Dr. Stephen Arthur LeMay

Purpose
Celebrity brands increasingly leverage social media alongside traditional media to repair reputations, reflecting consumer culture theory’s focus on co-created brand meaning. Prior research overlooks social media content creators (SMCCs). The purpose of the study is to uncover and understand the role of content creators in image restoration; the netnography of the Depp v. Heard trial reveals how SMCC coverage shaped attitudes, highlighting their critical role in celebrity brand crises.

Design/methodology/approach
This study used interpretive, immersive netnography to explore how SMCCs influenced public opinion during Depp v. Heard.

Findings
SMCCs engaged by Depp’s team influenced online communities, enhancing his brand image and popularity. This strategy increased trust in SMCCs over traditional media, especially when discrepancies arose. The findings highlight the crucial role of brand authenticity and credibility in image restoration.

Research limitations/implications
The findings fill a gap in the literature on celebrity branding, showing how public figures can leverage social media communities sharing similar values and emotions (e.g. sympathy, outrage and indignation) to influence public opinion.

Practical implications
For brand managers, the findings underscore the importance of engaging with SMCCs, particularly when mainstream media fail to highlight the preferred position of a brand. The findings highlight how SMCCs facilitate image repair and reputation management, reshaping public opinion and brand perceptions.

Social implications
The findings extend beyond individual branding to address broader social issues, including domestic violence and the “MeToo” movement. The impact of Depp v. Heard on these movements underscores the complex interplay between media representation, public opinion and social causes.

Originality/value
This study examined the role of SMCCs in celebrity brand image repair, positioning them as strategic stakeholders in branding and crisis communication. Findings demonstrate their pivotal role in shaping public discourse, extending image restoration theory to digital environments, and highlighting SMCCs’ influence in co-creating dynamic processes of brand image restoration.

The fashion supply chain is undergoing a transformation driven by AI, with significant implications for social sustainability and ethics. This study examines how AI-powered innovations optimize supply chain operations, enhance transparency, and support ethical labor practices. Through a systematic literature review, we identify key challenges and opportunities, emphasizing the role of AI in fostering circular economy models, responsible sourcing, and stakeholder collaboration. Our findings propose a research agenda centered on policy frameworks, technological advancements, and ethical AI governance. This study contributes to the discourse on socially sustainable and ethical AI adoption in fashion supply chains, offering insights for researchers and industry leaders.

The critical incident explores the complexities Jan, owner of JDD Rockway LLC, faced in navigating the challenging U.S. freight market post-COVID-19 pandemic. The focal point of the case is Jan's trilemma in dispatching options: using a third-party dispatching service, hiring an in-house dispatcher, or managing dispatch himself. Each option's financial implications and operational impacts are analyzed, highlighting the choices' advantages and challenges. The article provides insights into Jan's decision-making process amid evolving market conditions and underscores the broader implications for small carriers in the current freight landscape.

This study delves into the significant ethical criteria in the context of global standards. It addresses the moral wrongdoings and adverse side effects associated with global value chains as discussed in the business ethics literature. The methodology involves theoretical application and synthesis. The study employs ethical principles from deontology, consequentialism, and political cosmopolitanism to establish normative criteria such as "injustice and harm to others" and "bad outcomes." It further investigates how these criteria should influence consumers' decisions, actions, and responsibilities. These criteria are then used to examine the moral wrongdoings and negative effects mentioned in global standards. The study explores how global standards implicitly express consumers' roles in governing global value chains. It scrutinizes consumers' actions and decisions by applying ethical frameworks to global standards. The study outlines consumers' individual and political responsibilities in achieving the goals of global standards. The research findings have implications for governments, consumers, and organizations in practicing shared responsibility. The aim of this research is to provide normative guidance for responsible actions.

This research explores the ethical implications of private large language models (PLLMs) through the lens of stakeholder theory. Private LLMs, tailored for specific organizational needs, present unique privacy and data protection challenges. We examine the historical development of LLMs and their impact on stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and society. Our proposed framework balances stakeholder interests with ethical considerations, offering a comprehensive approach to the ethical development and deployment of PLLMs. This framework emphasizes transparency, accountability, and sustainable practices to ensure long-term value creation. Future research directions include developing regulatory frameworks, conducting detailed social impact assessments, and exploring strategies for effective human-AI collaboration. This study contributes to academic discourse by providing a multi-faceted approach to managing the ethical challenges posed by PLLMs, fostering best practices, and mitigating potential conflicts among stakeholders.

Purpose: This study aims to examine small-firm shifts in behavior during major supply chain disruptions that change supply chains permanently. The study focuses on small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) responses to suppliers' opportunistic behaviors within a larger disruptive environment. The study addresses two broad research questions: how do small businesses adapt to supply chain disruptions, and under what conditions are such adoptions warranted?
Design/methodology/approach: This study used mixed methods, a qualitative netnography and a quantitative analysis of survey data. It tested a model based on responses from members of an online business-to-business community. The model development was driven by the findings from netnography and two theoretical lenses.
Findings: The responses suggested a strong relationship between the two theoretical approaches. The conditions described by the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm led to many real options. Supply chain disruptions and deceptive suppliers triggered rapid adaptation through traditional marketing tactics and strategies. Changes in the supply chain, and place, led to responses in price, promotion and product. Respondents hoarded, developed relationships with new, nonopportunistic suppliers and changed prices, products and product mixes. They developed cooperative relationships - coopetition - to deal with shared problems.
Originality/value: This study interprets supply chain disruptions through the lens of marketing in SMEs; it combines qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand supply chain disruptions in a marketing context; it applies the real options theory and the RBV of the firm to marketing in the context of supply chain disruptions, and it reflects real-time small-firm behavior in a crisis.

Consumer polarization leading to buycotts and boycotts was magnified by the global crisis of 2020-2021 which changed consumer priorities and business practices: in-person shopping decreased, while social distancing, remote work, and media consumption increased. In this context, we examined the relationships among egoism, empathy, and consumer interest in social topics. These topics included employee treatment, social justice, and the environment. We highlighted aligning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts with consumer values. Using a survey method and structural equation modeling, we found such efforts increased consumer buycott. In this research we addressed whether consumers were motivated by empathy or egoism to engage in buycotting during global crisis. Consumers reacted to a firm's adherence to health and safety guidelines, respect for human rights, and engaged in environmental protection. This study contributes to the literature on CSR and prosocial behavior. It examined the relationships among key consumer characteristics and corporate behavior in times of crisis and expands the existing literature on psychological factors that play a role in buycotting. The findings are applicable to policy makers, academic literature, and practice as it offers practical recommendations on how companies might consider realignment of CSR activities during crisis. It also suggests directions for future research.

The circular economy (CE) seeks to eliminate waste and pollution by keeping goods and materials in use as long as possible. In this chapter, we introduce the moral supply chain (TMSC) and put it into the context of a CE, circular supply chains (CSCs) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). When supply chains cross national borders, they often cross cultural, moral and ethical borders too. Circularity does not eliminate these conditions, nor does it eliminate ethical and moral problems. A CE and CSCs focus on sustainability but often omit labour, corruption and broader social issues. CSR remains important; however, it is limited in covering issues raised by a CE and CSCs. Corporations are held responsible in restricted ways, sometimes subjected to unfair judgements or permitted to escape responsibility. Other supply chain actors, overlooked by CSR, also have social responsibilities. Without the cooperation of these other actors, a CE and CSCs will fail on economic and ethical grounds. This chapter stresses the ethical issues, using TMSC to expose the barriers to circularity in supply chains and the economy. It also covers the ethical and moral issues that should be addressed as we move towards CSCs and a CE.

As the Coronavirus shifted into a worldwide pandemic supply chains everywhere began experiencing comprehensive breakdowns. From continent to continent, suppliers, producers, distributors, and all services facilitating the movement and storage of products scrambled to alter plans in effort to secure enough product to meet customer demand. At one time or another during the pandemic most all failed to keep product flowing.
During this time, supply chain faculty at a southeastern U.S. comprehensive regional university began weekly Zoom sessions to learn first-hand what business alumni were doing to help their firms survive. These are their stories and the lessons they learned by working in the field during Covid-19. Our qualitative analysis of the Zoom transcripts identified 5 emerging themes depicting the immediate challenges being met by our informants that pertained to personnel shortages, supply/demand bullwhip effects, supply chain flexibility, public coordination challenges, and opportunistic logistics behaviors. The lessons learned may assist today’s managers in preparing supply chains for the next unforeseen worldwide supply chain challenge.

Blockchain and cloud computing continue to emerge and evolve as important technologies for data management. This has strategic implications for data stored in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We use manufacturing bills of materials (MBOMs) as an example of critical data in ERP. MBOMs define the complex product structures of manufacturing enterprises. We survey five alternatives for storing, controlling, and auditing MBOMs in ERP: Oracle Blockchain Table; Oracle Blockchain Platform Enterprise Edition; Microsoft Azure SQL Database Ledger; SAP HANA Blockchain Ledgers; and IBM Blockchain Platform. We also consider cloud computing without blockchain technologies. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative by its effect on the management of MBOMs. Although we use MBOMs in our illustrations, many of the concepts discussed also apply to other critical data stored in ERPs. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G31; G32; G33; M21.