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Drawing upon the social cognitive and customer engagement theories, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how individuals’ simple follow, purely aiming for information but with little contribution, could affect fans behavior and make them engage in company social network (CSN). The study identifies the impact of personal motivators (follower participation motivation), environmental antecedents (perception of information quality) and individual behavior (fan engagement behavior and stickiness) on CSNs and examines the interaction relationship between the follower participation motivation and perception of information quality.

Data collected from 392 valid questionnaires from WeChat Official Account users were analyzed by structural equation modeling.

Personal factor such as follower participation motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic motivator) was found to be significant predictor of fan engagement behavior. Environmental factor (perception of information quality: perceived usefulness as well as perceived entertainment) was a significant factor in determining followers’ proclivity to engage in CNSs. One significant interaction effect was found: the effect of perceived entertainment on fan engagement behavior was manifested to a greater extent when followers’ participation aimed for intrinsic motivator. The second interaction effect, between the extrinsic motivator and perceived usefulness, was also found to be statistically significant.

This study enriches and extends the studies on the theories of customer engagement and social cognitive theory. It applies the above theories to CSNs and advances CSNs research by taking into consideration both personal and environmental factors (follower participation motivation and perception of information quality), and the interaction effects of the two on individual behavior.

SAYS the handout from the Department of Industry: “The key role played by managers in improving British industry's economic performance was emphasised by Mr. Eric Varley, Secretary of State for Industry. He said that the publication of a discussion paper on industry, education and management underlined that industry in Britain today had many first class managers who made vital contributions to the economy.

Thriving brand communities are inseparable from engaged members and their word-of-mouth behavior. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which customer experience elevates customer engagement and consequent word-of-mouth intention in online brand communities, and how.

From the perspective of service ecosystem theory, a framework with several hypotheses was proposed. The model was verified with structural equation modeling based on questionnaire data collected from smartphone communities in China.

Empirical results indicate that customer experience promotes community engagement, and further enhances word-of-mouth intention. Furthermore, the mediating effect of community engagement in the relation between customer experience (social support and flow) and word-of-mouth intention has been verified.

This paper informs practitioners about the importance of experience co-creation with community members in brand and community promotion, and provides several implications to encourage more engaged customers with fostering pleasant customer experiences.

This study contributes to the theory of service ecosystem by empirical examination of its several propositions in a brand community context. The paper extends the present theory with the discussion of the mediation effect of community engagement in the continuing value co-creation process.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

Epidemiologists are concerned the next deadly global cognition will be a new kind of deadly flu which humans have no resistance. Since the 1960s, their alarm has been focused on a bird (avian) virus (H5N1). This virus is generally harmless in its host species, but it is extremely deadly when contracted by humans. H5N1 mutates quickly and tends to pick up genes from flu viruses that affect other species. The flu is far more contagious and harder to contain than the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus. It is projected that 30‐40 per cent of the population would be infected in a H5N1 flu pandemic, and as many as one‐third would die. The 1918 Spanish flu caused 20 to 50 million deaths world wide. One scientist observed that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic could have caused civilisation to disappear within a few weeks. Currently, more than 50 million chickens have been slaughtered in eight Asian countries in efforts to curb the spread of avian influenza. This article examines the roots and dangers of the potential avian influenza pandemic, examining the business and social ramifications that could ensue if the worst case scenario occurs.

Government is a very labour intensive enterprise. Public organisations provide services, enforce laws and regulations, solve problems, and have varied missions. Their varied missions include protection of the environment, food safety, elderly and disabled assistance, education of our children, and civil rights enforcement. All of these activities require the use of human resources. The quality of employees in the county directly relates to how well the county performs. Essential tasks of human resource managers are to find qualified employees for these government positions, as well as to promote an attractive work environment for these employees. Failure to use effective human resource management risks low productivity and a lack of commitment to the community. County managers have the challenge of meeting multiple objectives including productivity, staffing and many more.

Coaches as leaders of sports teams should identify the causes of conflict between the athletes and handle conflict effectively. The aim of this study was to examine the methods and ways coaches use to handle conflict in professional teams in Greece. The sample consisted of 42 professional football‐soccer, basketball and volley ball coaches, which were surveyed using questionnaires. Using the descriptive statistics and the one‐way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), it was found that: a) coaches are using five styles in order to manage conflict, and b) the most effective styles that can resolve team conflicts are the collaborating style, the compromising style and the avoiding style and the least effective styles from those suggested are the competing style and the accommodating style.

Adopting the split complementizer phrase (CP) hypothesis, the paper aims at providing an account for object cliticization in Standard Arabic (SA) as an instance of object displacement. Kayne's proposal on cliticization is adopted here to account for the type of displacement in SA that objects clitics in SA, like full determiner phrases (DPs), obligatorily move from their base position as independent complements of the verb to the specifier of Foc first before attaching to the verb under the tense node.

This research adopts a qualitative interpretive research design (Creswell, 2007, 2010). The majority of the samples chosen for the study involve dependent pronominal objects obligatorily attached to the verb. The samples were judged to be grammatical based on the author's judgment as an native speaker of Arabic. Moreover, all the examples were checked for grammaticality by two full professors of Arabic grammar who are native speakers.

The analysis proposed that, like lexical DP's, pronominal objects originate as separate maximal projection (XP) constituents and move from their base position as verbal complements to the focus position [Spec, Foc]. In other words, both are able to move out of VP, targeting the same specifier position of a functional projection. This movement is focus-driven, that is, triggered by the edge feature on Foc. Pronominal objects at a later phase crucially higher than V0 (possibly in phonetic form (PF)) get cliticized to the verb which has adjoined to T.

Unlike displaced lexical DP objects in SA syntax, displaced pronominal objects, however, have received less critical attention especially within Rizzi's (1997, 2004) left periphery theory and, therefore, some areas of these constructions remain poorly understood.

THE first practical application of a simplified form of aircraft structure was made by the Republic Aircraft Corp. in their production of the Seabee. This machine dispensed with conventional ribs and used external chordwise corrugations instead. These were found to be perfectly satisfactory; they resisted the air loading and were stiff enough to prevent undue distortion of the cross‐section of the structure. For machines of higher speed, however, these corrugations, or ‘beads’ as they were called, would be objectionable and would have to be replaced by internal stiffeners fixed to the skin. This is the type of structure it is now proposed to analyse—a general view is shown in FIG. 1.

Provides a rationale for looking at logistics and cultural diversity from a global “intercultural” perspective, and proposes this view as a potential tool for sensitizing logistics managers to cross‐ concerns. Concludes that any firm which embraces this concept by understanding cultural differences and going beyond cultural boundaries will reap increased organizational performance.