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A theater/drama perspective is used to gain insights into the participatory nature of service creation and to assess the relative importance of service elements across service scenarios.

Drama production principles are applied to situations where customers co‐create the service offering. Using a theater arts model, elements in service settings can be delineated into director, lead actor, set designer, scriptwriter, supporting cast member, and/or traditional audience roles. To understand the relative importance of the service provider, the customer, and other service encounter elements, three variations of a service setting (educational services) in which the consumer's participatory role moves from passive to proactive are compared.

As the service context became more participatory‐based, service provider roles significantly decreased in importance rankings while customer roles significantly increased, supporting the paper's hypotheses. The ranking of other service setting elements followed a similar pattern with greater importance being placed on elements as they became more central to the participatory experience.

The model is tested in only one service setting and the procedure for assigning theater roles to a service setting needs further refinement.

By merging theories from theater and services literature, a means of assessing the relative importance of service components across service scenarios is illustrated. Principles in theater arts provide the tactical detail needed to fit service creation elements into analogous roles in a drama setting. The model provides insights on the importance of service creation elements when transitioning from a spectator‐based to a participatory‐based service environment.

Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in the Pacific Northwest of the United States attempt to maintain a sufficient number of African Americans represented in the student population. This number should reflect the population of the state. African American students at the PWI face and conquer many nonacademic issues daily. This analysis of the African American Student Center (AASC) in the Pacific Northwest will examine the PWI support for Black students. Based on the information gathered from the students participating in the AASC, the PWI's support is limited and should increase. The support is apocryphal, but with time and progressive institutional effort, the AASC will continue to exist.

The study explores the relationship between the breadth of external pressures facing leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the entrepreneurial stance they adopt for their firm, that is, entrepreneurial orientation (EO).

Blending attention theory with EO literature, we argue that increasing breadth of external pressures will challenge leaders' attentions with implications for how they seek innovation, risk-taking and bold acts. We highlight an inflection point after which a negative relationship between the breadth of external pressure and EO will turn positive. We use data from a survey of 125 small-sized wineries in France to test this and capture a range of 15 external pressures on entrepreneurs.

The main tests and additional robustness tests provide support. It is the breadth of external pressures – as opposed to intensity of any one specific form of pressure – that plays a fundamental role in shaping leaders' adoption of EO in small enterprises over and above internal characteristics.

While the results may be context-dependent, they provide support for an attention-based view of entrepreneurial responses by leaders of SMEs under pressure.

SME leaders and entrepreneurs should be aware of how their attention is challenged by breadth of pressures from external sources, as this can influence the EO they adopt for their SME.

This nonlinear perspective on external pressures influencing the EO of small firms has not been taken in the EO literature to date, despite some recent work that considers only a small range of external pressures.

Purpose – This chapter discusses youth participation in a Social Justice Literacy Workshop (SJLW). Participants were predominantly Black youth residing in an urban community with a rich history and important community resources such as libraries and churches. The SJLW used a variety of print texts, videos, artwork, documents, and other texts to explore the topic of police brutality and other justice-related topics.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This chapter uses the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model as a lens to revisit the SJLW as designed and implemented by the first author Tiffany Nyachae. Nyachae designed and implemented the SJLW as space to inspire students to engage in critical thinking and analysis of authentic texts, and to use these textual interactions as an impetus for activism in their community. With the help of her co-authors, Nyachae reflects on the SJLW through a GRR lens to describe how students were scaffolded and supported as they moved toward activism.

Findings – Students brought their own understandings of police brutality and awareness of activism to the SJLW. These prior understandings were shaped both by their own lived experiences but also by their awareness of and interaction with social media. During the SJLW, youth read and discussed the novels All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (2015) and Hush by Jacqueline Woodson (2002). The youth engaged in activities and discussions about how prevalent issues in each novel connected to larger social and political concerns. Students discussed the current events, engaged in reflective writing, read short pieces, and analyzed documents and videos. The SJLW was successful in such a way that all students felt comfortable voicing their opinions, even when opinions differed from their peers. Students demonstrated critical thinking about issues related to justice. All students completed an action plan to address injustice in their community. While applying the GRR to this context and reflecting, first author Nyachae began to consider the other scaffolds for youth that could have been included, particularly one youth, JaQuan, who was skeptical about what his community had done to support him. Nyachae revisits the SJLW to consider how the GRR helped to reveal the need for additional scaffolding that JaQuan or other youth may have needed from leaders in the SJLW. A literature review also revealed that very few literacy practices have brought together the GRR and social justice teaching or learning.

Research Limitations/Implications – This chapter demonstrates that the GRR framework can be effectively applied to a justice-centered teaching and learning context as a reflective tool. Since very little research exists on using the GRR framework with justice-centered teaching, there is a need for additional research in this area as the GRR model offers many affordances for researchers and teachers. There is also a need for literacy researchers to consider elements of justice even when applying the GRR framework to any classroom or out-of-school context with children and youth.

Practical Implications – The GRR can be a useful tool for reflecting the practices of literacy and justice-centered teaching. Just as the GRR can be a useful framework to help teachers think about teaching reading comprehension, it can be an effective tool to help teachers think about supporting students to grow from awareness to activism in justice-centered teaching and learning.

Originality/Value of Paper – This chapter is one of only a handful of published works that brings together a social justice perspective with the GRR.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a complex phenomenon designed to resolve numerous societal challenges while remaining economically viable. However, how social entrepreneurs in developing countries have deployed digital technologies to address communal challenges during the Covid-19 crisis is largely undocumented. This research examines social entrepreneurs' adoption of digital technologies, the multi-level organisational conditions, and associated innovative outcomes of engaging digital technologies.

Based on the organisational resilience theoretical framework, this research employs a qualitative methodology, comprising 38 semi-structured interviews with Nigerian SE firms, to investigate social entrepreneurs' engagement with digital technologies.

The study’s findings reveal 19 pathways through which digital technologies enabled organisational resilience outcomes by Nigerian SE firms during the Covid-19 pandemic. This allows the authors to show, via a 3 × 3 matrix, how social entrepreneurs deploy digital technologies to build proximate, dynamic, and continuous resilience in a weak institutional context.

The study’s findings enables the authors to advance the SE – digital technologies – resilience scholarship in a developing economy.

This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions of inauthenticity due to adulteration of a narrative brand ending by using the research context of the final season and ending of the television series, Game of Thrones.

Two data sets totalling 2,032 online comments detailing consumer reactions to the final season of Game of Thrones were analysed using thematic analysis and human interpretive analysis. The coding was an iterative and continuous process, and posts were returned to and re-examined to refine codes and groupings as the analysis progressed.

The results indicate consumers perceived the ending of the eighth and final season of the television series, Game of Thrones, did not meet their expectations and was not authentic due to rushed writing and illogical character and plot developments. Consumers judged this adulteration was so great that it was a moral violation and transgression. Consumers also sought to assign blame for the inauthenticity, which they attributed to the writers and showrunners, who became the subject of revenge behaviours.

This study indicates consumers of narrative brands, due to their strong emotional attachments to their characters and storyworlds, may perceive unexpected and extensive changes to them as moral violations and transgressions and thus inauthentic. Consumers establish the authenticity of a narrative brand by regularly scrutinising narrative and character development against their expectations as shaped by prior narrative content. Due to their emotional attachment, consumers may attempt to attribute blame for the inauthenticity. The findings have not been established in prior research, and inauthenticity in a narrative brand context is also explored for the first time.

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of tools and techniques of strategy and strategic analysis within small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as a part of the strategy formation process.

This study uses a qualitative, multiple-case-based investigation with semi-structured interviews and secondary data sources to create a context-rich insight to the area examined.

The findings indicate a strong orientation towards operational tools deployment aligned with financial management and resources and process planning, monitoring and control. Strategic perspectives of the respondents indicate an implicit, rather than explicit deployment of strategy tools and unstructured deployment, but general awareness of the resulting component issues. Clearer strategic approaches and strong implementation appear to positively influence success, when measured by growth.

This study is limited to nine organisations within a UK geographic region, and therefore, larger-scale investigation would be beneficial to extend and confirm the findings in differing contexts.

With resource scarcity potentially stymying the opportunity for owner-managers to develop more structured approaches to strategic analysis and development, consideration should be given to how owner-managers can further develop their strategic thinking to support enhanced strategic outcomes for their organisations. Furthermore, strategy educationalists may wish to reflect upon the manner in which they prepare delegates for strategic roles, where the SME context may differ radically from corporate experience.

The methodology for this study differs substantially from previous investigations within the field, which has had relatively few contributions, as it uses in-depth, context-rich qualitative techniques to investigate the micro-processes at play. The conclusions capture new insights and indications and identify areas for further investigation, hence adding to the understanding of a complex and heterogeneous field.

The authors examine the nature of institutional rigidity and governance problems contributing to crisis and under-performance of large corporations in Japan during a period of environmental turbulence for corporate Japan.

Through explorative case studies of Mitsubishi Motors and Kanebo over a 10-year period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s the authors see how informal norms deeply embedded in the Japanese business system prevented the adoption of more liberal forms of governance that may have helped to overcome crisis.

Despite fundamental differences in formal organization between the two cases, there were similar underlying problems in terms of (1) mechanisms for capital investment that would underpin strategic resilience and rejuvenation and (2) management decision-making and strategic control during crisis.

The cases show how normative institutions rather than formal regulative institutions matter to strategic continuity in national business systems that are put under pressure.

The authors link informal norms of governance intrinsic to a country to the issues of strategic resilience and responses during crisis and warn against the retrenching to traditional governance approaches where there has been criticism of alternative governance approaches.

This study aims to contribute to research into narrative brands by investigating if the lack of closure in the ambiguous season two’s ending of the Australian television series, Wanted, constituted a brand transgression.

Comments on posts about Wanted from social media accounts associated with the series were downloaded and analysed using thematic analysis informed by non-participatory netnography.

Audiences found the ambiguous ending of Wanted season two disappointing and it did not fulfil implied promises and their expectations, which fits the description of a brand transgression, and so they engaged in behaviours indicative of a brand transgression such as spreading negative word of mouth online. The ambiguous ending could have been a cliff-hanger to lead into a third season that was not guaranteed when the final episode aired, or the ending for the entire series. Although a third season was eventually made and positively received by audiences, viewer numbers declined by nearly a third, illustrating the importance of brand management for narrative brands.

This research has implications for the creators of television series, particularly if they do not know if it will be renewed. Not providing audiences with their expected closure can constitute a brand transgression and damage the narrative brand’s residual brand equity and potential earnings from streaming or a revival at a later date.

Prior research has focused on audiences’ responses to definitive endings, rather than ambiguous endings, which is the focus of this research. Furthermore, narrative brands are still an under-researched context.

This study aims to focus on understanding the consumer-luxury brand relationships among Generation Z. Generation Z is an up-and-coming generational cohort that has received limited research attention in the domains of both consumer-brand relationships and luxury branding, despite its growing size and purchasing power. Therefore, this study highlights the distinctive patterns of Generation Z’s relationship with luxury by identifying their choice of a luxury brand, the nature of the brand relationships, what characterizes these relationships and the internal and external influences that shape these relationships.

This study used brand collage construction. A total of 56 Generation Z respondents created brand collages that covered 38 different luxury brands. The data from the collages and their accompanying descriptions were evaluated using content analysis.

This study identifies Generation Z’s unique yet expansive view of luxury that encompasses not only traditional luxury but also masstige and non-traditional luxury brands. Moreover, the findings generally support that Generation Z’s relationships with luxury brands are characterized by “like” rather than “love”; while Generation Z may feel a high level of loyalty toward luxury brands in terms of attitudes and behaviors, they do not necessarily have strong, passionate feelings for them.

The findings of this study offer a comprehensive understanding of Generation Z’s brand relationship with luxury. Luxury marketers need to recognize that for Generation Z consumers, luxury is an integral part of their everyday lifestyle more than a display of success, which is clearly different from previous generations.