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The purpose of this paper is to research lesbian fashion consumption in order to draw conclusions on the attractiveness of the lesbian target segment for the fashion industry. So far, lesbians’ fashion consumption behaviour has hardly been researched. However, an evinced lesbian stereotype exists which describes doctrinal feminists with an antipathy against consumption in general and fashion shopping in particular. In contrast, gay men have been identified quite contrary as an attractive market segment and marketers have started to particularly target this so-called “dream market”.

First, qualitative semi-structured interviews (n=18) were conducted to gain first insights into fashion consumption behaviour of lesbians. Second, a quantitative online survey (n=879) was carried out to generate more detailed findings. Due to the difficult reachability of the homosexual consumer target group, the segment’s high online media affinity was used and data collection was conducted through popular German homepages targeted to homosexuals (esp. “queer.de” and “lesarion.de”). The research investigated fashion-consciousness, willingness to pay, brand-affinity, and openness to homosexual marketing. In addition, influencing factors – such as the affinity towards the homosexual scene, career orientation, income, age, status of coming out, and number of inhabitants of the city of residence – have been researched.

Results prove that lesbians are an equally attractive and financially interesting market segment for fashion marketers as gays. Lesbians have a similarly high fashion-consciousness and willingness to pay, and an even higher brand-affinity – but a lower openness to homosexual marketing than gays. Especially scene-affine femme lesbians with a high-paid professional career are a highly attractive market segment. The study proves the attractiveness of the lesbian target segment for fashion marketing and debunks the myth of the consumption-averse lesbian stereotype.

This paper provides evidence on the attractiveness of the lesbian market segment for the fashion industry. Due to its size and financial attractiveness, the question whether to target lesbians with a specifically adopted marketing mix should be raised.

Research on lesbians’ fashion consumption behaviour in general is very scarce and on fashion consumption behaviour in particular is almost non-existent. This study is a first attempt to analyse the major areas of fashion consumption for the German market.

Young prisoners are one of the most vulnerable groups in society for mental health problems and ill-being. Therefore, there is a crucial need to understand their physical, psychological and social situations. This study aims to explore young Cambodian prisoners’ experiences and perceptions of mental health and well-being, their determinants and their coping strategies.

Six focus group discussions were carried out in three prisons with a total of 48 young prisoners between the ages of 15 and 24 years (50% women, 50% men). Semi-structured questions guided the discussions, and thematic analysis was applied to analyse the data.

Young prisoners reported multifaceted experiences of mental health and well-being. The majority described adverse mental health experiences, while some revealed better well-being, partly influenced by the socio-economic support from outside the prisons and previous involvement or not in drug abuse. The experience of physical overcrowding without emotional attachment among the fellow prisoners was perceived as the overarching determinant of loneliness and mental health problems, while socio-emotional support and rituals were described as the most important coping mechanisms.

This pioneering study from Cambodia gives young prisoners an opportunity to voice their experiences and perceptions of mental health and well-being in the prison setting. The findings in this study underline the importance of prison authorities tackling overcrowding to promote well-being and reduce mental health problems. Also, the coping mechanisms outlined by the participants should be considered when planning psychosocial interventions.

This aim of this study was to explore how hospital-based physicians in Sweden experienced the challenges in working conditions related to the provision of care during the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when hospitals transitioned to pandemic care.

The study has a qualitative design. Twenty-five hospital-based physicians were interviewed about their experiences from working in a hospital while healthcare organisations initially responded to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the empirical material.

The analysis resulted in four themes: involuntary self-management, a self-restrictive bureaucracy, passive occupational safety and health (OSH) management, and information overload. These themes reflect how the physicians perceived their work situation during the pandemic and how they tried to maintain quality care for their patients.

The study gives valuable insights for formulating preparedness in regard to crisis management plans that can secure the provision of care for future emergencies in the healthcare services.

This paper shows that a crisis management plans in the healthcare services should include decision structures and management, measures of risk assessment and OSH management, and the maintenance of personnel wellbeing. A prepared healthcare management can preserve quality care delivery while under crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what characterizes cyberbullying when it is performed in digital space and in an increasingly boundary blurred working life context.

Cyberbullying is explored through the lens of Erving Goffman’s theories on everyday life interaction and social media scholars understanding of social life on the internet today. The empirical material for the study is grounded in eight in-depth interviews with individuals who have been subjected to cyberbullying behavior in their professional life. The interview data were analyzed by means of thematic analysis.

Three key themes were identified: spatial interconnectedness, colliding identities and the role of the audience. The empirical data indicate that in order to understand cyberbullying in working life, it is necessary to consider the specific context that emerges with social network sites and blogs. Moreover, this study shows how social network sites tend to blur boundaries between the private and the professional for the targeted individual.

Cyberbullying in working life is a relatively under-researched area. Most existing research on cyberbullying follows the tradition of face-to-face bullying by addressing the phenomenon with quantitative methods. Given the limited potential of this approach to uncover new and unique features, this study makes an important contribution by exploring cyberbullying with a qualitative approach that provides in-depth understanding of the new situations that emerge when bullying is performed online.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality by focusing on motivational and incentive aspects.

The paper applies a game‐theoretic model of procurement decisions allowing for variable degrees of vertical integration and confronts the implications of its analysis with HR outsourcing data on a large sample of German firms.

The paper presents evidence for HR service quality being generally higher when procured from an external instead of an in‐house provider. Furthermore, the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality is considerably stronger if the provided services are complex and if the potential for monitoring an internal provider is low.

The findings have immediate practical implications concerning the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services: the more complex the HR service under consideration and the lower the potential to monitor its in‐house provision, the more attractive is the external provision of HR services.

While most of the literature on HR outsourcing is based on transaction cost theory or follows a resource‐based approach, this paper uses a game‐theoretic model to analyse the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services, allowing the incentives of an internal or external provider to deliver high‐quality services to be focused on. Furthermore, for the empirical analysis the paper uses an original data set comprising more than 1,000 German firms.

This study aims to describe and evaluate the impact of a participatory age-management intervention on the knowledge, awareness and engagement of line managers and their HR partners from six health-care organizations in Sweden.

The learning workshops consisted of lectures, discussions, feedback and exchange of experiences with colleagues and invited experts. A total of 19 participants were interviewed six months after the final workshop, and qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcribed interviews.

The intervention design produced promising results in improving line managers’ and HR partners’ knowledge and increasing awareness and engagement. On some occasions, the participants also initiated changes in organizational policies and practices. However, the intervention primarily became a personal learning experience as participants lacked resources and mandates to initiate change in their daily work. To stimulate engagement and change at the organizational level, the authors believe that an intervention must receive support from higher managers, be anchored at the workplace and be aligned with the organization’s goals; moreover, participants must be provided with sufficient resources and mandates to coordinate the implementation of age-management strategies.

Prolonged working life policies and skill shortages are affecting organizations and societies, and for many employers, there are strong reasons for developing strategies to attract, recruit and retain older workers.

This study offers lessons and guidance for future workplace interventions to attract, recruit and retain older workers.

Emotion recognition and emotion expression/regulation are important aspects of emotional intelligence (EI). Although the construct of EI is widely used and its components are part of many investigations, there is still no sufficient picture set that can be used for systematic research of facial emotion recognition and practical applications of individual assessments. In this research we present a new Facial Action Coding System validated picture set consisting of six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). Basic principles of stimulus development and evaluation process are described. The PFA-U can be used for future studies in organization for the assessment of emotion recognition, emotion stimulation, and emotion management.

Traditional studies in the sociology of science have highlighted the self-organized character of the academic community. This article focuses on recent interrelated changes that alter that distinctive governance structure and its related patterns of competition and cooperation. The changes that we identify here are contractualization and large-scale cooperative research. We use different data sources to exemplify these new patterns and discuss the illustrative role of research clusters in German academia. Research clusters as funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) are both a highly prestigious scarce good in the competition for reputation and resources and a means of fostering cooperation. Our analysis of this German example reveals that this new institutional configuration of universities as organizations, academic researchers, and the state has a profound effect on organizational practices. We discuss the implications of our empirical findings with regard to collegiality in academia. Ultimately, we anticipate a further weakening of collegial bonds, not only because universities and the state have become more active in shaping the nature of academic competition and cooperation but also because of the increasing strategic and individualistic orientation of academic researchers. In the final section, we summarize our findings and address the need for further research and an international comparative perspective.

This chapter at hand applies and extends Friedland and Alford's model of institutional logics to the case of birth practises focusing on a number of interrelated topics, namely, identity, trust, and ideology. It draws on Giddens's theory of modernity to “bring society back in,” as Friedland and Alford have formulated one major point of critique against existing institutional approaches. In its theoretical discussion, the chapter will focus on two issues: first, the treatment of conflict as a motor of institutional dynamics, and second, the relation between institutions and agency. The empirical data is based on participant observation, qualitative interviews with midwives and obstetricians, and a review of magazines and television material concerning birth and parenting.