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This paper aims to explore the key elements and dynamic formation mechanisms involved in the company identity construction during multicompany identification.

This study adopted a longitudinal single case study method, selected a representative company as the study case and analyzed the interactive practice of identity construction between the company and its external stakeholders based on the theory of organizational identity and sensemaking.

This study finds that the process of company identity construction for external stakeholders involves six elements. Companies mainly use a highly controlled, equality and interaction model to develop identity for a single stakeholder. Company identity is based on the company’s core identity claims and is formed by gradually integrating and cooperating with the identity claims of different stakeholders. Meeting the self-defining needs of stakeholders is a key driving force behind the evolution of company identity.

This study offers practical implications for companies to pursue and construct multicompany identity. For different types of external stakeholders, companies can adopt different identity sensemaking models. To build a new company identity, a company needs to do more on the basis of identity insights to break cognitive constraints and build new identity claim. Companies need to integrate new identity claims with the original identity claims. If different identity claims conflict or are difficult to reconcile, it may damage their original identity claims and companies need to evaluate the trade-offs.

This study expands the concept of company identity construction from the individual perspective to organizational identity and contributes to research in relationship marketing. This study identifies the key elements of company identity construction with multistakeholder participation and contributes to theory building in company identity research. The results of this study reveal the company identity construction mechanism for different external stakeholders and the dynamic formation process of multicompany identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of communicative interaction on meaning construction in three focus group interviews.

Within the framework of cultural‐historical activity theory, Bakhtin's perspectives of communicative interaction was applied to three interview cases on commercial aerospace supply chains.

These interactions are found to self‐organise without the control of any single actor. However, interventions by interviewees or the researcher affect the outcome when they create disturbances that go beyond the resilience of the established perspectives of the focus group community. The researcher's intervention or guidance is helpful in opening up reality perspectives of the community.

Focus group interviews may be difficult to control by the researcher. The potential for gathering rich data may, however, out‐weigh that.

The paper illustrates how focus group interviews enhance the richness of data collection compared to other interview methods.

This study examines whether online asynchronous discussion forums support student’s meaning-making about citizenship in a globalizing world. Citizenship is an increasingly contested identity for young people, yet they have few opportunities in traditional civic education to consider their own citizenship. Although online discussions are considered effective spaces for increasing dialogue and critical thinking between diverse students, there has been little research to understand how effective they are for helping students to construct new understandings of citizenship.

A content analysis approach was used to analyze and code 89 discussion board posts. The Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) coding scheme was used to describe and analyze the quality of knowledge construction that occurred across the posts focusing on different aspects of global citizenship.

The findings demonstrate that the discussion boards produced substantive talks about the meaning of citizenship that in some instances reached the level of new knowledge construction. The students considered different meanings for global citizenship and negotiated positions on key issues. However, the highest levels of knowledge construction were rarely reached.

A major implication is the need to organize and cue discussion boards to support knowledge construction in addition to fostering dialogue.

This study contributes to the role that technology can play in supporting students’ knowledge construction about global citizenship that go beyond the scripted meanings conveyed in civics classes.

An episode in the development of accounting for Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme transactions is explored from a social constructionist perspective. The “carrying” of meanings between sub‐worlds of the financial accounting world through social processes, principally by means of the standard‐setting body’s conceptual framework, is shown to be implicated in the social construction, maintenance and modification of accounting meanings. The social constructionist model is developed in several ways, some of which respond to particular characteristics of the financial accounting world.

This study provides insights into the meanings given to audit quality (AQ) by audit partners responsible for delivering audit services. It explores the influence of contextual factors in the auditing setting on constructing such meanings and its representations.

Drawing on a symbolic-interactionist framework, this study takes an interpretive approach, employing semi-structured interviews with audit partners from the United Kingdom (UK).

Three primary meanings of AQ are identified. First, in contradiction to that offered by “mainstream” AQ research, audit partners in this study predominantly regarded the meaning of AQ as an economic concept in the context of the “business” of auditing, delivering the service quality (e.g. value-added auditing and value-for-money) that is expected by their audit clients. Second, the audit partners also espouse the meaning of AQ to be “fit for purpose” audit documentation and adherence to quality control that meets the standards of compliance demanded by independent audit inspections. Third, and similar to the classic convention of AQ, audit partners consider “inputs” to AQ, attributes related to individual auditors (e.g. qualifications, experience and training) as one of the key AQ meanings. A range of stimuli underlies AQ meaning construction, including the audit firm's commercial interests, legitimacy, image management and social identity resulting from audit partners' interactions with audit clients, regulators, and their own self-reflexivity. Interestingly, this study identifies a considerable potential conflict between the meanings assigned to AQ, which suggests that auditors are struggling to strike a balance between the competing demands of those meanings.

This exploratory study addresses only the audit partners' perceptions concerning the meaning of AQ. Findings of this study are relevant to auditors and other parties, such as regulators, in addressing competing dimensions of AQ and potential choices involving conduct and content in any individual audit engagement.

The study complements existing research into AQ by exposing the rationales and potential behaviours that underlie commitments to quality by those involved in commissioning audit engagements. It also adds detailed evidence of how contextual factors in the auditing environment interact with auditors' notions of AQ.

Consistent with current literature, which highlights the role of narration as a key tool for exploring the processes by which people construct the meaning of their critical experiences the authors propose a theoretical and methodological model to analyse the narratives of illness and identify any innovative aspects. The generative model of mind presented refers to a semiotic, narrative and socio-constructivist perspective according to which narration constitutes one of the possible processes by which the affective and pre-verbal sense of experience is transformed into a meaning that can be symbolized and shared.

The onset of an illness represents a critical event which interrupts a person's life narrative, shattering his/her biographical continuity and undermining any assumptions of him/herself and the world. In particular, the model proposes a method of analysis, currently absent in literature, of the narrative interview Narrative Function Coding System (NFC) in order to grasp the ways by which four main narrative functions, namely psychic functions, are classified: the search for meaning, the expression of emotions, the temporal organization and the orientation to action.

NFC appears to be able to capture the complexity of the narrative process of construction of illness' sense-meaning making process, identifying both representative modalities of good functioning, which express a gradual process of connection with the variability of the experience, and modalities that express moments of disorganization and rigidity, which can persist throughout the time of treatment. The NFC represents not only a method for analysing illness narratives but also a method for tracking and monitoring the process of clinical intervention and change.

The sense-meaning making process perspective within the narrative socio-constructivist and semiotic framework of analysis proposed by NFC is currently absent in the literature. NFC can be a device for analysing the narrative process of sense-meaning making both for its use for clinical and preventive purposes. In addition we believe that this method, which focuses on the “form” and “way” of narratively constructing the subjective experience, rather than on the specific thematic content, can be used with all types of illness narratives, in particular the longitudinal one to explore the changes in sense-meaning making process.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the articulation of the affordances of two qualitative methodologies when used within one study to address the multi-dimensional nature of the research phenomena.

This paper considers one example of combining narrative inquiry and phenomenological inquiry to construct new understandings of teacher learning from an Australian study.

The author draws on the individual meaning-making and shared social phenomena of professional learning explored for five secondary school teachers. Findings are accessed in two ways: narrative inquiry enables the construction of unique professional learning narratives and phenomenological inquiry proposes commonalities in the teachers’ experiences.

Selected examples from the study are used to explore what may be learnt from combining two interpretative methodologies within one study with limited references to the overall research findings.

These qualitative methodological designs and their implementation within one study have positive influences on the multifaceted nature of the construction of meaning-making in teacher professional learning. Furthermore, using two qualitative methodologies together provide insights on the study phenomena, in this instance, highlighting the personal aspect of expert teachers’ professional learning needs and the disruptive dissonance of ongoing problematics as central for the teachers throughout their professional learning.

This study offers one possibility for combining methodologies to access the meaning-making in teacher learning and one avenue for creating hermeneutic understanding in using the methods within this approach.

The purpose of this paper is to address an issue related to the role of interaction processes in the development of customer-supplier relationships in business markets.

Focusing on the role of cognition in interaction behaviours in business relationships, the authors examine two research streams that offer perspectives on interaction processes akin to the IMP – the socio-cognitive perspective and the practice-based approach to markets and marketing.

The two research streams analysed contribute to understanding the link between cognition and interaction behaviours by pointing to the construction of meanings as an important factor in interaction behaviours and indicating storytelling as a tool to construct meanings among the actors.

This paper is among the few studies that focus the attention on communication processes in business relationships and networks.

This paper proposes a perspective of change agency that builds on the regenerative power of language achieved through ongoing talk and conversations associated with managing change. It seeks to elaborate on the role of speech in helping one to see change as a continuous stream of socially constructed utterances.

Configurations have played a central role in determining the extent of fit or misfit between entities – a prelude for steering change and modes of intervention. Much of the reliance on the notion of fit or misfit between entities has been largely driven by conceptions of organizations as consisting of objective entities. But change is not separate from its own construction; conduct of change is deeply rooted in meanings people attach to events. The paper develops a constructionist perspective of change agency; one that builds on the role of language in constructing change.

The social construction of meaning remains crucial for building connections with organizational identity. The main finding is that there is a very rich meeting point where both language and social construction converge to find each other. For change to take root, change agents would need to emphasize the social co‐construction of meaning and to focus on the role utterance plays in the formation of organizational identity.

The paper develops a constructionist perspective of change agency (regenerative and transforming qualities); one that builds on the role of language in constructing change.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the correction mechanism of resilient safety culture on new generation of construction workers (NGCWs)' unsafe behavior and test the multiple mediation effects of job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness based on the context of Chinese construction industry in order to find a new way to effectively correct the NGCWs' unsafe behavior.

A theoretical model of correction mechanism was established based on literature research and theoretical deduction. An empirical study was employed based on confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis with a sample of 404 NGCWs in China.

The results indicated that resilient safety culture can effectively correct NGCWs' unsafe behavior through job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness. Job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness can play independent and serial mediating roles between resilient safety culture and unsafe behavior.

Research results only represent a short-term law about the correction mechanism of NGCWs' unsafe behavior based on a questionnaire study from China's construction industry. It is necessary to continue to implement a longitudinal study to test it in a relatively long period in future research. The findings also need to be verified based on the young construction workers in other countries.

This study provides a theoretical basis and feasible management reference for construction enterprises in China to correct NGCWs' unsafe behavior from the perspective of resilient safety culture. Furthermore, the construction of resilient safety culture in construction enterprises can help NGCWs better carry out job crafting and perceive the meaning of work.

This paper clarifies the correction mechanism of resilient safety culture on unsafe behavior of NGCWs, and further tests the independent mediating roles and a serial mediating role of job crafting and perceived work meaningfulness between resilient safety culture and unsafe behavior, which fills the research gap about the influence mechanism of resilient safety culture on young construction workers' unsafe behavior and enriches the theoretical system of unsafe behavior correction of construction workers.