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This article aims to analyze the strategic work of Polish entrepreneurs in the furniture industry following the political changes in 1989. The authors examined how these entrepreneurs transitioned from local craftsmen or importers into leaders of international manufacturing companies and how their strategizing contributed to the unprecedented growth of the Polish furniture sector.

The authors examined extant data, specifically biographical interviews conducted with 11 prominent leaders in the Polish furniture industry (Hryniewicki, 2015, 2018). They analyzed within a theoretical framework that integrates J.C. Spender’s theory of strategic management with Barry Johnson’s concept of polarity management. Polarity is a way of understanding and managing interdependent, opposing pairs of values or perspectives that give rise to conflict.

The analysis reveals key patterns of strategic challenges at the level of human agency, history and sense-making. The authors identified four key polarities: life and business, knowledge presence and absence, concordance and discordance, and instrumental and non-instrumental sense-making.

The polarity concept illuminates the interplay of agency and determinism in strategic decision-making, offering valuable insights for methodology and a deeper understanding of Poland’s furniture industry.

The main purpose of the study is to examine the intellectual structure of academic studies on blue-collar workers. In this context, (1) productivity and evolution of the field, (2) conceptual dimensions, (3) citation density and (4) structure of academic networks related to blue-collar workers were analyzed. The findings of the study produced results covering all fields of science, not just management and organization. As a result of the study, blue-collar studies by years, the most cited blue-collar studies, the researchers who published the most frequently about blue-collar workers, the researchers who conducted the longest research on blue-collar workers, the most frequently used keywords and academic networks in blue-collar studies are determined. The most important finding is that the blue-collar issue is the common intersection point of different fields of science such as health, medicine, finance, management and organization, marketing, psychology and sociology.

This brief history of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) documents developments and trends during the decade 2013–2023. To situate recent ISATT history, we begin with an overview of the association's first 30 years (1983–2012). The dominant theme of those early years was developing ISATT as a recognized and influential professional organization connecting researchers on teaching and teacher education from a growing list of nations and regions of the world. During the most recent decade, there has been a concerted effort toward broad internationalization through biennial conferences and regional meetings, and a growing network of national representatives from across the world. Also, the ISATT journal, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, the journal, which began in 1995, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles written by more than 1000 authors and coauthors, contributing to a growing body of knowledge about teaching and teacher education in many cultures. In the last 20 years and especially in the past 10, the locations of ISATT meetings have become significantly more diverse, following a trend of greater internationalization compared with ISATT's European and North American beginnings. At the same time, the number of ISATT members remains stable and small thereby preserving a collegial and collaborative tone in our exchanges. In sum, ISATT's recent decade finds the association intellectually healthy, successful in managing the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enriched by the proliferation of multinational points of view and styles of research.

Vlogging constitutes a potential advertising channel for branded products. This paper aims to investigate the role and antecedents of the learning value, i.e. substantive (vs nonsubstantive) information processing, in consumers’ purchase behavior online.

The authors used a mixed-methods approach including qualitative data from 25 interviews, and two quantitative studies (a field study on 4,560 members of a vlogging learning community and a replication survey on 118 participants in a different context).

The results highlight the predominant role played by perceived learning due to the characteristics of the online environment. The authors further identify the components of vlog tutorials’ learning value. The findings distinguish structured from destructured learning content depending on consumers’ level of expertise.

The findings recommend developing the learning value for consumers. Managers should provide micro learning unit tutorials for expert consumers and complete structured learning units for novices based on core and additional learning components.

In contrast with traditional entertainment videos, tutorials provide added learning value that affects purchase behaviors to a greater extent. The results present in learning components that are recommended when developing learning tutorials.

This paper aims to use Q methodology to investigate Millennial perceptions toward private label or national brand apparel.

Q methodology was chosen to identify factors, which correspond to patterns of perceptions prevalent among Millennials. Participants were supplied with 14 statements that they sorted into two Q sorts – One representing perceptions of private label and the other representing perceptions of national brands. The Q sorts were completed through Qualtrics and participants answered open-ended questions on the placement of each statement within each Q sort.

Two factors emerged on private labels, highlighting patterns in price consciousness and uniqueness (acknowledged as patterns surrounding the desire for particular apparel characteristics). Three factors arose for national brand apparel, emphasizing the need for national brands to provide consumers with product security, quality and uniqueness (as identified through the unpreferred qualities national brands typically exhibit).

This study illustrates the various viewpoints retailers must consider when marketing apparel to a specific target demographic. In addition, a single perception (uniqueness) was found to connect motivations, which led to the development of a model for future inquiry.

Despite complete Q sorts and qualitative statements, participants' unfamiliarity with Q methodology and the sorting action of statements could be considered a limitation. The use of MTurk is also considered a limitation owing to the anonymity and possible deception of the workforce.

Private label brand personality growth has many retailers expanding their brand portfolios. Based on the findings of this study, specific opportunities are highlighted for the expansion and marketing of private labels and brand labels based on specific perceptions of a broad Millennial cohort.

Selfie is a popular self-expression platform to visually communicate and represent individual thoughts, beliefs, and creativity. However, not much has been investigated about selifie's pedagogical impact when used as an educational tool. Therefore, the authors seek to explore students' perceptions, emotions, and behaviour of using selfies for a classroom activity.

A triangulated qualitative approach using thematic, sentiment, and selfie visual analysis was used to investigate selfie perception, behaviour and creativity on 203 undergraduates. Sentiment analyses (SAs) were conducted using Azure Machine Learning and International Business Machines (IBM) Tone Analyzer (TA) to validate the thematic analysis outcomes, whilst the visual analysis reflected cues of behaviour and creativity portrayed.

Respondents indicated positive experiences and reflected selfies as an engaging, effortless, and practical activity that improves classroom dynamics. Emotions such as joy with analytical and confident tones were observed in their responses, further validating these outcomes. Subsequently, the visual cue analysis indicated overall positive emotions reflecting openness towards the experience, yet also reflected gender-based clique tendency with modest use of popular selfie gestures such as the “peace sign” and “chin shelf”. Furthermore, respondents also preferred to mainly manipulate text colours, frames, and colour blocks as a form of creative output.

The study's findings contribute to the limited studies of using selfies for teaching and learning by offering insights using thematic analysis, SA and visual cue analysis to reflect perception, emotions, and behaviour.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2021-0608/

This paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.

The research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.

Gilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.

The paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.

Motivated by significant global developments affecting the sell-side industry, in particular a shift toward passive investments and growing regulation, this study examines whether financial analyst coverage declined over the past decade and if any loss of analyst coverage is associated with a change in forecast accuracy.

After investigating, and confirming, a general decline in analyst following, the authors calculate the loss of analyst coverage relative to the firm-specific maximum between 2009 and 2013. In multivariate analyses, the authors then examine whether this loss of coverage differs across geographic region, firm size and capital market development, and whether it is associated with consensus analyst accuracy.

Results indicate that between 2011 and 2021, firm-specific analyst coverage globally declined 17.8%, while the decline in the EU was an even greater, 28.5%. Within the EU, results are most pronounced for small-cap firms. As a consequence of the loss of coverage, the authors observe a global decline in forecast accuracy, with EU small-cap firms and firms domiciled in EU non-developed capital markets faring the worst.

This study is the first to document a concerning global decline in analyst coverage over the past decade. The study results provide broad-based empirical support for anecdotal reports that smaller firms in the EU and those in EU non-developed capital markets bear the brunt of consequences stemming from changes in the sell-side analyst industry.

Research on same-sex marriage has suggested that the transition to marriage is a symbolically meaningful experience that significantly changes sexual minority lives. This chapter draws upon semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 28 married gay men and lesbians to examine how the life course trajectories they took en route to marriage shaped their experiences transitioning to marriage. A description of the short and direct and long and winding trajectories to marriage is provided. Subsequently, it is demonstrated that, although those who took the former report experiences much like those documented by research thus far, those who took the latter had smaller wedding ceremonies to which they attach relatively little meaning, and they report that getting married has done little to change their family relationships. These findings paint a more nuanced picture of the transition to same-sex marriage than has been documented to-date, and point to important directions for future research.

It is well-known and documented that despite a plethora of efforts by institutions to broaden participation in engineering, the representation, retention, and degree completion of Black males in engineering continues to lag. Coupled with a lack of representation, there is also a dearth of research that has sought to understand the experiences of Black males in engineering. In this chapter, through the lens of Hildegard Peplau's (1991) interpersonal relations theory, we sought to explore the experiences of nine undergraduate Black male engineering majors with academic advisors. Academic advisors are strategically positioned in higher education settings as guides to help students navigate college culture, policies, and procedures. Using thematic analysis, three salient themes emerged: “spots are limited,” building their own “advising team,” and prescriptive perceptions. As institutions imagine routes for broadening participation in engineering, they might also consider how they support advisors and encourage relationship development between students and advisors.