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The purpose of this study is to develop a model of a starting situation for relationship initiation in turbulent business networks.

The study is designed as an extreme single case study that takes its point of departure in a company’s bankruptcy in the Swedish automotive industry.

This study illustrates how a new business relationship can start from a resource combination previously controlled by one actor (i.e. a single company) in a turbulent business network, thereby bringing nuances to the common understanding that new relationships start in stable business networks where resource combinations are developed between actors in established business relationships.

Previous studies have stated that the development of a mutual orientation between actors leads to the formation of a business relationship. The business relationship then leads to resource adaptations between the two companies. The developed model, however, illustrates that this pattern can be reversed in situations of turbulence. Hence, previously adapted resources might lead to the formations of a business relationship. Based on this observation, the authors argue that there are reasons to question if previous models of business relationship initiation and development in business networks are adequately equipped for analysis in turbulent business networks.

Waiting is associated with pain and stress that leads to frustration. However, consumer narratives may help cope with the stress associated with such waiting. This study aims to understand consumer waiting behaviours within online communities.

Data was gathered following a netnographic approach from a Facebook brand community (FBC) by downloading and archiving the threads related to members’ waiting behaviours. This resulted in 91 pages of data, with 438 individual comments and 179 distinct threads.

The data revealed that members of the sampled FBC exercised waiting behaviour. The authors confirm that waiting for a product is associated with both negative outcomes (frustration, boredom, etc.), but positive ones (create stronger ties with the brand and fellow members, etc.). Members of the FBC exhibited reduced consumer anxiety and stress during the waiting period.

This study found 13 waiting behaviours within the FBC and supports the idea that new value-creating behaviours are noticed within the context of FBCs.

This study focuses on waiting within a goods-based context (waiting to be served has been examined predominantly within the service sector). The study explored the behaviours of consumers who use social media to complain about extended waiting periods to receive the product along with other consumer reactions to these waiting crowds to reduce the emotional pain associated with such delays.

La espera se asocia con el dolor y el estrés, lo que lleva a la frustración. Sin embargo, el relato de otros consumidores puede ayudar a hacer frente al estrés asociado a dicha espera. Este trabajo busca entender el comportamiento de espera de los consumidores dentro de las comunidades online.

Los datos fueron recopilados siguiendo un enfoque netnográfico de una comunidad de marca en Facebook (CMF) mediante la descarga de mensajes; sólo los hilos relacionados con los comportamientos de espera de los miembros fueron descargados y archivados. Esto resultó en 91 páginas de datos con 438 comentarios individuales y 179 hilos distintos.

Los datos revelan que en Facebook se dan comportamientos de espera. Confirmamos que la espera de un producto no sólo está asociada a resultados negativos (frustración, aburrimiento, etc.), sino también a resultados positivos (crear lazos más fuertes con la marca y los compañeros). Además, se comprueba que los miembros de la CMF reducen la ansiedad y el estrés del consumidor durante el período de espera.

Este trabajo encuentra 13 comportamientos de espera dentro de una CMF

Este trabajo se centra en la espera dentro del contexto basado en los bienes (la espera para ser atendido ha sido examinada principalmente dentro del sector de servicios). Además, no sólo nos centramos en los consumidores que utilizan los medios sociales para quejarse de una espera más larga en la recepción del producto, sino también en la reacción de otros consumidores a estas esperas para reducir el dolor emocional asociado a dicho retraso.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between preferred choice of school subject and student information behaviour (IB).

Mixed methods were employed. In all, 152 students, teachers and librarians participated in interviews or focus groups. In total, 1,375 students, key stage 3 (11-14 years) to postgraduate, responded to a questionnaire. The research population was drawn from eight schools, two further education colleges and three universities. Insights from the literature review and the qualitative research phase led to a hypothesis which was investigated using the questionnaire: that students studying hard subjects are less likely to engage in deep IB than students studying soft subjects.

Results support the hypothesis that preferences for subjects at school affect choice of university degree. The hypothesis that a preference for hard or soft subjects affects IB is supported by results of an analysis in which like or dislike of maths/ICT is correlated with responses to the survey. Interviewees’ comments led to the proposal that academic subjects can be classified according to whether a subject helps students to acquire a “tool of the Mind” or to apply such a tool. A model suggesting how IB may differ depending on whether intellectual tools are being acquired or applied is proposed.

The “inner logic” of certain subjects and their pedagogies appears closely linked to IB. This should be considered when developing teaching programmes.

The findings offer a new perspective on subject classification and its association with IB, and a new model of the association between IB and tool acquisition or application is proposed, incorporating the perspectives of both teacher and student.

This paper aims to address third actor introductions to interaction episodes aiming at fast-forwarding the continuous development of business relationships of new firms.

The study is qualitative, collecting data from 30 interviews from 28 informants associated with creation of new ventures and business network development in the context of a novel type of third actor called venture builder. Venture builders are privately owned organizations devoted to new firm creation in a factory-like mode, collaborating with individual entrepreneurs.

The findings suggest that interaction episodes, central to the development of new relationships, may be triggered by introductions managed by third actors using different types of involvement depending on the location and focus of the potential relationship. A framework is presented including four types of introductions to interaction episodes, aiming at saving time by removing the perceived distance between new firms and their counterparts in the initiation of business relationships. The framework describes four types of introductions of interaction episodes: Managed, Advised, Facilitated and Monitored.

Triggers and introductions of interaction episodes for new firms has previously been sparsely addressed. This paper presents how third actor involvement, by the introductions of interaction episodes with internal and external counterparts is managed with an aim of fast-forwarding relationship development.

Successful knowledge transfer (KT) between younger and older workers (YW and OW, respectively) is critical for organizational success, especially in light of the recent surge in employment volatility among the youngest and oldest segments of the workforce. Yet, practitioners and scholars alike continue to struggle with knowing how best to facilitate these exchanges. The qualitative study offers insight into this phenomenon by exploring how KT unfolds in YW/OW dyads.

The authors performed a reflexive thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with two samples of blue- and white-collar younger/older workers from the USA (N = 40), whereby the authors interpreted the “lived experiences” of these workers when engaged in interdependent tasks.

The analysis, informed by social exchange theory and exchange theories of aging, led to the development of the knowledge transfer process model in younger/older worker dyads (KT-YOD). The model illustrates that, through different combinations of competence and humility, KT success is experienced either directly (by workers weighing the perceived benefits versus costs of KT) and/or indirectly (through different bases of trust/distrust perceived within their dyads). Further, humility in dyads appears to be necessary for KT success, while competence was insufficient for realizing KT success, independently.

In exposing new inner workings of the KT process in YW/OW dyads, the study introduces the importance of humility and brings scholars and organizations a step closer toward realizing the benefits of age diversity in their workplaces.

The ripple effect (i.e. disruption propagation in networks) belongs to one of the central pillars in supply chain resilience and viability research, constituting a type of systemic disruption. A considerable body of knowledge has been developed for the last two decades to examine the ripple effect triggered by instantaneous disruptions, e.g. earthquakes or factory fires. In contrast, far less research has been devoted to study the ripple effect under long-term disruptions, such as in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study qualitatively analyses secondary data on the ripple effects incurred in automotive and electronics supply chains. Through the analysis of five distinct case studies illustrating operational practices used by companies to cope with the ripple effect, we uncover a disruption propagation mechanism through the supply chains during the semiconductor shortage in 2020–2022.

Applying a theory elaboration approach, we sequence the triggers for the ripple effects induced by the semiconductor shortage. Second, the measures to mitigate the ripple effect employed by automotive and electronics companies are delineated with a cost-effectiveness analysis. Finally, the results are summarised and generalised into a causal loop diagram providing a more complete conceptualisation of long-term disruption propagation.

The results add to the academic discourse on appropriate mitigation strategies. They can help build scenarios for simulation and analytical models to inform decision-making as well as incorporate systemic risks from ripple effects into a normal operations mode. In addition, the findings provide practical recommendations for implementing short- and long-term measures during long-term disruptions.

Social practices of work humor among engineering workers are a lesser studied phenomenon. We examine the social practices of an engineering work team through acts of a peculiar form of humorous expression we identify as installation humor. In these cases of installation humor, an anonymous member of the team created a temporary, inappropriate, yet neutral installation of a physical object to amuse the other members of the team. We provide three mini-cases of installation humor; these installations appeared as the team subtly resisted a managerial initiative. We contribute knowledge to the practices of engineers at work and to the practices of resistive humorous expression.

Qualitative, full-participant ethnographic research with multiple data collection methods and utilizing abductive analysis. During the data collection, one of the researchers was a full member of the engineering team.

We identified anonymous, artefact-based enactments of resistive humorous expression, which we named installation humor. We identify and describe installation humor, which occurred at the intersectionality of work and self-expression and served as momentary artefacts symbolic of engineering worker resistance in a high-tech environment.

Managerial awareness of the unfolding forms of worker-led, fleeting signals of resistance, such as acts of installation humor, would provide another dimension of perception for identifying salient signals surrounding the phenomenon of resistance to managerial-led change initiatives. Further research is needed on engineering humor in the R&D workplace to better understand the complexity and dynamics of phenomena such as worker resistance through humorous acts. We suggest future studies on forms of humor in the engineering workplace, including incidences of installation humor as they exist in other professional work environments and organizations, to understand common and shared practices across professional boundaries.

We advance and extend the understanding of humor as a social practice in the context of professional engineers in their R&D workplace and we identify humorous acts serving as a response to negative emotions (Huber, 2022) toward the organization related to a newly instated form of managerial control. This paper contributes to the studies of social practices of humor and emotions (Fine and De Soucey, 2005) in the engineering workplace (Buch and Andersen, 2013; Buch, 2016; Mazzurco et al., 2021) as unsupervised activity at work (Gabriel, 1995), with the social practice of humor adopting a non-verbal form that we identified as installation humor. We named this specific form of humor that we observed as installation humor and defined its specificity and differences from more traditional methods of humor (t. ex. Fine and De Soucey, 2005; Martin and Ford, 2018), shop floor humor (t. ex. Roy 1959), workplace humor (t. ex. Rosenberg et al., 2021) and engineering student humor (Holmila et al., 2007; Bender, 2011; Berge, 2017).The results of this study also suggest that ethnography for studying humor as a social practice is useful in identifying micro-level occurrences of unfolding engineering humor, including humor as a form of resistance.

The study of humor in high-tech engineering settings enhances the literature of engineering work (t. ex. Mazzurco et al., 2021) and emerging humorous phenomena (Jarzabkowski and Lê, 2017). This case study highlights and extends the understanding of the non-technical competencies of engineers and the role of peer-to-peer humor in the engineering workplace as a form of resistance during managerial initiatives within an organization.

The study extends and contributes new knowledge to research on emotions and humor by engineers at work, including the identification of a peculiar form of humor used by the engineers. This study also contributes to nascent research on the social practices of engineers at work. The research material was gathered as a full-member ethnography, increasing methodological knowledge of researching a site from within.

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how these enable the evolution of implementation opportunities.

Through a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a large multinational, the authors analyse the dialogue and interactions among 25 dyads when identifying opportunities to contribute to strategy implementation. The data analysis relies on a process-coding approach and linkography, a valuable protocol analysis for identifying recursive interaction schemas in conversations.

The authors identify four main framing processes – shaping, unveiling, scattering and shifting – and provide a framework of how these processes affect individuals’ mental models through increasing the tangibility of opportunities or elevating them to new value hierarchies.

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the strategy implementation and organizational development literature, providing a micro-perspective of how dialogue allows early knowledge structures to emerge and shape the development of opportunities for strategy implementation.

From a managerial perspective, the authors offer insights to trigger action and change in individuals to contribute to strategy when moving from formulation to implementation.

Rather than focusing on the structural control view of strategy implementation and the role of the top management team, this study considers strategy implementation as a practice and what it takes for organizational actors who do not take part in strategy formulation to enact and shape opportunities for strategy implementation through constructive dialogue.

This study examines what is the significance of the features of inter-organizational relationships in consecutive phases of the relationship life cycle.

Qu antitative, large-scale surveying was run on 786 software developers operating in Poland. The research hypothesis regarding the systematic increase of relational features (i.e. commitment, communication, (lack of) conflict, cooperation, intensity, investments, longevity, multidimensionality of bonds, trust, and velocity) across the particular relationship life cycle phase le (i.e. initial, development, maintenance, dormant/end, and reactivation) was verified using ANOVA and post-hoc tests.

The results show that the majority of considered features of inter-organizational relationships non-significantly but progressively strengthen from the initial phase, through the development phase, to the maintenance phase, then significantly weaken in the dormant/end phase and strengthen again in the reactivation phase. Interestingly, velocity–as the only examined feature–significantly increases in dormant/end and then decreases if the relationship is reactivated.

Prior studies were focusing on single feature, this one offers a holistic view considering ten relational facets. Moreover, this is one of the few research studies exploring the changes of relational features adopting the life cycle perspective.

Debates over the definition, processes and outcomes of minimum and “living” wages are heated and often politically contentious in garment-producing countries. Internationally, there have been various initiatives to promote and support the implementation of a living wage for workers in labour-intensive manufacturing, ranging from corporate-driven social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives to the long-standing living wage campaign of the global unions. One prominent regional initiative is the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA). The purpose of this paper is to assess its reach and effect in Southeast Asia.

A living wage campaign is assessed with reference to Indonesia and Cambodia, two important garment manufacturing countries in Southeast Asia. The paper draws on data collected in interviews with garment manufacturers, brand representatives, trade unionists and labour NGO activists, including members of the AFWA Steering Committee in Indonesia and Cambodia, complemented by a systematic review of documents and reports produced by the AFWA.

As the paper shows, despite a series of initiatives, the Asia Floor Wage has failed to gain traction in Cambodia or Indonesia. This is so, the paper argues, because national economic, political and institutional contexts are the primary drivers of the strategies and priorities of constituent organisations, governments and industry stakeholders. In the absence of robust local and regional coalitions of trade unions, efforts towards a common and coordinated regional approach to living wages are thus unlikely to gain traction.

To a large extent, the literature on the concepts and practices associated with the living wage has focussed on developed rather than developing countries. This paper extends the literature by providing a systematic examination of a transnational wage campaign in developing Asian countries.