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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has greatly impacted society and academic life and research practices. This study is an attempt to comprehend whether a global emergency of COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on researcher international collaboration. The authors analyze the research collaboration before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how scientists collaborated within their own nation's borders and beyond.

The authors analyze the research collaboration before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how scientists collaborated within their own nation's borders and beyond. The authors collected a dataset of research publications published in journals in the research area of business and economics and indexed in the WoS Core Collection database by researchers from 11 countries (Austria, Denmark, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Korea (South), Mexico, Pakistan, Romania and Vietnam). In total, 14,824 publication records were considered for the literature analysis. This study presented the scientometric analysis of these publications using bibliometric, statistical, factor analysis and network analysis methods. The results are evaluated and interpreted in the context of the Hofstede's model of cultural dimensions. The results of this study provide evidence to research management to properly allocate their efforts to improve the researcher cooperation during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to overcome its negative outcomes in the years to come.

The results of our study show that uncertainty avoidance as the cultural factor defined by the Hofstede's model has significantly influenced the properties of research collaboration networks in the domain of business and economics. Uncertainty avoidance focuses on how cultures adapt to changes and cope with uncertainty, while the global COVID-19 pandemic introduced a lot of change and uncertainty all levels of society around the world.

The study exclusively examines 14,824 research outputs which have been indexed in the WoS Core Collection database from 2019 till 15 November 2020 and only covered one research area (business economics). Thus, documents published in any other different channels and sources which are not covered in WoS are excluded from this study. The authors have analyzed the publications from just 11 countries, which represent a small part of the global research output. Also, the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model is not a unique way to study cultural characteristics at the national level.

The results of this study will provide evidence to research management to properly allocate their efforts to improve the researcher cooperation during the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to overcome its negative outcomes in the years to come.

Considering the global impact and social distress due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, this study is significant in the present scenario for identifying the changes in the characteristics of research collaboration networks of 11 diverse (in terms of geographical distribution and cultural differences in terms of the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model) countries between 2019 (the year before COVID-19) and 2020 (the year of COVID-19), which has not been done before.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony with the goal of making a nuanced contribution to the discussion of online participation and engagement afforded by social media.

This paper applies a qualitative approach of sequential video analysis to the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony interpretive segment.

Despite the Olympics being a “networked media sport” where countries compete against each another in various sporting events, the paper argues that the overarching narrative of the London 2012 opening ceremony is one that breaks down traditional barriers, while simultaneously situating the individual at the centre of “networked spectatorship”.

Beyond merely watching media events, the paper proposes the term, “networked spectators” to identify how people participate in the content creation, social media moderation, and conversation using social media. Networked spectatorship moves away from the binary of active and passive participation, and rather reflects on the multiple ways people can engage in media events, which specifically includes social media monitoring/moderation as a form of participation.

This paper problematises student support in higher education during the Covid-19 crisis and proposes an original approach of social network analysis for developing effective support for students from different socio-economic backgrounds.

In this forward-thinking essay, the authors draw on theoretical ideas from Hannah Arendt in conceptualising the destructive and productive nature of societal crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. We also draw on literature on social network analysis in exploring student support.

The authors propose a number of recommendations for university staff to consider when developing effective student support, ranging from nurturing their own professional capital to mapping student support networks and the role of faculty within these.

This paper emphasises the importance of developing effective student support that works for students from different socio-economic backgrounds. This is essential to avoid regression in widening participation policies and practices, and to promote inclusive university environments.

This paper aims to investigate the extent professionals from the vocational sector are networked individuals. The authors explore how professionals use their personal networks to engage in a wide variety of learning activities and examine what social mechanisms influence professionals’ agency to form personal informal learning networks.

This study applied a mixed-method approach to data collection. Social network data were gathered among school professionals working in the vocational sector. Ego-network analysis was performed. A total of 24 in-depth, semi-structured, qualitative interviews were analyzed.

This study found that networked individualism is not represented to its full potential in the vocational sector. However, it is important to form informal learning ties with different stakeholders because all types of informal learning ties serve different learning purposes. The extent to which social mechanisms (i.e. proximity, trust, level of expertise and homophily) influence professionals’ agency to form informal learning ties differs depending on the stakeholder with whom the informal learning ties are formed.

This study excludes the investigation of social mechanisms that shape learning through more impersonal virtual learning resources, such as social media or expert forums. Moreover, the authors only included individual- and dyadic-level social mechanisms.

By investigating the social mechanisms that shape informal learning ties, this study provides insights how professionals can be stimulated to build rich personal learning networks in the vocational sector.

The authors extend earlier research with in-depth information on the different types of learning activities professionals engage in in their personal learning networks with different stakeholders. The ego-network perspective reveals how different social mechanisms influence professionals’ agency to shape informal learning networks with different stakeholders.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Informal learning ties posses scope to play a substantial role in the development of professionals. Creating such ties with different key internal and external stakeholders provides a valuable source of learning opportunities. Different social mechanisms can influence network creation and enhance the quality of learning that emerges as a result.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that affect knowledge‐sharing attitudes in Malaysia, with emphasis on a manufacturing firm and how this attitude influences their intention to share knowledge.

This is a survey research conducted within a manufacturing firm. The questionnaire was developed by adapting items and concepts from prior works, and by developing a new variable, kiasuism. A census sampling method was used to select participants for this research. The data derive from a case analysis in a manufacturing company in Malaysia. The analysis was based on 141 valid responses.

The findings indicate that collectivism, social network, social trust, shared goal, incentive systems, kiasuism and self‐efficacy emerged significant except for individualism. A unique finding is that kiasuism emerged as proposed, which suggest that future works could focus more on this variable to highlight its impact in a firm's ability to share knowledge. Overall, the data support our framework and indicate that knowledge sharing among employees in Malaysia's private companies is gaining grounds.

The limitations of this research include the case study approach adopted, which does not allow the generalization of the results beyond that of the firm being studied. The implications emanating from this research is that the ability of a firm, especially electronic manufacturing firms, to harness internal resources and capabilities to enhance knowledge sharing among employees, would be critical for the firm to maintain a competitive position in the marketplace.

This paper provides specific backgrounds of the key factors that could affect the effective implementation of knowledge‐sharing initiatives in a firm, particularly those in the manufacturing sector. The findings suggest key implications for practice and research involved in knowledge‐sharing activities in their firms and related initiatives.

To provide an explicit model to address the relationships between the structural characteristics of a network and the diffusion of innovations through it. Further, based on the above relationships, this research tries to provide a way to infer diffusion curve parameters (innovation coefficient and imitation coefficient) from network structure (e.g. centralization).

Based on the network and innovation literatures, we develop a model explicitly relating the structural properties of the network to its innovation and imitation potential, and in turn to the observed diffusion parameters (innovation and imitation coefficients). We first employ current theoretical and empirical results to develop postulates linking six key network properties to innovation and imitation outcomes, and then seek to model their effects in an integrative manner. We argue that the innovation and imitation potentials of a network may be increased by strategically re‐designing the underlying network structure. We validated the model by searching the published empirical literature for available published data on network properties and innovation and imitation coefficients.

We validated the model by searching the published empirical literature for available published data on network properties and innovation and imitation coefficients. The results reported from various relevant research papers support our model.

This research shows that the innovation and imitation potentials of a network may be increased by strategically re‐designing the underlying network structure; hence, provide guidelines for new product managers to enhance the performance of innovative products by re‐design the underlying network structure.

The model developed in this paper is a breaking through result of synthesizing various traditions of diffusion research, ranging from anthropology and economics to marketing which were developed independently. The research explicitly modeled the diffusion process in terms of the underlying network structure of the relevant population allowing managers and researchers to directly link the diffusion parameters to the structural properties of the network. By doing so, it added value by making it possible to infer diffusion potential from directly measurable network properties. Vis‐à‐vis the network diffusion literature in particular, we added value by “unpacking” the diffusion process into innovation and imitation processes that form the building blocks of contagion. Moreover, we developed a holistic structural model of network diffusion which integrates the several network properties that have hitherto been studied separately.

The purpose of this paper is to review the study of social capital focused on the level at which it is embodied, cross-comparing two prominent camps that have emerged in the social capital literature: a communal level and an individual level.

This paper reviews the intersections and departures between communal level and individual level conceptualizations of social capital according to the social dynamics of action within social exchanges that they stimulate, the processes by which social capital is activated/mobilized and the rewards they yield, and their linkages to inequality through network diversity.

This paper articulates new directions for future research in social capital: more analytical precision for studying returns to social capital; more efforts to transcend the individual-communal divide; the depreciation of social capital or tie decay; and recognizing the importance of ties whose value does not come from the ability to provide instrumental gain, but just from their very existence.

Social capital has informed many influential agendas in the social sciences, but the sheer volume of which has largely gone unscoped. This paper reviews this literature to provide an accessible introduction to social capital, organized by social processes foundational to sociology and a novel contribution to the literature by articulating new directions for future research in the area.

The purpose of this study is to capture the variation in entrepreneurs' understandings and experiences through which they contextualise cultural factors within a national setting to articulate how they use their knowledge and social capabilities to advance their activity.

This study adopts an interpretivist approach through which culture is investigated at the individual level. Phenomenography is used as a methodology to capture the variation in the entrepreneurs own understanding and experiences of the cultural factors.

The findings introduce four different understandings and eight experiences to explore how entrepreneurs contextualise culture in their environment. The findings present a change in the role of culture in influencing entrepreneurial social capabilities and confidence; and a change in the local culture from collectivism to individualism. Furthermore, the findings show how entrepreneurs use their knowledge, experience and understanding to achieve socially driven acts to pursue economic value, integration and acceptance.

We encourage further research in the Middle-East region to examine the model and identify other factors that affect entrepreneurial behaviour, including the important developments with regard to women entrepreneurs. While Jordan has embarked on introducing policy level changes to support entrepreneurship, the findings report that the culture of collectivism is changing. This requires a longitudinal research to capture the change and its implication on entrepreneurial activity in Jordan and its impact on unemployment and economic value.

In terms of practical contribution, the study introduces a policy level contribution by answering the question presented by the GEM report (2014) pointing out the high entrepreneurial opportunity identification in Jordan, yet the country has the lowest entrepreneurial activity in the region. Although the report pointed out issues in policy and institutional support the role of culture was not addressed. The study recommendation is to celebrate and entrepreneurial activity and introduce entrepreneurial studies at schools to influence a positive change.

We addressed some of the several calls to further investigate and understand the role of culture, how entrepreneurs contextualise it (Foss and Klein, 2012; Garud et al., 2016; Zahra et al., 2014; Welter et al., 2019). Our research provides a fertile ground for further enquiries that pose questions such as “What other factors do entrepreneurs contextualise in their environment?” and “how these factors are contextualised?” The use of phenomenography as an interpretive methodology might therefore assist in revealing further shared understandings of the variation in entrepreneurs' behaviours. Further research on capturing “understanding” presents the complex forms of interactions and mechanism in the cognitive world of the entrepreneurs (Barandiaran et al., 2009; Brannback and Carsrud, 2016).

In this study, phenomenography has enabled new insights into the multiplicity and idiosyncratic role of culture within a national setting and introduces a model of social capability and integration which capture the contextualisation of cultural factors. The study contributes to entrepreneurship literature as follows: first, the implicit assumption in this research is that culture is an active construct that entrepreneurs understand, experience and also influence; second, the variation in entrepreneurs' outcomes is based on their subjective and personal understandings which form the ways of contextualisation. Third, the variation in understanding and experiences captures the different ways entrepreneurs use their social capabilities to achieve integration and economic value.