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The purpose of this paper is twofold: to introduce scholars and practitioners of foresight to the emerging Canadian foresight ecosystem, and to provide lessons learned on developing policy foresight from the Government of Canada context.

The paper provides a series of lessons based in part on informal and indirect observations and engagement with established Canadian foresight entities, including Policy Horizons Canada, and numerous newly established foresight initiatives at Global Affairs Canada, Standards Council of Canada and the Canadian Forest Service.

The paper finds that Canada’s newly emerging foresight units and initiatives face structural, institutional and organizational challenges to their long-term success, including in concretely measuring foresight outcome (rather than simply output) in policy making.

The paper provides a unique and empirically driven perspective of the foresight ecosystem that has emerged within the Canadian federal public service since 2015. Lessons are culled from this emerging network of Canadian foresight practitioners for international application.

Purpose – Drawing on Transformative Learning (TL) theory, the authors suggest a new and novel way to approach the study of violent radicalization.

Methodology/Approach – First, their argument is supported by the development of a Transformative Radicalization (TR) framework that borrows and adapts the core tenets of TL theory. Second, they provide a preliminary illustrative exploration of TR using two autobiographical accounts of militant radicalization (Islamist and Anarchist) from the UK and Canada.

Findings – Radicalization is a cognitive and emotional process of change that prepares and motivates an individual to pursue violent behavior. That process of change is incremental; individuals learn and adopt novel political, social, ideological, and/or religious ideals that justify and legitimize indiscriminate violence. The TR framework provides a more nuanced appreciation for the cognitive aspects involved in this process. The authors’ empirical illustrations provide guidance on how subsequent research might use original interview data on individual radicalization processes to develop more in-depth, cross-case comparisons.

Originality/Value – This theory builds a cross-disciplinary understanding of violent radicalization that highlights the way adults learn, alter their meaning perspectives, and change their behavior.

Purpose – This chapter examines the process of radicalization, deradicalization, and support for intelligence agencies in a few well-known cases of terrorists who turned into informants.

Methodology/Approach – Five cases studies are utilized to demonstrate the process of engagement in, disengagement from, and revolt against terrorist groups. Existing literature on radicalization and deradicalization is set against the context of these case studies.

Findings – By drawing upon the experiences of terrorists who turned into informants, it is possible to prove theories on radicalization and deradicalization. In particular, the process of cognitive radicalization presumes that extremist beliefs can also be rejected (deradicalization), while the process of behavioral radicalization presumes that terrorists can distance themselves from extremist behaviors (disengagement).

Originality/Value – Scholarship has traditionally focused on “underdogs” of all kinds, with a less keen interest in elites or the actors operating on their behalf. The work of informants has often remained in a dimly lit corner of academic research. This chapter helps illuminate the path undertaken by terrorists who become informants for Western security apparatus.

The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is in a critical moment in its information and news ecology, exhibiting signs of pretruth and posttruth syndromes. Between the “pretruth” and “posttruth” there is a gap that circumvented “truth.” The state of information in the MENA region brings back the dystopian Orwellian notion of the “Ministry of Truth.” A poetic term in anticipation of this moment of the crisis of truth. Sharing the latter with the rest of the world, the pretruth moment is engraved in the region's history of precarious political and religious authoritarian control and manipulation of information and news and low press freedom. In the region, truth is told, hidden, distorted, and manufactured by a blend of humans and bots, where both artificial intelligence and social humans are involved in this process of multipolarized disinformation operations with multifarious sponsors, actors, and beneficiaries that have distinct and often clashing agendas and interests. To understand the ecology of truth, facts, news, and information in the Middle East, studies ought to be situated within the ecosystem of information and media technologies in the globalized national and transnational societies of the region and consider both the role of the regionally oriented neoauthoritarian regimes and that of interested rising and established global powers. Central to this ecosystem is the dynamic interaction among three actors: communication technologies (the focus here is on the Internet); media, public, and activists' use of these technologies to mobilize, inform, and present alternative narratives, and to resist or confirm state narratives; and the authoritarian political regimes and their containment strategies for legacy media (particularly television) and the Internet.

Marketing management, digital marketing, advertising and promotion management, and technology management.

The case is suitable for BBA and MBA students. It can also be considered in executive education programs.

Venkatesh Kothapalli, the marketing head at Reebok India headquarters at Gurgaon, was in a decision dilemma about the effectiveness of using social media marketing and its employment in the current scheme of marketing strategy being planned. He had been able to generate a fair amount of awareness and excitement amongst potential users on Reebok's social media sites. However, these often fail to convert into topline sales. In addition, Alex his superior had given clear instructions that no separate budget would be earmarked for this type of medium. So Venkatesh had to divert some parts of his existing budgets (which he did from the PR budget and the DM budget) and channel these into the new area of social media marketing. This had also created concerns in Venkatesh's mind about the possibility of the new media not showing favourable results while budgets of the traditional and tried and tested media like PR and direct marketing were being chopped.

These include: understanding the dilemma of an organization's adoption of newer marketing tools as opposed to traditional marketing practices; evaluating the role of newer mediums like social media marketing and its long term and short term relevance; understanding the origins and development of social media marketing to grasp the full scale of its usefulness; and appreciating the complexities of measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing initiatives.

Teaching notes are available, please consult your librarian for access.

Firms are increasingly using social media platforms to engage with individuals, as it is recognized that a firm’s social media activity outcomes, such as number of user comments, followers or likes, impact brand equity. This study aims to evaluate both the extent that these social media activity outcomes relate to brand equity and the classification of firms which benefit from the various types of social media activity outcomes.

This study identifies various components of social media activity and then captures specific social media activity outcomes for Fortune 500 firms. This study then performs a hierarchical regression analysis to assess the impact of the various social media activity outcomes on brand equity.

The results show significant relationships of social media activity outcomes with brand equity. The activity outcome measures of social networking and content communities platform are significantly related to a firm’s brand equity. This study also found that the social media activity outcome levels of various types of social media platforms are contingent upon a firm’s brand country of origin and industry classification type.

The results help firms gain a clearer view of potential applications of social media platforms, thus improving their understanding of the impact of social media. This study can enhance social media strategy and design tactics to improve brand equity. The findings can also guide firms in evaluating which social media activity outcomes enhance brand equity.

The results highlight that activity outcomes in a firm’s selected content communities platform and social networking platform are related to brand equity.

The purpose of this study is to address a recent call for additional research on electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM). In response to this call, this study draws on the social network paradigm and the uses and gratification theory (UGT) to propose and empirically test a conceptual framework of key drivers of two types of eWOM, namely in‐group and out‐of‐group.

The proposed model, which examines the impact of usage motivations on eWOM in‐group and eWOM out‐of‐group, is tested in a sample of 302 internet users in Portugal.

Results from the survey show that the different drivers (i.e. mood‐enhancement, escapism, experiential learning and social interaction) vary in terms of their impact on the two different types of eWOM. Surprisingly, while results show a positive relationship between experiential learning and eWOM out‐of‐group, no relationship is found between experiential learning and eWOM in‐group.

This is the first study investigating the drivers of both eWOM in‐group and eWOM out‐of‐group. Additional research in this area will contribute to the development of a general theory of eWOM.

By understanding the drivers of different eWOM types, this study provides guidance to marketing managers on how to allocate resources more efficiently in order to achieve the company's strategic objectives.

No published study has investigated the determinants of these two types of eWOM. This is the first study offering empirical considerations of how the various drivers differentially impact eWOM in‐group and eWOM out‐of‐group.