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The purpose of this paper is to present a concept of informational capital to explain the interplay between social capital and information technology in community-based disaster management. It aims to discuss the role and formation of informational capital in community disaster resilience.

Based on an exploratory case study focusing on the 2010 eruption of Merapi volcano in Central Java, Indonesia, the paper seeks to analyse the emergence of disaster response fully organized by grassroots groups in Yogyakarta. In advancing the concept of informational capital, this paper analyses how the grassroots groups were able to mobilize resources for disaster mitigation, through which social capital became the foundation of community-based disaster response and recovery. Furthermore, the mobilization of social capital was significantly enhanced by mutual interactions facilitated by the use of information technology. This is evident in the role of Jalin Merapi, a web-based organization formed to respond to the crisis after the volcano eruption.

The concept of informational capital revolves around the ways in which social capital and information act as crucial assets when a disaster strikes. Through informational capital, strong community bonds and ties are transformed into organized information that effectively facilitates collective action to face the emergency crisis.

This paper presents a new concept of informational capital and highlights its key role in facilitating disaster management processes and contribution to community disaster resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to present a “human ecology economics (HEE)” framework for understanding economic growth and development challenges in Eastern Europe.

The HEE approach relies on evolutionary and complex systems processes; it expands the field of ecological economics by incorporating interdisciplinary material from the humanities; and it allows a long‐run perspective with a focus on sustainability of human systems. Using this framework and primary research from Hungary, Estonia, and Azerbaijan, challenges to Eastern European development are identified.

The main limit to Eastern European sustainable development is not “production capital”, i.e. the availability of natural resources, fixed human‐made capital, and intermediate consumption, but instead shortages of “transaction capital”, i.e. “social capital, informational capital, and financial capital.”

Rigorous analytical models of, and precise predictions of, change in the human ecology are at present not possible using evolutionary and complex systems approaches; however, Eastern Europe can be fruitfully studied through the HEE approach, and certain simulation methods and lessons from recent history are suggested.

Greater support for various kinds of transaction capital is recommended, including for social and communication networks, for information exchange between small and medium size businesses, for innovation and creative learning by doing, for financial intermediation, for better inter‐party cooperation at the national level, etc.

The need for greater social cooperation, including a reduction in discrimination exercised by dominant individuals or groups, arises as a more important pre‐condition for sustainable economic growth than is commonly believed.

Scholars, policymakers, and practitioners might appreciate the more comprehensive interdisciplinary framework for understanding economic growth and development challenges in Eastern Europe, especially the role played by intangible belief systems, social agreements, and levels of cooperation.

Positing that human capital resources of marketers comprise both psychological capital (PsyCap) and marketing capital (MarCap), and that PsyCap in combination with MarCap will have a synergistic effect on marketers’ job performance, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the configurational roles of PsyCap and MarCap in marketers’ job performance.

Using a survey data set collected from 472 marketers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the study tested the net effects of PsyCap and MarCap on job performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). Then, the study investigated the configurational roles of PsyCap and MarCap in job performance employing the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

SEM results show that two components of PsyCap (efficacy and optimism) and one component of MarCap (organizational MarCap) have positive effects on job performance. fsQCA findings reveal that, except hope, combinations of PsyCap and MarCap components form several sufficient conditions for job performance.

The focus of this study is on marketers, that is, at the individual level. Future research should examine both PsyCap and MarCap at a higher level, such as the team, unit, or firm level.

The study’s findings suggest that firms should pay attention not only to the net effect but also to the configuration of PsyCap and MarCap when designing and implementing their human resource strategies and policies.

This study contributes to the literature on human capital resources by confirming the configurational roles of PsyCap and MarCap in marketers’ job performance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a human ecology economics (HEE) framework for understanding and addressing homelessness, especially as it exists in California and the San Francisco Bay Area. The role of business and private “stakeholders of the homeless” is emphasized.

The HEE approach relies on evolutionary and complex systems processes, and it incorporates interdisciplinary material from the humanities. Within HEE, an early-stage exploratory research method is used. In-depth interviews with 16 long-term residents who are also managers in various organizations help to identify private-sector perceptions including how businesses can engage with and support the homeless.

In the current balance between needed supplies of “production capital,” which includes affordable housing, shelter beds, food, clothing, medical supplies and so on and “transaction capital,” which is an interacting mix of social capital, informational capital and financial capital, the authors find that the business community needs to pay greater attention to deficits in “transaction capital.”

It is beyond the scope of this paper, and beyond the current ability of complex system modeling, to prioritize the best interventions across various types of homeless communities. However, for early-stage research, the authors have provided a useful ontology of the human ecology of homelessness that might inform further research and policy initiatives. Follow-on research might then investigate, with more rigorous methods, the narrower causalities between subcomponents of one’s ontology.

Scholars, policymakers and business community activists might appreciate the more comprehensive and accessible interdisciplinary framework for understanding the causes and possible responses to homelessness.

Over the past few years, social networking sites (SNSs) have become very useful for firms, allowing companies to manage the customer–brand relationships. In this context, SNSs can be considered as a learning tool because of the brand knowledge that customers develop from these relationships. Because of the fact that knowledge in organisations is embodied in the concept of the learning organisation, customers may create brand knowledge as a consequence of two learning facilitators: informational and instrumental value. Then, the purpose of this paper is to identify the role played by brand knowledge in the process of creating customer capital, in the context of SNSs.

A total of 259 users of SNSs, who were followers or fans of brand pages, participated in this study. Data were collected through an online survey and they were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results of the study show that brand pages at SNS can perform brand knowledge by providing purposive gratifications to its customers. Moreover, they can also develop an indirect effect on customer capital, through the direct effect that brand knowledge has on it. Therefore, the results of the study will help managers design their learning strategies in relation to SNS and confirm the need of using SNS as a learning tool.

Few, if any, studies have analysed whether gratifications, usually related to media, work as learning facilitators in the context of brand pages at SNS.

Based on the resource‐based view of the firm, this study aims to examine antecedents and outcomes of firm‐specific marketing capital pool invested by marketers in a transition market, Vietnam.

A sample of 528 marketers in Ho Chi Minh City was surveyed to test the theoretical model. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the data.

It was found that firm‐specific marketing capital pool had positive impacts on both job attractiveness and job satisfaction. The impacts of human marketing capital and relational marketing capital pools on firm‐specific marketing capital were significant. Finally, the relationship between job attractiveness and job satisfaction, and the relationship between human marketing capital pool and relational marketing capital pool were also significant.

A key limitation of this study is the examination of only two antecedents of firm‐specific marketing capital pool: human and relational marketing capital pools.

The results of this study suggest that firms should establish people management policies and practices that motivate marketers to invest more in firm‐specific marketing capital to enhance job attractiveness and job satisfaction of marketers. Also, in order to improve firm‐specific marketing capital, recruiting marketers with high levels of human and relational marketing capital pools is a priority.

The study investigates the role of human resources at the marketing professional level in job attractiveness and job satisfaction in a transition market.

The extant international service marketing literature focuses heavily on the impact of globalization on the outward process of the internationalization of service firms. The purpose of this paper is to propose scholars examine international service marketing from a different perspective, that of the globalization of domestic markets and the existence of global segments throughout the world.

The paper uses resource‐advantage theory and a congruence approach to suggest that the alignment of resources with consumer needs in the globalized domestic market leads to competitive advantage for the firm.

It can be argued that this alignment will lead to the replication of the competitive advantage across global segments in expansion to new markets.

The paper provides two significant contributions to the literature: a new perspective for considering the globalization of services that incorporates the challenges of operating in globalized markets; and develops seven propositions that can serve as a foundation for a stream of research on the globalization of services.

Much of the criticism directed toward banking in China revolves around self-dealing in relationships between bankers and their clients. Corruption, nepotism, high levels of non-performing loans, and the inefficiency of government-directed lending have all been laid at the door of embedded guanxi networks. While valid to an extent, this criticism ignores two important, related points: guanxi networks bring disciplining mechanisms as well as the potential for corruption, and those mechanisms may improve banking governance.

Employing theory from relationship banking, information economics, and the business ethics of guanxi, I examine how monitoring by netizens will lead to greater disclosure.

Relationship banking in a Chinese context – with the influence of guanxi in banking – further increases reputational costs when self-dealing is uncovered. Costs of bad banking behavior are increasing just as benefits from staying rich increase. Increased disclosure affects chances of staying rich as disclosure increases the chance that a corrupt relationship will lead to loss of wealth and reputation.

This paper presents a theoretical construct informed by selected examples. An empirical analysis of netizen monitoring leading to improved banking governance would provide additional support for the theoretical construct.

Bankers, financiers, and government officials must be aware of monitoring by netizens, which forces more ethical financial contracting.

Rather than weakening financial system governance, guanxi may begin to strengthen the disciplinary measures inherent in relationship banking as information disclosure increases and private sector monitoring grows.

This paper provides an extension to private monitoring theory in financial contracting which may be applied to netizen monitoring in other regions and countries.

There are several strands that cope with particular intangible resources, such as intangible assets, intellectual, human, and organisational capital, data and information, knowledge and capabilities. However, until now there have been no attempts to define and identify all intangible resources systematically in one framework. The purpose of this paper is to show how an exhaustive and exclusive categorial system of all intangible resources can be generated.

Following the idea of comparative analyses by grounded theory, it will be referred to relevant approaches which can be defined in academic literature. It is investigated how types of intangible resources, that share common attributes, can be grouped together, which categories emerge, and how these categories can be defined. This gradually leads to the creation of the whole categorial system based on empirical inductionism. At the same time, the categorial system is created based on logical deductionism. Having defined intangible resources as the objects of reasoning and by which leading principles will be looked at, the class of intangible resources will be broken down into categories or sub‐classes with the help of precisely formulated attributes.

Generation of a comprehensive, consistent, and complete categorial system of all possible types of intangible assets.

Solely a theoretical paper. Although empirical examples are provided it might be interesting to demonstrate the application of this categorial system.

With such a categorial system we are in the position to identify and locate the uncountable number of “real world” types of intangible resources more precisely and efficiently.

With such an attempt it may become clearer how to cope with different types of intangible resources, how to gather, create, use, share and develop them more appropriately.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of the pursuit of academic capital – a form of cultural capital – on the working lives of mature students. The paper highlights the uneven educational conversion experience across class and gender for a group of mature students and argues that the higher education environment needs to be and do more for students in terms of support.

In total, 42 in-depth individual interviews were conducted over an 18 month period with 13 mature students located at a South African university. The students in the study – all in full-time employment – were enroled on a part-time management programme.

Through focusing on the narratives of mature students attending a South African university, the findings show that class trajectory and gender work differently for mature students, shaping both reasons for entry into higher education and influencing the relationships between mature individuals and significant others in their working lives.

The findings highlight the need for awareness regarding the role educational institutions can and should play in addressing the challenges faced by these non-traditional students. The world of work should also create an enabling environment where support and encouragement are provided.

Although several articles discuss the experiences of mature students, few delve into the issue of mature students’ ability to convert or exchange their academic capital to something of value within the world of work. The reasons for returning to study as mature individuals are also explored in the paper.