Vlerick Repository
The Vlerick Repository is a searchable open-access publication database, containing the complete archive of research output written by Vlerick Business School faculty and researchers.
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Item A clown's tale(Taylor & Francis, 2023-06-07)A clown’s tale’ tells the story of the author turning from an academic business educator into a theatre and clown performer. It gives a colourful insight of how life-changing, transformative and healing the contact with Performing Arts can be, on both personal and professional levels. For the author, this contact has not only been a turning point in his personal development and healing journey. It was a crucial moment for him on how to perceive, face and change typical academic working conditions. The chapter therefore mirrors the alienating impact of mainstream academic working conditions. A work context that calls for fierce competition and relentless self-marketing in precarious work settings builds ground for self-alienation and emotional self-disconnection, generally fuelling biographically established self-doubt and self-denial. The story therefore provides a strong testimony about how impactful Performing Arts can support individuals in breaking free of alienating and devaluating contexts, finding personal ground and a stance to operate truthfully from. Performing Arts does have immense immanent powers for personal and societal transformation, and this story is only a tiny example of that.Item Embracing Communication Failures with Joy: The Role of Emotional Safety(Springer Nature, 2023)Let us be honest: Making mistakes while communicating is the normality rather than the exception. However, we tend to run away from this inconvenient truth, with consequences. The fear of “messing up” makes us tense, inflexible and distant from the audience exactly when they want to find us relaxed, joyful and receptive. This chapter introduces a way to become comfortable with unexpected deviations during communicating, to go boldly to where the fear is and to establish emotional safety between the speaker and the audience.Item Nonstandard Errors(Wiley, 2024)In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data‐generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence‐generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty—nonstandard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for more reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer‐review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants.Item Sustainability nudges in the context of customer co-design for consumer electronics(Springer Nature, 2021)In this study, we shed light on the unexplored potential of customer co-design in a mass customization (MC) setting to contribute to the promotion of sustainable consumption. We theoretically derive and empirically test several opportunities for companies to improve sustainable consumption and production in a joint effort with consumers. Our research bridges between the MC and the sustainability literature and shows that MC enables consumers to cohere attitude and action, based on individual sustainability preferences. We empirically assess whether MC companies can nudge their customers successfully towards more sustainable choices by designing sustainability-based starting solutions (Study 1) and by providing transparent sustainability information (Study 2) in MC configuration systems. We do so by portraying a simulated online buying process of a customizable TV with a realistic web-based product configurator. We find that sustainable defaults can play a significant role in promoting sustainable consumption, while providing detailed sustainability information does not show an effect. To get more insights into our results, we discuss the results on a supplementary qualitative analysis based on think-aloud consumer tests (Study 3), revealing several suggestions for further research. Using these findings, we revisit sustainability information in Study 4 and find that intuitive labels significantly influence consumers to choose more sustainably.Item AI Strategy to Execution(Wiley, 2023)In this book, we discuss the “strategy to the execution gap” a leader of an organization encounters while adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) in that organization. The main focus is on value creation using AI and use of AI as competitive strategy. Although every organization across various industries is interested in integrating Artificial Intelligence into their business, a significant dilemma is the right AI strategy for their organization.