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New communication technologies are changing the way we work and communicate with people around the world. Given this reality, students in Higher Education (HE) worldwide need to develop knowledge in their area of study as well as attitudes and values that will enable them to be responsible and ethical global citizens in the workforce they will soon enter, regardless of the degree. Different institutional and country-specific requirements are important factors when developing an international Virtual Exchange (VE) program. Digital learning environments such as ProGlobe – Promoting the Global Exchange of Ideas on Sustainable Goals, Practices, and Cultural Diversity – offer a platform for collaborating with diverse students around the world to share and reflect on ideas on sustainable practices. Students work together virtually on a joint interdisciplinary project that aims to create knowledge and foster cultural diversity. This project was successfully integrated into each country’s course syllabus through a common global theme; sustainability. The focus of this paper is to present multi-disciplinary perspectives on the opportunities and challenges in implementing a VE project in HE. Furthermore, it will present the challenges that country coordinators dealt with when planning and implementing their project. Given the disparity found in each course syllabus, project coordinators uniquely handled the project goal, approach, and assessment for their specific course and program. Not only did the students and faculty gain valuable insight into different aspects of collaboration when working in interdisciplinary HE projects, they also reflected on their own impact on the environment and learned to listen to how people in different countries deal with environmental issues. This approach provided students with meaningful intercultural experiences that helped them link ideas and concepts about a global issue through the lens of their own discipline as well as other disciplines worldwide.
The article explores SME (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) brand strategies as a means to position and successfully engage in competitive markets. A derived typology of brand strategy types deals with social profiling and sheds light on brand strategy internalization of two current managerial paradigms—sustainability and co-creation. N = 895 German SME wineries were examined, leaning on a netnographic analysis of predominantly websites and social media interactions. A two-step clustering method thereby identified eight winery SME brand strategy types. The importance of sustainability across the identified eight brand strategy types is significant. Co-creation turned out to be a key profiling trait characterizing one brand strategy type. The typology illustrates strategic richness, with brand strategies leaning predominantly on traditional values, on sustainability, on external reputation, or on more innovative customer centric concepts such as co-creation. Hereby, the typology and the identified brand levers invite to strategically design brand management, governance, and sustainability. Wineries which focus on traditional positioning and legitimacy were found to be cautious in deploying co-creation through social media. Winery brands that are characterized by engagement in digital co-creation apparently either tend to expand their scope or partially combine it with traditional values, making them the most diverse type identified. Sustainability obviously needs to be addressed by all brand strategies. Despite industry and country focus, the analyses illustrate the relevance of socially-oriented profiling and highlights that sustainability has reached a status of a fundamental business approach still allowing to differentiate thereon. Furthermore, the business models of the SMEs need to deliver communicated values.