The growth of e-commerce has reshaped fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailing, yet consumer adoption in culturally embedded markets does not always follow a simple movement from physical stores to online platforms. This study explores how FMCG consumers in Kuwait decide when to shop online and when to remain with traditional retail channels. Drawing on nine semi-structured interviews with adopters, occasional users, and a non-adopter, the study re-examines e-commerce behavior through the lens of conditional adoption, trust, perceived control, and channel switching. The findings suggest that FMCG e-commerce adoption in Kuwait is not a linear transition, but a situational and category-specific behavior. Consumers turn to online platforms when convenience, urgency, delivery speed, heavy items, or time constraints make digital purchasing more useful. At the same time, they continue to rely on physical stores for fresh products, wider assortment, stronger promotional visibility, shopping enjoyment, and the ability to inspect items personally. Trust in product quality, confidence in delivery accuracy, price perception, and household routines strongly influence these decisions. The study contributes to engaged management scholarship by showing that e-commerce adoption in FMCG should not be understood only through technology acceptance or generational readiness. In the Kuwaiti context, online shopping operates as part of a hybrid retail routine shaped by cultural habits, category risk, Cooperative-Societies loyalty, family structures, and the consumer’s desire for control. For retailers and brand managers, the findings highlight the need to design digital FMCG platforms that go beyond convenience by strengthening trust, assortment depth, pricing fairness, loyalty mechanisms, and sensory assurance for categories where physical inspection remains important.

This study examines whether the explicit communication of corporate purpose, and the content of purpose statements, are associated with financial and sustainability outcomes in global and European large firms. Drawing on a sample of 377 publicly traded Fortune Global 500 companies, including 149 firms that explicitly publish a purpose statement on their corporate websites, the analysis combines NVIVO-based content coding with FactSet financial indicators and Truvalue Labs ESG scores. Purpose statements were coded for the presence of key components, including sustainability and corporate responsibility, values, customer orientation, distinctive competence, future orientation, and ESG-related dimensions. Welch’s t-tests were used to compare annualized stock returns, stock volatility, and ESG pillar scores across firms with and without explicit purpose statements and across firms whose statements contained specific components. The findings show that firms explicitly communicating purpose exhibit significantly lower stock volatility. In addition, statements emphasizing competence, customer orientation, and sustainability-related content are associated with lower volatility, suggesting that purpose communication may operate as a strategic signal that reduces uncertainty and enhances stakeholder confidence. Environmental content in purpose statements is positively associated with stronger environmental and governance ESG scores. In the European subsample, sustainability- and values-oriented purpose statements are also associated with higher stock returns. These results contribute to the emerging corporate purpose literature by linking external purpose communication to measurable market and sustainability outcomes, while also revisiting the mission statement tradition in a contemporary ESG context. Overall, the study suggests that purpose is more than symbolic rhetoric when explicitly communicated and substantively aligned with sustainability and stakeholder commitments.

This research examines work-life balance (WLB) in academia, focusing on the impacts of hindering job demands (HJDs) and the roles of job crafting, leisure crafting, and home crafting. Using data from 1,139 academics in Nigeria, it reveals a significant relationship between job crafting behaviors and improved WLB. Key findings include the positive correlation of leisure and home crafting with WLB and the mediating role of increasing structural job resources and challenging job demands.

This presentation examines the evolving customer-agent relationship in the German insurance industry amidst digital transformation. It proposes a value proposition framework encompassing key aspects such as interactivity, mobility, telepresence, customization, and information availability. Insights from interviews with sales agents highlight shifts in digital and non-digital stimuli influencing customer experiences and strategic implications for insurance sales.

This doctoral thesis explores the transformation of the German insurance industry under digitalization, focusing on the customer-agent relationship. It evaluates the digital value proposition drivers, identifies changes in customer interaction patterns, and develops insights for future evolutions in the insurance environment. The research extends the Retail Digitalization Framework (RDF) for application in the insurance sector.

This research investigates the digital value proposition for customer-agent relationships in the German insurance industry amidst increasing digitalization. Despite the dominance of physical sales channels, significant transformations in customer-agent interactions and behavioral patterns are anticipated. Leveraging the Retail Digitalization Framework (RDF), this study identifies digital and non-digital value proposition drivers, highlighting their implications for customer-centric strategies and sales transformation. The findings contribute to existing literature and provide actionable insights for managing insurance customer interactions effectively.

This document investigates the transformation of customer-agent relationships within the German insurance industry as it adapts to increasing digitalization. The research explores the adaptation of the Retail Digitalization Framework to the insurance sector and employs a critical realism-oriented approach. Key observations from expert interviews highlight changing value propositions and propose a new framework for understanding customer-agent dynamics.

Collections and recoveries (C&R) activities are essential for effective credit risk management, particularly in light of post-2007-2008 financial crisis regulations. Despite their importance, this area is often underexplored. Accurate unpaid debt segmentation is crucial for optimizing collection strategies and assessing collection potential. Our objective is to identify the key determinants influencing recovery rates for unsecured debt portfolios that banks and financial institutions have written off, and to assess how these determinants were affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, we aim to identify which variables significantly predict short-term repayment behaviour before, during, and after the pandemic. To this end, we developed statistical models utilizing the CHAID classification tree methodology to identify the most discriminating variables. Our findings indicate that the COVID-19 crisis had a notable impact, causing significant alterations in these variables. The insights from this research are expected to be valuable to key stakeholders in the C&R sector, including creditors, servicers, and regulators/supervisors. In this research, we utilized a database from a prominent Investment Firm, containing information on 900.000 accounts of unsecured debt portfolios sourced from the Spanish non-performing loans market, and their payment behaviour from 2018 to 2023, along with macroeconomic data from the “Instituto Nacional de Estadística”.

This research develops a taxonomy and decision framework for evaluating investment managers, focusing on factors and synergy that influence evaluative value in wealth and institutional segments.

This presentation explores decision frameworks used by analysts for professional money management selection. It identifies key factors influencing hiring and investing decisions, including both retail and institutional attributes. Employing qualitative research and grounded theory, it develops a taxonomy of factors such as consistency and validation. The findings highlight the role of heuristics, biases, and sub-factors in decision-making, offering insights for improving industry practices.