Search results

Digital technologies, and the affordances they provide, can shape institutional processes in significant ways. In the last decade, social media and other digital platforms have redefined civic engagement by enabling new ways of connecting, collaborating, and mobilizing. In this article, we examine how technological affordances can both enable and hinder institutional processes through visibilization – which we define as the enactment of technological features to foreground and give voice to particular perspectives and discourses while silencing others. We study such dynamics by examining #SchauHin, an activist campaign initiated in Germany to shine a spotlight on experiences of daily racism. Our findings show how actors and counter-actors differentially leveraged the technological features of two digital platforms to shape the campaign. Our study has implications for understanding the role of digital technologies in institutional processes as well as the interplay between affordances and visibility in efforts to deinstitutionalize discriminatory practices and institutions.

This chapter explores the concept of authenticity in the context of today’s highly competitive hospitality industry. Drawing on the multi-sited ethnographic case study of Ziferblat, the world’s first pay-per-minute cafe franchise, the author examines how the imperative of authenticity is addressed by small international enterprises falling in between the categories of chain and independent. By tracing how Ziferblat’s original concept, shaped by the personal and socioeconomic background of its founder, was subsequently transformed by the local teams and adapted to different cultural-geographical contexts, this chapter adds new empirical evidence to the dynamic and pluralistic notion of multiple authenticities.

The effects of board composition on performance have long been discussed in management research using fractionalization measures. In this study, we propose an alternative measurement approach based on board polarization.

Using an exploratory analysis and applying the polarization measure to German Deutscher Aktienindex (DAX)-, Midcap-DAX (MDAX)- and Small Cap-Index (SDAX)-listed companies, this paper applies the polarization index to examine the relationship between board diversity and performance.

The results show that the polarization concept is well suited to measure principal-agent problems between the members of the management and supervisory boards. We reveal that board polarization is negatively associated with firm performance, as measured by return on investment (ROI).

This exploratory study shows that the measurement of board polarization can be linked to performance differences between companies, which offers promising starting points for further research.

Primary care (PC) is a strong determinant of overall health care. Children make up around a fifth of the population of the European Union and European Economic Area and have their own needs and uptake of PC. However, there is little research into how well PC services address their needs. There are large differences in childhood mortality and morbidity patterns in the EU and EEA countries, and there has been a major epidemiological shift in the past half century from predominantly communicable disease, to non-communicable diseases presenting and increasingly managed in PC. This increase in multifactorial morbidities, such as obesity and learning disability, has led to the need for PC systems to adapt to accommodate these changes. Europe presents a challenging picture of unexplained variation in health care delivery and style and of children’s different health experiences and health-related behaviour. The Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project aimed to describe the PC systems in detail, analyse their components and appraise them from a number of different viewpoints, including professional, public, political and economic lenses. It did this through nine work packages supported by a core management team, and a network of national agents, individuals in each MOCHA country who had the expertise in research and knowledge of their national health care system to answer a wide range of questions posed by the MOCHA scientific teams.

Adopting an institutional view of entrepreneurship, this study aims to explore the potential mediating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in the relationship between subjective norms and the entrepreneurial intentions of Malaysian students. Additionally, social role theory (SRT) was used to examine whether gender acts as a boundary condition in the proposed relationship.

Empirical evidence was based on responses from 220 final-year students registered from a final-year entrepreneurship module at a private university in Malaysia. The hypothesised relationships were tested using Model 7 of the PROCESS macro.

The findings indicated that subjective norms had a weak but positive effect on the entrepreneurial intentions of Malaysian students. Moreover, ESE was found to mediate the relationship between subjective norms and entrepreneurial intentions. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, gender did not act as a boundary condition in the proposed mediation relationship.

By incorporating SRT with institutional theory, this study sought to address a knowledge gap in the existing literature by investigating and empirically exploring the moderating influence of gender on the mediating effect of ESE in the relationship between subjective norms and entrepreneurial intentions.

The purpose of this study is to explore the ideological gaps across a range of policing interactions with the public.

In a survey distributed via Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (n = 979), the authors explore the role that respondents' political ideology plays in the agreement of 13 aspects of policing services, their demeanor and decorum.

Attitudes toward policing interactions are slightly positive. Conservatives steadfastly hold positive attitudes about police. Liberals vacillate from negative to positive attitudes across the 13 policing interaction statements.

Although small, there is an ideological consensus that police adequately protect citizens and are knowledgeable about the law.

Even at record lows of public confidence in the police, some subsections of the sample, such as conservatives, firmly hold positive attitudes about police. The unwavering support for police by conservatives continues across the multi-item measure of policing interactions, whereas liberals illustrated less uniformity in their attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Swedish Advertisers’ Association's role in the institutional development of Swedish international advertising during 1955–1972.

A qualitative analysis of business association sources is used to explore the institutional development of international advertising.

A new postwar paradigm that focused on a consumer-oriented brand ideology enabled marketing executives in the Swedish Advertisers’ Association to develop a new discourse on international advertising in Sweden, which then was institutionalized within a national network on export promotion. The institutionalization process was supported by a corporatist system typical of smaller export dependent postwar European economies.

While based on a national case, this study points to the importance of understanding how advertising concepts are embedded within other economic, political and cultural systems than in those they originated in and how this contributes to a heterogenous implementation of similar ideas and practices. This study also illustrates how members can use their association to institutionalize a new discourse on marketing and network with other actors to enhance the use and reputation of its ideas and practices.

By highlighting the importance of analyzing both internal and external organizational relations, this study contributes to the research on history of marketing by making salient the importance of an institutional perspective to understand key processes in marketing. In practice neither the institutional perspective nor the explanatory power of discourse has received much attention, therefore the study results should be both interesting and valid for practitioners as well.

The study of the historical development of international advertising is limited and often descriptive. This study contributes to the literature by using a theoretical and methodological approach to make salient how the interaction between discourse, marketing associations and other collective actors propelled the institutionalization of international advertising within a specific national context.

This paper describes a quality improvement project to improve oversight of quality at national board level using statistical process control (SPC) methods, complimented by a qualitative experience of patients and frontline staff. It demonstrates the application of the “Picture-Understanding-Action” approach and shares the lessons learnt.

Using co-design and applying the “Picture-Understanding-Action” approach, the project team supported the directors of the Irish health system to identify and test a qualitative and quantitative picture of the quality of care across the health system. A “Quality Profile” consisting of quantitative indicators, analysed using SPC methods was used to provide an overview of the “critical few” indicators across health and social care. Patient and front-line staff experiences added depth and context to the data. These methods were tested and evolved over the course of six meetings, leading to quality of care being prioritised and interrogated at board level.

This project resulted in the integration of quality as a substantive and prioritised agenda item. Using best practice SPC methods with associated training produced better understanding of performance of the system. In addition, bringing patient and staff experiences of quality to the forefront “people-ised” the data.

The application of the “Picture-Understanding-Action” approach facilitated the development of a co-designed quality agenda item. This is a novel process that shifted the focus from “providing” information to co-designing fit-for-purpose information at board level.

Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs use typically increases in prevalence and frequency during middle and late adolescence. School health instruction often focusses on providing facts and rarely provides tools for addressing the psychosocial risk factors needed to prevent substance use. The purpose of this paper is to report about the effectiveness of a prevention programme delivered in US high school health classes. The intervention augments typical instruction by providing teachers with activities that can be infused in their daily teaching.

In total, 26 schools were randomly assigned to receive the intervention or serve as controls. Pupils were pretested near the beginning of the school year, posttest near the end of the school year and administered a final test near the beginning of the following school year. Teachers in treatment schools were provided with activities designed to target psychosocial variables known to mediate substance use onset and self-initiated cessation. These include normative beliefs, intentionality, lifestyle incongruence, beliefs about consequences of use, peer pressure resistance skills, decision-making skills, goal setting skills and stress management skills.

Hierarchical modelling analytic strategies revealed the intervention to have definable positive impacts on alcohol and cigarette use. Moreover, the intervention had strongest effects on alcohol and cigarette use among pupils who were identified at pretest as being lower-than-average risk.

This research provides support for providing teachers with a strategy for preventing alcohol, tobacco and other drugs that can be used in a flexible manner to augment the instruction they are already mandated to provide.

To decrease wear and friction, zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP) has been used in engine oil for several decades, but the mechanism of the tribofilm formation is still unclear. The purpose of this study is to characterize the chemical details of the tribofilm by using high-resolution approaching.

An ISO VG 100 mineral oil mixed with ZDDP was used in sliding tests on cylindrical roller bearings. Tribofilm formation was observed after 2 h of the sliding test. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and atom probe tomography (APT) were used for chemical analysis of the tribofilm.

The results show that the ZDDP tribofilm consists of the common ZDDP elements along with iron oxides. A considerable amount of zinc and a small amount of sulfur were observed. In particular, an oxide interlayer with sulfur enrichment was revealed by APT between the tribofilm and the steel substrate. The depth profile of the chemical composition was obtained, and a tribofilm of approximately 40 nm thickness was identified by XPS.

A sulfur enrichment at the interface is observed by APT, which is beneath an oxygen enrichment. The clear evidence of the S interlayer confirms the hard and soft acids and bases principle.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-01-2020-0035/