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The purpose of this paper is to formally introduce the future persona, a futures method to let scenarios come to life. A future persona is a scenario-specific fictional individual living in the future scenario (s)he is meant to depict. The paper provides a formal, systematic and clear step-by-step guide on how to create engaging and effective future personas after a scenario planning exercise.

After having introduced the future persona method, tracing it back to the customer persona method in user centered design (UCD) and differentiating it from previous uses of futures characters in the futures studies literature and in other domains, an example of the creation process of four future personas based on four scenario archetypes of the futures of work is provided, illustrated with pictures and discussed.

Future personas, with their narratives and graphical illustrations, are found to be particularly useful to convey scenarios to a target audience.

Futures personas can be used in a scenario planning exercise to increase the clarity of scenarios in the mind of scenario planners and to let scenarios be known inside an organization.

Future personas can substantially enrich scenarios, increasing their liveliness, playfulness and empathy.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, given contemporary global challenges and trends, the central goal for the future of higher education should be to facilitate the development of wise cyborgs.

Contemporary global challenges are identified. A theory of wisdom and wisdom‐based education is outlined, highlighting the development of character virtues and enhanced future consciousness. It is demonstrated that a wisdom‐based education is necessary for addressing global challenges. The intimate evolutionary connection between human intelligence and technology is described, including a general definition of a cyborg. The concept of a wise cyborg is described. Examples are provided regarding how to facilitate the educational development of the wise cyborg.

Solutions to modern global challenges require a synthesis of holistic, integrative, future‐focused, and ethical thinking – all qualities of wisdom. The qualities of wisdom can be described analytically and addressed educationally. Humans have purposely enhanced their functional capacities through technology throughout history. Humans are cyborgs and the intimate functional synthesis of the biological and technological will further develop in the future. Wise people in the future will be wise cyborgs. Educational methods can be identified that facilitate the development of wise cyborgs.

Wisdom, a concept traditionally associated with philosophy and spiritual thinking, is connected with technological evolution. An educational approach is described which synthesizes wisdom and character virtues with future consciousness and technological proficiency. This educational model is applied to creating individuals who can successfully address the problems of today and tomorrow.

The purpose of this research is to examine the nature of consumers' relationships with branded spokescharacters by drawing upon brand personality theory and reader‐response theory, focusing specifically on food trade characters. We aim to show that the persuasive power of these characters resides not only in their appearance, but also in the complex narratives consumers project (sometimes unwittingly) onto the spokescharacter.

The paper reports the results of a survey – blending quantitative and qualitative methodologies – designed to document consumer perceptions, affective responses and spontaneous associations to different characters (i.e. Aunt Jemima, Robin Hood, Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben, Poppin' Fresh the Pillsbury's Doughboy, and M. Felix and Mr Norton, characters created by a Montreal‐based cookie company).

The results revealed that consumers associate spokescharacters with distinct personality profiles. Also, a connection was found between spokescharacters and narrative: a relationship where the characters become part of a larger narrative paradigm and more importantly, a relationship where the consumer is cast in a specific role vis‐à‐vis the spokescharacter.

These results should invite brand managers to stay current with the variety of associations that consumers form and how these associations influence the perception of their brand's personality. The results further underscore the need to understand the role into which consumers are cast vis‐à‐vis a branded character. Future research should examine cross cultural differences in the perception and narratives of branded characters, especially since many multinational companies use branded characters across cultural divides.

The paper shows how consumers play an active role in rendering a spokescharacter likeable, credible, and even memorable and documents the narratives that engage consumers and are both constructed collaboratively with them and propagated by them.

This study aims to examine the effects of character body size, subject body size and product type on female adolescents’ attitudes toward the character. Given prior research showing that adolescents identify more strongly with those whom they view as similar to themselves, it is possible that heavy and obese adolescents will react more favorably to plus-size ad characters.

Two studies were conducted, one with females aged 12–14 and a second with females aged 15–17. Based on their body mass index, subjects were classified as of small/average size or overweight/obese. Ads featured either a thin, average-size or plus-size character, and promoted either a healthful or an unhealthful snack item.

In general, small/average size female adolescents responded more favorably toward thin characters, whereas their overweight/obese counterparts responded more favorably toward plus-size characters. Moreover, subjects’ responses were not moderated by the nutritional value (healthful vs unhealthful) of the product being advertised.

To effectively promote healthy foods to overweight/obese adolescents, it may be advantageous to incorporate plus-size characters. Additional research is needed, however, to determine whether this approach can effectively influence brand attitudes and consumption behaviors.

As obesity rates continue to rise, it has become vitally important to encourage healthier food choices among youth. To develop effective communication strategies, marketers need to better understand how young consumers respond to various advertising cues.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of character size and subject size on female adolescents’ attitudes toward the character.

Digital humanities research platform for biographies of Malaysia personalities (DHRP-BMP) was collaboratively developed by the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity in Taiwan, the Federation of Heng Ann Association Malaysia, and the Malaysian Chinese Research Center of Universiti Malaya in this study. Using The Biographies of Malaysia Henghua Personalities as the main archival sources, DHRP-BMP adopted the Omeka S, which is a next-generation Web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online, as the basic development system of the platform, to develop the functions of close reading and distant reading both combined together as the foundation of its digital humanities tools.

The results of the first-stage development are introduced in this study, and a case study of qualitative analysis is provided to describe the research process by a humanist scholar who used DHRP-BMP to discover the character relationships and contexts hidden in The Biographies of Malaysia Henghua Personalities.

Close reading provided by DHRP-BMP was able to support humanities scholars on comprehending full text contents through a user-friendly reading interface while distant reading developed in DHRP-BMP could assist humanities scholars on interpreting texts from a rather macro perspective through text analysis, with the functions such as keyword search, geographic information and social networks analysis for humanities scholars to master on the character relationships and geographic distribution from personality biographies, thus accelerating their text interpretation efficiency and uncovering the hidden context.

At present, a digital humanities research platform with real-time characters’ relationships analysis tool that can automatically generate visualized character relationship graphs based on Chinese named entity recognition (CNER) and character relationship identification technologies to effectively assist humanities scholars in interpreting characters’ relationships for digital humanities research is still lacking so far. This study thus presents the DHRP-BMP that offers the key features that can automatically identify characters’ names and characters’ relationships from personality biographies and provide a user-friendly visualization interface of characters’ relationships for supporting digital humanities research, so that humanities scholars could more efficiently and accurately explore characters’ relationships from the analyzed texts to explore complicated characters’ relationships and find out useful research findings.

Starting from the premise that formal ethical codes and other ethical discourses differ in their audiences, effects and characteristics, it is analyzed how practitioner‐directed ethical discourses have spoken and continue to speak about character‐based ethics. Borrowing from the literature on professions and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, starts from the assumption that editorials in practitioner‐oriented publications are a form of cultural good traded on an internal symbolic market. By providing access to symbolic capital, trade in this good acts to bind together members of the accounting profession, yet trade in this good also has the potential to obscure a number of important, underlying social issues. The study is based on a close (textual) reading of editorials in the Canadian Chartered Accountant (subsequently renamed CA Magazine) from 1911 to 1999, and this reading is framed in light of a number of macro‐level and meso‐level (contextual) changes. It is found that character‐based ethical discourses continue to pervade this professional field, though not without important changes which themselves need to be explained in light of the more widespread, non‐professional field.

With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and experiment with generative AI in their daily writing practices.

This critical case study of one digital platform – Character.ai – brings together an adolescent and adult authorship team to inquire about the intertwining of young people’s playful and critical perspectives when writing on/with digital platforms. Drawing on critical walkthrough methodology (Light et al., 2018), the authors engage digital methods to study how the creative and “fun” uses of AI in youths’ writing lives are situated in broader platform ecologies.

The findings suggest experimentation and pleasure are key aspects of young people’s engagement with generative AI. The authors demonstrate how one platform works to capitalize on these dimensions, even as youth users engage critically and artfully with the platform and develop their digital writing practices.

This study highlights how playful experimentation with generative AI can engage young people both in pleasurable digital writing and in exploration and contemplation of platforms dynamics and structures that shape their and others’ literate activities. Educators can consider young people’s creative uses of these evolving technologies as potential opportunities to develop a critical awareness of how commercial platforms seek to benefit from their users.

This study contributes to the development of a critical and humanist research agenda around generative AI by centering the experiences, perspectives and practices of young people who are underrepresented in the burgeoning research devoted to AI and literacies.

There has been a surge of interest in leader character and a push to bring character into mainstream management theory and practice. Research has shown that CEOs and board members have many questions about the construct of leader character. For example, they like to see hard data indicating to what extent character contributes to organizational performance. Human resource management professionals are often confronted with the need to discuss and demonstrate the value of training and development initiatives. The question as to whether such interventions have a dollars-and-cents return on the investment is an important one to consider for any organizational decision-maker, especially given the demand for increased accountability, the push for transparency and tightening budgets in organizations. The authors investigated the potential dollar impact associated with the placement of managers based on the assessment of leader character, and they used utility analysis to estimate the dollar value associated with the use of one instrument – the Leader Character Insight Assessment or LCIA – to measure leader character.

The authors used field data collected for purposes of succession planning in a large Canadian manufacturing organization. The focus was on identifying senior management candidates suitable for placement into the most senior levels of leadership in the organization. Peers completed the LCIA to obtain leader character ratings of the candidates. The LCIA is a behaviorally based and validated instrument to assess leader character. Performance assessments of the candidates were obtained through supervisor ratings.

The correlation between the leader character measure provided by peers and performance assessed by the supervisor was 0.30 (p < 0.01). Using the data required to calculate ΔU from the Brogden-Cronbach-Gleser model leads to an estimate of CAD $564,128 for the use of the LCIA over the expected tenure of 15 years, which is equivalent to CAD $37,609 yearly; and CAD $375,285 over an expected tenure of 10 years, which is equivalent to CAD $37,529 yearly. The results of the study also indicate that there is still a positive and sizeable return on investment or ROI associated with the LCIA in employee placement even with highly conservative adjustments to the basic utility analysis formula.

Utility analysis is a quantitative and robust method of evaluating human resource programs. The authors provide an illustration of the potential utility of the LCIA in a selection process for senior managers. They assert that selecting and promoting managers on leader character and developing their character-based leadership will not only leverage their own contributions to the organization but also contribute to a trickle-down effect on employees below them.

Scholars and practitioners generally acknowledge the crucial importance of visions in motivating and inspiring organizational change. In this article, we describe a two-part activity based on visionary leadership scholarship and theory designed to teach students to cultivate foresight and consider future possibilities through the organizational vision statement development process.

Using an experiential design, the exercise draws on several empirically validated techniques to encourage foresight and future thinking, to help students place themselves in the shoes of the chief executive officer of a hypothetical organization and use dramaturgical character development strategies to craft the vision statements that they will champion.

The exercise has been used in three different business courses (N = 87) and has been well received.

The content of the exercise is adaptable to a variety of courses in which leadership and vision are focal topics – such as organizational behavior, strategy and leadership – and could also be modified for an online classroom setting.

The environment of most organizations is beset by continuous change, instability, flux, and unpredictability. If organizations are to survive and prosper under such conditions, they must be capable of dynamic adaption and stable and reliable performance. Organization theory recognizes the importance of both imperatives, but typically assumes that they pull organizations in different directions. Building on Selznick’s theory of institutionalization, we argue that institutions can, should and sometimes do master the challenge of being responsive and stable, while avoiding the potentially destructive tendencies of rigidity and opportunism. Contrary to a prominent view that strong institutionalization leads to inertia, Selznick’s theory suggests that strong institutions are capable of preemptive adaptation to protect the character of their institutions. We describe this state as one of dynamic conservatism and explore four types of preemptive internal reform strategies: strategic retreat, self-cannibalization, experimentation, and repositioning. We conclude with a consideration of factors that might moderate the ability of strong institutions to proactively change in order to remain the same.