International Journal of Organisational Behaviour, Volume 17(4) ISSN 14410 5377
Guest editor’s introduction
BUILDING BUSINESS COMMUNITIES: COMMUNITY
SPECIAL ISSUE THREE: BUSINESS
This Building Business Community: Community Special Issue is designed to advance the current knowledge in the area of sustainable communities and business and is focused on developing business theory. This issue focuses on some of the associated business related areas of sustainability and offers contribution to the discourse in business practice in workers’ religious affiliations and organisational behaviour, developing a sustainable wine industry, carbon mitigation and consumer behaviour. A call for papers for a special edition in the IJOB
was circulated on the IJOB page, through the USQ Building Sustainable Communities
conference and was posted on the web. In addition, colleagues active in the field of sustainability were invited to contribute to the special editions. This is the third special issue. Authors, as well as independent reviewers, were requested to review submissions and the editors also contributed comments. This edition contains five conceptual papers with reflections on business sustainability and community in the areas of local council, non-profits and charitable organisations.
Examining and advancing the understanding of sustainability and advising business groups accordingly has been slow with the multiple perspectives that surround the concept (Peattie & Collins 2009; Tukker 2008) often argued as the reason for this. Sustainability is best viewed as an umbrella term that incorporates environmental, social and economic dimensions and takes on such ideas as reducing environmental impact, enhancing quality of life and wellbeing, minimising waste, taking a life cycle approach and looking at ecological preservation for future generations (Kemp 2008; UNEP 2002). The goal of business sustainability is to embed sustainable living objectives into practices and supply chain elements to ensure that society is able to be maintained over time. This special issue offers a unique combination of communities’ needs, practices and behaviours. The following papers are included in this issue.
Paper One by Seth Ayim Gyekye, Department of Psychology, Buckinghamshire New University and Mohammad Haybatollahi, Department of Social Psychology University of Helsinki, Finland discuss in the paper titled’ Workers' religious affiliations and organizational behaviour’, the increased and sustained importance of religion in the workplace and how it
International Journal of Organisational Behaviour, Volume 17(4) Guest editor’s introduction
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Paper Two by Mehryar Nooriafshar from the University of Southern Queensland, Queensland, Australia and Conor Vibert from Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada titled ‘A Heuristic Model to Determine the Perception of Success in a Nascent Wine Industry’. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the main factors which contribute to the perceptions of success in the wine industry of Nova Scotia, Canada. Commercial winemaking in Nova Scotia is a nascent industry. An investigation into this regional industry can certainly benefit the local winemakers and help identify commonalities for further research in other similar regions. The data used in the study is based on 17 different case studies related to this regional industry. These case studies are in the form of interviews with winemakers, winery owners and industry stakeholders. Local demand, expansion opportunities and growing conditions are amongst the main identified factors.
Paper Three by Heather Zeppel and Narelle Beaumont titled ‘Carbon Mitigation by Queensland Tourism Enterprises’ reports on carbon mitigation by environmentally certified Queensland tourism enterprises (n=83). The survey results profile attitudes to climate change, emissions auditing, carbon mitigation actions, and motives for emissions reduction. The main reasons for carbon actions were marketing climate friendly tourism, attracting green tourists, and cost savings.
Paper Four by Dr Mustafa Ally and Mr Michael Gardiner is titled ‘Application and device characteristics as drivers for Smart Mobile Device adoption and productivity’. This paper presents findings on research conducted to determine factors influencing the uptake of Mobile Integrated Media Devices (MiMDs). Smart devices offer advanced computing ability and connectivity, and typically combine the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA), mobile phone, portable media players and camera phones with high-resolution touchscreens, e-book readers, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband access using third-party and proprietary applications. This changing technology and environment has given rise to a number of competing mobile operating systems that support an integrated touch-screen application environment of which the three dominant players in the marketplace are Google (Android), Apple (IOS) and Microsoft (Windows Phone) This paper discusses the issues related to these applications and how they provide increased functionality, flexibility and scalability.
Paper 5 by Paul Allen Salisbury titled ‘Pay to Protect the Environment: Two Consumer Issues—Pros & Cons’ offers the perspective that all organizations need to acquire new customers to maintain and grow revenue, as well as to replace customers lost through attrition. This paper offers the notion that cost-effective marketing requires a targeting strategy to focus on appropriate candidates for acquisition. Organizations that are marketing green products and services, or plan to do so, need to know who they should target for acquisition. This paper examines this issue for two similar green issues on who will pay more to protect the environment examining that everyone is never a prospect for a given product or service.
