relationships to create (effectuation) internationalisation opportunities. When modelled separately, research supports the association of both paths with international opportunities and firm performance. Investigating the direct effects of effectual versus causal logic of decision making on firms’ international opportunity development and international performance presents an incomplete picture. Relatively little knowledge has been obtained to date on the indirect impacts of the juxtaposition of these paths toward internationalisation.
This thesis applies effectuation theory, combined with some insights from the Uppsala model. Both effectual and causal paths to international opportunity discovery and creation are modelled simultaneously. This research captures the indirect relationships between the logic of decision-making and international opportunity development, and subsequent international performance.
This thesis is a quantitative study based on survey data collected from 164 SMEs in New Zealand. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the data and answer the research questions. The findings show that, when modelled simultaneously, both effectual and causal paths result in successful internationalisation. Discovered and created opportunities improve international performance through the mechanism of experiential learning and networking capabilities. In the causal path, Systematic International Market Selection does not provide a mediation effect in the association between causal decision making and firm international performance
Dynamic ideologies : insights from the Slow Food movement
No full textIdeology is the framework in which all consumer decisions are made and as such, an understanding of ideology is important for marketers. There is however, little research which conceptualises either what ideology actually is, or the role that it plays in a marketing context. One of the most obvious problems is the tendency for scholars to treat ideology as static, rather than exploring its dynamic nature.
This thesis examines ideological change in the context of a consumer activist movement. The Slow Food movement is a contemporary example of such a movement and provides an interesting research case for investigating ideology. The research is guided in that it uses a framework provided by new social movement theorist Alberto Melucci to study ideological change. A number of research propositions are derived from this framework about the form, content and role of ideology and how these vary over time. The histories of the Slow Food movement members are therefore 'told' in this thesis through the eyes of Melucci's criteria. A historical methodology is used to search for evidence based on these research propositions. The data is collected at two different levels of analysis: at an organisational level and an individual activist level.
The thesis makes a number of significant theoretical and practical contributions:
• The research provides a comprehensive historical narrative of the Slow Food movement. This includes insights into food activists' thoughts and behaviours and how these have changed over time.
• The research extends on current marketing conceptualisations of ideology by investigating how it is operationalised in a marketing context. This includes an understanding of how it is co-produced, how it changes over time and how it is used strategically by a consumer activist movement to reach its objectives. In achieving these ends, the research has also extended on several well known marketing concepts and theories by applying them to the research context of ideology.
• The research overviews the work done in marketing to date on consumer activist movements and suggests the new title 'consumer activist movement theory' for this body of literature. Building on this, the research then shows how consumer activist movements can be conceptualised as a subset of social movements and how these can be differentiated from other types of collective actions that occur in the marketplace. A systematically logical and simple way of differentiating between different types of consumer activist movements is identified.
• The research emphasises the importance of ideology as a leadership resource and provides consumer activist movement leaders with the knowledge of how to approach and assess their movement's ideology.
The major finding of this thesis is that Melucci's framework for evaluating ideology - when used in conjunction with a number of marketing theories such as tribal marketing - is useful in helping marketers understand ideological change in the context of contemporary consumer activist movements. Future research could investigate if this framework can be extended into other contexts such as understanding the ideologies of political parties
Sustainable Market Orientation: Its Applicability in Conservation and Tourism Management
No full textThis thesis explores the strengths and weaknesses of market orientation as a corporate management concept and identifies opportunities to increase its value through an increased focus on environmental and social management. It proposes the integration of two management paradigms; market orientation and sustainable development as sustainable market orientation. The market orientation attributes include market and customer responsiveness, market intelligence organisational integration, profitable performance. Sustainability management attributes include balanced strategic management of environmental, social and economic strategy elements, long term intergenerational strategy horizons and social equity. The second part of the thesis reports on exploratory research to evaluate the managerial usefulness of the SMO concept in both public administration and business management. Case study research was conducted in a New Zealand regional tourism community where the integration of economic, social and environmental management is a critical aspect of strategy management. The value of the SMO conceptual model as a management frame was confirmed in both the public and private sectors. Sustainability based management was found to be most advanced in the public sector case, but identifiable elements of sustainability strategy were found in the private sector cases. Management implications of applying an SMO are discussed. The most challenging is to develop mechanisms that achieve a balance in long term environmental, social and economic strategy.
The research provides a basis for replication research to further understand SMO management in different organisations, industries and cultures. The long term objective is development of normative management constructs and performance metrics.
Sustainable Market Orientation: Its Applicability in Conservation and Tourism Management
Full text linkThis thesis explores the strengths and weaknesses of market orientation as a corporate management concept and identifies opportunities to increase its value through an increased focus on environmental and social management. It proposes the integration of two management paradigms; market orientation and sustainable development as sustainable market orientation. The market orientation attributes include market and customer responsiveness, market intelligence organisational integration, profitable performance. Sustainability management attributes include balanced strategic management of environmental, social and economic strategy elements, long term intergenerational strategy horizons and social equity. The second part of the thesis reports on exploratory research to evaluate the managerial usefulness of the SMO concept in both public administration and business management. Case study research was conducted in a New Zealand regional tourism community where the integration of economic, social and environmental management is a critical aspect of strategy management. The value of the SMO conceptual model as a management frame was confirmed in both the public and private sectors. Sustainability based management was found to be most advanced in the public sector case, but identifiable elements of sustainability strategy were found in the private sector cases. Management implications of applying an SMO are discussed. The most challenging is to develop mechanisms that achieve a balance in long term environmental, social and economic strategy.
The research provides a basis for replication research to further understand SMO management in different organisations, industries and cultures. The long term objective is development of normative management constructs and performance metrics.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Dynamic ideologies : insights from the Slow Food movement
Full text linkIdeology is the framework in which all consumer decisions are made and as such, an understanding of ideology is important for marketers. There is however, little research which conceptualises either what ideology actually is, or the role that it plays in a marketing context. One of the most obvious problems is the tendency for scholars to treat ideology as static, rather than exploring its dynamic nature.
This thesis examines ideological change in the context of a consumer activist movement. The Slow Food movement is a contemporary example of such a movement and provides an interesting research case for investigating ideology. The research is guided in that it uses a framework provided by new social movement theorist Alberto Melucci to study ideological change. A number of research propositions are derived from this framework about the form, content and role of ideology and how these vary over time. The histories of the Slow Food movement members are therefore 'told' in this thesis through the eyes of Melucci's criteria. A historical methodology is used to search for evidence based on these research propositions. The data is collected at two different levels of analysis: at an organisational level and an individual activist level.
The thesis makes a number of significant theoretical and practical contributions:
• The research provides a comprehensive historical narrative of the Slow Food movement. This includes insights into food activists' thoughts and behaviours and how these have changed over time.
• The research extends on current marketing conceptualisations of ideology by investigating how it is operationalised in a marketing context. This includes an understanding of how it is co-produced, how it changes over time and how it is used strategically by a consumer activist movement to reach its objectives. In achieving these ends, the research has also extended on several well known marketing concepts and theories by applying them to the research context of ideology.
• The research overviews the work done in marketing to date on consumer activist movements and suggests the new title 'consumer activist movement theory' for this body of literature. Building on this, the research then shows how consumer activist movements can be conceptualised as a subset of social movements and how these can be differentiated from other types of collective actions that occur in the marketplace. A systematically logical and simple way of differentiating between different types of consumer activist movements is identified.
• The research emphasises the importance of ideology as a leadership resource and provides consumer activist movement leaders with the knowledge of how to approach and assess their movement's ideology.
The major finding of this thesis is that Melucci's framework for evaluating ideology - when used in conjunction with a number of marketing theories such as tribal marketing - is useful in helping marketers understand ideological change in the context of contemporary consumer activist movements. Future research could investigate if this framework can be extended into other contexts such as understanding the ideologies of political parties
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