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This paper aims to investigate the mathematics self-efficacy of students who are non-maths specialists. The project explores the student experience in the context of a maths module with a blended design, comprising both online content and face-to-face teaching. The aim was to reflect on the role of blended learning in this context.

Using a mixed-method analysis, the study uses data gathered via student surveys and discussion forums, as well as module grades, to provide evidence regarding whether the online component of the module enables students to master the required maths skills. The data are examined under four themes that emerged as critical to improving the self-efficacy of students: flexibility, the interactivity of the online platform, the module's blended design and the functionality of the platform.

The findings are that the blended approach increases academic self-efficacy in the area of mathematics, also enhancing the student experience. These benefits arise from the combination of allowing the individual mastery of technical skills in the private and stress-free environment provided by the online platform and access to social resources in the classroom setting.

The paper details the influence of self-efficacy on academic performance and the effectiveness of a blended learning approach, in the area of mathematics. It provides insight into the importance of providing multiple opportunities for students to become autonomous as they develop academic self-confidence through the mastery of maths skills.

In today’s rapidly changing sales environment, successful salespeople must acquire skills that give them a competitive advantage. Emotional intelligence (EI), defined as perceiving, interpreting, and reacting to one’s own and others’ emotions, is offered as one critical skill that will allow salespeople to guide their behavior and think in ways that can enhance their sales performance. In this paper, we review emotional intelligence and discuss how it is related to existing theories of sales performance. Research propositions are then developed based on the Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) sales performance model. Strategies for sales practitioners are proposed, and additional opportunities for future research are identified.

The effect of digitalization on organizations has been studied separately but there has been very little research done on the overall "big" picture of the effects. However, the digitalization of society and business is marching forward at an ever increasing speed, calling for more converged research on the phenomenon. The main areas of effects elicited from the literature are organizational learning, digital innovations, organizational agility, business ecosystems, and organizational structures. More minor influences have been gathered in the framework of digitalization presented in this article. It can be seen as a tool for managers to explore their organizations capabilities on the digitalization front.

Social marketing initiatives designed to address the UK's culture of unhealthy levels of drinking among young adults have achieved inconclusive results to date. The paper aims to investigate the gap between young people's perceptions of alcohol consumption and those of government agencies who seek to influence their behaviour set within a contextualist framework.

The authors present empirical evidence from a major study that suggests that the emphasis of recent campaigns on individual responsibility may be unlikely to resonate with young drinkers. The research included a meaning‐based and visual rhetoric analysis of 261 ads shown on TV, in magazines, on billboards and on the internet between 2005 and 2006. This was followed by 16 informal group discussions with 89 young adults in three locations.

The research identified the importance of the social context of young people's drinking. The research reveals how a moral position has been culturally constructed around positioning heavy drinking as an individual issue with less regard to other stakeholders and how the marketing agents function in this environment. Calls to individual responsibility in drinking are unlikely to succeed in the current marketing environment.

The qualitative research was limited to three geographical locations with young adults between the ages of 18 and 25.

The authors explore implications for social marketing theory and for UK alcohol policy. In particular, the authors suggest that the social norms surrounding young people's drinking need to be acknowledged and built into “sensible” social marketing campaigns. The authors suggest that shame, fear and guilt appeals should be replaced with more constructive methods of ensuring young people's safety when they drink.

From the theoretical perspective of contextualism, the paper brings together empirical research with young adults and a critical analysis of recent social marketing campaigns within the commercial context of a “culture of intoxication”. It provides both a critique of social marketing in a neo‐liberal context and recognition of issues involved in excessive alcohol consumption.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Ramadan intermittent fasting (RIF) has produced heterogeneous and domain-specific effects on cognitive function. This study aims to investigate the effect of RIF on verticality perception or estimation of subjective visual vertical (SVV) in young adults. The significance of SVV is that it is essential for spatial orientation, upon which many daily activities depend.

Verticality perception was assessed with a computerized rod and frame test (CRFT) in two visual conditions: without a surrounding frame and with a distracting tilted frame. The tilted frame condition measures level of visual dependence or reliance of visual cues for posture and orientation. In total, 39 young adult men were recruited at different stages of Ramadan fasting: 21 were tested at the end of the first week (Week 1) and 18 others at the end of the third week (Week 3) of Ramadan. Also, 39 participants were recruited to serve as a non-fasting control group. Factorial ANOVA analyses were conducted to identify the main effects of fasting status, time-of-day and the interaction between them on blood glucose levels, nocturnal sleep duration and vertical alignment errors.

The main effect of fasting status on glucose level was significant (p = 0.03). There was a significant time-of-day main effect on glucose levels (p = 0.007) and sleep duration (p = 0.004) only in fasting participants. Neither the main effects of fasting status nor time-of-day were significant for rod alignment errors in both visual conditions. The interaction of fasting status and time-of-day was not significant either. This may indicate that any negative effect of Ramadan fasting on activities that are critically dependent on verticality perception and spatial orientation, such as sports and driving, may not be due to verticality misperception.

The present study was the first to investigate the effect of Ramadan fasting on spatial orientation. It demonstrated robustness of verticality perception to fasting status and the point of fasting during Ramadan. Verticality perception was also unaffected by time-of-day effects in non-fasting and fasting groups at two different points of Ramadan. This study corroborates others reporting heterogeneous effects of Ramadan fasting on cognitive function.

The purpose of this paper is to chronicle the study of deviant behavior aimed at the organization, or CWB‐O, from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to the present day.

Counterproductive work behaviors that have been documented and studied since the Industrial Revolution were systematically reviewed and discussed.

Over the past few centuries, employees have engaged in behaviors that harm their organizations; as organizations have become more complex, however, employees have found many more ways to engage in CWB‐O. Further, recent advances in technology have made employee CWB‐O much more ambiguous.

The study of CWB‐Os will remain a rich area for researchers as the boundaries between work and personal life continue to blur, as employees develop new forms of CWB‐O, and as employers increase their use of technology to detect employee deviance.

As the penetration of technology into job roles grows and the use of personal mobile devices becomes institutionalized, managers now must decide how much company time they will tolerate their employees spending on personal issues while at work. Put another way, managers must cope with the reality that a certain amount of what was once considered deviant behavior in the workplace may now be a minimum expectation of employees.

This paper builds a historical foundation of the present conceptualization of CWB‐O, thereby providing scholars with a greater understanding of what past events drove the emergence of the types of CWB‐O that are prevalent today and why some counterproductive behaviors may have become less prevalent.

Research on communication in organisations has enabled us to develop a body of knowledge about recognising and overcoming barriers to effective communication. In contrast to the tenet in the communication literature that communication barriers require minimisation, the leadership literature provides a basis for a re‐conceptualisation of the “problems” into opportunities. This article offers a theoretical synthesis of the communication and leadership literatures to extend our knowledge of improving communication in organisations.

Ostracism is a subjective and relative concept that renders itself to multiple manifestations and context-specific outcomes. Therefore, this study identified specific behaviours that are perceived as workplace ostracism by teaching faculty of Pakistani Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). Building on belongingness theory, the ramifications of ostracism on psychological well-being are outlined along with the context-specific factors that shape these outcomes.

A phenomenological approach was adopted, and 30 semi-structured interviews from the teaching faculty of HEIs in Lahore, Pakistan, were conducted. The transcribed interviews were coded, and an inductive thematic analysis via NVivo 12 Plus software was used to generate themes and sub-themes.

Five behaviours, i.e. biased treatment, exclusion from formal and informal interactions, interpersonal alienation, delayed sharing or hiding of knowledge, lack of work-related, social and emotional support constituted the acts of ostracism in studied HEIs. The psychological well-being of faculty suffered in terms of negative emotions, reduced job, career and life satisfaction in their work and family life. The contextual factors deciding the intensity of outcomes resulting from workplace encompassed head of department (HOD) support, pay, friendly relations, fear of confrontation, alternative job options and designation of faculty members.

This research is a pioneer in using an in-depth phenomenological approach to define a behavioural typology of ostracism in academia. Moreover, a much needed holistic outcome of psychological well-being is explored in work and non-work domains and further elucidated in light of context-specific factors.

The paper traces negative and limiting media depictions of public relations (PR) to their origins in the 1920s in order to determine whether modern media characterizations of “public relations” are new or a legacy of the past.

A qualitative content analysis was used in order to look more deeply at media characterizations of public relations. The New York Times and Time magazine were chosen to sample because of their dominance and unique reflection of the era, respectively.

Reporting about “public relations” was primarily fair. Early practitioners were often quoted defining the profession, including “great men” of PR history and more common practitioners. These practitioners of PR are as much to blame for confounding the terms “public relations” and “press agent” as are the media of the 1920s.

This historical study sheds a light on and provides context for both the media and society's understanding of public relations today.

While much research has looked at media portrayals and public perceptions of the public relations field, few if any have traced attitudes about the profession to the decade when the term “public relations” was first popularized. The paper remedies this deficit.