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This study aims to contribute to research into narrative brands by investigating if the lack of closure in the ambiguous season two’s ending of the Australian television series, Wanted, constituted a brand transgression.

Comments on posts about Wanted from social media accounts associated with the series were downloaded and analysed using thematic analysis informed by non-participatory netnography.

Audiences found the ambiguous ending of Wanted season two disappointing and it did not fulfil implied promises and their expectations, which fits the description of a brand transgression, and so they engaged in behaviours indicative of a brand transgression such as spreading negative word of mouth online. The ambiguous ending could have been a cliff-hanger to lead into a third season that was not guaranteed when the final episode aired, or the ending for the entire series. Although a third season was eventually made and positively received by audiences, viewer numbers declined by nearly a third, illustrating the importance of brand management for narrative brands.

This research has implications for the creators of television series, particularly if they do not know if it will be renewed. Not providing audiences with their expected closure can constitute a brand transgression and damage the narrative brand’s residual brand equity and potential earnings from streaming or a revival at a later date.

Prior research has focused on audiences’ responses to definitive endings, rather than ambiguous endings, which is the focus of this research. Furthermore, narrative brands are still an under-researched context.

This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions of inauthenticity due to adulteration of a narrative brand ending by using the research context of the final season and ending of the television series, Game of Thrones.

Two data sets totalling 2,032 online comments detailing consumer reactions to the final season of Game of Thrones were analysed using thematic analysis and human interpretive analysis. The coding was an iterative and continuous process, and posts were returned to and re-examined to refine codes and groupings as the analysis progressed.

The results indicate consumers perceived the ending of the eighth and final season of the television series, Game of Thrones, did not meet their expectations and was not authentic due to rushed writing and illogical character and plot developments. Consumers judged this adulteration was so great that it was a moral violation and transgression. Consumers also sought to assign blame for the inauthenticity, which they attributed to the writers and showrunners, who became the subject of revenge behaviours.

This study indicates consumers of narrative brands, due to their strong emotional attachments to their characters and storyworlds, may perceive unexpected and extensive changes to them as moral violations and transgressions and thus inauthentic. Consumers establish the authenticity of a narrative brand by regularly scrutinising narrative and character development against their expectations as shaped by prior narrative content. Due to their emotional attachment, consumers may attempt to attribute blame for the inauthenticity. The findings have not been established in prior research, and inauthenticity in a narrative brand context is also explored for the first time.

This article seeks to analyze retrospective and emergent narratives in a changing organization. It aims to uncover the emic meanings of resistance to diversity change.

This article is based on interpretative research in a German high‐tech company, informed by the anthropological frame of mind.

The organization studied needs to cope with an increasing number of foreign employees. As narrative analysis showed, English language and diversity are associated negatively with an organizational dark age. In the past, a focus on sameness and on German language has been a successful counter‐strategy. Yet, in the present, this strategy forces German and non‐German employees into a dichotomist relationship that hinders diversity change. Through narrative analysis, other values of the past, such as caring for each other, and the metaphor of organization as family, are discovered. These concepts are highly adaptable to the new present and should be supported and facilitated in order to create trans‐cultural sameness.

The contribution of this article is to show how to utilize identity‐based resistance for organizational change, in this case diversity change. Emergent and retrospective narratives of the self are a viable tool of analysis.

Identity‐based resistance to change originates in the inability to link the past collective self to present conditions. This is often seen as an obstacle to change. This article uncovers the emic meanings of resistance, thereby utilizing it for diversity change.

The purpose of this opinion piece is to present a case for the potential of positive autoethnography (PosAE) as a new autoethnographic approach.

This work resulted from on-going discussions between the authors as to the practicalities and benefits of associating the qualitative approach of autoethnography with the field of positive psychology.

PosAE is proposed to encourage writers to actively reflect on the importance for themselves, and their readers, of including positive narrative elements, prospective visions and exploratory trajectories in their work.

This research builds on existing research that has included positive psychology in autoethnography. As positive psychology is grounded in empirical research, the authors are suggesting that PosAE is allied to pragmatic autoethnography.

PosAE offers to facilitate positive thought, affect and strategies that could improve well-being. For example, some people struggling with serious health issues, and those helping them, may find it useful for articulating conditions and envisioning, even experiencing, positive change.

With so many lives impacted by mental health issues globally, and with rapidly changing societies struggling to provide stability and purpose, an autoethnography that provides tools such as PERMA (Positive emotions, Engagement, Positive Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments/Achievements) to communicate the positive seems timely.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time the creation of an autoethnographic approach explicitly linked to positive psychology has been proposed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how brand communities collectively react towards brand transgressions, an area where previous research has been scant.

This study adopts a netnographic approach in studying the reactions of one particular brand community and its reactions to a marketer-initiated brand transgression.

Building on coping theory, we find evidence of brand community coping, a temporally bounded process in which the community seeks to come to terms with and even overturn the transgression. Overall, we define the brand community coping process as unfolding through three overlapping and temporally bounded stages of (1) making the problem communal, (2) exploring the problem’s meaning, and (3) co-creating responses.

Studies of consumer coping particularly in cases of brand transgressions have predominantly adopted an individualistic approach to coping, or have treated communities as coping resources for individual consumers. This study is the first study to truly look at brand communities’ collective coping endeavors. We also offer managerial implications by questioning the overtly positive tone of brand co-creation literature and underline potential threats to marketers when consumers decide to use their co-creative practices to punish the marketer.

Narrative is discussed as a way of making sense of the world of work. Qualitative research in organisations often falls short of discovering the ethnographic or agent‐centred meanings and assumptions which underlie action. It is argued that eliciting and analysing managerial narratives helps researchers identify the implicit reasoning and assumptive knowledge that underlies decisions and actions. It also allows respondents to provide narrative representations of how they see the past, present and future in their work and attain a fuller degree of coherent understanding. Research like this can shed valuable light on both the tacit and explicit knowledge in the organisation.

This paper is part of a study which attempts to take a different approach to understanding the events which occurred in the U. S. steel industry during the period 1945 to 1985. In undertaking to provide a different form of explanation, this project was principally concerned with searching for an understanding of how those in the industry chose to act in the manner they did. The findings presented demonstrate the extent to which organizational and industry history influence managers′ interpretations of the world in which they exist, and the possibilities for action within that interpretation. Attributions about ones′ self, and others, are slow to change. The narratives which reflect those attributions are important to the organization and to the development of strategic actions. The manner in which steel industry managers chose to understand their role, and the role of others in the industry, had a long‐term impact on the strategies they developed.

Researchers in information studies have examined fictional depictions of libraries in various mediums because these images can reflect and influence real-life experiences and attitudes. Video games, despite being relatively overlooked, are increasingly culturally relevant and can indicate library users' real needs and desires. This study investigates the ways in which video games depict characters using libraries to seek and use information.

A qualitative content analysis approach incorporating methods from information studies and game studies was applied. Tancheva's (2005) semiotic analysis of fictional libraries and Carr's (2019) textual approach provided the framing for the unique aspects of video games and their meanings. Carroll (2021)'s character analysis and Chatman (1996)'s theory on insiders–outsiders dynamic underpinned the data collection and analysis. The purposive sample included 15 video games released since 2010.

Video games depict game characters visiting libraries to solve short-term problems, to gain knowledge to improve themselves or to bond with others. Protagonists are often depicted as adventurers or outsiders who must adapt to unfamiliar places and situations to achieve their wider objectives. In these games, libraries provide useful documents, spaces or helpful guides and intellectuals who assist the protagonists. As outsiders, the protagonists seek information in libraries to help them learn about their environments and to immerse themselves in the local histories and cultures in their worlds. Overall, these depictions highlight both short- and long-term benefits of library use.

As with existing studies, the ways in which fictional library use appear in video games can suggest real needs and desires among library users. The findings from this study emphasise the importance of library services and spaces that help users both address short-term problems and immerse themselves in local concerns, with longer-term goals. Applying different research methods or lenses to analysing video games could deepen our understanding of what library users think and feel when they seek and use information in libraries.

The law-oriented short stories and novels of lawyer/English professor John William Corrington are receiving increasing attention from legal scholars. However, no one has analyzed the science fiction screenplays he co-wrote with his wife, Joyce, from a legal perspective. This article analyzes two such screenplays and concludes that they are “Socratic” texts whose narrative structures and epistemological processes work in much the same way that the traditional participatory exchange works in law school. My analysis explores the links between law, allegory and science fiction as intersecting methods to imagine the possibilities for the future.