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This exploratory inquiry sheds light on the nature of victim (i.e. provocative and passive) and specific work context in shaping the perceived causes and outcomes of felt workplace ostracism in teaching faculty of Pakistani higher educational institutions (HEIs) based on target-centric victimization framework.

This phenomenological research is based on data gathered from 30 ostracized teaching faculty members working in Pakistani public and private HEIs through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interviews were tape-recorded, and transcription was entered in NVivo 12 Plus software to conduct thematic analysis.

This study found that provocative and submissive victim status, as well as the specific contextual factors in Pakistani HEIs (i.e. negative competition, cronyism, egoism and poor interpersonal relationships), is responsible for fostering workplace ostracism and yielding unique outcomes in each case.

This study has taken the scantly used target-centric victimization framework to distinguish the causes and consequences of workplace ostracism based on the nature of victim and work context in Pakistani HEIs .

In this study, we applied the strategy-as-practice (SAP) framework to analyse strategic communication practices. SAP implies approaching strategy as something that organisational members do and is useful for understanding the tensions between emergence and formalisation and between planning and improvisation that characterise the everyday communication work of communication practitioners.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study of a record company and on qualitative interviews with various actors from the music industry.

Tensions exist between the emergence of inputs from active consumers that require flexibility and attempts to strategically formalise and continuously adapt plans and encourage consumers to act in anticipated ways. The findings revealed five strategic communication practices—meetings, working in the office, gathering and analysing consumer engagement and related data, collaboration and storytelling—that practitioners used to conduct strategic communication and navigate the tensions.

The study contributes to understanding the role of strategic communication practices in contemporary organisations and how practitioners manage the tensions within them. The study shows that an SAP approach can account for improvisation and emergence, as well as planning and formalisation. It also shows how SAP resonates with emergent and agile strategic communication frameworks.

Based on the theory of trust and cost-benefit perspective, this paper examines the relationship between citizens’ trust and their digital attitudes by considering the mediating effects of performance expectancy and perceived risk, as well as the moderating effect of media use.

The city digital transformation in Shanghai is chosen as the case in this study. 466 questionnaires were collected through a survey, with Structural Equation Modeling to test the hypotheses in AMOS.

Citizens’ trust of government and trust of technology has no significant direct effect on their digital attitudes. However, performance expectancy mediates between the trust of government and digital attitudes, and perceived risk mediates the effect of trust of technology on attitudes. The use of social media significantly moderates the association between trust of technology and citizens’ attitudes.

Exploring why citizens shape supportive attitudes toward digitalization is critical to achieving digital governance goals in developing countries, especially large cities where digital transformation is accelerating. The originality lies in using cost-benefit analysis as a perspective and media use as a moderator to examine the mechanisms of citizens’ trust and digital attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to present a strategic management framework for a successful digital transformation (DT) roll-out aimed at enabling organisational resilience. The study aims to identify the critical areas of consideration for management to strategically approach DT in order to build resilience.

The research study is based on the 3Ps framework: (1) people (culture, capabilities, engagement and well-being), (2) processes (systems) and (3) plant (technological infrastructure and tools). The research methodology is a qualitative study comprising semi-structured in-depth interviews, conducted with industry experts in different sectors undergoing major digital disruptions such as financial services, mining, oil and gas, energy and retail.

The research findings show that the successful roll-out of an organisation’s DT is largely driven by the people elements incorporating organisational culture, workforce skills and training and employee well-being. It also highlights that it is critical for organisations to invest in technological infrastructure, once the people elements have been addressed, as they are the drivers of technology implementation.

A bigger and broader sample size can validate the elements and structure of the DT framework in South Africa.

The study’s discussion unlocks understanding about: (1) what are the key enablers for successful DT; (2) what hinders organisations from realising the value of digital investments and (3) a strategic framework for the digital roll-out.

Technology is impacting employees at both a personal and professional levels. Ensuring that DT rollouts are strategical implemented lowers the impact on technostress and strengthens resilience.

The value and practical implication of this study is that the developed strategic framework can be used by managements to enable the smooth adoption of DT toward building organisational resilience in developing countries such as South Africa with low digital maturity.

Upon graduating from university, many engineers will work in new product development and/or technology adoption for continuous improvement and production optimization. These jobs require employees to be cognizant of ethical practices and implications for design. However, little engineering coursework, outside the traditional ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) required Engineering Ethics course, accounts for the role of ethics within this process. Because of this, engineering students have few learning opportunities to practice and reflect on ethical decision-making.

This paper highlights one approach to integrating ethics into an engineering course (outside of engineering ethics). Specifically, the study is implemented within a five-week module with a focus on big data ethics, as part of a Supply Chain Management Technology course (required for Industrial Engineering Technology majors), using metacognition as the core assessment.

Four main themes were identified through the qualitative data analysis of the metacognitive reflections: (1) overreliance on content knowledge, (2) time management skills, (3) career connections and (4) knowledge extensions.

Three notable points emerged which contribute to the literature. First, this study showcased one example of how an ethics module can be integrated into an engineering course (other than Engineering Ethics). Second, this study demonstrated how metacognitive reflections can be used to reinforce student self-awareness of the learning process and connections to big data ethics in the workplace. Finally, this study exhibited how metacognitive reflection assignments can be deployed as a teaching and learning assessment tool, providing an opportunity for the instructor to make immediate changes as needed.

The present study aims to extend the knowledge of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) disclosure practices in the Italian Healthcare Organisations (HCOs) context. The ultimate goal of the study is to provide fresh insight into the possible explanatory factors that may drive the extent of ICD provided by Italian HCOs via the web.

The present study applies a manual content analysis on the websites of a sample of 158 HCOs to determine the level of voluntary ICD. A multivariate regression model is estimated to test the association between different variables – size, gender diversity in top governance positions, financial performance and indebtedness – and the level of ICD provided by sampled HCOs through their official websites.

Content analysis results reveal that – in the absence of mandatory requirements – Italian HCOs tend to use websites to disclose information about IC. Particular attention is devoted to Structural and Relational Capital. The statistical analysis pinpoints that size and indebtedness negatively influence the level of ICD. In contrast, the presence of a female General Manager (GM) positively drives ICD. Also, it is observed that Research and University HCOs and those located in the Italian Northern Regions are particularly prone to discharge accountability on IC through websites.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines voluntary ICD practices through websites in the Italian HCOs' context. Also, since prior studies on IC in the healthcare context are mainly descriptive or normative, this is the first study examining the potential determinants of ICD provided by HCOs in terms of size, gender diversity in top governance positions, financial performance and indebtedness.

This paper aims to develop and apply a service design method that allows for stronger recognition and integration of human activities into the front-end stages of the service design process.

Following a discussion of different service design perspectives and activity theory, the paper develops a method called activity-set mapping (ActS). ActS is applied to an exploratory service design project to demonstrate its use.

Three broad perspectives on service design are suggested: (1) the dyadic interaction, (2) the systemic interaction and (3) the customer activity perspectives. The ActS method draws on the latter perspective and focuses on the study of human activity sets. The application of ActS shows that the method can help identify and visualize sets of activities.

The ActS method opens new avenues for service design by zooming in on the micro level and capturing the set of activities linked to a desired goal achievement. However, the method is limited to activities reported by research participants and may exclude unconscious activities. Further research is needed to validate and refine the method.

The ActS method will help service designers explore activities in which humans engage to achieve a desired goal/end state.

The concept of “human activity set” is new to service research and opens analytical opportunities for service design. The ActS method contributes a visualization tool for identifying activity sets and uncovering the benefits, sacrifices and frequency of activities.