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The aim of this research was to investigate the perceptions of senior compliance professionals in Irish organisations regarding potential connections between the area of diversity and compliance. The research followed a qualitative design to address the research questions and to gather and summarise the data. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather primary data from senior compliance professionals based in five organisations spanning the public sector and the financial services sector. The Central Bank of Ireland (‘Central Bank’) report Behaviour and Culture of the Irish Retail Banks (2018a) was reviewed alongside Irish and UK Corporate Governance Codes and Corporate Governance Reviews in the UK. The Central Bank in their reviews of retail banking following the financial crises of 2007 - 2008, have suggested that increasing diversity on boards is related to an improvement in culture and behaviours. The variables in the research are diversity in the form of gender and compliance in public sector organisations as opposed to private financial services companies. The following themes emerged from the results found. Diversity is not a topic in Compliance Programmes and companies are largely not making the link with improvements in diversity having a positive effect on compliance. However, in assessing future risks, financial services companies are aware of the changing regulatory environment and are taking account of diversity in the Compliance Programmes. Analysis of the interviews suggested that a collaborative type of leadership model is viewed as conducive to an inclusive culture where diversity can be embedded. The future focus now needs to move from not alone having diversity in the workplace but to the proactive inclusion of those diverse people in the organisation.

Since GDPR came into enforcement in 2018, various firms have been found violating or circumventing the ePrivacy Directive known as the Cookie Law which lays out the cookie consent guidelines for websites. To improve the GDPR compliance rate, several conversations are going on between EU commission, Data protection agencies, business & websites owners and ad vendors regarding their cookie policy, obtaining user consent for data collection and its usage. One of the key stakeholders who are the website users, whose privacy is in question seems to be left out from the discussions. The study aimed to understand user perception towards website cookie banners, which are mandatory under GDPR, and the influence of factors like awareness of cookies, user experience, consent banner design, privacy risk, brand trust on user’s willingness for accepting all cookies, to develop recommendations to improve customer’s motivations to give consent. Using a quantitative approach, the primary data was collected from 132 internet users residing in the EU region through an online survey questionnaire shared in social media networks. The results showed that the (i) majority of respondents had more than moderate level of awareness about cookies (ii) they are more likely to accept cookies for quick access or task completion, (iii) acceptance of cookies was varied across different categories of online activity and (iv) given a choice they are more likely to opt-out of 3rd party cookies which are widely used for targeted advertising. Since 3rd party cookies will be phased out in the near future and are likely to be replaced with more advanced customer tracking technologies which are harder to opt-out of, this study proposes a framework for Consent for Advertising Directive (CAD) to go beyond the existing Cookie Law, which will improve user data protection regardless of the tracking technology used, and help brands to improve transparency about their data collection and avoid GDPR violations.

Food retail outlets, by making food accessible, available and affordable, contribute significantly to consumers’ food choices, including snack food choices, and ultimately their longer-term health status. Therefore, the food retail environment may represent an opportune place to harness marketing power to implement anti-obesity measures. The study aimed to understand consumers’ purchasing decisions for confectionery and savoury snack food items both on and off promotion. Associated objectives sought to identify what influences consumers’ food buying decisions and understand if these differ by food product category or promotional status, particularly in respect of single versus multi-pack confectionery/savoury snack food items, to inform retail promotional strategies and anti-obesity policymaking. In order to gain an insight into consumers’ motivations, attitudes and behaviours, an ethically compliant, quantitative survey was designed which collected data from 302 respondents aged 18-75. Three-quarters (76%) of those surveyed believed promotions are more prevalent for less healthy foods compared to healthy foods. Promotions were found to have a significant impact on consumer behaviour, causing 64% to purchase greater volume of an item and 76.5% to purchase confectionery and savoury snacks more readily. Respondents made unintended purchases regularly with the highest incidence among those shopping four to six times per week, while 72% of all unintended purchases were attributed to promotional activity. Findings highlight the clear effect promotions have on consumers’ buying behaviour. The main enabler reported to encourage consumers to make healthier food choices was “if healthy food was cheaper”. Additionally, the findings also suggest that increasing the price of less healthy foods (such as confectionery and savoury snacks) could also impact positively on consumers’ purchasing behaviours. The research indicates the potential for future supermarket health promotion initiatives to encourage consumers to make healthier food choices which could play a vital role in improving public health and subsequently reduce obesity levels.

This paper presents a preliminary scoping review exploring the evidence landscape regarding academic staff experiences and perceptions of social media adoption as an educational tool in higher education. The goal of this paper is to examine 10 empirical studies of social media adoption in teaching and learning by academics in preparation for a proposal for a systematic literature review. Consequently, this scoping study assisted in the development of a review protocol which established the inclusion and exclusion criteria for conducting this systematic review at a future date. This paper will present the first stage of carrying out a systematic review: planning the review and presenting the results of the scoping study. The findings of this scoping study revealed that academics are slow in adopting social media within teaching and academics that have adopted the use of social media do so primarily for sharing relevant information and resources easily with students rather than for teaching purposes. Overall, the adoption of social media as an educational tool is faced with many challenges, such as cultural resistance, pedagogical issues, lack of institutional support and time investment. The results also indicate that teaching styles, demographic factors, privacy issues and previous experience can influence academic staff’s decision to adopt social media for teaching purposes.

Competitive advantage is the ‘Holy Grail’ in strategic management theory. What makes a company more successful than its rivals has dominated scholarship in this area for more than 20 years. There have been two main theories proposed to attempt to identify the important resources and capabilities that configure to build competitive advantage; the Resource-based View and Dynamic Capability View. There is a growing literature stream in the area of Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data Analytics with regard to both the computer technology and business management constructs. However, the literature is silent of the affordances of BI for Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and so a significant gap in the literature remains. This discussion aims to signal the need to fill that gap and to build awareness of BI as a potentially significant contributor to sustained competitive advantage in SMEs underpinned by the iniquitousness of cloud applications previously the domain of Multinational Corporations.

There has been a dramatic growth of individuals using online auctions especially within Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) e-commerce coupled with increasing academic attention to behaviour in the online environments. Literature has identified the influence of attitudes, perceptions, trust and security on individual’s online auction transaction intentions and behaviours. The aim of this study, therefore, was to predict and understand individuals online auction transaction intentions and behaviours through the application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Three hundred and seventy-two respondents completed the survey within two geographical regions. Findings reported that attitudes, self-efficacy and trust significantly influenced intentions; while intentions and self-efficacy significantly influenced online auction behaviours. Interestingly, social pressures, perceived control and security failed to have any influence. Overall, the study provided greater insight into which salient drivers influence transaction behaviours and intentions.