NEWS DIGEST
HOW SUSTAINABLE WINE BOTTLES & LABELS INFLUENCE TASTE PERCEPTIONS
SCHOOL : NHH Norwegian School of Economics, Norway
Packaging and information in relation to sustainability were found to impact the perceived taste and quality of wine in new research from NHH Norwegian School of Economics. In the study, wine enthusiasts were invited to tastings where they sampled conventional wines alongside three different types of sustainable wine. These encompassed wine with ethical production methods, climate-friendly packaging (ie a lighter glass bottle) or ‘biodynamic’ labelling (representative of an ecological farming approach). Half of the participants were told which wines were sustainable and in which way, while the remaining enthusiasts undertook blind tastings. The results showed notable differences between the blind and informed participants’ ratings that run contrary to the belief that packaging does not affect the perceived taste of the wine. The good news, from the green perspective, is that the same wine was rated substantially higher when participants were informed about its ‘biodynamic’ labelling. Conversely, participants who knew of a wine’s climate-friendly packaging rated its contents significantly lower than those who tasted it blind. Knowledge of a wine’s ethical production methods, meanwhile, had no significant impact on perceived taste. “This experiment shows that information about sustainability still shapes how we perceive wine,” surmised NHH researcher and PhD candidate Rieke Kohn. In reference to the low ratings given to wine in lighter, climate-friendly bottles, Kohn pointed to the enduring impact of tradition and the association of a bottle’s weight with quality, before adding that “such connection simply isn’t real”. EB
DEMYSTIFYING THE LINK BETWEEN LEADER PERSONALITY & STARTUP CULTURE
SCHOOL : Macquarie Business School Macquarie University, Australia
The startup world tends to celebrate leaders who push hard and take bold risks at pace. However, new research from Macquarie Business School finds that while such personalities might help build entrepreneurial, fast-moving cultures, their overall effect on employee innovation can still be negative. “A startup culture can look entrepreneurial and energetic on the surface, but leadership behaviour determines whether that energy becomes innovation or strain,” says Ying Lu, study co-author and an associate professor at Macquarie Business School. The study focused on the presence of “dark triad” traits, encompassing leaders’ propensity towards Machiavellianism, narcissism and subclinical psychopathy. “High-pressure cultures can create momentum,” confirmed Macquarie Business School associate professor and research co‑author Yue Wang, “but whether that pressure becomes innovative energy depends heavily on how leaders manage it.” Indeed, the study found that the benefits of that pressure can be cancelled out when leaders create environments marked by stress, internal competition and mistrust. “Difficult leadership is often romanticised in startup culture, but pressure alone does not create innovation. Employees also need trust, psychological safety and the mental space to turn pressure into creative ideas,” surmised Lu. The study was co‑authored with researchers at the School of Economics and Management, East China Normal University and published in the Journal of Business Research . TBD
Ambition • ISSUE 3 • 2026 9
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