1st year PhD presentations

Lisa Stickel and Maria Dahl Andersen present their PhD projects

Info about event

Time

Tuesday 11 January 2022,  at 10:00 - 11:45

Location

via Teams

Organizer

Department of Management

10:00-10:45 via Teams: Click here to join the meeting

Lisa Stickl: 'Emotional and cognitive reactions to healthy snack products along the customer journey'   
Supervisors: Klaus Grunert & Liisa Lähteenmäki
Discussants: Birte Asmuß & John Thøgersen

Abstract
Snacks generally serve consumers as a spontaneous seduction and are often consumed without much thought. The focus lays more on sensory product qualities such as taste, appearance or smell. The addition of nutrition or health claims to a snack, and thereby repositioning it as healthy, poses serious challenges to marketers and policy makers. Changing consumer habits and adopting them to the new situation requires both, successful habit change intervention and attractive healthy alternatives. Despite great efforts, this was relatively ineffective in the past. A reason may be that most studies used classical research methods solely based on consumers’ self-reports – even though many consumer/snack interactions along the customer journey have a low level of conscious awareness and consumers cannot reliably remember the reasons for their choices. Therefore, future methodologies need to go beyond verbal questioning or self-reported techniques. In this PhD project, I will investigate new approaches of measuring consumers’ unconscious reactions to food products and how these measures can support the prediction of acceptance and success for a healthy snack.


11:00-11:45 via Teams: Click here to join the meeting

Maria Dahl Andersen: 'Recruiting for diversity as Sustainable Human Resource Management: An ethnographic inquiry into the practices and processes of recruiting for diversity in a self-declared sustainable organisation'
Supervisors: Christa Thomsen & Jakob Lauring
Discussants: Irene Pollach & Dorthe Døjbak Håkonsson

Abstract
Organisations are increasingly embedding sustainability as a core concept in their practices and processes to balance their current and long-term economic, environmental, and social relationships with and impact on people and society (Carroll, 2021). This introduces complex interactions of priorities to the field of Human Resource Management (HRM) and practitioners by extending impact beyond mere economic objectives to the development and perseverance of the workforce (Gond, Igalens, Swaen & Akremi, 2011; Voegtlin & Greenwood, 2016). With this interface, a new concept has been born; Sustainable Human Resource Management (Ehnert, 2009). Focus is on the adoption of HRM strategies that enable the achievement of economic, social, and ecological goals with an impact in- and outside the organisation over a longer time while controlling for unintended side effects of those very strategies (Kramar, 2013). Diversity can be seen as one manifestation of Sustainable HRM to create a platform where all voices are acknowledged, valued, and sustained (Gehrels & Suleri, 2016). Organisations often turn to recruitment as a relevant process to integrate their diversity and sustainability commitments; here, employers decide whom, why, and how new employees are invited into the organisation (Jepsen & Grob, 2015).

However, with Sustainable HRM still being in its infancy, scholars are requesting theoretical and especially, empirical knowledge on what happens when practitioners are faced with and work in a context of sustainability (Keegan, Bitterling, Sylva & Hoeksema, 2017; Poon & Law, 2020).

Based on an ethnographic case study in a multinational production company, I therefore investigate how a self-declared sustainable organisation recruit for diversity. Thereby, I aim to contribute with knowledge on how diversity is practiced as a sustainable initiative in the recruitment process thus contributing to the field of Sustainable HRM.

Everyone is welcome!