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Electronic Sports (eSports) is an emerging sector of the sports and entertainment industry experiencing an accelerated increase in consumer and sponsor demand. This paper aims to study selected cases of eSports service ecosystems, to identify similarities and differences and to understand the different roles, relationships and multiple interactions of actors involved in value co-creation processes.

This empirical paper follows the service-dominant logic to highlight value creation. Based on the sport value framework, an organizing logic for the actors in sports-related ecosystems to exchange service and co-create value, the authors apply the conceptualization of an eSports service ecosystem framework in which actors create value through their interactions. A case study approach was applied to qualitatively describe two cases of value co-creation by multiple actors during three eSports events. Case study 1a is the 2019 League of Legends World Championship Finals in Paris. Case study 1b is the 2020 League of Legends World Championship Finals in Shanghai. Case study 2 is the BLAST Premier Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Global Final 2020, which was entirely virtual.

The outcome is an empirically investigated conceptual framework of multiple actors co-creating value within a service ecosystem in eSports. The insights of the cases explain how actors interact with each other and co-create value during events in eSports ecosystems. The cases illustrate interactions in the context of eSports where the actors are connected within ecosystems. This enables further development of a value co-creation concept and a better understanding of value co-creation in eSports.

This study contributes to research by explicating a theoretically grounded framework for eSports service ecosystems based on empirical evidence. This research extends the scope of value co-creation beyond the firm–customer dyad to a service ecosystem in eSports, demonstrating the dynamic interactions of multiple actors.

Just as a rotten apple makes other apples around it begin to decay, so too can people influence others within their vicinity, particularly in terms of destructive emotions and behaviors. Trevino and Youngblood (1990) adopted the term ‘bad apples’ to describe individuals who engage in unethical behaviors and who also influence others to behave in a similar manner. In this chapter, the ‘bad apple’ metaphor is adopted to describe the employee whose actions and interactions create and maintain destructive faultlines and unethical exclusion behaviors that negatively impact the emotional well-being and effective and ethical performance of the team. In particular, the chapter examines the way in which ‘bad apples’ use destructive emotion management skills through the manipulation of emotional levers of others, what motivates them to do so and the implications it may have on management.

The purpose of this paper is to describe Burmese migrant women’s perceptions of health and well-being during pregnancy, their health promoting practices and their experiences with the Thai antenatal services.

The study used an ethnographic design. Observations were conducted in two antenatal clinics in southern Thailand. Ten Burmese migrant women and three Burmese interpreters participated in interviews. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

The Burmese women wanted to take care of themselves and their baby to the best of their ability. This included following traditional practices and attending the antenatal clinic if able. Negotiating the demands of earning an income, and protecting their unborn baby, sometimes led to unhealthy practices such as consuming energy drinks and herbal tonics to improve performance. Accessing antenatal care was a positive health seeking behaviour noted in this community, however, it was not available to all.

This is a small ethnographic study conducted in one Province in Thailand and all Burmese participants were legal migrants. Further research is required to understand the needs of pregnant women not able to access maternity services because of their status as an illegal migrant.

Community-based health promotion initiatives need to focus on the nutrition of pregnant women who are migrants living in southern Thailand. New models of care may increase migrant women’s use of antenatal services.

Most studies of the health of migrant women are conducted in high-income countries. This study demonstrates the difficulties experienced by women migrating from a low to middle-income country.

This article explores the use of organizational learning mechanisms to create actionable knowledge in a pharmaceutical company. An action research based approach was used to explore the nature and issues associated with fostering the dynamic learning capability within the firm. The results indicate that dynamic learning capability is embedded and influenced by company culture, existing skills and competence, organizational structure, incentives for learning, capacity for continuous change and leadership. It is argued that enabling actionable knowledge creation is a fragile process that has to be managed with care, and is far more complex than the literature suggests.

Despite the increasing use of the agency perspective in studies of headquarters-subsidiaries relations in the multinational corporation (MNC), opponents fundamentally question its utility. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, we evaluate prior studies and develop considerations for future research. Our review of extant studies of headquarters-subsidiaries relations that make (explicit) use of the agency perspective reveals two significant shortcomings. First, we identify a need to validate the underlying assumptions when using the agency perspective in studies of headquarters-subsidiaries relations. Second, we detect a need to better account for the complex nature of headquarters-subsidiary relations in the MNC. A focus on these two areas can improve the use of the agency perspective and, ultimately, help resolve the contentious debate over the utility of the agency perspective.

Informal knowledge sharing interactions (IKSI) are of particular value for innovation projects. This is especially true for unplanned IKSI, because they are even more likely to provide non-redundant knowledge and new perspectives than planned IKSI. Seminal studies have shown that the formation of unplanned IKSI can be explained on the basis of spatial structures. Strictly speaking, however, these studies only explain unplanned encounters. Whether unplanned IKSI result from these unplanned encounters, though, cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of spatial configurations alone. The purpose of this paper is to tackle this explanatory gap by unraveling the fundamental social processes by application of the symbolic interaction theory.

For this purpose, the formation of 132 IKSI on innovation projects from three research and development departments of large companies was recorded in detail using a combination of diaries and interviews. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

The analysis reveals that IKSI cause symbolic costs (image damages), and that these costs vary between types of social situations. Because actors anticipate situation-specific costs, their propensity to initiate IKSI can be explained in terms of the situations in which they encounter one another. Furthermore, the analysis reveals six particularly relevant characteristics of situations and further elaborates the basic argument by analyzing their functioning.

The paper complements previous explanations of unplanned IKSI by opening up the social processes underlying their formation.

Purpose: To describe some of the tensions that both unaccompanied and accompanied immigrant children and youth face when reuniting with family members living abroad after years of living apart, separated by borders and anti-immigrant policies are described.

Methods: Fifty-eight interviews with immigrant minors from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and the tensions they reported having after moving in with their biological parents or legal sponsors in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area are drawn upon.

Findings: Youth reported that getting used to cohabitation and in-person relationships with their parents or other sponsor was difficult at first, though it improved over time. Despite the biological, emotional, and financial bonds, minors had to learn how to relate to new authority figures and follow their rules. Many reported feeling lonely and missing grandmothers and other family members and friends left behind in the country of birth.

Research implications: Interviews with counselors and local authorities that interface with these families show that parenting and youth programs in the places of settlement can become effective interventions to improve relations between children and parents recently reunited, which can indeed help with scholastic achievement and socio-economic advancement.

Value: The interview extracts bring a window into intrafamily dynamics, often overlooked in discussions of the integration of immigrant children and youth into their new homes and communities.