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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a tendency towards appropriation or participation of the individual in the literature of knowledge management (KM).

This is a literature review paper. In terms of approach, appropriation in this paper is referred to as the KM tasks assigned to individual employees by the management whereas participation is referred to as KM tasks determined jointly by individuals and management.

The review suggests that while the participation of individuals is seen as important for KM, the KM discourse is visibly oriented towards the appropriation of individual employees and their knowledge for better economic performance of organisations. The review suggests that an appropriation of the individual in KM serves neither employees nor organisations, and that individual employees are meant to be valued participants in the development and management of knowledge.

The paper is concerned with the KM literature to study the appropriation or participation of individual employees in the discourse on KM. Consequently other streams of literature that address individual employees’ participation are excluded from this study.

The paper initiates a new research agenda for KM where the emphasis shifts from the appropriation to the participation of the individual in the discourse on KM practices.

The need for a universal rural pension system has been heightened by demographic changes in rural China, including the rapid aging of the nation’s rural population and a dramatic decline in fertility. In response to these changes, China’s Government introduced the New Rural Social Pension Program (NRSPP) in 2009, a voluntary and highly subsidized pension scheme. The purpose of this paper is to assess the participation of rural farmers in the NRSPP. Furthermore, the authors examine whether the NRSPP affects the labor supply of the elderly population in China.

This paper uses household-level data from a sample of 2,020 households originating from a survey conducted by the authors in five provinces, 25 counties, and 101 villages in rural China. Using a probit model and conducting correlation analysis, the authors demonstrate the factors affecting the participation and the impact of NRSPP on labor supply of the rural elderly.

The results show there are several factors that are correlated with participation, such as specific policy variant in force in the respective household's province, the size of the pension payout from government, the age of sample individuals, and the value of household durable assets. Specifically, different characteristics of NRSPP policy implementation increase participation in China’s social pension program. The results suggest that the introduction of the NRSPP has not affected the labor supply of the rural elderly, in general, although it has reduced participation for the elderly who were in poor health.

Several previous studies have covered the NRSPP. However, all previous studies were based on case studies or just focused on a small region, and for this reason the results cannot reflect the populations and heterogeneity of rural areas. Therefore, a data set with a large sample size is used in this paper to provide a new perspective to fully understand the participation of NRSPP and its impacts on rural households. This paper will make an update contribution to the literature in the area of pension programs in China.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how participation in an online health community provides for direct benefits in the form of information utility and social support and an indirect influence on perceptions of patient empowerment.

A multi‐method approach was conducted involving interviews with moderators of 18 online health communities and a field survey of 153 online health community participants.

Online health community participation leads to direct benefits in the form of information utility and social support and that information utility also helps to shape perceptions of patient empowerment among community participants.

This research calls into question the role of online health communities as a support mechanism to empower patients to take ownership over their healthcare treatment. Online health communities support the development of patient empowerment by creating and disseminating information that can be used to gain an understanding of a patient's health condition.

Purveyors of online health communities must be able to ensure a high level of engagement among community participants that allows for each member to elicit outcomes such as information utility, while simultaneously guarding against undesirable circumstances that may prohibit a positive experience.

Medical professionals can utilize the results of this study to develop strategies for incorporating online health communities into patient care. Specifically, medical professionals can use these results to identify relevant communities and engage in information sharing to ensure relevant and accurate information is disseminated to patients as they seek out information concerning their health conditions.

As an ever growing segment of the population looks to online health communities for health information seeking and emotional support, we still know very little as to the type of support that is provided by these forums and how benefits obtained from participation help to shape patient empowerment outcomes. This study determined that information utility and social support are two benefits obtained by online health community participants and that information utility also helps to shape perceptions of patient empowerment among community participants.

Arguing against a concept of learning as only a formal process occurring in explicitly educational settings like schools, the paper proposes a conception of the workplace as a learning environment focusing on the interaction between the affordances and constraints of the social setting, on the one hand, and the agency and biography of the individual participant, on the other. Workplaces impose certain expectations and norms in the interest of their own continuity and survival, and in the interest of certain participants; but learners also choose to act in certain ways dependent on their own preferences and goals. Thus, the workplace as a learning environment must be understood as a complex negotiation about knowledge‐use, roles and processes – essentially as a question of the learner's participation in situated work activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what may influence participation in mobile collaborative consumption (CC). In particular, the authors investigate the effects of individual sociability and psychological antecedents including enjoyment, social connection, altruistic motivation, reputation, trust and embarrassment on the participation intention in this emerging phenomenon, as well as their relationships.

Survey approach was employed to validate the research model.

Hedonic factor, i.e. enjoyment, and social-related factors including altruistic motivation, reputation and embarrassment emerge as important antecedents of participation in mobile CC. On top of these factors, individual sociability plays an important role, by acting as a direct antecedent of the dependent variable, while also influencing their perceived greater altruistic motivation and reputation from participating in the CC. Yet, sociability has no significant effect on perceived enjoyment and embarrassment associated with the activity, suggesting that addressing these factors may encourage individuals with low sociability to participate.

This study taps into mobile technology to support CC in daily consumption activities, and highlights the factors that influence people’s participation in such activities. More importantly, the findings suggest that while it is more likely for individuals with high sociability to participate in this emerging form of social activities, for consumers with low sociability, addressing the enjoyment aspect and embarrassment issue of the activities may nonetheless promote their participation.

The purpose of this paper is to model the link between political participation and life satisfaction whilst correcting for the endogenous nature of the relationship; explore the impact of different strengths of political participation and aim to uncover if the relationship displays different patterns by gender.

The data originate from the 2006/2007 European Social Survey. The analysis spanned across a pooled data set for 20 European countries. Three alternative empirical frameworks were trialled: an ordered probit regression, a linear regression model and a two‐step, simultaneous treatment effect model to address endogeneity concerns.

Following the correction for endogeneity via two‐step, simultaneous treatment regressions, political participation – and specifically strong political engagement – displays a robust, statistically significant, strong and positive impact on life satisfaction. It was deduced that actual political participation, and not merely the right to participate in the political process, is a source of procedural utility.

The cross‐sectional nature of the data imposes design limitations to examining trends and changes over time. It follows that the analysis cannot rely on fixed‐effect estimations to control for time‐invariant factors.

Once the results are corrected for endogeneity, the empirical results reveal that the effect of actual political participation on life satisfaction not only matters, but also as the strength of political engagement grows it matters even more. Findings hold true even when a multitude of socio‐demographic characteristics are controlled for. These are important results for researchers and policy makers who are concerned about the happiness of people in democratic societies.

Employee participation is often suggested to improve employees' relations to the organization. A multidimensional perspective on employee participation may heighten its specificity. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the relationships between multiple dimensions of employee participation and social identification.

The study applies questionnaire data from 166 hospital employees, i.e. nurses, physicians and medical secretaries, in a cross‐sectional design. Hierarchical regression analyses were applied to investigate the hypothesized associations.

The results showed that individual influence on proximal (i.e. work‐related) issues predicted organizational identification. The relevance of proximal issues and psychological involvement in relation to direct participation were suggested to explain why this particular dimension of participation is directly associated with organizational identification. The result qualifies the theoretical notion that participation symbolically signals inclusion and status in the organization.

The result emphasizing participation in decisions about work issues may be limited to the highly meaningful patient work in the health care context. Future studies are to establish if the findings may be generalised to other contexts.

The originality of the study lies in the applied combination of participation dimensions, the inclusion of organizational identity at different social foci, and the application of social identity as a theoretically well‐grounded concept of employees' relations to their organization.

Social participation (SP) has been shown to have a favorable impact on health status, particularly among elders in developed countries. However, empirical study is scarce for China. This study explores the relation between social participation (SP) and health status among middle-aged adults and elders in China when controlled socioeconomic characteristics of individuals.

This paper employs an empirical study based on the data from a three-wave national longitudinal survey: the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) from 2011, 2013 to 2015. It collects data from 28,895 individuals aged 45–84. It uses lagged variable method (LV) to address the reverse causality problem, and the random-effects model or fixed-effect model to address the heterogeneity problem.

The paper finds the social participation positively affect self-reported health statistically. The influence of social participation on self-reported health flows through two channels: the improved mental health effect (SP-MH-SRH channel) and the increased income effect (SP-income-SRH channel). In comparison with the SAP-income-SRH channel, the influence of the SP-MH-SRH channel l is greater.

First, the absence of other measures of volunteering, such as hours of social participation that are not available in the employed dataset. Second, even though the LV model and FE model are used in the paper, there may remain the endogeneity problem in the results. Third, the influences of formal and informal social participation should be distinguished in the future research.

Social participation may improve the self-reported health status. The influence of SP on health may be due to the improved mental health effect (SP-MH-SRH channel). In order to improve the mental and physical health status of middle-aged adults and elders the government should consider even more promotion of social participation.

First, this paper focuses on the correlation between social participation and well-being (self-reported health) of middle-aged adults and elderly in China, the previous studies on the issue for China are scarce. Second, this paper uses the lagged variable method (LV) to address the reverse causal relation problem, and the fixed-effects model or the random-effects model to address the heterogeneity problem. Third, the two channels (the improved mental health effect and the increased income effect) are firstly investigated in this study.

The growing popularity of gig and sharing economy changes not only consumption models but also employment patterns. This study aims to analyze the potential entrepreneurial nature of gig and sharing economy initiatives. As such, the authors compare the entrepreneurial intentions of gig and sharing economy workers to the general population. Further, the authors consider commonalities and differences in terms of the driving forces of both intentions to start-up and participation in gig and sharing economy, treating them as connected phenomena. Finally, the authors look into gig and sharing economy experience as a direct antecedent to entrepreneurial intentions formation.

The empirical settings for this study are derived from the sample of 1,257 individuals who participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Adult Population Survey 2018 in Russia. Methodologically, the authors rely on analysis of variance-test and binary logistic regression analysis to test the study hypotheses.

The results indicate that entrepreneurial intentions of gig and sharing economy workers are significantly higher when compared to the general population. In terms of antecedents to gig and sharing economy participation and startup intentions, similar effects of age, entrepreneurial social capital, prior entrepreneurial exit and intrapreneurial experience were revealed, while perceived self-efficacy was associated only with engagement into digital platforms. Finally, gig and sharing economy experience showed significant and positive effect on entrepreneurial intentions formation.

This study represents a first substantive effort to systematize antecedents to gig and sharing economy participation through an entrepreneurship perspective. Beyond that, this research adds to the contextualization of entrepreneurship literature stream, further defining the mechanism of entrepreneurial intentions formation in empirical settings of an emerging market with a relatively low propensity of population to develop intentions to start-up.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social media use and protest participation in Latin America. It advances two questions. First, does social media increase the chances of protest participation at the individual level, as prior research shows for advanced democracies? Second, in a region with glaring economic and political inequalities, does social media deepen or reduce the gaps in protest participation that exist among men and women, the young and the old, different social classes, or people with varying levels of political engagement?

The paper uses cross-sectional Latin American Public Opinion Project survey data from 2012 representing the adult population of 17 Latin American countries. It presents binary logistic regression models with protest participation as the dependent variable, social media use for political purposes as the main independent variable, control variables, and interactions.

Using social media for political purposes significantly increases protest chances – it is the second strongest predictor. Additionally, social media reduces protest gaps associated with individuals’ age, gender, psychological engagement with politics, and recruitment networks.

First, the paper shows that the contribution of social media to collective protest travels beyond advanced democracies – it also holds for more unequal regions with weaker democratic trajectories like Latin America. Second, it shows that social media may mitigate participatory inequalities not only, as shown by past research, regarding institutional participation (e.g. voting), but also regarding contentious tactics.