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This chapter focuses on Norman K. Denzin's vast and enduring contributions to sociology and the study of research methods and methodology, particularly with respect to “us[ing] the tools of the critical sociological imagination” (Denzin, 1989) as we conduct our research. Through revisiting and extending lessons and principles from his book The Research Act (1989) – especially the need for “triangulation” – in relation to C. Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination (1959), this chapter explores how cultivated critical sociological imaginations can help researchers best meet our “obligations to change the world, to engage in ethical work that makes a positive difference” (Denzin, 1989) throughout all phases of the research act.

The term “fashion” triggers images of frivolous symbolic production with a particular impact on women, quite a world apart at first sight from high technology and mobile telephony that traditionally tend to be associated with science, rationality and masculinity. Surprisingly, we show in this paper that the field of mobile telephony has, for a number of years now, been impacted and significantly transformed by the transposition of fashion logics. We deconstruct the process of logic transposition, considering key moments and key actors, key modes and mechanisms. The comparison of multiple case studies within the mobile telephony industry also points to the limits of transposition and to varying degrees of hybridization and logic co-habitation. This process of logic transposition is, we argue, profoundly transforming the mobile telephony industry, bringing it closer, on many counts, to “cultural industries”. In the end, we draw a number of theoretical conclusions on logic transposition as an important mechanism of institutional change.

I have presented an ‘issue history’ (Szasz, 1994, p. 162) case study of GSE's campaign against incineration. This approach has utilized different theories to examine GSE's campaign. It has outlined the study in the context of a NIMBYist campaign that utilized three main frames of health risks, NIMBYism and democratic deficit. The campaign was set in the second of two phases of environmental campaigning in Ireland. The first phase established community opposition to multinationals, whereas the second phase witnessed NIMBYist campaigns against infrastructural projects, such as incinerators, which the state tried to introduce to deal with the post-boom waste crisis.

This qualitative study explores the acquisition of global mindset in business executives who engaged in short-term business travel. Global mindset is operationalized as actively seeking to engage and reflect upon perspectives and orientations that both complement and contradict one’s own worldview. The narratives of 16 global supply chain leaders who work for a multinational company were content-analyzed. The results indicate that short-term business travel provides the context for participant reflection on their development as global leaders. They describe their development as a continuous evolution over time that is focused less on becoming a cultural expert and more on being culturally responsive in order to build relationships and achieve business results. The findings suggest that companies could take steps to leverage the developmental opportunity that short-term business travel represents.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasise the importance for the practicing ethnographer of responding to unforeseen events that occur during periods of data collection.

An analysis of four unforeseen events occurring during prolonged periods of study amongst workplace cleaners is undertaken and the changes in researcher acceptance resulting from the outcomes of these events are reported.

This paper shows how awareness of the possible incidence of unforeseen events and the ability to carefully yet spontaneously manage the ethnographer’s reaction to them can substantially influence the degree of acceptance achieved by the observer within the group under study.

Though the need for an ethnographer to get close to the participants in a study is well documented, detailed examples as described in this paper are rare. The documentation of the nature and effects of such episodes and how they unfold serve to enhance the credibility of the research.

Lean thinking and organizational culture

MBA, Executive Education, Post Graduate Diploma

The case details the adoption of lean thinking at K-Way, a contemporary technical textile manufacturer of outdoor apparel and accessories. The case covers the 12-year journey at K-Way, detailing the process and cultural improvements the company underwent. The case closes as Bobby, the General Manager at K-Way, thinks about his new challenges. The CEO of K-Way’s parent company, Cape Union Mart, wants Bobby to start devolving the lean thinking approach to other units within Cape Union Mart, in particular a newly acquired and under-performing children’s clothing business. Bobby is excited at the prospect, but simultaneously anxious about the work that still needs to happen at K-Way and more importantly, whether the organization is ready for his, and his key consultant-coach’s withdrawal as the primary “voices” of lean thinking. Would there be a reversal of progress in their absence and how can they counter this?

Understanding lean thinking as a management system and not a mere set of tools for waste reduction, while recognizing the importance of waste reduction. An understanding of how to entrench lean thinking in an organization after initial adoption with specific emphasis on the following: Kata and scientific thinking – what it is and how it can be employed; Hoshin Kanri/Strategy Deployment – what it is and how it can be used; Leader Standard Work, what it is and how it can be used. Consider responses for a company that has been on a lean journey for 10 years, with a focus on how (or if) lean leaders can withdraw from the operation.

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CSS: 9: Operations and logistics

This paper aims to examine the impact of key affective moments of a playful experience on consumers’ overall retrospective evaluations.

The authors build on past literature on hedonic psychology and sequential preferences and link it to specific characteristics of playful experiences to derive their hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested through two field experiments conducted at a videogame arcade.

Results demonstrated that consumers’ overall evaluations are better aligned with the affective intensity at the final or end moment of a playful experience. Findings also revealed the complexity of understanding playful experiences, for it is the meaningfulness of end moments rather than simply their recent position in the experience that underlies overall evaluations. When end moments cease to be meaningful, the trough or least affective intense moment impacts overall evaluations.

This research has implications for marketers who are deciding on which point of a playful experience to concentrate their resources for optimizing evaluations.

This research contributes to literature on playful consumption by illuminating how consumers rely on affective moments of a playful experience to construct overall evaluations. Additionally, it highlights the important role of meaningfulness of end moments, a relatively underexplored process, which extends literature on key moments and retrospective evaluations.

The field of human resource management faces a significant dilemma. While emerging evidence, theory, and practical demands are increasing the visibility and credibility of human capital as a key to organisational success, the measures used to articulate the impact of human resource management decisions remain misunderstood, unwanted by key constituents, or even counter‐productive. This article proposes that the key to creating meaningful HR metrics is to embed them within a model that shows the links between HR investments and organisational success. The PeopleVantage model is proposed as a framework, the application of the model is illustrated, and the potential of the model for guiding research and practical advances in effective HR measures is discussed.

Many initiatives are seeking to engage children in learning to code. However, few studies have examined how children’s engagement in learning and using coding develops over time. This study aims to seek young people’s perspectives on what they viewed as important in their long-term participation in a coding community.

This study identified youth with a high level of participation and who demonstrated emergent leadership in the Scratch online community. Using methods from qualitative research on youth development, individual interviews were conducted in which these youth were asked about memorable moments in their participation and how these experiences influenced them.

While each young person described a unique pathway and perspective, this study identified key experiences that motivated their participation, influenced their development and inspired their emergent leadership. These experiences included opportunities to learn through exploration, to receive feedback from peers, to engage in creative collaboration and to contribute to the community.

This study discussed these findings in light of previous research on youth development, and it suggests that building on practices and principles from research on youth programs can help more young people become engaged in developing broader skills with coding.

Youth highlighted experiences that enabled them to express their ideas, to build relationships, to help others and to see themselves in new ways. Their perspectives expand beyond the predominant focus of coding initiatives on computational thinking and problem-solving skills to also support social, leadership and identity development.

Purpose – This chapter examines the central and potent role of ‘micro-moments’ in relation to the development and construction of corporately responsible cultures and environments.

Methodology/approach – The chapter engages a participant observational method set within an interpretivist methodology. The data generated take the form of vignettes which are used to explore the issues.

Findings – The discussion and argument demonstrate that while much worthwhile attention has been paid to the macro aspects and dimensions of corporate social responsibility, less scrutiny has been focused on the myriad micro-moments that operate to ultimately create macro-settings. The chapter illustrates the nature of micro-moments and shows their interactive nature combined with their consequences and implications for building corporately social irresponsible or corporately social responsible environments.

Research limitations/implications – The chapter underlines the vital role of micro-moments for corporate social responsibility. The data consist of a number of vignettes which illustrate a particular circumscribed setting. As is commonly the case with inductive research, further work, mindful of on-going reliability and validity measures, will be required to assess the generalisability of the findings across other sectors and organisations.

Practical implications – The chapter affords people working in organisations the opportunity to reflect on their actions in the micro-moment and scale them towards corporately social responsible outcomes.

Social implications – Improvement of micro-moment interactions should work to improve corporate social responsibility across a range of organisational settings.

Originality/value – The chapter constructs a novel argument in relation to micro-moments and demonstrates through original vignette data the impact and interplay of micro-moments for corporate social responsibility/irresponsibility.