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To meet the complex technology needs of retail clients, technology providers must work in a close partnership with their clients and co-envisage a strategic vision for the role that technology should play in the client’s value chain. However, many providers lack the sales capabilities needed to do this. This study aims to examine the need for providers to transition from transaction-oriented to solution selling-oriented approaches. To do so, this study explores the impact outcomes of a knowledge-exchange intervention co-designed with a partner from industry.

Building on empirical insights from an ongoing research programme that examines retail technology implementations, this study developed a knowledge exchange intervention consisting of planning discursive channels, co-defining the scope, co-developing knowledge, executing the intervention and assessing impact outcomes. Discursive channels – multi-lateral communication channels that allow researchers to work collaboratively with the research partner and other stakeholders – emerge as a critical knowledge-exchange mechanism to generate impact outcomes.

The knowledge-exchange intervention provides impact by enabling the industry partner to establish cross-functional solutions teams, assess retail clients’ technological needs, aid decision-making, define barriers to implementation and develop a coaching approach to support clients’ technological investments. Impact outcomes vary in magnitude, intensity, scope and duration and can also be unintentional where unplanned changes are embedded into practice.

This impact framework offers a roadmap to orchestrate impact outcomes that emerge from academic enquiries.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on participatory place branding processes and, in particular, on multiple actors’ ability to build agency.

An in-depth qualitative inquiry of place branding processes in Cardiff (UK) was undertaken during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured (online) interviews with 28 city representatives from the public, private and voluntary sectors are analysed using three-stage conceptual coding.

Five transitions in the meaning-making and engagement processes at the nexus of participatory place branding are identified: heightening value of the local environment; building and sharing local knowledge; embedding a sense of community into relational networks; innovating engagement channels; and blurring of roles and responsibilities. Combined, these demonstrate a cultivating place (brand) attachment and evolving logics around participation.

Transitions in actor agency require monitoring over time, drawing on additional studies, wider samples and multidisciplinary frameworks.

Local knowledge and multi-actor networks are increasingly viewed as valuable assets, providing legitimacy for those in possession of these resources and for the brand. Practitioners, policy makers and community representatives should support innovative ways to involve and learn from local actors, including those not currently active across the place brand web.

Antecedents to actor agency are investigated, highlighting that during a period of disruption actors gained legitimacy for their participation by emphasising the value attached to localities, building place (brand) attachment and drawing on blurred place branding boundaries.

This paper aims to explore how business-to-business (B2B) salespeople use social media and emulate value creation strategies used by social media influencers.

Using 28 interviews with salespeople, this paper develops six propositions and a conceptual framework that outlines when and how B2B salespeople use social media in value-creating sales.

This study’s findings provide a critical analysis of when social media are most effective and beneficial in supporting salespeople’s value-creating sales in various stages in the sales process (e.g. prospecting, opening relationships, qualifying prospects and serving accounts) and when they are less effective (e.g. presenting sales messages and closing sales).

This research yields a substantive understanding of the evolving role that social media play in B2B sales by examining B2B salespeople’s value creation strategies through the lens of social media influencers’ practice and outlines ideas for future research on B2B salespeople’s social media strategies.

The findings of this research can be used by B2B organizations to structure the training of B2B salespeople to use social media to the fullest extent by aligning specific strategies with different parts of the sales process.

This paper contributes by summarizing the B2B sales literature on social media and integrating recent insights from the social media influencer literature; empirically identifying how B2B salespeople use social media to create value, thus validating previous findings and extending understanding by offering a set of six theoretical propositions; and delineating B2B salespeople’s social media practice into 11 value creation strategies that are critically explored for their place in the sales process.

The chapter addresses the use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an indicator of social change and progress towards sustainability by analysing how stakeholders shift their CSR perceptions in different economic conjunctures between visions that are closer to communication or to governance as structures of network interaction. A matrix is presented that defines four models of CSR perception by integrating theoretical approaches of CSR framed by market or by society, by communication or by governance. Stakeholders’ perceptions are then positioned in the matrix through qualitative analysis of the diverse definitions, constructions and positions with respect to CSR made and adopted by corporate agents, social stakeholders and communicators in their discourses. The study proves that changes in how actors perceive and explain self-governed CSR do not depend so much on economic factors as on the networks of stakeholder interaction through communication and governance. Mapping CSR stakeholders’ perceptions indicates changes and limiting actors, but is not enough to isolate the triggers of those changes. The maps provide a starting point for further exploration of (de)politicization, framing, and understanding of CSR communication and governance, and for the analysis of the limitations of the current model of CSR self-governance. The theoretical approach and methodology provide a framework that integrates communication and governance as relational structures of network interaction in CSR.

This contribution aims to evaluate key theoretical bases that were used in previous research, to investigate the use of crowdfunding platforms by small businesses and startups. It presents the findings from a systematic review to better explain the pros and cons of utilizing these disruptive technologies for crowdsourcing and/or crowd-investing purposes.

The researchers adopt the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodical protocol to search, screen, extract and scrutinize seventy-two (72) articles that were indexed in both Scopus and Web of Science. They examine their research questions, describe their methodologies. Afterwards, they synthesize the findings from previous literature, outline implications and discuss about future research avenues.

A thorough review of the relevant literature suggests that there are opportunities as well as challenges for project initiators as well as for crowd-investors, if they are considering equity crowdfunding, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and rewards-based crowdfunding platforms, among others, to raise awareness about their projects and to access finance from crowd-investors.

Further research is required on this timely topic. There are a number of theories relating to technology adoption and/or innovation management, strategic management, accounting and financial reporting, and normative/business ethics, among other research areas, that can be utilized as theoretical bases, to explore this topic.

Crowd-investors are striving in their endeavors to find a trade-off between risks and rewards associated with crowd-financing.

Currently, there are few systematic reviews and conceptual articles focused on the crowdfunding of small businesses and startups. Hence this contribution closes this gap in the academic literature. Moreover, it links the extant theory to practice. It clarifies that the resource-based view theory of the firm, the theory of planned behavior, the diffusion of innovations theory as well as the signaling theory, among other conceptual frameworks, can be used to investigate different facets of crowdsourcing and crowd-investing.

The current study aims to map the existent modes of engagement used by both individual and organisational actors of Romanian diaspora community in the UK to build public legitimacy and social value in the host society. This study focuses on two main questions: (1) What are the forms of engagement by which diaspora members enact their role as diplomats for ethnic diaspora communities? (2) What is the nature of their communication practices that sustain these forms of diasporic engagement?

This study is based on an analysis of online public documents extracted from different websites, blogs and public social media accounts, complemented by primary data. The research design is a multi-levelled case study.

The main findings are that Romanian diaspora in the UK develops a specific model of diplomacy, focused on cultural and political forms of engagement. Firstly, equality and belonging are two key dimensions that clearly define this diasporic community diplomatic actions and practices. Secondly, the communication that fosters its networked and associative features has shifted towards a more democratic and strategic model.

This paper has multiple original points. Firstly, it deepens the understanding of diaspora diplomacy, connecting the concept with strategic communication. Secondly, the identification and theorisation of specific forms of engagement of diasporic communities reflects a process which is yet underdeveloped in both types of literature. Findings may be instrumental in providing strategies for relationship building, cultivation and the engagement efforts of the UK institutions regarding immigrant integration.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach to understanding the interrelationships between education and violent conflict, namely, one that focuses on the multifaceted, context‐specific impact of conflict on school communities and departs from the lived experiences of teachers and students in conflict‐affected places.

The paper is based on ethnographic, child‐centred research in elementary schools in Lebanon. It explores how the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel and subsequent internal sectarian strife in Lebanon have shaped the ways in which school communities confront issues of violence and identity.

By viewing the relationship between education and violent conflict as multifaceted and context‐dependent, this paper elicits how schools may become complicit in the continuing of violent conflict, rather than supporting its ending. It shows how teachers' pleas for peace are overruled by political conflict, partly as a result of children's engagement with politics. The paper argues for grounding educational interventions in children's lived realities so as to optimise their capacities for bridging differences and shaping a better future.

The lived experiences of students and teachers in conflict zones have rarely been exposed. On the basis of anthropological research, this paper offers original and critical insights into the interrelationships between education and violent conflict, based on the perspectives of elementary school students and their educators.

Social inequality is a key recurring theme animating various protest movements over the past decade. Take, for example, the Occupy Wall Street movement conceived by many as a new global movement phenomenon. Others, however, maintain that these demonstrations displayed characteristics typical of “old” social movements. We argue that in order to understand differences between old and new movements, it is necessary to compare Occupy protests with other contemporaneous anti-austerity protests, as demonstrators in both protested against stark inequality following the financial meltdown. To do so, we rely on the Caught in the Act of Protest data where data were collected at actual demonstrations at Occupy protests and anti-austerity protests between 2009 and 2012. We examine sociodemographics (the who of protest), motivational dynamics (the why of protest), and mobilization dynamics (the how of protest). We find that the two types of demonstrations brought different crowds into the streets. Occupy protesters were younger, higher educated, and much less involved in formal organizations compared to anti-austerity demonstrators. Moreover, Occupiers were more dissatisfied with democracy. Finally, we discuss these findings against contemporary anti-inequality mobilization. We argue that political entrepreneurs on the (populist) left and/or the right will politicize current inequality-related grievances and mobilize people in the streets and/or at the voting booth.

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.