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The purpose of this study is to examine the use of formality indicators in chat reference interchanges within the context of politeness theory, with its corollaries of face‐threat and social relationship development.

This discourse analysis identifies the syntactic and content indicators and patterns of formality levels in a purposive sample of 402 chat transcripts (covering 6,572 minutes) from one academic year at a large, US, public university.

Syntactic formality markers include regular use of contractions, slang, sentence fragments, and non‐standard punctuation as well as limited use of acronyms and abbreviations with rare use of emoticons. Content‐based markers included apologies, self‐disclosure, and expressions of extreme need. Use patterns are related to the level of responsibility assumed by the librarian as well as the interview stages.

A limited data source and potential coder bias are the two limitations of this study. The research implications point to the need for chat reference librarians to assume greater control of formality nuances in order to encourage a more effective search for the user.

The fundamentals of politeness theory, particularly in terms of formality indicators, should be incorporated into staff training and behavioral standards for reference librarians. While future research is needed to determine the most effective means of employing this theoretical construct, this study implies that a self‐reflective, culturally sensitive use of the nuances of formality can enhance the user's experience.

This study is the first to systematically examine formality indicators in the context of politeness theory. The use of two coders, a full academic year's worth of data, and a substantial sample provide great depth.

The policy approach in Pakistan with regard to combating the informal economy has remained quite myopic and skewed in its reliance on measures informed by the rational economic-actor theory as opposed to the social-actor approach. Thus, this study attempts to evaluate and synthesise the two alternative policy approaches and formulate a more theoretically integrative understanding of the subject.

The authors gather data from 600 micro-entrepreneurs operating in the retail and wholesale sector of Lahore, Pakistan, which is then analysed using an ordered logit regression technique.

In contrast to more developed countries, the finding here is that higher perceived penalties have a highly significant and positive impact on the level of formality of Pakistani micro-entrepreneurs. The perceived risk of detection, meanwhile, has only a moderately significant impact on the micro-entrepreneurs level of formality. Likewise, the level of vertical and horizontal trust has a positive but moderately significant impact on the level of formality. Nonetheless, both the vertical and horizontal trust exhibit a very significant moderating effect on the relationship between the use of penalties and the level of formality, that is, the higher the level of trust that the micro-entrepreneurs have in the state and other businesses, the lower is the effectiveness of punitive measures.

Deterrence is an effective way to enhance the level of formality in the case of the Pakistani context. Nonetheless, the authors imply that without building trust, this overreliance on punitive and detective measures can actually be counter-productive. A combined and congruent (not sequential) use of voluntary compliance measures is thus warranted.

It is a unique attempt to evaluate and synthesise the global policy theorisations in a non-mainstream and antagonistic climate, such as Pakistan.

This paper aims to examine the factors associated with a household business entrepreneur’s decisions to formalise the firm at a multidimensions level.

The data set is a panel of 2,336 SMEs and household businesses from Vietnamese SME surveys during the 2005–2015 period.

This study elucidates how firm-level resources, entrepreneur characteristics and costs of doing business influence an entrepreneur’s decision to enter, the speed and the degree of formality.

This study provides insight into the origins of an entrepreneur’s decisions to the multidimensions of business formality through the lenses of the resource-based view, entrepreneurship and institution theories.

The paper aims to address the issue of generalizability by examining process formality across the global regions of North America, Europe and Asia. A common prescription in the new product development (NPD) discipline is to employ a formal process. Because generalizability of this prescription has not been fully investigated across global regions, the present manuscript addresses the issue of generalizability by examining process formality across the global regions of North America, Europe and Asia.

Recently made available to researchers, data of the Product Development and Management Association’s 2012 Comparative Performance Assessment Study (CPAS) were analyzed. The uniqueness of the 2012 CPAS data set is its global composition with sizable samples from North America, Europe and Asia. Chi-square tests and multivariate analysis of variance were applied.

Results support use of a formal process, as companies with a formal NPD process perceived higher performance than companies with no standard process. Process formality appears to differ across regions and be influenced by innovation strategy. European firms tended to not use a formal process when pursuing radical innovation, and these firms perceived higher performance. North American firms tended to not use a formal process when pursing incremental innovation, but these firms perceived lower performance.

Having some NPD process is generally better than not having any process at all. Process differences across regions appear to exist when pursuing radical innovation or incremental innovation.

This is one of few studies comparing global regions to examine generalizability of a best practice prescription, namely, the extent to which a formal process should be implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the cross-functional integration processes between marketing and logistics, while considering five basic elements: boundary spanning activities, integration factors, level of integration, formality/informality and impacts of integration.

After an extensive literature review, five case studies were performed and in-depth interviews conducted. Both within-case and cross-case analysis was performed to better understand the cross-functional integration processes between marketing and logistics.

A characterization of cross-functional integration in the form of a managerial framework was proposed. This framework presents the elements in a process view, instead of disconnected parts of the integration processes. The framework and process perspective helps to explain the integration process, the roles and impacts of integration within organizations, while considering cultural formality and informality.

Qualitative data collection and analysis methods cannot achieve amplitude with respect to sampling nor generalize results. In spite of this, the implications revealed by the propositions may be applied not only to Brazilian companies, but organizations in other countries as well, due to the high level of heterogeneity of the sample, and the fact that they represent multinational organizations. Therefore, further research using broad-based survey data could test the correlations between the elements of cross-functional integration processes.

The identification of the cross-functional integration processes within organizations can help managers to facilitate the efforts of integration between marketing and logistics, reducing conflicts and improving business performance.

Case studies focussing specifically on five Brazilian organizations help provide evidence for an initial definition of cross-functional integration processes by analyzing five key elements according to their characteristics and respective roles. This research provides a strong foundation for future broad-based survey research.

This study examines the influence of contextual factors (e.g. age and ownership type) on HRM formality (including the underlying functions of recruitment, selection, training and development, performance appraisal and compensation) in SMEs.

Data were collected through a quantitative survey of 300 owners/managers of services, manufacturing and trade SMEs in Pakistan.

Firm age, association with a larger parent entity, existence of a strategic business plan and the presence of a human resource information system (HRIS) are positively related with higher HRM formality. Firm size, family ownership and exporting characteristics had no association with formality.

This study suggests a highly influential role for contextual factors in shaping HRM practices in Pakistani SMEs. Since the lack of a strategic approach towards human resource development is directly linked to the inferior performance of SMEs in Pakistan, this study provides an understanding of the contextual institutional setting that shapes the nature of HRM practices. The findings inform both SME owners/managers and policy makers.

Institutional influences on HRM systems have attracted attention but organisational factors are less often studied. Studies mostly relate to Western contexts and lack perspectives from SMEs. The findings of this empirical investigation highlight the importance of context specific research given the different nature of institutional settings.

This paper aims to present exploratory, empirical data from an ethnographic study into workplace humour and fun. It explores the notion that workplace humour and fun are influenced by the creation of boundaries that either enable or constrain activities.

Qualitative data were gathered from four New Zealand companies within different industries. Mixed methods were used and included semi‐structured interviews, participant observation and document collection.

The findings suggest that organisational culture is influential in boundary creation. In three formal companies, boundaries for humour and fun activities were narrower, and this constrained humour activities. In an informal company, wider boundaries resulted in humour activities that were unrestrained which created an unusual and idiosyncratic company identity.

It would be useful to replicate this exploratory research in different workplace sectors and environments.

Boundaries constructed through social processes are assuming greater importance in modern organisations. However, research has not investigated boundaries around workplace humour and fun. Understanding boundaries may assist work groups when creating (and promoting) fun. This original research considers both managerial and employee concerns, and findings extend theory on workplace fun and humour.

This study aims to investigate the factors that affect the likelihood of formalizing informal sector activities in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, using World Bank enterprise survey data collected between the periods 2009 and 2018. Notwithstanding the great contribution of the informal economy in Africa, developing countries may stand to gain more if they make inroads in formalizing the informal sector.

Since the dependent variable is binary taking the value of one if the firm is willing to formalize and zero otherwise, the study will employ a discrete choice probit model.

Results inter alia show that firms that are more likely to formalize are young, owned by individuals with high levels of education and, have registered before. Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with information about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood for them to register would be high.

The study uses cross sectional data and therefore cannot capture time variant factors affecting the probability to register and also cannot correct effectively for endogeneity.

Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with as much information as possible about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood to convince them to register would be high. They should also reduce the cost of registration so as to improve net benefits in line with the rational exit view.

Formalizing informal activities will help improve the performance of these firms, reduce vulnerable employment as well as crime, poverty and inequality. Providing decent operating and working conditions to informal players will reduce social and political unrest.

The African continent is home to many informal firms accounting for roughly 55% of economic activity with 90% of workers eking out a living in a sector that does not respect worker rights, provide decent working conditions and where changes in growth have done little to reduce its size. Regulatory reforms have also been implemented resulting in the number of start-up registration procedures falling from 11 in 2003 to seven in 2019. The uniqueness of Sub Saharan Africa in terms of entrepreneurial culture, political, institutional and economic conditions as well as lack of consensus in the extant empirical literature make this study pertinent.

Research has shown that the discursive patterns students use in their email interactions with their teachers are not linguistically and socio-culturally appropriate. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to try to explore how socio-cultural conventions influence the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ choices of discourse strategies in their email communications within an academic context. The study, then, investigates the impact of social distance and gender on the stylistic features of students’ email texts.

The email texts written by 180 university students majoring in Applied Linguistics were systematically analyzed based on such patterns as opening and closing moves, reduced forms, text connectives, symbolization and emoticons. Alternatively, three semi-structured interviews were conducted to gauge the participants’ motives underlying the selection of particular discourse features.

The findings revealed that students, despite many statements to the contrary, were aware of the socio-cultural conventions governing email writing style and could write status-appropriate email messages, which rightly reflected the etiquette of email communication within an academic context.

The findings may offer certain benefits to EFL teachers and students.

The paper highlights understanding of a specific social group in relation to their interaction with different status social groups in the context of a specific communication technology and to some extent the perceived effectiveness of such approaches by those invoking them.

This paper aims to explore networks in relation to small professional service businesses. Both the structural and relational components of networks are considered to better understand what networks are and how they operate. The paper investigates the link between networks and marketing and discusses the extent to which small professional service businesses use their networks for marketing activities.

The literature review identifies key elements of professional service businesses, networks and marketing activities. The primary research is qualitative by design and exploratory in nature and used a multi-case study approach. Data were collected from five small management consultancy businesses through in-depth interviews using semi-structured questionnaires.

The study finds that small professional service businesses lack the business/marketing language to articulate their approaches and values. They are increasingly relying on collaboration to deliver changing services. Findings show that “core groups” are highly significant in the structure of their networks. Furthermore, while most connections are work-related, networks are not strategically motivated. Linkages are strong and motivations to network and networking activities are both short and long term. Generating work and developing lasting collaborative relationships is based on similar values and interests.

The study offers insight and practical understanding on the relations that small businesses have with their networks. It also builds and adds value to the theory of network and networking in both the small business field and professional services related industry. It explores networks by considering the structural and relational components separately whilst also highlighting their interconnection.