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To fully grasp the potential of using social media, one must know what governments and citizens are communicating in these media. Despite much statistics published, there is a dearth of research analyzing information content in detail. The purpose of this paper is to identify the kind of information exchange that occurs between a local government and its constituent citizens using social media.

This paper presents a qualitative single case study of the Facebook presence of the municipality and city of Karlstad, Sweden, one of the most prominent local governments on Facebook in the country. Facebook page data were collected between May 2015 and July 2015. A content analysis was performed on the data to explore new and existing categories that drive the analysis.

The paper identifies 11 content categories for municipality posts and 13 content categories for user posts (citizen or organization). The frequency for each content category reveals that the page owner is first of all using its Facebook page to promote different happenings in the municipality while the page user is asking questions to the municipality or other users.

The study is limited to one municipality, but achieves analytical generalizability in its findings. In other words, the categories and mode of communication are a finding in and of itself that in future research may be validated in terms of commonality on a national scale.

Management concerns about opening up a municipality Facebook page for user posting may be exaggerated: positive posts are as common as complaints. If an organization wants to use the Facebook page for increased user participation and collaboration, it seems that users, both citizens and organizations, welcome such opportunities. However, such posts are not likely to receive many comments or shares from other users.

The paper is one of the first that uses content analysis to categorize both page owner posts and user posts on a local government Facebook page. The content categories identified in the paper provide novel and detailed insights on what types of information exchange occur on social media between a local government and citizens but also highlight the need to distinguish organizations from citizens among the visitors to the government Facebook page. Different types of user will post different types of content. The identified content categories can serve as a basis for future empirical research within e-government research.

The purpose of this study is to apply the concept of organizational ambidexterity as a conceptual lens to increase the understanding of tensions between exploitation (continuity) and exploration (change) in Agile software development (ASD) project teams, and particularly the balancing (ambidextrous) strategies utilized.

A conceptual framework was constructed from interdisciplinary sources on ambidexterity. A literature review of publications on ambidexterity in ASD was then performed, and the results from the selected publications were classified according to an extension of the conceptual framework.

Contextual ambidexterity in ASD is affected by the four basic coherent concepts: time, task, team and transition. The study found that most ambidextrous factors and strategies were task and team-related. In addition, a mixture of hard (performance) strategies and soft (social) strategies is needed in order for people/teams to (be able to) become ambidextrous.

To provide a better understanding of ASD, it is important to identify a broader set of ambidextrous factors and strategies that can impact ASD project teams. The expanded conceptual framework can serve as a basis for future empirical research and provide insights to practitioners on how to strengthen ambidexterity in ASD projects.

The contribution is of great importance for ASD research and practice, as ASD methods are a popular method for managing projects within ASD and in other nonsoftware organizations. In addition, as more and more organizations struggle to deal with rapidly changing environments, interest in the phenomena of paradoxical tensions and the strategy (ambidexterity) to deal with these tensions increase.

Although more than half of the PhD graduates do not take up traditional academic positions, the little we know of how they navigate into the non-academic workforce is somewhat conflicting. This study aims to contribute to our knowledge by examining over time the experiences of post-PhD social scientists who went into non-academic careers. It examines how post-PhD social scientists in non-academic careers characterize their experience of the PhD; how they imagine their post-PhD careers during the degree and how this influenced their doctoral activity; and to what extent their intentions changed over time and how agentive they were in managing challenges or disappointments.

The study uses a longitudinal qualitative narrative approach to examine the experience of eight post-PhD social scientists beginning during their degrees through their initial years after graduation outside academia.

The analysis highlights variation in clarity of career vision, strategic career thinking and action, knowledge of career opportunity structures and changes in career intentions over time. Still, for all individuals, the PhD was considered a powerful learning experience which continued to influence their lives.

Overall, the results make clear that post-PhD trajectories are best built from the beginning of the PhD, a conclusion that has curriculum implications.

This study incorporates the career question into the development of junior researchers highlighting the need to attend not only to objective measures of career success but also subjective intentions, investments, choices and assessments. Further, the constructs developed within an academic work context to understand career trajectories proved robust in analyzing non-academic work experience.

The aim of this paper is to inform researchers and practitioners about the fuzzy front‐end (FFE) of the innovation process in process firms.

A multiple case study of four process firms was conducted, with a total of 64 semi‐structured interviews.

The paper gives new insights into the FFE in non‐assembled product and process development in process firms. The FFE of non‐assembled product and process development is first conceptualized and key activities are identified. Further, how the strong relationship between product and process development can be managed in the FFE is discussed.

All four firms are from the mineral and metals industry, prompting caution when generalizing the results to other contexts. This research offers insights about the FFE in process firms. Theoretical implications are added to the existing literature on the FFE and general process development literature, and the paper increases our understanding of innovation management in general.

From a practical point of view, the paper gives advice on how managers in process firms can increase speed and clarity in the FFE. The conceptualizations and the identified front‐end key activities are suggested as checklists for improving the FFE stage.

This study compares how the FFE within two different types of innovations is conceptualized and managed. Thus, the FFE in non‐assembled product and process development is explored. The FFE of process development is an unexplored context.

This paper aims to contrast two approaches to the study of contracts in business and industrial marketing: first, as a legal document in shaping at the outset exchanges and interactions, for instance in projects; and second, as relational norms in becoming integrated into a business relationship through interactions, for instance as a resource.

The paper draws on cross-case comparison of three projects, as actors develop an engineering service for optimizing the maintenance of large-scale capital equipment by analyzing real-time data from sensors and user records. Comparison is by coding interview and observational data as micro-sequences of interactions among actors.

Preparing contracts allows a project to commence and is an early form of interaction, intensifying new relationships or cutting into and recasting established ones. Relational norms augment and can supersede the early focus on the contract, thus incorporating incremental innovation and absorbing some uncertainties.

The research approach benefits from detailed comparison and captures some variety across its three cases, but the discussion is limited to theoretical generalization.

The analysis and discussion highlights and focuses on when different approaches to understanding contracting are more apparent across durable business relationships. Transitions from a contractual document to a view of relational norms are subtle, vulnerable and not always made successfully.

This paper’s originality is in it comparison of overlapping approaches to understanding businesses’ uses of contacts in business and industrial marketing, of contract and relational norms. It develops a valuable research proposition, in the transition from a mainly contractual to a mainly relational uses of contracts, thus identifying contract as a particular business resource, to be deployed and embedded.

Country of Origin (COO) labeling has been shown in several studies to be an important extrinsic cue for consumers in their quality evaluation of food products such as olive oil, wine or tea. COO has not been discussed in the context of pepper; however pepper's quality highly depends on the heritage. This paper aims to explore this aspect.

The study was conducted in an organic grocery store in Bonn, Germany. The first part of the face to face interviews at the point‐of‐sale were carried out for understanding consumers' attitudes towards different extrinsic quality cues. The second part covered the product‐country‐image of pepper as well as consumers' knowledge regarding COO and pepper quality. Third, the contingent valuation method is used to analyze organic consumers' willingness to pay (WTP). Fourth a blind‐tasting of black pepper from different origins and production methods was conducted.

The study reveals that organic consumers are able to experience taste differences due to COO though only a minority expects those taste differences. Thus, also concerned and involved consumers are not sufficiently informed on COO information to rely on their purchase decision of pepper. As a result consumers are not willing to pay a significant higher price for COO labeled pepper.

This study is the first which combines face‐to‐face interviews regarding attitudes, image and knowledge with a blind tasting of pepper and an investigation of consumers' WTP for pepper from different origins and processing characteristics.

From the organisational perspective, the authors know that management, including innovation management, becomes less “organised” by bureaucracy and administrative tools, and much more impacted by organisational capabilities, competences and hidden, “soft” routines, bringing innovation and creativity to the core of organisation. The purpose of this paper is to focus on competency sets for open innovation (OI) and is to provide recommendations for OI competency development in companies, linked to the core OI processes.

The research is exploratory and aims at theory-based practical indication combining deductive identification of competency clusters and inductive model development. Thus, the authors apply quantitative methods to data collection and analysis. The authors conducted an extensive literature review on competence challenges with regard to execution of OI, and empirical data analysis based on a large-scale structured industrial survey in Europe (N=264), leading to the development of competency sets for companies. SPSS tools are applied for empirical tests.

The authors develop a generic OI competency model applicable across industries, combined with organisational implications for sustaining OI management capabilities. The research clusters competencies based on the empirical analysis, which addresses the various challenges of OI, leading to recommendations for competency management in an OI context.

The data were collected from one key informant per company. Although the authors made efforts to ensure that this was a senior manager responsible for innovation, the authors cannot exclude some bias in the way that OI activities and related competencies are perceived. Exploratory nature of the research, which calls for a more systematic investigation of the OI activity modes and the OI competencies resulting competency model. In particular, the competencies could be tested on an inter-professional sample of employees with involvement in and/or responsibility for innovation, development, and HR management, as well as on leaders of innovating companies. Third, although significant in size for the analyses undertaken, the sample is not large enough to enable a more fine-tuned analysis of regional differences across Europe in the way that OI is managed through the development and implementation of competencies.

The research contributes to the OI management field with an outlined OI competency profile that can be implemented flexibly and tailored to individual firm’s needs. It brings indications for both further theory building and practice of innovation organisation, especially with regard to human resource development and organisational capability building for OI.

The social implications of the paper result from the contribution to innovation management competency development in OI regimes, which is an important tool for designing contemporary educational programmes, contributes to OI management sophistication in business which is especially important during the economy slowdown and search for new sources of growth and productivity, and supports firms productive engagement in OI ecosystems and collective technology upgrading towards higher societal benefits and stakeholder involvement.

An empirically grounded OI competency model is proposed with an implication to support human resource development for OI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no prior attempt to build such a model. The distinguished feature of the research is its extensive European coverage of 35 countries and multinational scope. The empirical validation strategy makes the research extremely relevant for management decisions related to human factors related OI capability development in organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore young consumers’ attitudes toward novel organic food products by analyzing their acceptability and perception.

A mixed method approach was applied to conceptualize (sensory profiling of organic bakery and confectionery products) and then to evaluate young consumer’s willingness to buy (consumer survey) innovative products: ten variants of rolls and ten variants of shortbread cookies made of certified raw materials originating from bio-farming, enriched with a combination of fresh and dried fruits and vegetables. Product recipes were free of saccharose, sweeteners and chemical pulverizing agents. To evaluate consumer orientation toward novel organic products, 200 consumers from Poland (Warmia and Mazury region) were surveyed regarding their hedonic opinion about these concepts. A Likert-type scale was used in the consumer survey to assess the perception and declared willingness to buy the evaluated products.

Research results demonstrate that the young consumers had ambivalent or negative attitudes to sensory attributes of many variants of the organic bakery and confectionery products. This could be explained by the taste of most of the products, which appeared unacceptable to consumers. It has been concluded that the choice of organic foods by young consumers is not strictly related to the concern over their health nor to the awareness of health-related attributes of these food products. Taste turned out to be the key factor affecting consumer attitudes toward organic foods and driving their willingness to buy these products.

Despite the constant development of research in the area of the organic food market, the current scientific findings still have some cognitive gaps that concern attitudes and expectations of consumers, especially of young consumers, toward new ecological products. This study contributed to the young consumers’ behavior knowledge by analyzing their attitudes toward novel organic bakery and confectionery prototypes produced manually. The empirical findings from this study also have practical potential for organic food market applications. Information of this type is useful in understanding and predicting the demand for certain products, which helps managers develop effective strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to ask what role robustness plays in current medicine and in how far medical practices influence human robustness and thus the ability to be adapted and survive under changing conditions.

In order to do this Bateson's concepts of learning and network pathologies are applied to the medical topic of immune reaction.

Current medical research does not take sufficiently into account that natural stimuli and therapeutic interventions might lead to a large‐scale of changes. This is mainly due to the lack of related epistemological tools.

This lack leads to a restricted validity of many medical findings. There is even some evidence that the current therapeutic approach might lead to a decline of human robustness.

This paper shows how systemic concepts can contribute to a deeper understanding of the therapeutic processes.