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Considering the significance of the human resource management (HRM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) relationship, the aim of this research is twofold: first is to measure the cultural differences between HRM, CSR and sustainable performance relationship (study 1) and second is to identify the how HRM instigates CSR and sustainable performance (study 2) in the hospitality industry of UK and Pakistan.

A mixed-method approach was used to collect the qualitative and quantitative data from upscale hotels. In Study 1, a multi-respondent and time-lagged strategy was employed to collect the data from 162 Pakistani and 290 UK upscale hotels. In Study 2, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand the HRM–CSR–performance nexus.

The results of Study 1 highlight the significant cultural differences in the relationships of HRM–CSR–performance, while Study 2 explains that ethical culture, shared objectives, transparency, training and development, and economic incentives are the factors that push the employees to take part in CSR-related activities and attaining higher sustainable performance.

This study addresses the debate on the difference between cross-cultural studies related to implementing Western theories in shaping, developing and implementing business strategies, including CSR, HRM and sustainable performance in an Asian context.

The variability of weather at tourist destinations can significantly affect travel decisions by tourists and their comfort. In particular, rain affects the profitability of hospitality firms that can hardly contrast the phenomenon of heavy rain. Therefore, the assessment of rainfall financial risks, i.e. the negative economic effects caused by rain, becomes crucial to safeguarding the profitability of the hospitality industry. The purpose of this study is to assess such risks.

The present work contributes to the literature on weather/climate change and tourism by advancing a model for the rainfall financial risk assessment of hospitality firms. The model is based on scenario correlation between business performances and rain and originates from the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) presented by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), where some tools to adequately face business risks are advanced.

The model is complemented by an empirical experiment based on the business performances of the hospitality industry of Lake Garda and the amount of rainfall in the same area during the decade 2005-2014. The empirical application detects scenario correlation between those variables over time. In particular, the findings open opportunities to purchase financial instruments (insurance contracts, derivative instruments, etc.) with greater awareness, with the purpose of mitigating the negative impacts of rain on business performances of hospitality firms.

The model improves scenario analysis by introducing scenario correlation, which is a tool for assessing the highly nonlinear links between business performances and rain in today’s complex world. This is the essential step that firms should perform if they want to successfully adopt strategic decisions about rainfall financial risk management.

This study aims to propose the application of relational leadership theory (RLT) for magnifying the dynamics involving the individual who participates in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in the hospitality sector. Dominant theories in this field fail to show what drivers affect such dynamics. The key preoccupation of those frameworks is the extent to which CSR can attract, motivate and retain employees.

This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through a quantitative survey involving circa 1,300 hotels, and qualitative semi-structured interviews, this study seeks to unpick what actors identify as sustainable practice driving motives, which, in turn, influence the implementation of CSR initiatives. In this perspective, actors drift away from being mere receivers, or executors of sustainable practices, acquiring a more active role. The qualitative data of this study are collected through semi-structured interviews in hotels in Italy, the UK and Pakistan and run the quantitative survey across the same three countries.

The quantitative data showed a significant positive correlation between economic incentive and teamwork in CSR practices. This aligned with the qualitative data that showed two main drivers – responsibility and convenience – displaying characteristics of collectivity and collaboration, which tie to the principles of RLT.

This study posits the relevance of relatedness at multiple levels to spot how CSR initiatives can produce varying “hospitality work” outcomes.

By focusing on actors and identifying the driving motives of sustainable initiatives, this paper suggests that leaderful practice stands at the core of CSR implementation.

Gender competence as part of engineering education can better prepare men and women to work on sustainable solutions that benefit entire societies. This chapter describes the framework and lessons learned of a community of practice (CoP) for gender equality facilitated by the Mediterranean Engineering Schools Network. Faculty and students from Mediterranean European, North African and Middle Eastern countries came together in this CoP, which was supported by the TARGET project, to develop a practical plan using a reflexive approach. The transfer of knowledge between generations is achieved by using participatory learning processes, facilitating mindful awareness, widening experiences, deepening understandings and building a gender-sensitive mindset. Students embarked on the journey to become change agents. The process led to the consolidation of gender equality knowledge, competence building and the development of change agents for gender equality. This CoP can inspire other institutions to undertake a participatory path towards gender equality – at local, regional, or global level.

Crowdfunding campaigns reflect the personality traits of the entrepreneur, influencing the chances of a successful fundraising. In this study, the authors focus on three different entrepreneurs’ personality dark traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Through a text analysis of 338 equity-crowdfunding campaigns in the UK, the authors identified narcissistic expressions used by entrepreneurs in their pitches, and their impact on funding success. The authors found an inverted U-shape relationship between entrepreneurs’ narcissism and the crowdfunding success. On the other hand, entrepreneurs’ psychopathy has a negative linear relationship with crowdfunding success. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature, highlighting the importance of displayed entrepreneurs’ personality traits in engaging with crowd investors.

This paper aims to investigate how a small business is able to continually use entrepreneurial financial sources (i.e. crowdfunding) within and after a successful transformation from an entrepreneur. It additionally investigates how a market incumbent is able to successfully join the market of entrepreneurial financial resources.

Therefore, a comparative case study using qualitative and quantitative data as well as triangulation technique is conducted within the international board game (or tabletop) market at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The US company CMON, which has developed from an entrepreneur to a small business and beyond, is compared with the German incumbent Pegasus. Based on an analysis of a set of key performance indicators suggested in the literature, qualitative and quantitative variables are deductively derived to measure their impact on the financial goal achievement, thereby showing their impact on the goal achievement. During the analysis, additional variables are identified inductively.

As a result, several qualitative components are found to be crucial, including oral storytelling and computer animated videos/images, a perfect multilingual product language, prototyped components, an active community and a depth and regularity in campaign updates. In quantitative terms, important components include having more product images than longer project descriptions, more optional buys than different but fixed project rewards, a big social network (on Twitter and Facebook), and the number of updates.

Based upon the data and findings, this study invites for more research, especially in conducting a larger scale quantitative analysis using the developed framework to compare more cases within a branch, cases across branches and cases with different background stories.

But to successfully run a crowdfunding campaign, entrepreneurs and incumbents can use the provided measures as a first design- and decision-roadmap, as well as copying the new business strategy of continually practicing crowdfunding for new products.

Despite its limits, this paper offers the first in-depth qualitative and quantitative crowdfunding case study showing on the one hand a new business strategy about crowdfunding as well as providing a structured measure to compare crowdfunding project performance.