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Communication studies have expanded significantly around the globe in the last decades. Due to new channels of communication and more and more mediatised societies, the role of communication has gained significance. In contrast, communication does not seem to be a topic of high priority for many corporate leaders. They often still value communication as a mere support function.

This chapter explores communication courses of business schools in the United States and Europe. It is hypothesised that only if communication courses are recognised in such programmes the profession of business communicators will realise entry into the highest levels of corporate decision-making.

The main question is how far top-ranked Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes integrate communication courses. This is investigated via website analysis and interviews. This chapter also provides explanations for the current status quo. The results will be of interest to all those responsible for shaping MBA curricula and give insights into how the communication discipline is viewed by leaders of business schools.

The Christian Churches have lost a great amount of their attraction in many European countries over the last century. Since the 1960s, ties to the Churches have been relaxed and approval for their central beliefs and standards has declined.

This is a problem, since the Christian churches are essential agents of fundamental values, such as solidarity and charity that foster the cohesion of a community. Christian faith communities are committed to preserving these values.

If we imagine the Church as a company, from a design perspective the question arises of what stories and images of the Church could revive its values? What could be a convincing set of contemporary visual items of the Christian Churches?

With the creative methods of design thinking some alternative approaches for visual communication of Christian Churches in the age of social media have been developed in a workshop with various representatives of Christian Churches.

Two creative methods were the focus of the workshop, Rummaging and PaperPoint. These methods were selected for refining the strategic concept with the goal to develop solutions for a new way of visual storytelling.

The first strategy is the definition of ‘core values’ and transition to today and the second strategy is change of perspective, refining the concept for the new way of visual storytelling.

The results show that design thinking can be used to bring about creative results even from participants without a professional advertising background.

This paper aims to investigate consumer reactions to minority retail employees. The paper argues that despite the persistence of racism and homophobia in society, the vast majority of the population is strongly against these forms of discrimination. Because of the profound negativity of such behavior, the study hypothesizes that consumers will be motivated to see themselves unequivocally as individuals free of prejudice. As a result, rather than treating all people equally, the study proposes that consumers will overcompensate and exhibit favoritism toward a retail employee when the latter is a member of a minority group.

This study presents ten studies in which participants evaluated employees who were a member of a minority or majority group. Studies 1a–1d use sexual orientation to contrast reactions to majority or minority bank managers in four countries (USÀ, Germany, Italy and South Korea), whereas Studies 1e and 1f use ethnicity (White vs Black) to examine the same question (UK and Canada). Study 1g offers a single-paper meta-analysis, testing the robustness of the observed effect. Studies 2 and 3 examine the roles of political ideology and its associated values, and Study 4 examines choice of an advisor in an online, but consequential setting.

Across several contexts and countries, the study finds a consistent pro-minority bias in evaluations of service employees. The study show that, in the USA, this bias is prevalent among liberals, but not among conservatives. This difference in the impact of political ideology is explained by adherence to traditionalism.

This paper investigates consumer reactions to gays and Blacks and do not test for consumer reactions to other minority groups. Regarding employees’ sexual orientation, the findings of this study are limited to gay men only.

To elicit favorable evaluations from customers, managers may consider the match between employees’ sexual orientation or ethnicity and consumers’ liberal beliefs. In particular, managers may want to hire people from those minority groups in areas known for their liberal values. On the other hand, the findings suggest that managers should not worry about their new recruits’ sexual orientation and ethnicity in conservative areas, because the results suggest that conservatives show no favoritism toward employees in response to their group status.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first paper in marketing investigating consumer reactions to employees who belong to minority groups. The study reports a pro-minority bias that holds across samples and countries, thereby attesting to the population validity of the hypotheses. Further, the study identifies boundary conditions of the effect of employees’ group status by identifying managerially relevant moderators (i.e. political ideology and traditionalism).

This paper aims to conduct a review of the recent literature on inter-firm relationship quality (RQ) in the supply chain (SC) settings.

100 English-language scientific publications on inter-firm RQ, published from 2006 to 2015 were selected and analyzed by using a content analysis approach.

The results of the frequency analysis map the antecedents, dimensions and consequences – particularly the performance and behavioral intentions of collaborating partners – of buyer–seller RQ presented in the current literature. The contingency analysis offers insights into the use of relevant constructs of inter-firm RQ in SCs in the individual papers. A range of research gaps is uncovered.

The category building for the content analysis was based on an RQ framework that focuses on the mediator structure and neglects the effects of moderators.

The developed framework of inter-firm RQ in SCs provides managers with a guide to the relevant influencing factors, evaluation indicators and consequences of the quality of their relationships with SC partners.

This paper provides the first literature review at the intersection of RQ and SC. The research framework developed specifies the use of the previous RQ framework in the business-to-business and SC context. A critique of the existing studies is discussed and the agenda for future research are suggested.

Recent technological and social changes have challenged manufacturing firms to remain competitive in increasingly dynamic markets. A way of facing these challenges is to foster organizational structures that encourage creativity. Although the general importance of organizational creativity for market success is undeniable, few studies on manufacturing firms have provided a nuanced view of how this relationship is affected by firm-external factors (e.g. different levels of market dynamism) and whether and how this leads to greater market success.

This research uses survey data from 255 chief executive officers (CEOs) and top managers of manufacturing firms in Germany. The authors performed different regression analyses to test for direct, mediation, moderation and moderated mediation effects.

The findings show that, in highly dynamic markets, organizational support for creativity indeed helps manufacturing firms to remain competitive by positively influencing firms' innovation performance, which subsequently results in improved market performance. By contrast, in markets with low dynamism, organizational support for creativity has no impact on firms' innovation and market performance.

From a theoretical perspective, this study introduces market dynamism as a novel, so-far underexplored firm-external factor that moderates the relationship between organizational support for creativity and innovation and market performance. This research thus enhances the understanding of the dynamics of organizational creativity and its effects on innovation and market performance in an organizational context of manufacturing firms.

In general, this research emphasizes the importance of establishing a creativity-supporting environment to enhance innovation and market performance. Most importantly, this relationship depends on whether firms are active in highly dynamic or stable markets. Managers should thus consider the level of (future) market dynamism when making decisions about creativity-supporting work environments.

This research provides novel insights into how organizational support for creativity influences innovation and market performance in the manufacturing industry and introduces market dynamism as an important moderating factor.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the consumers’ perception of natural and artificial food colourants. Furthermore, attitudes towards the application of carmine, being technically important and ubiquitously used to impart red shades, are assessed and analysed. Originating from insects, carmine is considered as natural but may arouse disgust.

In total, 625 individuals were surveyed using an online, self-administered questionnaire to represent a broad cross-section of the German population.

Independent of their origin, the application of colourants was rejected by 57.0 per cent of the interviewees. In total, 31.8 per cent of the participants stated a neutral attitude, while only 11.2 per cent expressed a positive notion. Most respondents preferred colourants from natural sources to artificial ones. While consumers perceive natural food colourants composed of genuine plant pigments positively, 61.6 per cent of respondents disliked the application of animal-derived colourants, 24.8 per cent of them did neither reject nor like it, and only 13.6 per cent of the interviewees stated a positive attitude towards them. The findings of this paper further indicate consumers’ preference for colourants to be either artificial or plant-derived rather than carmine. Food colourants are being rejected, possibly due to misleading information and confusing labelling. Consequently, information about carmine, including its origin and production, did not increase the aversion to products that are dyed with it, but increased their acceptance.

This study outlines consumer perception and attitudes towards food colourants. For the first time, the findings of this paper report the effect of revealing information about an additive, which initially aroused disgust, and its influence on consumer perception.