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This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework and presents a number of propositions relating to why and how multinational companies (MNCs) engage in social innovations. The central focus is on the role of MNC knowledge, networks and power for their involvement in social innovations.

The authors combine literature on social innovations, business innovations and MNC literature, and present a number of propositions dealing with the link between MNC knowledge, networks and power-relations and their potential involvement in social innovations.

The authors emphasize that when social innovations are embraced by MNCs, the way that these corporations use their knowledge, networks and existing power-relations needs to be adapted to the new conditions present in the social innovation arena.

The main limitation of this work is that the propositions are based on anecdotal evidence and that they are restricted to literature revolving around a few theoretical concepts (knowledge, networks, power). Against this, the authors suggest that to address the call for more empirical work on MNCs engagement in social innovation, these concepts could be used as a starting point in future empirical investigations.

The paper brings together and outlines a theoretical framework based on three theoretical approaches to the MNC as suggested by the literature: the knowledge-based MNC, differentiated MNC and political MNC. Based on these three perspectives, the key contribution of this paper is to develop a broader understanding of why and how MNCs engage in social innovation and the potential underlying liabilities for this involvement.

Surprise family vacations have become increasingly prevalent in today’s digitally mediated consumer culture. Drawing on a performance-based view of tourism, this paper aims to explore the performance practices and embodied experiences by which young consumers are the recipients of last-minute surprise vacations.

YouTube offers a space for examining surprise family vacations, as captured in real time by consumers. The visual elements and verbal discourses of 139 surprise family vacation reveal videos were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Findings suggest that surprise family vacations are characterized by three performance practices in which embodied tensions arise between normative expectations and unanticipated experiences: executing the reveal (scripted act versus improvised act), announcing the destination (absolute ideal versus relative ideal) and reacting to the surprise (initial acceptance versus initial rejection).

By exploring a phenomenon in which children’s anticipation for a vacation is largely absent or limited, surprise family vacations reveal culturally idealized norms and performative practices in family tourism. Positioning a family vacation as an offering or surprise for the children is distinct from previous research, which suggests family vacations are co-created. Children of all ages experience tourism-related stresses and anxieties.

The primary practical contribution for marketers lies in revealing how the material and performative practices of a family vacation begins even before a family enters its tourist destination. Service providers and retailers may provide offerings for families to support surprise family vacations, particularly in an increasingly digital culture. This study also reveals opportunities for parents to strategically discuss surprise vacations with their kids.

This study captures the liminal moment in which a child’s tourism journey begins. By using YouTube as a resource for digital ethnography, researchers can better understand how families discuss, negotiate and mediate tourism-oriented concepts, through their lived experiences.

The use of recycled aggregates (RA) has been explored to lead to a more sustainable future. The paper investigates on a sustainable concrete mix incorporating steel fibres (SF) and RA to provide an alternative to traditional natural aggregate concrete for structural applications. This paper aims to explore the feasibility of combining RA and SF in structural applications in terms of strength, cost and industry perspectives.

A mixed research approach is established with two phases. Phase 1 aims to identify an optimum material combination that satisfies the structural strength requirements and to identify the costs in its optimum combination. Phase 2 involves qualitative interviews with key industry parties to explore their perspective and identify various enablers and barriers for this material.

The optimum combination of 30 per cent RA replacement and 0.3 SF volume content has been identified through laboratory testing. It was noted that there would be a direct additional cost because of SF addition. However, when other benefits such as reduction in transportation costs and landfill dumping fees were considered, an overall cost saving could be achieved. Consequently, the key industry practitioners’ perspectives for this material have been gathered through qualitative interviews. Several enablers and barriers were identified through these interviews.

Even though, there are various research attempts on improving RA for structural purpose by adding different additives, a holistic study that incorporate cost effects and the industry perspectives was lacking and is addressed in this current study. In particular, industry perspectives lead to refocus research directions and get closer to the realisation of a sustainable construction industry.

This paper aims to explain the discrepancy between pro-environmental intentions and behaviors with moderating effects of two socio-cultural values (espoused individualism and faith in others) on the link between intentions and actual behaviors to save electricity.

An online survey of 303 consumers in Hong Kong with a structured questionnaire was used to collect the data to test all the hypothesized relationships.

Attitude toward saving electricity has a significant positive effect on the intentions to save electricity, but subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have no such effect on intentions but do positively affect the actual electricity saving behavior. Finally, the link between intentions and behavior to save electricity is negatively moderated by espoused individualism and positively by faith in others.

This study was conducted with a sample of consumers in Hong Kong; hence, its findings may not be generalizable to other countries.

This study provides new insights into the link between pro-environmental intentions and behaviors by looking beyond the theory of planned behavior and exploring the moderating role of socio-cultural values on the intention-behavior link.

This paper aims to identify the intellectual structure of four leading hospitality journals over 40 years by applying mixed-method approach, using both machine learning and traditional statistical analyses.

Abstracts from all 4,139 articles published in four top hospitality journals were analyzed using the structured topic modeling and inferential statistics. Topic correlation and community detection were applied to identify strengths of correlations and sub-groups of topics. Trend visualization and regression analysis were used to quantify the effects of the metadata (i.e. year of publication and journal) on topic proportions.

The authors found 50 topics and eight subgroups in the hospitality journals. Different evolutionary patterns in topic popularity were demonstrated, thereby providing the insights for popular research topics over time. The significant differences in topical proportions were found across the four leading hospitality journals, suggesting different foci in research topics in each journal.

Combining machine learning techniques with traditional statistics demonstrated potential for discovering valuable insights from big text data in hospitality and tourism research contexts. The findings of this study may serve as a guide to understand the trends in the research field as well as the progress of specific areas or subfields.

It is the first attempt to apply topic modeling to academic publications and explore the effects of article metadata with the hospitality literature.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a novel manufacturing process for a biochip with a multi‐electrode array (MEA) that is specifically designed for use in characterising cardio‐active substances and to demonstrate a novel proposed solution prototype that has been constructed to meet the needs of end‐users.

Practical problems encountered with conventional MEA biochips are described and a novel biochip design to tackle these problems is presented. The manufacturing approach used to produce the prototypes of that design is described and depicted.

The novel prototype MEA biochips were successfully manufactured using conventional electronics manufacturing approaches. Prototypes demonstrated limited successes in the early stages of testing. Further revisions of the feature geometry are required to implement an alternative MEA biochip that is suitably reliable.

Basic photolithography techniques have been used to construct a base substrate for proof‐of‐principle studies. Increased sophistication in manufacturing stages is required in future iterations of the proposed concept.

This paper introduces a problem encountered by MEA system adopters that requires a suitable solution. The scale up of an electronics manufacturing process‐based solution to the problems described holds much promise for the screening of new chemical entities.

Luxury brands seek to differentiate themselves from competitors by engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Although many luxury brands participate in CSR activities, it is unclear if luxury brands communicate these CSR activities to consumers. Therefore, this study aims to explore two questions: are luxury jewelry brands communicating CSR (including women’s empowerment) in their advertising? And how should luxury jewelry brands communicate CSR messages in their advertising?

This paper uses a content analysis of luxury jewelry print advertisements and in-depth interviews with 20 female jewelry consumers analyzed using grounded theory to construct the luxury brand CSR advertising strategies theory.

Very few (3%) of print advertisements contain CSR messages, including femvertising and the theory presents four paths for brands to consider when promoting CSR practices, namely, ethical sourcing, cause-related marketing product, a signal of product care and quality and signal of an authentic relationship with the consumer.

The model provides four potential CSR advertising strategies and guidelines luxury jewelry brands can use to create successful advertising campaigns.

Luxury jewelry advertising has not been empirically examined and the study fills gaps in the understanding of luxury brands’ communication strategies. It adds to the knowledge and theorizing of the use and appropriateness of CSR appeals in a luxury brand context.

This study aims to propose a novel way to explore the narrative structure of advertisements, a nascent area of research, through the protagonist’s emotional arc progression.

The multi-methods approach is used. In Study 1, the authors explore the basic universal emotional arcs through the analysis of narrative advertisements from six key economies. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors experimentally test hypotheses concerning the narrative structure and viewers’ attitudes toward the narrative using representative samples (317 and 193 ads, respectively).

The authors identify five broad emotional arcs of the protagonist in audiovisual advertisements. Different emotional arcs are found to induce different attitudes in the audience. Narratives ending in a positive mode and the narrative arcs with higher emotional shifts are more favorably evaluated by the audience.

The present study is limited to textual stimuli tested in a US population and does not consider protagonist characteristic portrayal.

Understanding consumer preferences for different emotional arcs can help practitioners to develop more clutter-breaking and relevant advertisements.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the narrative structure theory in the context of advertisements using a positivist approach.

The study's goal was to identify the factors contributing to the practical completion of Kaizen events (KEs). The effect of the work-study man's characteristics, the supervisor's conduct and the autonomy of the Kaizen team are analysed in this study.

Data were collected from 249 respondents working in the manufacturing sector in India, mainly those who had been involved in Kaizen projects. Three-step procedures, namely, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and partial least squares, have been applied to test the research hypotheses through structural equational modelling.

The exploratory factor analysis extracted in-role performance, creative performance and human aspect as latent variables explaining work-study man's performance (eigenvalue = 1). The study's findings indicate that the performance of work-study man (in-role, creative and human) and supervisors' conduct is directly related to the success of KEs. It was shown that supervisors might influence the outcomes of KEs only by moderating the human aspects. Additionally, the degree of autonomy of the Kaizen team was found having a significant positive relationship with the success of KEs.

The current study suggests that in-role and creative performance are prime assets of a work-study man. At the same time, the human aspect is a delicate issue that can affect the supervisor's behaviour. Therefore, the study implies that work-study men have the tactics and abilities to work with other co-workers to make a Kaizen project successful.

Although the significance of Kaizen projects has been widely emphasised, past research has failed to establish what factors contribute to the success of Kaizen efforts. Similarly, the supervisor's critical role has been highlighted several times. However, it is unclear how their conduct influences the relationship between work-study man's performance and the effectiveness of Kaizen projects. This study contributes significantly to organisational culture and human resource management by answering these questions.