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The authors, seven women–writers–performers–artists–academics, have been working collectively for a year, storying, de-storying and re-storying the experience of our lives. The authors write to “taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect” (Nin, 1976), to uncover and learn ourselves through writing (Richardson, 1997), to take the “risky” steps of talking to each other about our inner lives (Palmer, 1998). Cognisant of the limitations and masculinities of traditional academic discourses, in form and content, and heavily confined by neoliberal expectations to count and be counted, we write and express the stories of lives the authors did not choose or imagine – lives we are given and live through. Our expression inhabits aesthetic, contemplative and sensory ways of knowing and employs poetry, image, song and story to create a polyvocal account of women’s lives, voices, struggles and learning. The authors share here part of our collective memoir and its development. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is designed as a collective memoir.

The authors write and express the stories of lives we did not choose or imagine – lives we are given and live through. The expression inhabits aesthetic, contemplative and sensory ways of knowing and employs poetry, image, song and story to create a polyvocal account of women’s lives, voices, struggles and learning. The authors share here part of our collective memoir and its development.

The research focuses on autoethnography and lived experience.

Auto-ethnography/lived experience offers rich insights into the personal and political actions and actors within higher education.

Decision makers and authorities largely ignore cycling when conceptualising and developing programmes to support older mobility and therefore, unsurprisingly, levels of cycling in the United Kingdom are low compared to other northern European nations. Cycling has the potential to play an important role in the active ageing agenda and provide older citizens with a form of independent mobility that enhances personal health and wellbeing. The chapter provides evidence of the important role cycling does and could play in older people’s mobility and outlines ways in which older cycling could be supported and promoted.

Integrating identity theory and role theory, this study examines the re-expatriation inclinations of highly-skilled professional female self-initiated repatriates (SIRs) in an Asian rapidly emerging market (REM) and the reasons underlying these inclinations.

The authors conducted a survey on a sample of highly-skilled professional female SIRs in Vietnam (N = 248). Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model.

The study found that female SIRs' career identity, family identity and social identity have a significant influence on their inclinations to re-expatriate. Attitude towards re-expatriation fully mediates the influence of family identity and career identity on re-expatriation inclinations.

This research was limited to female SIRs in one REM, namely Vietnam, and may lack generalisability in countries and contexts.

By delineating the identity-related factors that contribute to skilled female SIRs' inclinations to re-expatriate and recognising gender as a complex, multifaceted social construct, the authors broaden the way expatriation is conceptualised and isolate factors that can inform practices for recruitment and retention of this important sub-set of international talent.

Despite its potential as a new source of competitive advantage, the performance implications of social media (SM) marketing (SMM) are not well understood. This study aims to investigate how and when SMM matters to firm performance, analysing the mediating role of product innovation (PI) and moderating the role of marketing innovation (MI) in business to business (B2B) small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This paper used structural equation modelling analysis in STATA, using the Australian bureau of statistics data set of 4,956 SMEs which operate in the B2B environment.

The results reveal differential moderating effects of MI on the direct SMM–performance relationship. MI positively moderates internal SMM and SM use for promotion and branding on firm performance. MI also negatively moderates SM use for customer communication on firm performance, underscoring SMM constituting a double-edged sword. The indirect effects of internal SM use and SM use for promotion and branding, and customer involvement in new product development on performance via PI are significant when MI is absent.

Hence, B2B SMEs benefit from PI and existing SMM but do not benefit from dual PI and new MI.

By disaggregating SMM and explicating the mediating mechanism and moderating effects of MI, this study reveals how and under what conditions SMM matters to firm performance in B2B SMEs.

The repatriation process often involves challenging and unexpected readjustment issues, leading to high turnover amongst repatriates. However, research has focussed on the re-entry decisions and experiences of company-assigned (CA) repatriates, whilst studies on self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) that repatriate back to their home countries (i.e. self-initiated repatriates (SIRs)) are limited, particularly in emerging transition economies. This study develops and tests a model to explain the factors influencing professional SIRs' turnover intentions and how repatriation readjustment affects their intentions in Vietnam.

The data was collected from 445 Vietnamese professional SIRs who worked and/or studied for extended periods overseas and subsequently returned to Vietnam. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data.

Results indicate that both work and life repatriation adjustment difficulties have significant positive effects on turnover intentions, whilst only repatriation life adjustment difficulties have an indirect effect via life dissatisfaction. Further, cultural distance positively influences repatriation adjustment difficulties and turnover intentions. SIRs' on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness negatively moderate the influence of repatriation work and life adjustment difficulties on turnover intentions, respectively.

The study develops a theoretical model explaining how repatriation difficulties impact the turnover intentions of SIRs, considering contextual factors including cultural distance and embeddedness. The research highlights the importance of job embeddedness as a form of social and organisational support for SIRs in managing psychological challenges related to repatriation, which can help reduce turnover and retain highly skilled talent. Additionally, the study extends repatriation research on an under-researched subgroup of SIEs, SIRs, in an under-researched emerging transition economy context.

The purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of career satisfaction of professional accounting returnees who have studied and/or worked abroad and then returned to work in different types of international workplaces in their home country.

A survey of professional accounting returnees in Vietnam was undertaken and multiple regression analysis was applied to test the proposed relationships.

This study finds that career satisfaction is affected by career fit, career sacrifice, types of international workplaces (domestically headquartered firms versus globally headquartered firms) and cross-cultural work readjustment. Further, cross-cultural work readjustment partially mediates the effect of career fit and career sacrifice on career satisfaction.

The research provides the basis for designing career-related employee experiences to support career satisfaction of professional accounting returnees.

This study integrates dimensions of career embeddedness with cross-cultural work readjustment and employee experiences, which are normally studied separately, in different types of international workplaces. It contributes to the limited research on contributors to well-being in the form of career satisfaction among professional returnees in an emerging economy.

Email communication is indispensable for US state agencies to respond to citizen requests and engage with constituents, contributing to building trust in local governments. While prior studies examine the responsiveness of elected officials, the quality of virtual interactions between government organizations and citizens is often overlooked. This study aims to investigate how US government agencies capitalize on the potential of online interactions with constituents to manage generic queries and introduce the response engagement index (REI) consisting of response time, reactive transparency and message interactivity to evaluate levels of communicative engagement.

The authors conducted a field experiment encompassing emailing a request to 547 state agencies based in the five largest states and one small state. A total of 377 organizational responses were manually analyzed to reveal the usages of six communicative engagement strategies.

The results show the potential of online communication is underutilized as the average score of response engagement remains low. Human responses are less engaging than auto-reply messages and require a one-day waiting period, if not longer. Response types and gender of government communicators significantly differ in response time and engagement strategies. The findings identify divergent patterns of response engagement and provide practical implications for facilitating citizen engagement.

This research fills a critical gap by investigating the quality of online interactions between US government agencies and citizens. The authors develop a theory-grounded tool of response engagement to identify three features: response speed, reactive transparency and interactivity. The findings can improve the quality of email communication in state agencies, enhancing governance quality. The REI proposed here addresses what Pfau (2008) deemed problematic for communication scholarship: research is sparse on “functional issues” that examine the communication process. Pfau argued for research that provides knowledge of interest across disciplines so as to “cross-fertilize” ideas between political communication and public relations; this study sought to bridge that gap with a theoretical and practical tool for building public trust in governments.

To support the evaluation of transparent and responsive governments, reliable and valid measurements are needed. The proposed REI provides practitioners with a theory-grounded tool to identify areas of engagement quality in government responses. The findings can be used to improve the quality of email communication in state agencies, enhancing governance quality.

Citizens seek reciprocal dialogue through prompt, open and interactive communication. US state agencies should leverage the engagement features for increasing citizen trust – response time, reactive transparency and interactivity – when responding to public inquiries. Ultimately, trust in government agencies' interests in serving stakeholders cannot be strengthened without prompt and engaging responses to meet the public's needs.

This field experiment was one of the first to focus on US state agencies' responses to information requests. It introduces a new REI to assess communicative engagement in a government/citizen exchange.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze change process perceptions of public service employees and document how change readiness belief salience fluctuates and evolves throughout the implementation of a major organizational restructuring effort.

This research is a longitudinal multiple-case study of a major transformation initiative in a large North American public recreation organization. Over the course of 15 months, the authors conducted four rounds of personal interviews with 19 participants (65 interviews in total, each lasting 25–45 min). Additionally, the authors analyzed internal e-mail correspondence, memos, and meeting agendas, as well as external stakeholder communication. Finally, the primary researcher spent a significant amount of time collecting field notes while shadowing high-level managers and employees and attending meetings.

Overall, the authors documented a clear hierarchy of change readiness dimensions. The relative strength and temporal persistence of these dimensions can be traced back to various public organizing particularities. Moreover, the authors found that an initial focus on some readiness dimensions facilitated subsequent sensemaking processes whereas others hindered such engagement with the change project.

This research is the first to empirically document temporal fluidity of change readiness dimensions and salience. Moreover, it offers a rare in-depth look at a changing public service organization.

This research helps change agents in developing tailored change messages and to better understand potential sources of frustration and resistance to change efforts.

No similar efforts exist to document the underlying dynamism of evolving change readiness perceptions.

Popular self-help pregnancy literature suggests a “generational disconnect” between pregnant women and their mothers, emphasizing the incommensurate experiences of the two generations. Based on longitudinal, in-depth interviews with a diverse group of 64 pregnant women and 23 grandmothers-to-be, this chapter explores how different generations of women negotiate the idea of a disconnect and its implications for the medicalization of pregnancy. My findings showed limited support for the generational disconnect. Nearly all of the pregnant women I interviewed who were in contact with their mothers consulted them to assess issues related to pregnancy embodiment. Black and Latina women and white women with less than a college degree disregarded or even rejected the disconnect; they tended to frame their mothers’ advice as relevant. Their mothers attended prenatal care appointments and frequently expressed skepticism about medical directives. By contrast, I found that highly educated white women tended to endorse the generational disconnect when it came to matters related to pregnancy health behaviors – what to eat, how much to exercise – and their obstetric care. The mothers of these women not only largely supported the generational disconnect, but also bonded with their daughter over a shared appreciation for scientific understandings of pregnancy. Foregrounding women’s perspectives provides insights into meaning-making in pregnancy and the ways that mothers of pregnant women can both stymie and deepen medicalization of childbearing.

It has been two decades since the first academic paper shone a spotlight on non-GAAP earnings. The past 20 years of research investigates concerns over the misuse of these disclosures and resulted in some significant changes to accounting and reporting standards across the globe. This paper aims to document the history of non-GAAP reporting and outline the emerging themes of the now matured practice of non-GAAP reporting.

This systematic literature review searches two popular databases to identify the academic publications relating to non-GAAP reporting between 2002 and 2022. The paper uses bibliographic mapping to present the key statistics of the non-GAAP reporting field of research.

The non-GAAP reporting environment started out as the “wild West’ but, through regulation and public awareness, emerged as an important supplement to the traditional outputs of financial reporting. Current consensus is recent non-GAAP earnings are informative to users but there is lack of research into qualitative non-GAAP disclosures and the vast body of archival research needs triangulating with more experimental studies.

This paper contributes to the literature by documenting the past 20 years of non-GAAP reporting and identifying the important existing and emerging research areas concerning non-GAAP earnings disclosures.