Search results

When a crisis strikes, responders need to make sense of it to gain an understanding of its origins, nature and implications. In this way, crisis sensemaking guides the implementation of the response. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the sensemaking questions that responders need to address for achieving effective and efficient crisis management.

Data are drawn from six exercises, in which teams of professionals from different crisis organizations were confronted with two terrorist attacks. Just like in real incidents, these professionals convened in tactical response teams and formulated their response collectively.

The exercises demonstrate that crisis responders do not just have to make sense of the crisis, but also of their own roles and actions. They raise and address three sensemaking questions: What is happening in this crisis? (i.e. situational sensemaking), Who am I in this crisis? (i.e. identity-oriented sensemaking) and How does it matter what I do? (i.e. action-oriented sensemaking).

Crisis preparation tends to focus on plans and systems that accelerate or improve the construction of a situational understanding, while this study suggests the need of more preparatory attention for crisis responders’ roles and actions.

The research extends crisis sensemaking literature beyond the restricted focus on the incident itself by showing that responders are also trying to grasp their own role and how their actions matter when they are engaged in crisis response.

The purpose of this research is to explore how an industry is represented in multimodal public media narratives and to explore how this representation subsequently affects the formation of public sense-giving space during a persisting crisis, such as a pandemic. The question asked is: how do the use of multimodality by public service media dynamically shape representations of industry identity during a persisting crisis?

This study made use of a multimodal approach. The verbal and visual media text on the restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic that were published in Finland by the public service media distributor Yle were studied. Data published between March 2020 and March 2022 were analysed. The data consisted of 236 verbal texts, including 263 visuals.

Three narratives were identified– victim, servant and survivor – that construct power relations and depict the identity of the restaurant industry differently. It was argued that multimodal media narratives hold three meaning making functions: sentimentalizing, juxtaposing and nuancing industry characteristics. It was also argued that multimodal public service media narratives have wider implications in possibly shaping the future attractiveness of the industry and organizational members' understanding of their identity.

This research contributes to sensemaking literature in that it explores the role of power – explicitly or implicitly constructed through media narratives during crisis. Furthermore, this research contributes to sensemaking literature in that it shows how narratives take shape multimodally during a continuous crisis, and how this impacts the construction of industry identity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe challenges to ethnic minorities in the UK. While the experiences of migrants are both complex and varied depending on individuals' social class, race, cultural proximity to the host country and acculturation levels, more in-depth studies are necessary to fully understand how COVID-19 affects specific migrant groups and their health. Taiwanese migrants were selected because they are an understudied group. Also, there were widespread differences in pandemic management between the UK and Taiwan, making this group an ideal case for understanding how their acculturation journey can be disrupted by a crisis.

Qualitative data were collected at two different time points, at the start of the UK pandemic (March/April 2020) and six months on (October/November 2020), to explore migrant coping experiences over time. Theoretically, the authors apply acculturation theory through the lens of coping, while discussing health-consumption practices, as empirical evidence.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, participants worked hard to achieve high levels of integration in the UK. The pandemic changed this; participants faced unexpected changes in the UK’s sociocultural structures. They were forced to exercise the layered and complex “coping with coping” in a hostile host environment that signalled their new marginalised status. They faced impossible choices, from catching a life-threatening disease to being seen as overly cautious. Such experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society.

It is important to note that the Taiwanese sample recruited through Facebook community groups is biased and has a high level of homogeneity. These participants were well-integrated, middle-class migrants who were highly educated, relatively resourceful and active on social media. More studies are needed to fully understand the impact on well-being and acculturation of migrants from different cultural, contextual and social backgrounds. This being the case, the authors can speculate that migrants with less resource are likely to have found the pandemic experience even more challenging. More studies are needed to fully understand migrant experience from different backgrounds.

Public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. In particular, this paper has shown how separation, especially if embraced temporarily, is not necessarily a negative outcome to be corrected with specific policies. It can be strategically adopted by migrants as a way of defending their health and well-being from an increasingly hostile environment. Migrants' home country experience provides vicarious learning opportunities to acquire good practices. Their voices should be encouraged rather than in favour of a surprising orthodox and rather singular approach in the discussion of public health management.

The paper has clear public health policy implications. Firstly, public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. Acknowledging migrants' voice is a critical first step to contribute to the development of a fair and inclusive society. Secondly, to retain skilful migrants and avoid a future brain-drain, policymakers are advised to advance existing infrastructure to provide more incentives to support and retain migrant talents in the post-pandemic recovery phase.

This paper reveals how a group of previously well-integrated migrants had to exercise “coping with coping” during the COVID crisis. This experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society. It contributes to the understanding of acculturation by showing how a such crisis can significantly disrupt migrants' acculturation journey, challenging them to re-acculturate and reconsider their identity stance. It shows how separation was indeed a good option for migrants for protecting their well-being from a newly hostile host environment.

This study aims to elucidate the process and internal mechanism of place identity construction in traditional villages under the impact of tourism by taking Cuandixia village as a case. The research methods comprise participatory observation and in-depth interviews with the residents. The main results are as follows: the impact of tourism on traditional villages is mainly reflected in space reconstruction, livelihood change, social relations restructuring and culture change; under the impact of tourism, the representation of residents’ identity construction shows complexity, with positive and negative effects; and the place identity construction of residents affects their perception of and attitudes toward tourism. Moreover, self-esteem and self-efficacy principles play a key role in their perception of tourism. This study provides some reference for further investigation of the tourism development model and the mental mechanism of residents in traditional villages.

This study aims, first, to explore and analyze if and how organizational members’ professions or occupations influence perceptions of internal crisis communication. The second, related, aim is to discuss the role of internal communication in creating a strong organizational identity during a prolonged crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

This study is mainly conceptual but uses quantitative data from a survey conducted in a health-care organization in late 2020 to illustrate the theoretical reasoning.

The results show that the administrative groups perceive factors in the internal crisis communication more favorably than the professional groups. The study suggests that organizational members perceive internal crisis communication differently depending on which intra-organizational group they belong to. This further points to the absence of a “rally-around-the-flag” effect and highlights the importance of working proactively with professionals and in internal crisis communication.

This study highlights the role of professionals in crisis communication, which is an aspect that so far has been ignored. The internal professionalization processes and an intriguing power struggle between professions have obvious consequences for crisis communication. As shown in the overview of earlier research on internal communication, leadership and professional organizations, the prerequisites for creating an increased organizational unity among coworkers are challenging. The idea that a crisis may, as in certain political situations in society, create a “rally-around-the-flag” effect is still relevant, even if the case study is an example of how this did not happen.

Despite to useful relevance to better understand how group-level identity develops, few studies have explored the identity theory in the esports field and, in particular, considering the impact of a fan's role identity. The current study aims to explore esports fan role-identity vis-à-vis the relationship with the sponsor and the sponsee so as to understand the effects on their behavioral intentions.

Using a sample of 356 esports fans who attended the 2021 FPF eFootball Open Challenge, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) analyzed the psychometric properties of the constructs and a subsequent Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) examined the effects of fan identity on two types of behavioral intentions and sponsor–sponsee relationship.

Results indicate that fans who highly identify with esports have the highest attachment to the event and tend toward having a positive word-of-mouth intention. Esports fans who have a higher brand identification reported a positive attitude toward the event's sponsor brand and tend to purchase its products. Moreover, the study findings also provide evidence of the bidirectional interaction between the way in which fans attach with the esports event and its sponsor brand, leading to greater reciprocity in their identity formation.

This study helps to understand how the fan identity process can enhance its fate and develop mutually, building role overlapping identity in the esports sponsor–sponsee relationship. Complementarily, it supports of how the marketeers and managers must analyze the importance of being a fan to the individual in order to understand how its self-identity can shape the future behavior.

This paper aims to interpret the multidimensional Asian American identity of immigrant Indians in terms of pan-ethnicity, gender and religion.

The social construction and experience of race in the US and the intersection of multiethnic Asian American identity with race, gender and religion will be used in critically commenting on the interview of primary ethnic identity of Indian Americans including the pan-ethnic identity of Indians in the US as Asian Americans, the Mar Thoma Church community, the second-generation Patel family's union formation in terms of gender identity.

The future directives include Asian American Movement (AAM) which is trying to incorporate Indians as pan-ethnic identity assimilation and the process of holding American identity as primary identification of Indians.

Policy recommendations are that the US Census Bureau should include Indian Americans as separate ethnic identity for Indian immigrants like the Chinese Americans. USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) should reform policies to include the wives of H-4 visa holders. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should provide secure living environment for Indian immigrants. The US Department of Labor should provide equal opportunities for women in their immigration policies.

This paper will critically analyze the interview results of primary ethnic identity and justify the hypotheses of Asian American identity of Indians, whether (1) they merge with the American identity as part of cultural assimilation or (2) retain their Asian identity beyond Americanized identity or (3) go beyond both American and Asian identity to restate their Indian ethnicity.

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between (dual) organizational identity and individual heuristics – simple rules and biases – in the process of strategy change. This paper offers a theory on identity reflexivity as a cognitive mechanism of strategy change in the context of organizational hybridity.

The authors draw on a 2-year ethnographic study at a Dutch social housing association dealing with the process of strategy change. The empirical data comprises of in-depth semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations as well as secondary sources.

Conflicting identities at the organizational level influence heuristics at the individual level, since members tend to identify with their department's identity. Despite conflicting interpretations, paths of cognitive shortcuts – that the authors define as internal and external identity reflexivity – are shared by the conflicting identities.

The findings of this research are subject to limitations typical of a qualitative case-study, such as possibly being context dependent. The authors argue that this research contributes to the understanding of how individual heuristics relate to organizational heuristics, and suggest that the process of identity reflexivity can contribute to the alignment of conflicting identities enabling strategy formation in the context of a dual-identity organization.

Understanding how managers with conflicting identities achieve agreements is important to help organizational leaders to pursue sustainability-oriented strategy change.

Given the pressure experienced by mission-driven organizations to integrate multiple sustainability demands in their mission, understanding managers' decision-making mechanism when adapting to new, often conflicting, sustainability demands is important to accelerate societal sustainability transitions.

This paper addresses the process of new strategy design in the context of a socially driven business. This context fundamentally differs from the one addressed by the existing heuristics literature with respect to organizational environment and role, and specific competing demands.

The United Arab Emirates’ complex history, its current demographics, its youthfulness as a country, and the fact that it is a region undergoing fast-paced change make the issue of cultura identity particularly relevant and urgent in this part of the world. This is especially true given the rapid spread of English in the sphere of education and everyday life in recent years. This paper discusses the above issues before analyzing the attitudes and perceptions of female Emirati undergraduate students and female Emirati primary school teachers with regard to global English and its effects on local culture and identity. After analysis of the findings from a qualitative study using open-response questionnaires with 35 undergraduates and twelve teachers, a discussion follows with recommendations on how to overcome issues raised in the study.

As hybrid organizations become increasingly common, the authors observe that some hybrid forms are becoming institutionalized and legitimated. The authors explore the implications of the institutionalization of hybridity, addressing both the internal tensions that plague many hybrids and the external tensions stemming from evaluator assessments and stakeholder uncertainty. The authors propose that institutionalization can dampen internal tensions associated with hybridity and also facilitate legitimation and acceptance by external audiences. The authors present identity as a useful theoretical lens through which to examine these questions, as identities are born from, but also have the potential to modify, existing institutional arrangements. The authors present directions for future research at the juncture of identity, hybridity, and institutionalization, suggesting potential avenues of inquiry in this productive stream of research.