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This study aimed to investigate the impact of social networks on learning requests by Arab undergraduate EFL students.

Furthermore, both types of requests (i.e. direct and indirect) have been compared under the same condition. A total of 40 Saudi EFL learners participated in this study. Their scores in the pre-test and post-test were compared.

Results of the post-tests indicated that the experimental groups' performance significantly outscored the control groups. However, no significant difference was reported between the two experimental groups (i.e. direct and indirect).

Requests, as a component of pragmatics, have been investigated extensively in the literature to aid second/foreign language learning. However, little is known about the manner by which social networks could foster learning requests.

Questions the circumstances under which consultants should consider the interpretation of unconscious material as part of their mission, and the forms that these interpretations should take. Following the approach taken by Abraham Zaleznik, suggests that it may be necessary to reflect upon the analysis of requests from clients for consultancy or for auditing. Seeks to review the issue of client‐request analysis from a psychoanalytic perspective and, in particular, from the angle of the tripartition of Lacanian analysis: that of need, demand and desire.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent to which youth have ready access to alcohol and the extent to which immediate family influence affects consumption.

This qualitative descriptive exploratory study undertook semi-structured peer-group interviews with 20 participants from four New Zealand high schools. The interviews centred on exploring the “general” experiences of youth related to alcohol access – but with a focus on alcohol access “at home” and the parental role.

The study confirmed that the home unit was the main source of alcohol for most youth and parents were the most common source of provision. Parents provided financial access to alcohol by giving their child money to purchase it themselves through older family members or friends. It was also found that youth used negotiation strategies with their parents to influence their consumer purchases of alcohol.

Youth frequently used strategies such as pressure tactics, exchange tactics, ingratiating tactics and consultation tactics to influence their family’s decision-making process and to pressure their parents into supplying them with alcohol.

It is important to recognise the role that family play as “gatekeepers” for readily allowing access and supplying youth with alcohol – and the reasons for doing so.

Alcohol plays an important part in many societies. It is important to understand how young people consume and access alcohol – particularly when the family plays a major role in access and consumption.

Many studies have been conducted in relation to youth and alcohol consumption. Very few, as far as we can tell, explore the role of the family from the young consumers’ perspective and especially from a qualitative narrative perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in an Anglo and a Confucian‐Asian nation how pressure is exerted on middle managers by their subordinate staff, and the managerial activities affected.

In a survey, Australian (n=251) and Singaporean (n=340) health managers rated the degree of pressure exerted on them by subordinate staff to devote additional time to various managerial activities. They described the influence strategies employed.

Ratings of the average pressure experienced regarding nine managerial activities were identical in both cultures. Australian managers reported significantly greater pressure affecting people and general organisational management. Singaporeans experienced more pressure affecting their quality and data management tasks. Australian subordinates used more direct‐assertive and direct‐persuasive influence strategies. Singaporeans employed more indirect‐assertive tactics, particularly poor work performance.

The generalisability of the findings may be limited by having convenience samples from one occupational sector.

The cultural differences found are relevant to the increasing numbers of multinational organisations and expatriate and migrant workers. The information will inform discussions on factors affecting the assignment of managers' priorities, which can be at variance with their aspirations.

Managers' experiences of pressure from subordinates and how pressure is conveyed have been under‐researched, particularly cross‐culturally.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what Christmas gifts mean to children by examining the features and styles of the letters that children write to Santa Claus.

Contents and style of 314 authentic letters sent by UK children to Santa Claus were analyzed using an underlying interpretive consumer research approach.

Letters to Santa contain expressions of needs, wants, desires, hopes and dreams related to Christmas. The majority of letters were identified as expressions of wants and desires, while only a few letters contained features of needs or dreaming. This implies that for children Christmas seems to be a rather unspiritual festival concerning having things rather than dreams coming true.

The generalization of findings is limited to Western welfare societies. Letters are not originally written for research purposes, and therefore lack background information about the writers and their writing situations.

Analysis of letters to Santa offers an opportunity to identify the spirit of postmodern consumption with its contradictory aspects, and understand children as consumers. It is essential to recognize and understand the nature of the desires of today's children as they are an influential set of consumers.

The paper offers insights about the contemporary Christmas gift giving from the point of view of children. Contrary to previous studies, the central focus of the analysis is on gift request styles and letters as meaningful entities, not just on product categories or brands as such.

This paper aims to investigate how supply chain risks can be identified in both collaborative and adversarial buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs).

This research includes a multiple-case study involving ten Chinese manufacturers with two informants per organisation. Data have been interpreted from a multi-level social capital perspective (i.e. from both an individual and organisational level), supplemented by signalling theory.

Buyers use different risk identification strategies or apply the same strategy in different ways according to the BSR type. The impact of organisational social capital on risk identification is contingent upon the degree to which individual social capital is deployed in a way that benefits an individual’s own agenda versus that of the organisation. Signalling theory generally complements social capital theory and helps further understand how buyers can identify risks, especially in adversarial BSRs, e.g. by using indirect signals from suppliers or other supply chain actors to “read between the lines” and anticipate risks.

Data collection is focussed on China and is from the buyer side only. Future research could explore other contexts and include the supplier perspective.

The types of relationships that are developed by buyers with their supply chain partners at an organisational and an individual level have implications for risk exposure and how risks can be identified. The multi-level analysis highlights how strategies such as employee rotation and retention can be deployed to support risk identification.

Much of the extant literature on supply chain risk management is focussed on risk mitigation, whereas risk identification is under-represented. A unique case-based insight is provided into risk identification in different types of BSRs by using a multi-level social capital approach complemented by signalling theory.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the speech genres in the original and the published versions of an article written by academic researchers and published in the US practitioner-oriented journal, Strategic Finance. The original version, submitted by the researchers, was rewritten by a professional editor in the USA before it was published.

The paper analyses the “persuasive” speech genre of the original version and the “authoritative” speech genre of the published version.

Although it was initially thought that the differences between the two versions were due to differences in the forms communication used by academics and practitioners, as the analysis progressed it became clear that the differences the authors were observing could be traced to more profound differences in philosophical assumptions about the “way of understanding and constructing a world”.

The choice of language and argumentation should be given careful attention when the authors craft the accounting frameworks and research papers, and especially when the authors seek to communicate the findings of the research to practitioners. However, the authors have focused on just one instance in which a text written by academics was re-written for publication in a practitioner journal.

The paper contrasts the rationalism of the persuasive speech genre and the pragmatism of the authoritative speech genre. It cautions academic researchers against uncritically adopting specific speech genres, whether they are academic or practitioner speech genres, without carefully reflecting on their relevance and implications for understanding the nature of the phenomenon being discussed.

This paper attempts to propose an integrated model for measuring the knowledge transfer effectiveness in university‐industry alliances. The so‐called “RDCE” model is thereby proposed as an integrated model for measuring the knowledge transfer effectiveness. By combining inter‐organizational relations (IORs), knowledge‐based view (KBV) and resource‐based view (RBV) of firms, this paper aims to focus on the influence of determinant factors such as partner complementarities, partner attributes, the characteristics of the coordination and relationship quality between industrial companies and universities that may lead to the effectiveness of knowledge transfer.

This framework thereby clarifies how mediating variables influenced the paths that constitute the direct, indirect and total effects of mediated models by integrating moderated regression analysis together with bootstrap resampling methods to ensure the precision in estimating confidence intervals of indirect effects and path analysis using structural equation models to test all the hypotheses simultaneously for the robustness of the results and conclusions.

The statistical results reveal that the proposed model has a significant mediating effect that contributes to knowledge transfer effectiveness. Only partner attributes and relationship factors have a direct impact on the effectiveness of knowledge transfer. This appears plausible since mere complementarities and coordination between partners may not lead to learning or knowledge transfer, which requires a certain depth of the partner interaction in terms of the specific attributes of partners, coordination and relationship quality.

The authors assumed that the alliance constitutes partnerships between firms of roughly equal size and market power. Therefore, this study provided only broad perspectives of collaboration among alliance partners, and did not capitalize on different degree of alliance integration and different types of collaboration.

Managerial suggestions on how to improve their knowledge transfer effectiveness are also provided at the end of the text.

There are numerous studies examining alliance network performance. Very few studies, however, have examined detailed collaborative activities in dyadic university‐industry partnerships and potential constructs for measuring knowledge transfer and commercialization in the research and development alliance between industrial firms and university context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if retail services have a transformative potential to improve the well-being of customers in a Latin American market. Transformative studies have been conducted mostly in developed countries, and consumer well-being in a Latin American supermarket context has not been addressed previously. Specifically, this study aims to understand if customer satisfaction with a supermarket experience in Chile leads to positive customer well-being. Additionally, it is examined if customer well-being influences firm outcomes, such as customer loyalty, word-of-mouth (WOM) communication or retailer equity.

A conceptual model was developed, and data was collected through an online survey from 866 customers of a large supermarket chain in Chile. Hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study support all the hypotheses of the model and confirm that customer satisfaction has direct and indirect effects on customer loyalty and other firm outcomes through customer well-being.

This research is among the few studies in the academic literature that considers retail experience and well-being outcomes for supermarket customers in a Latin American context. Limitations derive from the cross-sectional nature of this study.

There are implications from this study contributing to the literature on customer retail experience, in terms of the potential to transform supermarket shopping in a Latin American country. This is particularly relevant in Latin America as the extent to which for-profit organizations acknowledge their relevancy of the individuals’ well-being is still at its infancy.

This research provides empirical support to the importance of not only looking at traditional measures such as WOM, equity and loyalty but looking into the impact services have for customers’ life and well-being.

This study contributes to the services literature and addresses a gap in it by exploring the transformative potential of supermarket shopping on customer well-being and in turn the role of customer well-being in retail firm outcomes. The findings also contribute in considering Chile, a Latin American context that has been overlooked in the transformative services studies. This provides managerial implications for domestic and global companies that offer grocery retailing for consumers in this region.