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While some institutions require their students to spend a semester abroad as a prerequisite to earning a business degree, academics challenge the view that travel abroad helps students become culturally competent. Many students admit that they failed to immerse themselves in a cross-cultural environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the components of exchange study abroad programs (ESP) that facilitate student cross-cultural learning (CCL). Building on transformative learning theory (TLT), we propose and test a conceptual model of relationships between different components of exchange programs and student CCL. The data collected from more than 700 students participating in a semester and two-semester-long programs are analyzed through logistic regression. This research contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of ESP by identifying the key components that maximize positive outcomes for students. By building on TLT, it reveals the importance of getting out of one's comfort zone and providing students with support during the ESP. This study bears practical implications as it provides academic institutions and students with important insights that help maximize student CCL.

Despite excellent education and a rich working experience in their home countries, skilled expatriates struggle to find employment that matches their qualifications. This article goes beyond the dominant stress and emotions' perspective on underemployment and presents the challenges of skilled migrant labour through the lens of the Common In-group Identity Model. It draws from the voices of expatriates and host-country nationals, and employs interviews and personal narratives to study the role of inter-group bias in social and occupational adaptation of skilled expatriates with focus on their underemployment. Its contribution lies in that expatriate employment challenges are examined not from a psychological but from a societal perspective. Thus, it increases our understanding of the factors that lead to underemployment among skilled workers. It also offers solutions to how the problem of underemployment can be overcome through recategorisation, as well as, points to differences in expatriate adaptation among self-initiated expatriates and international assignees.

Despite a multitude of social campaigns and widely publicized scientific evidence of how excessive, unprotected sun exposure damages the skin and is a key cause of the skin cancer, people continue to crowd the beaches, oftentimes without any sunscreen protection. Also numbers of those who use sunscreen on a daily basis remain low. In this study, we analyze how the attitudes toward tanning and behavior of sunscreen use change under the influence of persuasive messages. We compare the effectiveness of an emotionally neutral persuasive message to an emotionally negative persuasive message. We show that persuasive messages combining fear with other negative emotions are successful, however, those generating negative emotions are not significantly more effective than emotionally neutral messages. Furthermore, our results show that while persuasive messages can change the attitudes toward tanning, they do not directly lead to a behavioral change in terms of sunscreen use intentions. However, as we show, the tanning attitude mediates the relationship between persuasive message and the attitude toward sunscreen use and intentions to use it. The resulting change in the tanning attitude contributes to a change in the attitude toward use of sunscreen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of an ongoing climate change and an increasing fragility of fossil energy supply due to global political tensions, the adoption of renewable energy sources is of utmost importance for economic and social prosperity. This study targets to endeavor major value chain configurations within the global wind power industry network based on a data set of 326 relationships established by the 10 globally leading wind turbine firms covering a time span of 15 years. We discuss the demand side and provide an overview of the main wind power investment target countries and compare the importance of different regions. On the supply side, we analyze and identify eight important firm clusters within the global wind power business network. Concerning our sample, we elaborate horizontal and vertical relationship links, their collaboration patterns, regional partner preferences, and their value chain competences, thus providing valuable insights into the competitive structures of the wind power industry. By doing so, we open the debate on appropriate and efficient firm strategies within renewable industries. As consequence, we provide robust empirical evidence on global wind power industry architectures and corresponding competitive firm forces for the future. As we found that the industry is currently divided into eight main global industry clusters, our study delivers valuable industry network insights addressing managerial, political, and socioeconomic decision makers in order to secure future ecological and economic prosperity in a challenging world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educators, marketers, and policymakers need to understand what factors influence the consumers' purchase of green products to encourage green product buying. Thus, this study examines the antecedents to green purchases. An online survey provides quantitative input for a SmartPLS analysis. The study draws on the theory of consumption values to investigate how emotional and social values affect green purchasing decisions. The role of knowledge‐seeking in developing these values is investigated and found to be significantly positive. The relationships between emotional value, social value, and green purchase behavior are found to be mediated by environmental concerns. This study contributes to the discussion around consumption values by showing that environmental concern has a stronger relationship with green purchases than emotional and social value. It is through the environmental concern that emotional and social values influence green purchases. Our findings suggest that marketers should leverage the consumers' knowledge‐seeking and environmental concern in their advertising campaigns by emphasizing a specific green product novelty and highlighting the casual connection between green buying and their effect on the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As environmental concerns do not translate into action, this study uses an experimental design to test the effectiveness of different priming strategies in terms of increasing green non‐purchase behaviour frequency. Green non‐purchase behaviours are particularly problematic as they are associated with sacrifice. While previous research focused on promoting green purchases, this research contributes to the existing literature by investigating effective ways to promote green non‐purchase behaviours (conservation and recycling) and shows that they can be primed with appropriate communication strategies. In particular, building on prospect theory, it shows that priming personal gain, as opposed to environmental gain, can motivate people to act green and that priming no effort can mitigate the perceived sacrifice associated with green non‐purchase behaviours. Rather than focusing on intentions or immediate attitudinal responses, this study investigates behavioural changes that occur due to effective priming, thus contributing to a better understanding of how to generate a lasting behavioural change. This study also bears practical implications and provides recommendations regarding the development of successful social campaigns that encourage green non‐purchase behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media permeated almost every aspect of our lives. As it enables consumer socialization through peer communication, it has the power to influence and encourage adopting behaviors that might contradict beliefs held by our offline reference group (or the majority). For instance, green lifestyle which promotes conservation and non-purchase behaviors stands in a stark contrast to the cult of consumption held by majority of people in many developed countries. This research asks how sustainability advocates on social media drive their followers to embrace the minority view i.e. green lifestyle. To map the process of green lifestyle adoption, we draw from real experiences of social media users. We examined netnographic data from over 8000 Facebook posts of green lifestyle advocates from the past 3 years, and interviewed their followers. To contribute to the existing body of knowledge, we identify the key elements of social media communication that drive green lifestyle adoption. By the two combing two seemingly contrasting theories, i.e. minority influence theory (MIT) and social learning theory (SLT), we provide a more complete picture of the process of green lifestyle adoption and reveal how both types of influence suggested by the theories, informational influence (II) and normative influence (NI), impact customers at different stages of new behavior adoption. We open the debate on how minority influence can be exerted in an online setting. This research offers a number of practical implications for social agents and policymakers that promote green behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brands are constantly competing for user attention on Facebook and are trying to encourage fans to share, click 'like', and comment their posts. Yet, it remains unclear what content strategies are successful at encouraging those behaviors. Noting that the effectiveness of brand content strategies still remains an uncharted research area, this study adopts a discovery-oriented approach and employs workshops, quantitative content analysis, and episodic interviews, to link desired user responses (namely clicks share, 'like', and comment) to brand content strategies. This study reveals that customer-centric content strategies are the most effective at encouraging user responses. Managers can use provided recommendations to engage their customers by adopting content strategies that result in desired behavioral reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]