In a world of attention scarcity, cause-related marketing strategies generate a substantially greater impact. The neurophysiological mechanisms that support favorable consumer attitudes toward cause-related marketing messages are, however, rather little understood. This study attempts to comprehend how a marketer may employ cause-related marketing initiatives to improve the company’s reputation as well as how program, company, and product identities affect consumers’ attitude toward the corporate image. Following the classical experimental design, this study uses four stimuli to investigate the effects of cause type and cause category on attitude toward corporate image. The four different stimuli used in this study are exposure to a negative corporate image of a fictitious brand, exposure to a negative corporate image with exposure to cause-related marketing message on Save Amazon Rainforest, exposure to a negative corporate image, and exposure to cause-related marketing message on Educate Homeless Children project, and exposure to a negative corporate image and exposure to cause-related marketing message on feeding the hungry homeless children with a description about the gravity of hunger among the poor homeless children of India. For this study, 1,171 urban Indian consumers were used as the sample. The study suggests that empathy-embedded cause-related marketing communications are characterized by primary need-based humanitarian causes. This study thus validates the mirror neuron hypothesis, which confirms that customer-centricity increases with the degree to which the communication content is similar to that of the respondent. A higher degree of customer-centricity results in a better advertisement attitude, which improves consumer attitude toward the corporate image.

This article analyses the impact of institutional quality and sustainability on FDI. To achieve the objective, the study utilises data from 189 countries for 19 years, from 1996 to 2017. For estimation, the study uses several approaches such as pooled panel least squares with fixed and random effect models, generalised method of moments and panel quantile regression. The study finds that FDI and institutional quality steers the sustainability of the participating countries, primarily by creating and maintaining a conducive environment for investment and trade. We also confirmed that institutional quality variables can predict the FDI inflow across the countries. This is the first study in our knowledge that adopts different estimations and thereby ensures the robustness of the research findings. Moreover, our study is unique by including a new variable, i.e., the environmental performance index, to understand the sustainability aspects of FDI and the institutional quality. JEL Codes: Q56, C33, G28, E02, E22, F21

Background/aims Service quality in hospitals is determined by the quality of staff interactions with patients. Human resource (HR) management practices play a significant role in the recruitment and retention of high calibre hospital staff. This study aimed to investigate how HR management practices affect employees' performance-related outcomes, such as their commitment to delivering a good standard of care and their perceptions of the quality of service that their hospital provides. Methods An integrated causal model was designed and tested by surveying the staff of hospitals in India. A total of 1236 usable response sets were analysed through structural equation modelling to test the relationships between HR management practices and employee performance-related outcomes. Results All but two of the relationships described by the model were found to be significant. The relationship between employees' commitment to their organisation and their perceptions of the service's quality and the relationship between HR management practices and employee commitment to delivering good service quality were found to be non-significant. Conclusion The integrated causal model could help healthcare managers to identify and strategically plan HR management practices to target desired employee performance-related outcomes in the hospital sector.

The study was intended to examine the role of SHGs in promoting sustainable entrepreneurial competencies among members and to check whether the entrepreneurial competencies among women micro entrepreneurs can be discriminated based on their membership status in SHGs. The study investigated the opinion of SHG members and non-members in order to understand the cognitive part of entrepreneurial competencies among women micro entrepreneurs in coastal Kerala. The field data collected were supplemented with focus group interactions. Discriminant Analysis was performed to identify whether the status of membership in SHGs is a good predictor of their entrepreneurial competency. The results reveal that the prediction model is statistically significant, and that the status of membership in SHGs is capable of predicting the outcome variable.

Corporations are now expected to self-regulate in order to uphold their social obligations to society. This is known as the social responsibility of corporations or corporate social responsibility. CSR helps a business to be mindful of the impacts it has on the economy, society, and environment. The most important CSR component for the automotive industry is unquestionably environmental responsibility. Despite the fact that many businesses still place a strong emphasis on economic responsibility, it is widely acknowledged that all three CSR elements are essential for the success of a firm. This study’s objective is to look into the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on business performance in the automobile sector, with an emphasis on Asian nations. Sample companies were selected from the Thomson Reuters database according to the data availability on corporate social performance and firm performance for more than 10 years. Data analysis was performed using the software STATA. Fixed and random effects panel regression models were used to analyse the relationships. The findings of this study are consistent with the idea that corporate social responsibility considerably improves the performance of automobile companies. The study concludes that companies need to focus more on CSR spending, as it improves the financial performance of the company. The study contributes to the existing literature as it validates the strong relationship between CSR components and firm performance in the automobile sector, which has not been much explored in the extant literature. The results of the panel data regression demonstrated that not only the environmental score is significant in determining the firm performance; other components such as social and governance scores are also equally important in achieving the desired firm performance, which is totally against the common notion that since automobile firms cause much damage to the environment, they need to focus only on environmental aspects through their CSR initiatives.