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The purpose of this paper is to critically study the implementation and contextualization of the human resource transformation (HRT) management model within the human resources (HR) function of a global industrial company group.

A qualitative case study that includes two data collections.

Implementation of the HRT model led to tensions and conflicting interpretations of the mission of the HR function, and a “tug of war” about the distribution of work both within HR and between HR and line management. Splitting the HR function into three legs made the HR function's learning cycles more difficult. The corporate group had a decentralized and diverse business culture, and contextualization of the HRT model to this setting highlighted the model's embeddedness in the American business culture of centralization and standardization. Implementation of the model also entailed a transition from an employee to an employer perspective within HR.

For an assessment of HR's total work other parts of the HRT model (Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005) need to be involved since HR professionals in the insourced or outsourced shared service center (SSC) and Center of Expertise (CoE) and the e-HR tools are equally important for executing the total HR's mission. Further studies of the problematic human resource business partner (HRBP) role are needed and also what the development of e-HR solutions means for the HR profession.

The authors argue for a continuous development of HR work, along with closer professional contact both with line managers (LMs) and within the HR function, for improved learning cycles and a need for contextualization when implementing management models.

The paper discusses the HRT model's impact on HR practitioners’ and LMs’ work practice.

This article shows the need for contextualization when implementing management models. The lack of such contextualization led to severe tensions, and the intentions of an efficient and respected HR function were not achieved. The study contributes an evaluation of the tensions between HRT as a normative and standardized model in business settings accustomed to variety and decentralized decision-making.

Over the past few decades, examinations of emerging economies (EEs) have received increasing attention in international business (IB) research. This article takes a critical stance on some of the re-occurring shortcomings of that research.

The authors conducted a critical literature review of 493 articles on EEs that have been published in five top-tier IB academic journals in the period 2010–2020. True to the nature of a critical literature review, the authors judge and question some of the practices that have impeded knowledge accumulation.

The authors found a recurring lack of definitional clarity and contextualization, as well as overgeneralized inferences from findings. The authors provide recommendations on how to address these weaknesses and a checklist to guide future IB research on EEs.

The authors question and problematize what they see as dominant but undesirable practices when conducting EE research. The actionable directions for addressing uncovered issues and checklist to guide future research in this area that the authors offer are rather bold and unambiguous.

This paper presents the phenomenographic analysis of students' approaches to learning in the first year architectural design coursework; thereby correlating contextualization in the architectural curriculum.

This paper reviews phenomenographic data of first year architecture students' learning experience through a comparative analysis of first- and fourth-year students' approaches to learning in the design studio; further co-relating this analysis to the final classification involving all five years of students' learning approaches in the architecture program.

Five meta-categories of the comparative analysis and nineteen meta-categories of the final classification are evaluated using first-year students' learning approaches – to understand the importance of contextualization in curriculums of architecture.

This phenomenographic analysis of first-year students' learning experience represents the onward journey from surface-to-deep approaches to learning that is encountered in their learning approaches, pertaining to the design process in the design coursework during five years of architectural education.

This paper systematically extends the discussion of first year architecture students' engagement in the design process that leads to deep learning; further delving into the static dimension of knowledge and its extension to the dynamic dimension of knowing architecture.

Needs for information literacy, disparities in society, bridging digital divides, richness of information sources in electronic (e-)environments and the value of dictionaries have often been propagated. To improve information sources and information literacy training, information behaviour must be understood (i.e. all information activities). This paper conceptualises new opportunities for information sources (e.g. electronic dictionaries) to all society sectors, dictionary literacy and research lenses such as lexicography to supplement information literacy and behaviour research.

A scoping review of information literacy and behaviour, lexicography and dictionary literature grounds the conceptualisation of dictionary literacy, its alignment with information literacy, information activities and information behaviour and lexicography as additional research lens.

Research lenses must acknowledge dictionary use in e-environments, information activities and skills, meanings of information and dictionary literacy, the value of e-dictionaries, alignment with information behaviour research that guides the development of information sources and interdisciplinary research from, e.g. lexicography – thus contextualisation.

Research implications – information behaviour and information literacy research can be enriched by lexicography as research lens. Further conceptualisation could align information behaviour, information literacy and dictionary literacy.

Dictionary training, aligned with information literacy training, can be informed by this paper.

The value of dictionary literacy for all sectors of societies can be improved.

Large bodies of literature on information behaviour and lexicography individually do not cover combined insights from both.

The purpose of this study is to address a significant gap in the understanding of entrepreneurship at the microfoundation level. It focuses on how individual entrepreneurs, specifically Hongbang entrepreneurs in China from 1896 to 1949, shape and transform their contexts. The aim is to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that facilitate entrepreneurial success.

The study adopts a microhistorical approach, investigating the case of Hongbang entrepreneurs in China during 1896-1949. It involves an in-depth examination of historical records to explore the strategic interactions between these entrepreneurs and core stakeholders such as consumers, financial intermediaries, government regulators, and human resources. The research methodology emphasizes a process-oriented view, examining the evolution of personalized networks into extensive connections.

The research reveals that Hongbang entrepreneurs successfully reshaped their unfavorable embedded contexts by strategically collaborating with key stakeholders. They influenced consumer tastes, allied with financial intermediaries, negotiated with governments on regulation policies, and developed human resource stocks. The transformation was facilitated by the evolution of their networks from personalized to extensive connections. These findings highlight the localized strategies such as cronyism in resource acquisition within China’s private property development industry.

This study contributes to the field by offering insights into entrepreneurial contextualization and networking. It sheds light on the complex interplay between entrepreneurs and their contexts, providing a nuanced understanding of localized strategies in the Chinese context. The findings add value to the discourse on entrepreneurship by elucidating the strategic and processual acts through which entrepreneurs engage with stakeholders and reshape their environments.

This paper aims to contribute to this special issue on interpretivist research methodologies and the phygital consumerist landscape by exploring some underlying issues within the specific context of luxury consumption. The paper starts with a critique of current research, drawing particular attention to problems of reductionism, poor representativeness and weak contextualisation in research that adopts a positivist epistemology. The paper then highlights some of the contributions that interpretivist scholarship is making, and can potentially make, to our understanding of the experiential and humanistic aspects of luxury consumption, presented in a nuanced, discursive and deeply contextualised manner.

This commentary is informed by an in-depth examination of the methodology and approach adopted in the 327 most-recently published academic articles on luxury (from late-2021).

This opinion piece suggests the need for a sea-change in the way that scholars approach luxury research in online, offline and hybrid phygital settings to capture and convey its true complexity, diversity, contingency and contextuality and its emotional and symbolic character, and to help ensure that it delivers findings that are of relevance and value to luxury industry practitioners.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to look comprehensively and critically at the methodological approaches adopted by academics writing in the field of luxury consumption.

Research on employee non-/compliance to information security policies suffers from inconsistent results and there is an ongoing discussion about the dominating survey research methodology and its potential effect on these results. This study aims to add to this discussion by investigating discrepancies between what the authors claim to measure (theoretical properties of variables) and what they actually measure (respondents’ interpretations of the operationalized variables). This study asks: How well do respondents’ interpretations of variables correspond to their theoretical definitions? What are the characteristics of any discrepancies between variable definitions and respondent interpretations?

This study is based on in-depth interviews with 17 respondents from the Swedish public sector to understand how they interpret questionnaire measurement items operationalizing the variables Perceived Severity from Protection Motivation Theory and Attitude from Theory of Planned Behavior.

The authors found that respondents’ interpretations in many cases differ substantially from the theoretical definitions. Overall, the authors found four principal ways in which respondents interpreted measurement items – referred to as property contextualization, extension, alteration and oscillation – each implying more or less (dis)alignment with the intended theoretical properties of the two variables examined.

The qualitative method used proved vital to better understand respondents’ interpretations which, in turn, is key for improving self-reporting measurement instruments. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is a first step toward understanding how precise and uniform definitions of variables’ theoretical properties can be operationalized into effective measurement items.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relevant literature to gain deeper insights into understanding what directions of research are needed with reference to entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness in the oil and gas sector of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

This paper is a conceptual evaluation of literature.

The extant body of research on both entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness is based on quantitative studies without previous systematic, exhaustive and comprehensive grounded theory-based theorizing processes rooted in qualitative approaches. This accounts for inconsistencies and controversies of findings reported in the field.

The grounded theory-based approach advocated by this paper is likely to generate a more precise estimation of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, competitive aggressiveness and firm performance. Consequently, an accurate understanding of the interplay between these factors can empower managers to make finely-tuned strategic decisions, achieve sustainable competitive advantage and optimally adapt to dynamic and unforeseen environments.

The paper reports on important limitations of the existing literature indicating that current findings may be an artifact of studying a small number of industries.

The paper aims to provide a critical review of how variations in the conceptualization and contextualization of hate crime across US cities might impact how their individual law enforcement agencies collect hate crime data. Media reports and political discourses present hate crime as a prevalent problem in the USA. However, this representation of hate crime in the public sphere is not reflected in the relatively low national numbers of hate crimes published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Drawing primarily on the national hate crime data for the period 2008–2018, this author conducted a secondary research study of the concept, context, extent and law enforcement collection of hate crime data in five cities in the USA.

This paper is a product of some of the findings of the study, which include the definition of hate crime at the federal, state and city levels and the contextualization of hate crimes at these levels. The findings show inconsistencies in how the five cities and associated law enforcement agencies conceptualize hate crime and in how they collect and report hate crime data at local and national levels.

Through its analysis of how five US cities and the associated law enforcement agencies interpret and respond to hate crime data collection, with recommendations of best practices for hate crime data collection by law enforcement agencies, the paper contributes to the academic and nonacademic debate on hate crime.

In this chapter, Jared Thomas, a Nukunu person from the Southern Flinders Ranges and a Research Fellow at the South Australian Museum and University of South Australia, reflects on his efforts to enhance the Fire Exhibit within the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery [AACG], which has not been updated in 20 years. Thomas draws from an international precedent of involving Indigenous communities in museum displays.

The author outlines the limitations of renovations in terms of budget, space, and Indigenous protocols, while considering the potential impact of the proposed Tarrkarri Centre for First Nations Culture. He emphasises the importance of fostering relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples, allowing Indigenous voices to speak for themselves.

Thomas focusses on the Fire Exhibit, discussing its significance in Aboriginal culture, the lack of contextualisation, and the need for improved representation. He proposes short-term actions such as adding QR-code-based text for context, and long-term ambitions like incorporating audio-visual and augmented reality elements. He highlights the importance of Aboriginal fire land management practices, especially in the aftermath of the 2019 Australian bushfires.

Thomas proposes strengthening the exhibit’s connection to foods, medicines, and fixatives that benefit from cultural burning. He envisions collaboration with the Adelaide Botanic Gardens and acknowledges the resource constraints faced by the museum. He concludes by envisioning a template for extending improvements across the museum and fostering better understanding and representation of Aboriginal culture.