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The purpose is to present the results of exploratory research which analysed firm‐employee relationship strength from the employee perspective. Three main research questions were explored: What indicators should be used to measure strong firm‐employee relationships? How important do employees see relationships to be in the work environment? and how do employees define relationship strength?

Qualitative research in the form of focus groups was utilised. Four focus groups of employees from medium to large regional and national Australian companies were held in a large Australian regional city.

Employees view relationships as being very important in the work environment. The findings revealed a greater degree of consistency between employees' viewpoints about important relationship elements and non‐marketing literature. Important elements found were cooperation, empowerment, communication, attachment, shared goals and values, trust and respect. The emphasis on commitment as a key relationship indicator was not supported by the findings. The findings are summarised in a proposed model of relationship strength, positing commitment as a relationship strength outcome. Employees defined relationship strength in terms of the identified elements.

This research enables commencement of examination of the value of internal relationships through empirical examination of the proposed model.

Management is informed as to what makes the best work environment from the perspective of employees.

This paper fulfills an identified gap in the literature in relation to the ability to measure internal firm relationships. It also clarifies the confusing literature on relationship elements, and it posits a model for the empirical assessment of firm‐employee relationship strength.

In today’s business landscape, arts and cultural organisations are challenged to search for excellence of their business model management to create and deliver value in a more sustainable way. This study develops exploratory focus groups aimed to capture insights into the practical challenges, wants and needs that arts and cultural organisations across Europe address and face in managing and developing their business models.

The focus groups method has been applied. The methodology included seven focus groups involving arts and cultural organisations operating in different European countries.

The overall feeling emerging from focus groups is that there is an increasing pressure to prove the value of culture, e.g. economic, social and civic, progressively more in quantitative figures. Arts and cultural organisations are greatly concerned about their financial health, and their ability to continue creating and presenting great arts and cultural events. At the same time, there is an acceptance that gaining financial resilience and sustainability can no longer be put off. Organisations are conscious that it is crucial to rethink their way of operating and to improve their value creation mechanisms to get sustainability. Nevertheless, the challenges to face and issues of change to get a more effective business model management are numerous and various.

The study sheds more light on “business dimensions” perceived by arts and cultural organisations across Europe, as particularly crucial for their survival and requiring proper management attention. In doing this, it offers fresh and valuable knowledge about aspects, factors and dimensions to take into account in the managing business model.

In this research, collaboration attributes related to the firm's intrinsic and extrinsic facets at pertinent levels (i.e. enterprise, strategic, operational, and tactical levels) for construction equipment OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) operating in India have been quantified and modeled.

For modeling the intra-firm collaboration at respective organizational levels, relevant attributes have been populated employing literature review followed by subsequent validation from pertinent focus groups. The focus groups comprising professionals working in the construction and mining equipment industry in India aided us in estimating the extent of interdependencies and influences within/amongst collaboration attributes. The collaboration attributes and respective interdependencies/influences are modeled employing the concept of graph theory wherein the individual attributes are represented using vertices and influences/interdependencies are represented using edges. The collaboration indices resulting from the variable permanent matrix have been derived as well.

Scenario and subsequent sensitivity analysis are performed. This research discusses the significance and aspects related to various collaborative attributes and the interrelations amongst them. Further, the research also evolves quantitative measures of collaboration indices at enterprise, strategic, tactical and operational levels by employing a graph-theoretic approach (GTA). The authors have also extricated and discussed a number of meaningful implications from both the perspectives of interorganizational relationships (IORs) and the normative theory of organizations using a cross-case analysis of five firms having operations in India.

The research would aid organizations (particularly those belonging to the construction equipment sector) measure the efficacy of collaboration in respective value-chains at strategic, tactical and operational levels. From the theoretical perspective, the integration of the IORs and normative theory of organizations enables looking at the intra-firm collaboration problem from a multi-dimensional standpoint involving activities, performance measures, action initiation, communication, shades of top management, level of activity, etc.

Drawing on value theory, this study aims to explore the perceived value of using energy efficiently amongst a low-income older population group. It aims to provide an empirical exploration of the concept of value-in-behaviour, and, in doing so, identify that it is a logical addition to the extant concepts of value-in-exchange and value-in-use.

Exploratory focus group research was conducted to explore older, low-income people’s perceived value towards using energy efficiently in the contexts of their everyday lives. The research was conducted in regional New South Wales, Australia, with 11 focus groups of 59 people (40 females, 19 males) aged over 60 with a personal disposable income below $26,104 per annum.

Using this framework, functional, economic and ecological value appeared to be the most pertinent value dimensions for using energy efficiently, while social or emotional value was less relevant. Attention is drawn to how value in using energy efficiently emerges within the everyday contingencies and constraints configured by individual households’ financial, social, material and cultural contexts. These findings suggest that programmes in this area and with similar target groups would benefit from trying to promote and co-create such value.

The present study provides empirical evidence that consumers in a social marketing context appear to perceive value-in-behaviour in relation to using energy efficiently. This approach inspires social marketers to foster individual behaviour change through a better understanding of how value is created in everyday practices. This builds upon existing work on value in social marketing and suggests that value is an important concept that warrants continued theoretical, empirical and practical exploration.

The authors empirically determine the stages and leadership styles that enhance the effectiveness of firm response and recovery efforts during each stage.

The authors use an inductive exploratory approach and mixed-method research design. Study 1 uses a combination of qualitative data gathered through two rounds of exploratory focus groups (26 managers and executives), Q-sorting (60 participants) and a confirmatory focus group (6 experts) to highlight how expert practitioners perceive the staged progression of a supply chain disruption. Study 2 uses responses from 90 experienced managers in an experimental vignette to determine the most effective leadership style during each stage.

Expert practitioners are strongly partial to a two-staged disruption model that includes an early/response and late/recovery stage. They consider decisiveness to be the most effective style in the response stage. However, in the recovery stage, a style that combines decisiveness and task-centered leadership is perceived to be the most effective. Further, effective leadership hinges on applying distinct styles depending on the progression of events during supply chain disruptions.

Empirical evidence and validation of conceptual models on leadership behavior during crises are essentially nonexistent in the literature. This study is likely the first to pursue the subject of leadership during stages of crises and the first to offer empirical evidence thereof. Relatedly, the authors contribute to the growing research on crisis management, which is likely to receive even more attention as the frequency and size of crises facing organizations increase.

Focus group interviewing, an important social science research methodology dating to the 1920s, is currently experiencing renewed popularity worldwide. This paper aims to review the implementation of this qualitative assessment tool as it relates to the library environment. The article is designed to stimulate the use of focus groups in librarianship and to demonstrate the range of positive applications across various activities within this field, such as administration, cataloging, reference, internet, and other areas. The goal is to bolster recognition that this data‐gathering technique can be utilized to achieve a variety of goals.

A comprehensive search of online databases was conducted in library science and in numerous other social sciences, given the interdisciplinary nature of the topic. The salient monographic and journal literature was selected and annotated. A number of standard handbooks, textbooks, references sources, and scholarly articles were consulted to provide the background information found in the introductory essay.

The paper finds focus group interviewing can be successfully employed in a wide range of endeavors within librarianship. Relative to the other social sciences, to date libraries have underutilized the approach.

This research may be useful for librarians, library administrators, and others who are involved in planning and conducting a focus group project in order to appraise the quality of library programs, services, and policies. No other article provides this level of in‐depth review and evaluation through copiously annotated entries covering the spectrum of use throughout the library literature.

This paper aims to explore the social impact that two events, the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Clipsal 500, have on young residents (16-19 years old) of Adelaide. The purpose of this paper is to examine how young people participate in these events and how this affects their sense of involvement in the event and contributes to their identity development.

A mixed methods approach was adopted in which focus groups and questionnaires were conducted with secondary school students. As an exploratory study, focus groups (n=24) were conducted in the first stage of the research. The results of the focus groups were used to develop a questionnaire that resulted in 226 useable responses. The final stage of the research explored one event in further depth in order to determine the influence of different participation levels.

This study found that young people demonstrated more involvement in the Adelaide Fringe Festival and their identities were more influenced by this event. Further investigation of the Adelaide Fringe Festival also indicated that level of participation affects the social outcomes gained, with those participating to a greater degree achieving higher involvement and increased identity awareness. This is demonstrated through a model which aims to illustrate how an event impact an individual based on their role during the event.

This paper applies two leisure concepts in order to analyse the impact of events. Activity involvement is a concept which examines the importance of the activity in the participant's life. Also of importance to young people is how activities contribute to their identities, especially because they are in a transitional period of their lives.

This paper seeks to highlight the current confusion in the terminology for group research, identify the geographic, historical and scientific sources of this confusion and suggest a reduction in the number of terms used to two, thereby offering a definition on which researchers from different cultural backgrounds and scientific traditions may be able to agree.

A review of the academic and practitioner literature on qualitative group research in academic, social and market research indicates that various terms for groups are used interchangeably and are often assumed to have the same meaning. These terms include; Focus Group, Group Discussion, Group Interview, Group, Focus Group Interview, Focus Group Discussion, Qualitative Group Discussion and Nominal Group Interview.

The contribution of this paper is that it offers a resolution of this issue and so allows researchers from across geographic borders, different scientific traditions and from both academic and practitioner backgrounds to talk to one another in a common language.

This issue of differences in terminology for groups has largely been ignored by researchers and this paper hopes to bring some clarity and understanding of the key differences between focus group interviews and focus group discussions.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the initial top-level findings of a year-long comprehensive needs assessment, conducted with the digital library community, to reveal reuse assessment practices and requirements for digital assets held by cultural heritage and research organizations. The type of assessment examined is in contrast to traditional library analytics, and does not focus on access statistics, but rather on how users utilize and transform unique materials from digital collections.

This paper takes a variety of investigative approaches to explore the current landscape, and future needs, of digital library reuse assessment. This includes the development and analysis of pre- and post-study surveys, in-person and virtual focus group sessions, a literature review, and the incorporation of community and advisory board feedback.

The digital library community is searching for ways to better understand how materials are reused and repurposed. This paper shares the initial quantitative and qualitative analysis and results of a community needs assessment conducted in 2017 and 2018 that illuminates the current and hoped for landscape of digital library reuse assessment, its strengths, weaknesses and community applications.

In so far as the authors are aware, this is the first paper to examine with a broad lens the reuse assessment needs of the digital library community. The preliminary analysis and initial findings have not been previously published.

With channels of distribution changing rapidly and multi‐channeling becoming increasingly widespread, studies of consumers will need to focus not just on understanding product choice, but also on understanding the reasons for channel choice. Although the choice of individual channels and the adoption of new channels has been researched, there is little to suggest that we have a more general understanding of why consumers, although purchasing essentially similar products, use some channels rather than others. Using the example of financial services, where multi‐channeling has been the norm for some time, this paper reports on an exploratory study to identify those factors which influence channel choice. Based on the results of focus group discussions, the paper argues that channel choice in financial service can usefully be conceptualised as being determined by consumer, product channel and organisational characteristics, with product‐channel interactions and consumer‐channel interactions being particularly important.