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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.

Despite all recent changes in families, and maybe because of them, the birth of a child remains an event of intense expectation, investment, and symbolic meaning. In this chapter, we offer a simultaneously new, innovative, and contemporary perspective on the social construction of the family through the lens of family rituals, specifically directed to the postnatal hospital visit following the birth of a child. The raw data were collected through episodic interviews carried out to Portuguese middle-class men and women. A qualitative content analysis of their detailed descriptions was then conducted making use of software NVivo (©QSR International). The sociological perspective we used allows us to conclude that the moment of the birth of a child is a quintessential time–space for the social construction of the family. Around the baby, for the task of rocking the cradle, men and women join and take on their old and new roles. While the postnatal hospital visit allows the presentation of the newborn family member for the extended family and friends, it strongly underlies the strategies and senses of belonging to one particular family, thereby serving the purpose of its social construction.

In this chapter, the author draws on a historical case study of the Australian wine industry to explore variations in collective agency. The inductively derived process model illustrates the emergence of a new profession of scientific winemaking, which unfolds in three phases. Each phase is characterized by a distinct form of agency: distributed agency during the earliest phase, coordinated agency during later phases, and orchestrated agency during consolidation. In addition to exploring the temporal shifts in agency, the study includes a detailed analysis of the early stages of distributed agency, examining how collective agency is achieved in the absence of shared intentions.

Visual ethnographic methods are increasingly popular in social science research. Much has been published on their design and use (e.g. Banks, 2001; Pink, 2001; van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001). Yet little has been written on using video in in-depth interviews, or how such video-interviews might differ from tape-recorded interviews. In this chapter I discuss the video interview, as developed in my research about gender in the sensory home,¹ to reflect on the nature of the ethnographic knowledge about everyday life and experience this method produces. I focus particularly on informants’ uses of narrative as a vehicle for self-representation that reveals and conceals. Video invites informants to produce narratives that interweave visual and verbal representation. In doing so they reference familiar everyday narratives and practices that are in part visual. Here I discuss how three narratives – which I shall call the “Hello magazine,” “estate agent” and “self-analysis” narratives – were developed in an audiovisual research context.²

This chapter draws on 10 years of ethnographic fieldwork collected in gay bars from three American cities to explore the strategies LGBTQ subcultures deploy to recreate meaningful places within the vestiges of local queer nightlife. As gentrification and social acceptance accelerate the closures of LGBTQ-specific bars and nightclubs worldwide, venues that once served a specific LGBTQ subculture (i.e., leather bars) expand their offerings to incorporate displaced LGBTQ subcultures. Attending to how LGBTQ subcultures might appropriate designated spaces within a gay venue to support community (nightlife complexes), how management and LGBT subcultures temporally circumscribe subcultural practices and traditions to create fleeting, but recurring places (episodic places), and how patrons might disrupt an existing production of place by imposing practices associated with a discrepant LGBTQ subculture(place ruptures), this chapter challenges the notion of “the gay bar” as a singular place catering to a specific subculture. Instead, gay bars increasingly constitute a collection of places within the same space, which may shift depending on its use by patrons occupying the space at any given moment. Beyond the investigation of gay bars, this chapter contributes to the growing sociological literature exploring the multifaceted, unstable, and ephemeral nature of place and place-making in the postmodern city.

Whenever the news media feature brand-related moral struggles over issues such as ethicality, fairness, or sustainability, brands often find themselves in the position of the culprit. However, brands may also take the opposite position, that of a moral entrepreneur who proactively raises and addresses moral issues that matter to society. In this chapter, the authors present a case study of the Austrian shoe manufacturer Waldviertler, which staged a protest campaign against Austria’s financial market authorities in the wake of the authorities demanding that the company closes its alternative (and illegal) consumer investment model after 10 years of operation. In response to this demand, the company organized protest marches, online petitions, and press conferences to reclaim the moral high ground for its financing model as a way out of the crunch following the global credit crisis and as a way to fight unfair administrative burdens. The authors present an interpretive analysis of brand communication material and media coverage that reveals how this brand used protest rhetoric on three levels – logos, ethos, and pathos – to reverse moral standards, to embody a rebel ethos, and to cultivate moral indignation. The authors also show how the media responded to protest rhetoric both with thematic coverage of context, trends, and general evidence, and with episodic coverage focusing on dramatic actions and the company owner’s charisma. The authors close with a discussion of how protestainment, the stylization of a leader figure, and marketplace sentiments can ensure sustained media coverage of moral struggles.

Purpose – This chapter contributes to the growing debate on the diffusion of managerialist modes of thinking across third-sector organisations. It offers an analysis into the power dynamics at play in the emergence of hybrid management systems (HMSs) by looking at the management practices in non-profit organisations (NPOs) active in combating HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Design/methodology/approach – In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with donor organisations and big non-governmental organisations (NGOs) based in the Northern hemisphere, and with managers and team leaders in South African NGOs. Taking a postcolonial perspective, the HMSs resulting from the encounter at the ‘glocal’ interface are investigated.

Findings – The data indicate that the power dynamics shaping the process of hybridisation work through three intertwined circuits of power: the managerialist discourse, the ‘rules of practice’ emanating from that discourse and episodic power relations at the level of interactions.

Research limitations/implications – As is the case with most qualitative research, care must be taken in generalising the findings of this research beyond the organisations participating in this study. At a theoretical level, the implications of this chapter are its contributions to three sets of literature that rarely interact: NPO management, international and cross-cultural management (ICCM) and critical management studies (CMS). At the level of organisational praxis, the findings have potential impact in terms of developing innovative ways of managing NPOs.

Originality/value – The originality and value of this chapter lies in its application of postcolonial theory to understanding hybridisation processes shaping management ideas and practices in South African NPOs.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

This chapter investigates the outcome of the ongoing interactions between the Danish University College of Northern Denmark and stakeholder networks in the Italian destination Campi Flegrei. The findings of this study show that the benefits of the interactions among students, lecturers, and destination stakeholders are manifold and show that the challenge resides in strengthening the flux of knowledge sent back to destination stakeholders. Thus, the authors suggest an action- and stakeholder-oriented approach for future knowledge transfer from the educational institution to the destination stakeholders.

The thesis that rankings do more than just make visible an organization’s position viz-á-viz a competitor, but stimulate new competitive rivalries, has provoked much interest. Yet, to date, scholars lack an understanding of how such competitive rivalries unfold at the level of organizational strategy. Put simply, if competition is played out in rankings, how does this change the way organizations strategize? We answer this question through an ethnographic study of how information technology organizations engage with rankings. The strategic responses we observed included “leapfrogging a rival,” “de-positioning a competitor,” “owning a market,” and “encouraging a breakout,” which together are theorized as “ranking strategy.” This novel conceptualization extends understanding of the organizational response to rankings by showing how common reactions like gaming are only the tip of the iceberg of a broader array of strategic responses. The study also throws light on the different ways a ranking can pattern competitive rivalries, including creating more episodic forms of rivalry.