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The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the use of the term “culture shock” in international management studies and cross-cultural research and to propose a paradigmatic shift in how the term is understood for future research. The experience of “culture shock” is an established concept within international management studies, engendering an industry of training designed to combat difficulties in relocation. This paper argues that the use of concept is based on a flawed understanding of “culture” and proposes an alternative perspective to help organisations prepare their employees for overseas assignments.

The paper opts for a critical review of literature to examine models of culture shock through time and theories relating to success factors in cross-cultural adjustment. In so doing, the paper revisits the notion of culture shock from a social constructionist perspective within a dialectical framework.

The paper challenges the notion of culture as an essential, reified concept, arguing that culture shock is not about culture, but about the dynamics of context and how individuals deal with life changes to navigate the challenges that they face.

Future research should focus on context-related, interactive behaviour, framed in discourse processes, rather than predetermined a priori typologies based on cultural stereotypes. This would recognise the discursive nature of social interaction within a dialectical framework, where relational tension emerges as a result of disparity.

The paper contributes to an understanding of the complex range of factors influencing the success of relocation to guide international companies in their policies.

This paper proposes a paradigm shift in the treatment of culture shock towards a more discourse-based concept created through universal cultural and dialectical processes.

As the rate of growth in trade of developing and developed economies converges, international business is increasingly taking place in a growing assortment of political and ideological contexts with variable levels of tolerance for plural dissidence. This can create substantial challenges and risks for crosscultural adjustment and increases the potential for assignment failure. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of an authoritarian regime on the process of adjustment amongst expatriate sojourners and draw out lessons for future research and policies for relocation in similar authoritarian contexts.

This was a qualitative research study over three years making use of participant observation methods as a result of researcher immersion in the local context.

This study finds that “culture” is an insufficient category for explaining difficulties in cross-cultural adjustment and demonstrates that adjustment difficulties under authoritarianism are heightened in the proximate sociocultural context, with geo-political and ideological dynamics creating more challenging conditions of life. Increased levels of social control act to heighten psychological vulnerability amongst sojourners, resulting in coping behaviours that seek a greater degree of psychological alleviation and companionship through more resource-intensive supportive networks and a tendency toward enclavism, thus inhibiting sociocultural adjustment to the host society.

Research needs to recognise more fully the diverse nature of contexts in cross-cultural adjustment. Future research should explore different types of contexts and assess what sort of challenges may arise in relation to the process of psychological and sociocultural adjustment and the adjustive resources required to overcome them.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the psychological and sociocultural challenges of international relocation in an authoritarian context and serves as valuable insight for relocation planning in similar conditions, which are an ever-increasing feature of international business.

This paper gives a unique insight into international relocation in Cuba and draws out the areas of concern for cross-cultural adjustment under authoritarian conditions, an ever-increasing feature of international business. It serves as an example of how context-based research can inform cross-cultural theory and practice within an evolving landscape of doing business globally.

This research is aimed to better understand what characteristics of family firms create a context in which family governance systems are more frequently adopted.

We analyse a sample of 490 Spanish family businesses using cluster analysis, and we identify four different types of family businesses whose characteristics are associated to the adoption of different family governance systems, i.e. family councils and family protocols. The comparison between clusters of the baseline parameters was performed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for parametric variables, the χ2 test for parametric variables and Kruskal-Wallis for nonparametric variables. By conducting between-profile analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), we tested for differences in the dependent variables (i.e. the existence of family councils and/or existence of family protocols) between the clusters, using cluster membership as the independent variable.

Taking into account the characteristics of family firms in terms of ownership structure, management involvement, and family and organizational complexity, we identify four different contexts that create different communication needs and are related to the use of different family governance mechanisms. We characterize the different contexts or types of family firms as: founder-centric, protective, consensual and business-evolved. Our findings show that family protocols are associated to contexts with high family involvement in management and family complexity, while family councils are more frequent when there is a separation of managerial and ownership roles and there is a high organizational and family complexity.

The study highlights the value of social systems theory in order to explain the association between the characteristics of different firm types and contexts, and the use of family councils and family protocols to govern the relationship between the owner family and the business.

Family governance mechanisms are widely recommended by practitioners and scholars. However, they are usually adopted only by a small percentage of family firms. This study helps to better understand what family governance systems may be more appropriate in different contexts and relativize the necessity of these governance mechanisms in function of the communication needs created within each context.

The improvement of family governance mechanisms helps to increase the likelihood of survival and durability of family firms. These firms contribute to more than 60% of employment in most developed countries. Consequently, good governance in family firms has social implications in terms of labour conditions and stability.

Most family firms don't use family protocols or family councils to govern the relationship between the owner family and the firm. However, little is known about the reasons for this lack of structuration of the family-firm relationship. Using social systems theory, our research contributes to better understand the conditions in which business families are more prone to use structured forms to manage this relationship, as well as the reasons that may be constraining their adoption.

Family governance mechanisms serve to govern and strengthen relations between the family and the business, as well as the relationships between the members of the business family itself. However, despite agreement on the importance of adopting family governance structures, explicit research on the determinants of family governance mechanisms is currently missing. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to uncover the determinants of family meetings. In order to do so, the social systems theory is used to unravel several determining factors of this crucial form of family governance mechanisms in private family firms.

The authors perform a qualitative study by conducting semi-structured interviews in eight Belgian private family firms in order to discover the antecedents of the implementation of family meetings. The authors use a pattern-matching technique as an analytical strategy.

The findings of the study highlight the importance of “soft,” relational, qualitative issues as antecedents of family meetings as opposed to previous research on family governance, which predominantly focused on “hard,” quantitative measures (e.g. family ownership). The findings of the study also provide novel insights into the origins of the family component (i.e. family meetings) of family business governance.

While the current literature has only focused on describing the different types of family governance and their positive consequences for the family firm, the authors take a step back to explain why family meetings, as a form of family governance, are adopted in the first place. Second, the authors demonstrate the instrumentality of the social systems theory in understanding the family's needs that necessitate the implementation of family governance mechanisms.

Technology has transformed teaching and learning environments in tertiary education, introducing new collaborative library spaces and developing the roles and skills of library staff. Academic libraries need continually to re‐examine their services to ensure they meet student needs. The current survey aimed to discover how students perceived staff in the Information Commons (IC) and whether their perceptions of staff attitudes and skills influenced their use of library resources.

A questionnaire containing closed and open questions was distributed electronically to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Sheffield, obtaining 250 responses (around 1 per cent of the student population).

The results showed that most students were unable to distinguish different groups of staff, were unaware of their departmental librarian and did not recognise the academic role of librarians. However, those who had sought assistance in the IC or attended classes delivered by librarians had positive views of their experiences.

The timing and fixed duration of the study limited the size and nature of the sample, the generalisability of the findings and depth of the investigation, but sufficient data were collected to establish patterns of behaviour and identify important factors.

Low awareness among students of the expertise of librarians and their capacity to provide academic support indicates a need for more promotion to ensure library resources are properly utilised.

The study is thought to be the first of its kind conducted in the UK and the only such survey carried out in an IC setting.

The purpose of this paper is to advance debate and prompt new strategies substantially to improve the capacity to disrupt serious profit-motivated crime.

Using interdiction rates (the proportion of criminal funds seized or forfeited) as an interim proxy effectiveness indicator, this article challenges elements of the dominant anti-money laundering/counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) narrative, and reflects on policy effectiveness and outcomes.

Interdiction rates in jurisdictions surveyed hardly constitute a rounding error in the accounts of profit motivated criminal enterprises. The current AML/CFT model appears almost completely ineffective in disrupting illicit finances and serious crime.

With such research at an early stage, some data are poorly substantiated and methodological inconsistencies rife.

For policy interventions with a reasonable prospect for crime not to pay, beyond rhetoric, frank evaluation of results and a potential step-change in policy, regulatory and enforcement vision and capability, may be required.

Scholars have exposed a paucity of meaningful links between AML/CFT controls and crime and terrorism prevention, yet the dominant narrative persists largely unchecked. This paper examines components of that narrative in the context of scholarship on “bullshit”.

This paper aims to consider whether ethical persuasion can be part of public relations practice.

The paper contends that the critical issue for practitioners is not whether they engage in persuasion, but whether they do so ethically. Accordingly, a definition of ethical persuasion is derived by examining unethical propaganda. The paper then considers what standard might be used to assess the ethics of persuasion. The notion of “the public interest” – ubiquitously linked to ethical practice in public relations – is considered but found to be too elusive to guide the practice individual practitioners. Other more assessable standards are identified, as is a guiding approach to ethics. The approach to ethics adopted in this paper is rule utilitarianism. The methodology of this paper is deductive and derivative analysis, argument and synthesis, drawn from a broad body of literature.

Persuasion can be ethical, and a definition of ethical persuasion is proffered. The public interest is not a standard that individual practitioners can determine, decide, know, or apply to assess the ethics of their practice. Ethical persuasion can, however, be assessed using other standards, discussed in the paper. Consequently, a set of criteria and standards to practicing ethical persuasion is developed.

The paper does not extend into a discussion of practical persuasive techniques. Therefore, an extension of this examination could consider a thorough assessment of the ethics of practical persuasive communication techniques.

Directly relevant to the daily work of public relations practitioners, communicators, adertisers and marketers, who are interested in acting ethically. The paper provide a basis for a guide to assessing the ethics of persuasive practice.

This paper confronts both the question of whether practitioners can use the notion of the public interest to assess the ethics of practice, and also what constitutes ethical (and unethical) persuasion, and considers how persuation can be used ethically.

The purpose of this paper is to dissect key issues and debates in digital humanities, an emerging field of theory and practice. Digital humanities stands greatly to impact the Information and Library Science (ILS) professions (and vice versa) as well as the traditional humanities disciplines.

This paper explores the contours of digital humanities as a field, touching upon fundamental issues related to the field’s coalescence and thus to its structure and epistemology. It looks at the ways in which digital humanities brings new approaches and sheds new light on manifold humanities foci.

Digital humanities work represents a vital new current of interdisciplinary, collaborative intellectual activity both in- and outside the academy; it merits particular attention from ILS.

This paper helps potential stakeholders understand the intellectual and practical framework of the digital humanities and “its relationship” to their own intellectual and professional work.

This paper critically synthesizes previous scholarly work in digital humanities. It has particular value for those in ILS, a community that has proven especially receptive to the field, as well as to scholars working in many humanities disciplines. Digital humanities has already made an important impact on both LIS and the humanities; its impact is sure to grow.

The purpose of this study is to integrate status conflict, as a relatively recent and unexplored phenomenon, to the family business literature.

The authors follow multilevel theory building to develop a multilevel conceptual model of status conflict in family firms (FFs).

The authors identify the main antecedents, processes and consequences of status conflict at three levels of analysis (individual, family and firm) unique to FFs. Seventeen theoretical propositions at three levels of analysis are presented.

The authors address the need for multilevel research for organisations and multilevel status research, contribute to the under-researched theory of conflicts in FFs and show that the conflict literature, which has predominantly focussed on the individual- and group-level factors, can borrow from the family business literature, which has primarily been oriented to the group- and firm-level factors.

This paper presents the results of a thematic analysis of safeguarding adults reviews (SARs) where homelessness was a factor to illuminate and improve safeguarding practice and the support of adults who are homeless in England.

SARs were identified from a variety of sources and a thematic analysis was undertaken using data extraction tables.

In addition to identifying shortcomings in inter-agency co-operation, SARs highlighted a failure to recognize care needs and self-neglect among people with experience of homelessness and evidenced difficulties in engagement between professionals and people with experience of homelessness.

The authors may have failed to find some SARs in this category (there is no central registry). SARs vary in quality and in detail; some were not full reports. The approach to people’s experience of homelessness was broad and covered more than the circumstances of people who were rough sleeping or living on the streets.

This paper contributes to the current practice debates and policy initiatives in respect of homelessness and safeguarding in England. It may have wider relevance in the rest of the UK and internationally.