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The authors aimed to explore how involvement in a creative development accelerator impacted participants. In particular, the authors considered the role of suffering in the acceleration process.

The authors conducted an ethnography of a rapid prototyping program in video game development. Data collection included participant observation (162 h before, 186 during and 463 h after the main prototyping), interviews (23 formal and 35 informal) and artifact analysis (presentations, documents, games).

Acceleration led to individual suffering via burnout, lack of sleep, overwork and illness. In turn, participants required varying periods of recovery after participation and diverged in their longer-term reaction to the experience. The authors make two contributions. First, the authors deepen empirical understanding of the embodied impact of participation in an organizational accelerator. Second, the authors develop a theoretical process model of suffering in an accelerator program based on time and initiation.

This paper focused on a single iteration of a program based out of an incubator in the United Kingdom (UK) Suffering was discovered as part of a larger study of the program.

Business and technology accelerators are becoming a popular way to organize work. This research suggests that accelerator structures might lead to unintended and negative participant experiences.

This research challenges the assumption that accelerators always benefit, or at least not hurt, participants. The authors add to the limited attention paid to suffering in organizations. The authors conclude the impact of an accelerator is more complex than usually portrayed.

Chronic consumption practice has been greatly accelerated by mobile, interactive and smartphone gaming technology devices. The purpose of this paper is to explore how chronic consumption of smartphone gaming produces positive coping practice.

Underpinned by cognitive framing theory, empirical insights from 11 focus groups (n=62) reveal how smartphone gaming enhances positive coping amongst gamers and non-gamers.

The findings reveal how the chronic consumption of games allows technology to act with privileged agency that resolves tensions between individuals and collectives. Consumption narratives of smartphone games, even when play is limited, lead to the identification of three cognitive frames through which positive coping processes operate: the market-generated, social being and citizen frames.

This paper adds to previous research by providing an understanding of positive coping practice in the smartphone chronic gaming consumption.

In smartphone chronic gaming consumption, cognitive frames enable positive coping by fostering appraisal capacities in which individuals confront hegemony, culture and alterity-morality concerns.

This article examines the internationalisation of Tesco and extracts the salient lessons learned from this process.

This research draws on a dataset of 62 in‐depth interviews with key executives, sell‐ and buy‐side analysts and corporate advisers at the leading investment banks in the City of London to detail the experiences of Tesco's European expansion.

The case study of Tesco illuminates a number of different dimensions of the company's international experience. It offers some new insights into learning in international distribution environments such as the idea that learning is facilitated by uncertainty or “shocks” in the international retail marketplace; the size of the domestic market may inhibit change and so disable international learning; and learning is not necessarily facilitated by step‐by‐step incremental approaches to expansion.

The paper explores learning from a rather broad perspective, although it is hoped that these parameters can be used to raise a new set of more detailed priorities for future research on international retail learning. It is also recognised that the data gathered for this case study focus on Tesco's European operations.

This paper raises a number of interesting issues such as whether the extremities of the business may be a more appropriate place for management to experiment and test new retail innovations, and the extent to which retailers take self‐reflection seriously.

The paper applies a new theoretical learning perspective to capture the variety of experiences during the internationalisation process, thus addressing a major gap in our understanding of the whole internationalisation process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine students' perceptions of managerial mistakes and why (and why not) managers admit mistakes.

This paper provides a reflective account of how students' perceive management mistakes and deal with admitting “mea culpa” – “I am to blame”.

The findings show a range of attitudes: they highlight the intermingling pressures associated with the cultural environment and mistakes; they identify media characteristics and its influences on mistakes and mea culpa; they highlight ceremonial processes and tasks that shape and influence the declaration of mea culpa; and they identify how the psychology and sociology of mistakes confronts and affects students. Taken together, the study highlights the varying degrees of wariness that is carried forward by the students from vicariously learning about management mistakes.

This paper links up with recent discussions on retail failure and retail pedagogy. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to address, and engage with, management mistakes creatively in their teaching.

In the stakeholder marketing literature, there have been calls by several researchers to expand the stakeholder domain to incorporate a broader array of stakeholders. In developing this argument in this paper the authors aim to explore a set of stakeholder relationships in an international retailing context, notably those which exist between retail firms and investment banks.

Theoretical ideas are subject to empirical scrutiny from 34 in‐depth interviews with investment banks and senior retail executives from two retail multinationals.

Exploratory findings suggest that US investment banks' ideals were at odds with European retail firms – and both occupied “different thought worlds”. It is concluded that the relationships between financial stakeholders and the retail firm cannot be explained simply by reference to stylised economic interactions, but must also be examined in the light of the cultural contexts and different forms of market system within which different firms emerge, operate and interact.

New strategies such as internationalisation stretch resources and capabilities to a point where retailers invariably will be exposed to different stakeholder issues and stresses. Towards this end, this paper contends that the significant international re‐orientation under way in retailing must be understood within the wider context of stakeholder theory. The paper argues that the full potential of applying stakeholder marketing theory to the internationalisation process of retailers has yet to be realised. From this exploratory research, five research propositions are put forward that might serve as a guide to future research in this area.

This paper aims to explore the nature of divestment within the context of retailer internationalisation.

It focuses on the activities of the Dutch food multinational retailer Royal Ahold (Ahold). Drawing on 37 in‐depth interviews with investment banks and executives, this paper provides a number of insights into Ahold's international retail divestment activities within the context of a broadly successful international investment strategy.

It offers some new insights into the multidimensional nature of international retail divestment construct in terms of the operational as well as more subtle and less visible non‐operational international retail divestments. It is concluded from this study that, rather than portraying strategic and opportunistic approaches as binary opposites, a retail firm may have varying degrees of approaches to international retail divestment, and these may not necessarily be isomorphic across different countries.

The paper explores international retail divestment from a rather broad perspective, although it is hoped that these parameters can be used to raise a new set of more detailed priorities for future research on international retail divestment.

This paper raises a number of interesting issues such as whether retailers initially take divestment seriously and the degree to which this is actually possible during market entry.

As called for in the literature, this study examines divestment in the broadest possible fashion, thus addressing a major gap in our understanding of the whole internationalisation process.

This chapter adopts a reflective approach exploring and setting out the contrasting factors that led to the establishment of the subdiscipline in both countries. The factors included the role of key individuals and their respective academic backgrounds and specialisations within each country’s higher education system. Furthermore, attention is given to the particular circumstances in a case analysis comparison of the oldest programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. This sheds light upon the factors linked to the disproportionate success profile for the sociology of sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An analysis of scholars and programs within each country reveals important differences aligned with the politics of funding and the variety and extent of systematic structures. Additionally, scholars’ specialisations and preferences reveal a broad offering but are primarily linked to globalisation, gender relations, indigeneity and race relations, social policy, and media studies. This work has been undertaken variously via the critical tradition including Birmingham School cultural studies, ethnographic and qualitative approaches and, more recently by some, a postmodern poststructuralist trend. Lastly, along with a brief discussion of current issues, future challenges are set out.

This paper discusses the opinions of people who use communication aids regarding the development of a voice input voice output communication aid (VIVOCA) using speech recognition technology. It uniquely combines the views of users of communication aids with those of speech and language therapists. Semi structured questionnaires were completed by 12 users of communication aids and 34 speech and language therapists discussed the concept of a VIVOCA in three focus groups. A thematic analysis of the information was carried out. Input, output and hardware requirements are discussed leading to specifications that therapists and users perceive would be required for a VIVOCA.

This paper develops a new method to study institutions based on institutional work theory. Institutional disruption is intentionally utilized to explore the taken-for-granted foundations of social institutions. The paper outlines the method and considerations.

Taking inspiration from ethnomethodological breaches, the paper outlines the steps in the new method called researcher initiated institutional disruption (RIID). The four steps are identifying the institution, identifying the institutional actors, selecting the disruption type and disrupting the institution to gather data (action and reaction). RIID utilizes three types of institutional disruption: undermining assumptions and beliefs, resistance and issue raising.

The new method complements traditional field methods, such as observation, by showing how a researcher can deliberately make taken-for-granted institutional features visible. The paper finds that RIID offers the opportunity to gather different data, but it is not appropriate for every study and carries potential consequences in the field.

This paper contributes to the literature by outlining an innovative use of theory as method. The approach has not previously been detailed and offers the potential to access previously inaccessible research questions, data and theoretical insights.

While literature has examined market orientation, it is limited with respect to small businesses. More specifically, previous research has not considered empirically the relationship between small business market orientation and environmental uncertainty. Due to resource constraints, smaller businesses are especially vulnerable to environmental uncertainty. To address this, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between environmental uncertainty and small business market orientation.

Drawing from small business literature, the authors developed a research model advancing and testing hypotheses to address the research aim. An empirical study was conducted with 104 small grocery retailers from Brazil. A questionnaire was administered, divided into two sections relating to measurement of market orientation and the market turbulence and technological turbulence as dimensions of environmental uncertainty. ANOVA technique and a multinominal logistic regression model were employed to analyze the results.

The findings reinforce the view of market orientation as a dynamic construct which can explain the relationship between small businesses and environmental uncertainty. Small businesses with higher levels of market orientation emphasized responsiveness as a critical dimension in orienting to turbulent markets. The findings also show that aspects of technological turbulence, particularly pertaining to the opportunities for competitive advantage and new ideas for product supply related to higher levels of market orientation.

The paper's findings, addressing a knowledge gap in the small business literature, emphasize the importance of small businesses orienting themselves to the market, particularly in environments characterized by higher levels of market and technological turbulence.