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Entrepreneurial firms, which include the new-age start-ups and an emerging era of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), have a central role to play in the economic growth of a country. Moreover, they have a central role in the economy and are imperative for employment generation and boosting technological advancement. It is well established that the management of established large-sized firms is significantly different from the challenges faced in the management of the small-sized entrepreneurial firms. Also, out of the numerous factors that influence the growth of SMEs and start-ups, one of the key differentiating factors is the leadership and the team/people that drive organisational growth. It has been seen that attracting, hiring and retaining key employees has always been challenging for any organisation, but in the case of small-scale entrepreneurial firms, it is even more daunting. In the context of this, the objective of the present chapter is to develop a framework for understanding the factors that affect employee retention in entrepreneurial firms using a systematic literature review. This chapter is an effort to find evidence from the past that indicates the factors affecting the employee retention in entrepreneurial firms. The findings from this study suggested that the HR policies can play the major role in retention practices.

This chapter explores the concepts of ethics, morals and social responsibility from organisational and societal perspectives covering both marketing that is focused on profit and marketing focused on bringing about social benefit. It discusses the meanings of social responsibility from different paradigmatic viewpoints and highlights the advantages and limitations of particular approaches. The chapter also considers some aspects of legal and regulatory frameworks and the potential for the development of codes of conduct for socially responsible for-profit marketing and social marketing. The discussion is positioned in a global context and is grounded by intercultural considerations and the diversity of ethical perspectives and norms across cultures.

This chapter unpacks the challenges faced in marketing sustainable fashion products within an industry fuelled by perpetual reinvention and growth. In recent decades, the fashion industry, but most notably fast fashion, has been mired in controversies ranging from environmental sustainability to the exploitation of cheap labour and disregard for workers’ health and safety. In parallel, increasing consumer demand has emerged for sustainable fashion options, which has led to a rapidly growing but diverging market. Adopting the three R’s — Reduce, Reuse and Recycle — this chapter explores the complexities involved in (1) the promotion of reduced consumption and demarketing, (2) the rising popularity of second-hand/vintage clothing, fashion libraries and the use of deadstock fabrics, and (3) recycling and upcycling. Barriers faced by marketers in promoting these more sustainable options are examined in considering paths forward to more sustainable practices.

Gamification found acceptance as an intriguing business tool, especially in the marketing domain wherein game-like processes encourage human engagement with products or services. Several studies have highlighted various uses of gamified approaches not only in marketing but also in other domains. However, what is unexplored is the “dark side” of gamification for various users across various businesses. Though gamification incentivizes customers to repeatedly play for more chances to win, it is covert in nature, which can lead to stress or strain on individuals and may have a huge impact in terms of ethics, privacy, and health monitoring on the users. As gamification engages users on psychological levels, it can be associated with privacy invasion, social overload, and negative health conditions, thereby revealing shocking exhaustion scenarios. These have huge ethical, privacy, surveillance, and monitoring impacts as gamification is in a way manipulating human minds and continuously keeping people addicted to an opaque and nonexistent world for materialistic benefits and pleasure. This chapter explores the impact of the false transparency creation, unethical interactions, and worst-case scenarios that gamification can cause. This can have huge ramifications on human beings as gamified systems are really complex processes. This chapter further highlights that businesses need to understand their limitations before gamification becomes a more powerful psychological tool with serious consequences, including life-threatening ones, for its users.