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A charity’s core purpose is legally mandated and delivery thereof is not a corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity which, by definition, is voluntary in nature. Any CSR activity not required by law should be “incidental” and be an outcome of a core purpose/object and not a focus of activity. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to address the lack of research into voluntary CSR activities conducted by charities so that charities might have a clearer operating platform and do not involuntarily contravene legislation.

This was an exploratory investigation using purposive sampling of senior leaders in UK charities. This study uses a case study approach to identify pragmatic areas of concern and also identify practical actions.

The conventional hierarchical ordering of Carroll’s CSR pyramid (1991) for profit-focussed organisations were found to be inconsistent with those for charitable organisations which were: ethical, legal, economic and philanthropic/voluntary/incidental.

This was an exploratory study and would benefit from further investigation.

Corporate social responsibility actions undertaken by charities need to be carefully evaluated to ensure that they comply with the core charitable purpose or are incidental.

Many employees in charities are motivated by social justice; however, they need to be cautious that they do not exceed the core purpose of the charity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research was identified which has addressed the fundamental issue of charities’ core purposes and the extent to which charities might legally undertake CSR activities.

This study examines the results of a program intended to act as a selection tool for mass merchandisers and a development tool for small manufacturers. The evaluation program assessed the management practices and products of potential suppliers. Based on past experience, buyers for mass merchandisers consider small manufacturing enterprises a poor risk as potential suppliers of retail goods. As part of the evaluation process, firms were asked 34 closed-end questions regarding their management practices, and each product was evaluated on 41 specific qualities necessary for the mass merchandising market. Of the 1,690 firms that participated in this project, about 5 percent had their products accepted by a national mass merchandiser. A review of the evaluation data reveals that firms needed high performance in both areas of evaluation to be successful in the marketplace, not just a strong firm or a marketable product. However, each of these areas separately had a statistically significant effect on the success of the product in gaining a retail buyer’s attention.

Aims to verify the usefulness of a “balanced approach”.

This study examined 236 small manufacturers that had attempted to become suppliers to the mass merchandiser market. Each firm was asked to complete a self‐assessment instrument and allow its product to be independently evaluated by a trained marketing professional.

The results suggest that, while the balanced approach is useful in evaluating small suppliers, the reliance on only firm‐related items is not as effective as an approach using an instrument that also includes product‐specific measures. Firms with superior management and products were more successful in reaching a merchandiser's shelves than those with poor ratings in each area.

This study not only evaluated management areas similar to the ones recommended by Kaplan, Norton, and Kanji, but also included an assessment of product attributes. The study suggests that a balanced approach to performance assessment includes both firm and product measures. Buyers and suppliers in the mass merchandising industry could use this approach to more accurately assess the strengths and weaknesses of a potential relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of market orientation for small manufacturers vying to be suppliers in the mass retail marketplace. It examines the mediating effect of product‐related factors (market readiness and market level) on the market orientation‐performance relationship. The paper also assesses the performance of these manufacturers using measures such as buyer review and actual product acceptance.

This paper uses the results of a program, designed to evaluate and develop small manufacturers for the mass retail marketplace, to test the effect of a market orientation philosophy and product‐related factors on small firm performance.

It is found that while a market orientation is critical for the success of these manufacturers, product‐related factors have an even greater value in assessing their performance. Specifically, an evaluator's assessment of a product's readiness for the marketplace and his/her recommendation for the type of market it should enter were much better at predicting product performance for the small manufacturers taking part in the program.

The paper shows that small firms wanting to supply the mass‐merchandising marketplace should not rely solely on market orientation when trying to compete at this level. Market orientation may improve your market readiness, but it does not predict success for small manufacturers. Instead, low market orientation levels and poor product‐related factors strongly predict failure.

To the authors' knowledge no other articles examine market orientation's effect on small manufacturing performance using specific product‐related measures as a mediating variable.

This paper aims to provide an insight into the corporate greed and consequent corporate collapses of companies such as HIH, One.Tel and Harris Scarfe in Australia, while concurrently, Enron, WorldCom and other companies were attracting the attention of the accounting profession, the regulators and the general public in the USA. It is argued that the rise in economic rationalism and the related increased materialism of both the public and company directors and managers, fed the corporate excesses that resulted in spectacular corporate collapses, including one of the world’s largest accounting firms. The opportunistic behaviour of directors, and managers and the lack of transparency and integrity in corporations, was compounded by the failure of the corporate watch‐dogs, such as auditors and regulators, to protect the public interest. If the history of bad corporate behaviour is not to be repeated, the religion of materialism needs to be recognised and addressed, to ensure any corporate governance reforms proposed for the future will be effective.

A study was undertaken to determine if there were quality differences between ventures that were forwarded on to a mass merchandiser for buyer review and those that were not. The sample ventures were manufacturers participating in an independent evaluation program for a major US midwest mass merchandiser. The quality issues were based on common management practices and on the marketability of the product being offered to the firm. Ventures that were forwarded for subsequent buyer review were found to be superior in both areas of concern. A separate analysis was run to determine if any gender‐based differences were notable in the evaluation process. With few exceptions, male‐ and female‐owned ventures were of comparable quality when forwarding status was controlled. However, using regression analysis, product quality was found to have the greatest impact on whether or not a female‐owned venture was forwarded, while the quality of the entire venture (product and management practices) was of greater significance for male‐owned ventures.

This paper aims to explore the interaction between consumer empowerment and social interactions as fundamental social media elements. It demonstrates their relationship in both experiential and informative social media setting where social media complements an offline consumer activity. The study aims to contribute to the literature on social media by demonstrating its complementary role on offline activities through these fundamental elements.

The paper reports three experimental designs that manipulate the empowering and the socializing elements of complementary activities to show their effects on both the complementary online and the complemented offline activities.

The paper presents three empirical studies that reveal the effects of two fundamental social media elements (i.e. empowerment and socialization) on consumers’ responses toward consumption episodes that consist of complementary online and complemented offline activities. It reveals that that these elements increase positive consumer responses toward both the online and the offline activities through psychological empowerment. However, the interaction between the elements changes with respect to specific empowerment types.

The paper contributes to the literature on social media by demonstrating its complementary role on offline activities through its empowering and socializing elements. It bridges research on consumer empowerment and socialization in a way that reveals their interaction beyond the extant definitions of empowerment resulting from enhanced communication among consumers. The paper also demonstrates the complementary role of social media on offline consumer behaviors through the effects of these two fundamental elements.The participants of the experimental studies are presented with hypothetical scenarios and asked about their behavioral intentions. Thus, future studies should address the research questions in real-world settings.

The paper includes implications for social media usage as a complementary activity to offline real-life consumer behavior through the effects of consumer empowerment and social interactions. Thus, it may benefit marketers seeking to optimize the empowering and socializing components of their social media strategies.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how social media may affect real-life consumer behavior. It also identifies the interaction between the empowering and the socializing elements of social media offerings in both experiential and informative settings.