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Organizational learning has long been recognized as an important determinant of organizational performance and sustainability. Existing research, however, has commonly viewed organizational learning as a single-level, top-down and organized organizational event initiated by the leader. This particular perspective may fall short of explaining the effect of employee spontaneous workplace behaviors on organizational learning. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop a multilevel theoretical model exploring how an employee’s upward helping and voice behavior foster organizational learning through developing leadership capital.

A conceptual analysis was conducted by incorporating relevant research.

This paper proposes the following. First, an employee’s upward helping increases a leader’s human capital and social capital. Second, the leader’s human capital and social capital enhance the employee’s psychological empowerment and knowledge leadership. Third, the employee’s psychological empowerment leads to employee voice behavior. Fourth, employee voice behavior strengthens knowledge leadership. Finally, knowledge leadership promotes organizational learning.

This paper provides a theoretical framework for future research attempting to understand organizational learning from a multilevel, bottom-up perspective. Practically, this paper offers several implications that help promote organizational learning through encouraging employee upward helping and voice behavior.

This paper critically examines the processes of meaning creation and transfer in sports celebrity endorsements. It uses findings from a qualitative case study that investigated how Canadian journalists covered Simon Whitfield's gold medal win in the inaugural men's triathlon Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, and how sponsors subsequently capitalised on his media image. The results highlight key factors that influence Olympic sports reporting and their implications for leveraging an Olympic athlete's media image as part of a product endorsement strategy.

The paper aims to understand how state and non-state domestic terrorism impacts MNEs in foreign markets. Despite the burgeoning literature on terrorism within international business (IB), most research has focused on international terrorism, or terrorism generally. Consequently, there has been limited research examining how domestic or local based terrorism impacts foreign firms.

This is a conceptual paper.

Domestic terrorism is the most common form of terrorism in the world today and involves the state and non-state actors. Non-state domestic terrorism can be low intensity or high intensity. High intensity non-state-domestic terrorism typically involves regular and protracted political violence, along with inter-communal violence. This can expose MNEs to considerable operational, governance and legitimacy pressures.

The paper contributes to the gap in IB terrorism research with regards domestic or local based terrorism. Drawing on IB theory and critical terrorism research, the paper addresses the nature and impact of domestic terrorism within IB. The authors’ paper shows the operational, governance and legitimacy pressures of both state and non-state domestic terrorism for MNEs in host markets. While most IB scholars consider the threat of non-state terrorism for international firms, this study shows how domestic state terrorism benefits and constrains foreign firms.

As social theorists propose that there has been an intensification of social and commercial pressures on men to become fashion consumers, this paper sets out to examine the proposition by investigating fashion consciousness of Generation Y male consumers.

Data were gathered from a survey of 346 male respondents aged between 18‐25 who completed a fashion consciousness questionnaire, which was then factor‐analysed.

Relatively high levels of fashion consciousness were found, but not necessarily fashion adoption. Factor analysis showed that men view fashion in highly simplistic terms and there is still a strong “anti‐fashion” dimension to the average young male consumer.

Drawing on the fields of psychology and sociology, it is argued that “anti‐fashion” fashion consumption creates the distinction necessary for men to create a defensible masculine practice.

The “anti‐fashion” motivation is of interest to marketers and provides a basis for planning retailing and branding approaches. The key to fashion marketing for men would be to show how clothing could overcome some of these fears, e.g. not earning or achieving enough.

Being such a nascent potential market segment, there are no empirical studies that specifically focus on male Generation Ys.

Purpose: This chapter focuses on the relations between aging and the perception about the families’ quality of life in a medium-sized Portuguese city. Departing from the descriptions of individuals living with at least one child under 14 years of age, particular emphasis is put on how young adults perceive and incorporate into their speeches the presence and role of non-cohabiting elderly, namely their parents and in-laws, as an expression of the quality of life they experience.

Design/methodology/approach: Data rely on episodic interviews conducted with both men and women with young children (3–14 years old), within a broader sociological research devoted to the study of family rituals. The data collected was analyzed using qualitative techniques of content analysis with the help of NVivo software (QSR). The data is presented recurring to contextualized narratives.

Findings: Data analysis allows to conclude that geography matters in the perception that young adults have when reflecting upon the role of the elderly surrounding them, either their parents or in-laws. The presence and coexistence of generations are perceived as “priceless,” a “fortune,” and a “privilege,” possible in a medium-sized city, where everything is close enough to thicken the informal intergenerational solidarities between grandparents, parents, and grandchildren. Behind the scenes, data, furthermore, discloses unpredictable tensions arising mainly regarding children’s education, rules, and behavior.

Originality/value: This chapter contributes to shed light into the daily life of elderly people who are still independent and active, and the seemingly invisible presence and unimportant role they play in their children and grandchildren’s lives.

Although the commodification of black bodies amid state violence and widespread racism is nothing new, considering the histories of Hollywood, jazz, minstrelsy, or even athletes enslaved on plantations (Rhoden, 2006), the hyper commodification of the contemporary black athlete, alongside expansive processes of globalization, growth in the profitability of black bodies, and their importance within colorblind discourse, demonstrates the importance of commodification within our new racist moment. Likewise, the shrinking opportunities afforded to African American youth, alongside clear messages about the path to desired black masculinity (Neal, 2005; Watkins, 1998; West, 1994), push black youth into a sports world where the possibility of striking it rich leads to a “win at all costs” attitude. Robin Kelley argues that African American youth participate in sports or engage in other cultural practices as an attempt to resist or negotiate the inherent contradictions of post-industrial American capitalism (Kelley, 1998). Patricia Hill Collins describes this process in the following terms: “Recognizing that black culture was a marketable commodity, they put it up for sale, selling an essentialized black culture that white youth could emulate yet never own. These message was clear – ‘the world may be against us, but we are here and we intend to get paid’” (Collins, 2006, p. 298). Celia Lury concurs, noting that heightened levels of commodification embody a shift from a racial logic defined by scientific racism to one centering on cultural difference. She argues that commodity racism “has contributed to shifts in how racism operates, specifically to the shift from a racism tied to biological understandings of ‘race’ in which identity is fixed or naturalized to a racism in which ‘race’ is a cultural category in which racial identity is represented as a matter of style, and is the subject of choice” (Lury, 1996, p. 169; as quoted in Spencer, 2004, p. 123). In the context of new racism, as manifested in heightened levels of commodification of Othered bodies, racial identity is simply a choice, but a cultural marker that can be celebrated and sold, policed, or demonized with little questions about racial implications (Spencer, 2004, pp. 123–125). Blackness, thus, becomes little more than a culture style, something that can be sold on Ebay and tried on at the ball or some something that needs to be policed or driven out-of-existence. Race is conceptualized “as a matter of style, something that can be put on or taken off at will” (Willis as quoted in Spencer, 2004, p. 123). Collins notes further that the process of commodification is not simply about selling “an essentialized black culture,” but rather a particular construction of blackness that has proven beneficial to white owners. “Athletes and criminals alike are profitable, not for the vast majority of African American men, but for people who own the teams, control the media, provide food, clothing and telephone services, and who consume seemingly endless images of pimps, hustlers, rapists, and felons” (2006, p. 311). bell hooks, who describes this process as “eating the other,” sees profit and ideology as crucial to understanding the commodification of black bodies. “When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races…affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the other” (Hooks, 1992, p. 23). She, along with Collins, emphasizes the importance of sex and sexuality, within this processes of commodification, arguing that commodification of black male (and female) bodies emanates from and reproduces longstanding mythologies regarding black sexual power.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the inability of the Japanese higher education system to adapt to widespread unexpected disruption. The limited metrics available to assess Japanese higher education’s response in the wake of the pandemic indicate several areas where the system needs to be strengthened. This paper aims to harness the ecological perspective to explore the procedures by which higher education in Japan can mitigate extant digital shortcomings.

Leveraging Zhao and Frank’s ecological perspective as its theoretical model, this paper proposes practical solutions to remedy deficiencies highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic rooted in existing literature both within and outside of Japanese higher education research.

The paper suggests pragmatic ideas to embolden each of the three strata encompassing the educational “ecosystem”: institutions, faculty and students. The paper identifies measures for strengthening institutions to become more adaptive and improve leadership capacity. At the faculty level, meanwhile, an increase in professional development opportunities and the bolstering of support systems may function to bridge an intergenerational digital divide. Finally, for students, the authors argue for mobile-assisted language learning in an effort to cultivate stronger learner outcomes, and prescribe how to integrate this method into formal IT platforms.

The current paper is among a select few that use the ecological perspective in the field of educational research in Japan. The authors contend that the model, while effective, offers an incomplete view of education, suggesting that the ecological perspective must be expanded to include students as a distinct species.