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Millions of ratings and reviews about products are available on the Internet for free, and they are used by academic researchers in the tourism sector. Data from websites like TripAdvisor are replacing or complementing traditional questionnaires and interviews. The authors are proposing a methodology to estimate the percentage accounted for by the sample of self-interviewed individuals over the total study population, in order to calculate the reliability of the results obtained. Average percentages obtained for hotels cannot be easily generalized due to the high dispersion in participation rates among hotels, even in the same city. Participation levels for tourist attractions are substantially lower than those for hotels and are likely biased, due to the fact that some tourists evaluate places without actually visiting them, merely after viewing them from the outside.

Product development becomes more complex when co-development involves multiple parties crossing boundaries of functions, companies, countries and even competitors. An interdisciplinary framework is needed to understand the challenges of structuring collaborative work within global product teams – especially in the research arenas of strategic partnerships, product development teams, collaboration, distributed work, organizational learning and new metaphors. The multi-party partnership of the Joint Strike Fighter Program at Lockheed Martin, the largest aerospace program in history, provides an illustration of the complex information-sharing and problem-solving challenges in aligning a large, distributed, global integrated product team in an environment where even connectivity is a challenge. It sets the stage for the innovative management approaches needed to build collaborative climates as well as research directions for the future.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a central backbone of (most) national economies. Research shows, that due to their smaller size, SMEs not only have comparatively less formalized, less complex, and less specialized organizational structures, but a somewhat different social character as well. It is in particular the interplay of these structural and cultural peculiarities of SMEs that is difficult to impart perceptibly in regular university courses on Small Business Management.

From a managerial science perspective, the structural as well as social characteristics of small non-profit organizations are quite similar to the above-mentioned features of SMEs. Both types of organizations usually function in a less bureaucratic and more personal way, while also being a bit more chaotic sometimes. In addition, both are often facing the challenges of severe resource scarcity as well as a lack of management competencies.

In view of these fundamental similarities between SMEs and small non-profit organizations, the practical seminar Service Learning Project was designed to provide management students at Europa-Universität Flensburg with the opportunity of experiencing typical small business work realities. Here, student teams support local non-profit organizations in meeting typical management challenges ranging from the conception and implementation of fundraising or image campaigns to internal consultancy projects. In this way, the seminar offers the possibility to deal with real-world practical management issues while concurrently strengthening students’ civic societal awareness, fostering empathy, and overcoming the oftentimes overly pronounced distance between science and life-world practice.

Who can make claims “to know?” This chapter argues that there are distinct sets of understandings in social science versus STEM fields, and that STEM education research can benefit from interdisciplinarity, instead of being disciplinary (principally the purview of STEM insiders). The concept “gender” proves illustrative. Among many social science scholars, gender is understood as a complex social construction: contingent, contextual, contested ways that masculinities and femininities are embodied, enacted, and differentiated in everyday social life – as compared to simple, dichotomous male–female comparisons. Comparing social science and STEM conceptualizations of gender leads to three conclusions. First, empirical research with more forward-looking conceptualizations demonstrate that outdated underpinnings in STEM research overlook important issues, such as seeking solutions within individuals (especially students) instead of in the educational community or STEM culture. Second, since the frontier of social science keeps moving, and STEM insiders’ appreciations will necessarily lag new understandings, STEM-insider research might unfortunately be outdated from inception. Thirdly, the chapter concludes that collaborations between/among STEM and social science scholars have greater potential for research with explanatory power, research able to contribute better understandings of and solutions for dilemmas of STEM education.

The management of inter-regional basins in the Spanish case is a clear example of the complexity of water policy. The entry into force of the Water Framework Directive changed the objective and design process of public policy, prioritizing the conservation of river ecosystems and establishing the mandate for participation and inter-administrative coordination. This expanded the number of participants, creating a network of public and private actors with different interests and perceptions, bringing the water issue closer to what is often referred to in public policy as a wicked problem. In this chapter, we highlight how the Spanish political sphere has approached water policy in this new context, paying special attention to the role played by river basin organizations. To this end, we deal with two conflicts: the first concerning the Ebro Delta and the second on the water transfer between the Tajo and Segura rivers. Both cases show the inability of the central bodies of the State, the autonomous communities, and private agents to reach a consensus on water policy, which ends up shaping a decision-making system in which, although the legislative resources of the stakeholders are key, and the policy capacity of the basin organizations is reduced.

We analyze how Brazilian Black Movement organizations and banks deployed different mechanisms like cooperation, cooptation, and confrontation that generated affirmative action initiatives in the banking sector at the beginning of this century. Black movement organizations triggered an institutional change by connecting fields and exploring a constellation of strategies. However, Brazilian banks adopted defensive strategies aiming to accommodate their interests. We find that only piecemeal change occurred, as the field’s structures – resource distribution and power – remained unscratched. We conclude by noting how the success of social movement strategies can depend upon the framing and sense-giving work that social movements conduct in their continuous jockeying activity toward incumbents.

A core concept of work–home interface research is boundary permeability – the frequency with which elements from one domain cross, or permeate, the boundary of another domain. Yet, there remains ambiguity as to what these elements are and how these permeations impact important outcomes such as role satisfaction and role performance. The authors introduce a multidimensional perspective of work–home boundary permeability, identifying five forms of boundary permeation: task, psychological, role referencing, object, and people. Furthermore, based on the notion that employee control over boundary permeability behavior is the key to achieving role satisfaction and role performance, the authors examine how organizations’ HR practices, leadership, and norms impact employee control over boundary permeability in the work and home domains. The authors conclude with an agenda for future research.