Search results

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

While most studies concerning gender differences in small business performance have emerged from developed countries, how applicable the results are to transitional economies, where there still exist significant differences in the socialisation of men and women, is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of gender on the performance of small businesses in Ghana by exploring the impact of personal values on business owners' choice of strategies, specifically asking, do women and men pursue different business strategies, how do personal values influence their strategies and how do their strategies affect performance?

A total of 600 owner‐managers of small retail shops in the Greater Accra Region were surveyed. Results were analysed using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modelling.

The results suggest that there are gender differences in personal values, which lead to different strategies adopted by women and men, which in turn influence performance; specifically Ghanaian women owner‐managers are more risk‐averse than Ghanaian men, and this affects their pursuit of specific functional strategies and ultimately their performance in varied ways.

Further studies will need to replicate these findings with other types of businesses, in other locations.

The results suggest that closer attention should be given to developing the entrepreneurial values of women if the goal of greater economic development is to be achieved in transitional economies.

Limited research has been conducted on women and men small business owners in transitional economies such as Ghana. This empirical research provides important insights into this field.

This study seeks to investigate strategies for building personal relationships with an organization's members, and to examine the outcomes of personal relationships in an advocacy organization.

The case study includes interviews with 39 staff people at national, state, and affiliate levels of the organization; 58 members; and five former members, for a total of 102 participants. Document analysis and participant observation were supplemental methods.

The following strategies for cultivating personal relationships were identified: direct engagement, task sharing, constitutive rhetoric, peer linking, hat‐in‐your‐hand, investment in local relationships, and targeting of aware affiliates for diversity efforts. To contribute to the discussion about the value of personal relationships in organizations, the study also investigated the outcomes of personal relationships. The outcomes found in the study include affective commitment, political leverage, social capital, member recruitment, and member retention.

Although many of the cultivation strategies and outcomes are likely to apply to various contexts, some of them may be specific to the context of an advocacy organization that has a grass‐roots culture and layers of leadership, such as local, state, and national offices.

Organizations can read the study to identify potential strategies they can use to cultivate strong personal relationships with their stakeholders.

The study produces new cultivation strategies and outcomes for personal relationships and engages in a critical discussion of the existing literature.

This study investigates the personal branding strategies utilized by Iranian professional athletes. It also examines the challenges these athletes face in attempting to create a personal brand. For example, unlike their global counterparts, Iranian athletes’ access to social media is limited to only Instagram, due to a ban in Iran on the use of Facebook and Twitter. This specific situation provides unique opportunities and interactions in the personal branding process.

Utilizing a criterion purposive sample of Iranian professional athletes, the authors conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews to understand the branding strategies and challenges of these athletes.

Two categories (branding strategies and cultural/societal challenges), along with Six themes emerged. The categories were derived based on the literature review and the subsequent research questions.

This paper provides valuable information on challenges and opportunities for athletes' personal branding from international perspectives. Also, the results of the study broaden our understanding of how athletes' personal branding can function in different countries and contexts. Findings will provide governing bodies and sport marketers have a better understanding of athletes' social media usage.

A presentation and critique of techniques, relevant research literature, and advice commonly viewed as facilitating women′s success in management. The strands of this advice have been conceptualised into six broad strategies which have been labelled as: “learn male rules”, “superwoman”, “personal change”, “female niche”, “reformist”, and “women‐centred”. Each strategy is described and then the positive and negative implications for women are considered, both at a personal level and in terms of the likely impact on social change. This article aims to provide a clearer conceptual framework through which women can assess the available advice and choose a mix of strategies which is most appropriate for their own situation.

Leadership development is a significant issue in public libraries and library administrators debate, among other topics, how to achieve it for the middle-level manager. At the present time, library organizations use leadership and management workshops, seminars, and institutes to assist with managers’ organizational learning processes. Current literature indicates that additional strategies such as career planning, mentoring, networking, acquiring adequate qualifications and experience, professional involvement, and continuing education are used not only to facilitate middle-level managers’ career development, but also to help organizations fill the leadership gaps within their ranks.

Low-status expatriates (LSEs), a highly vulnerable group, have been significantly affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores the stressors that continue to impact LSEs in Germany and their access to support during the pandemic.

An interpretivist, qualitative research approach was employed. The authors utilised a multi-level data collection strategy that combined interview and questionnaire data from 16 expatriates and 16 social actors. The data were analysed using a directed content analysis method.

LSEs experienced high levels of stress that were further exacerbated by the introduction of COVID-19 control measures that were intended to slow the spread of the virus. LSEs are particularly vulnerable due to their overrepresentation in precarious professions and the associated job insecurity. Critically, external support from employers and social actors is generally lacking, leaving LSEs to rely on their own personal coping strategies in difficult times.

The earlier Expatriate crisis Framework highlights the importance of external support for expatriates. However, this framework does not sufficiently account for personal coping strategies that are particularly important for individuals that cannot access such external support (e.g. LSEs). Herein, the authors offer a revised framework that is more applicable to LSEs.

Current practices are problematic, necessitating policy changes at both governmental and organisational levels.

This study provides unique insights into the ways in which the pandemic has affected the already precarious position of LSEs and identifies the importance of personal coping strategies in the absence of external sources of support.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the associations of personal archiving behaviors to factors and challenges that have been assumed to affect personal digital archiving strategies.

This study created an online survey to understand general patterns of personal digital archiving practices and related phenomena. The survey was employed to investigate to what extent people show a certain behavior or feel certain factors and challenge when archiving personal digital content.

Some of the findings of this study regarding specific personal digital archiving practices were in accordance with existing studies. However, the associations between digital archiving challenges and archiving practices were not observed statistically significantly as assumed in previous studies. General technology efficacy and the awareness of the importance of personal records appeared to influence personal archiving practices.

This study used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As this is not a commonly used internet service, the workers here could have higher than average levels of internet efficacy. This possibility may have affected the demographics, and the survey responses may be biased in this respect.

As the study results suggest that technology efficacy and personal heritage awareness are the influencing factors of personal digital archiving, these are the areas where information professionals can involve in assisting users for future cultural heritage.

This is the first study that develops measures for personal digital archiving related practices and perceptions that the previous qualitative studies have identified. With these measures, it examines the general status of individuals’ archiving strategies and the overall associations of digital archiving challenges as well as looking into other technological and personal factors.

This paper aims on one hand to provide a comparison of mobile consumers' perceptions regarding privacy issues in three different national and cultural contexts (England, France and Romania), and on the other hand, to investigate the strategic approach taken by respondents for protecting their privacy.

Both secondary and primary data are collected and analysed. Secondary data collection focuses on the topic of consumer privacy issues in mobile commerce. Primary data collection was realised between March‐June 2008, when 300 mobile device users answered to a face‐to‐face questionnaire, in each of the three investigated countries.

Both the country of origin and the personal profile of users, are influencing their perception regarding privacy threats in the mobile commerce environment, as well as the privacy protection strategy they adopt.

This study has an exploratory approach, the results being mostly descriptive. The findings can provide a useful insight for marketers, legislators and consumers regarding the privacy related concerns and behaviours in the mobile commerce environment.

This study realises a multi‐country comparative analysis regarding the perceptions of mobile device users, and investigates the influence of their profile on the personal privacy protection strategy adopted in the mobile commerce environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether university students' smoking behaviour is associated with higher levels of stress and depression directly, or indirectly, via the mediation of coping, personal beliefs and social support.

The study design involves a cross‐sectional survey. Structural equation modelling was employed to explore the relationships between smoking behaviour, stress and depression via the mediating effects of coping resources, personal beliefs and social support.

The higher the stress and depression levels, the more likely the respondents' were to adopt disengagement coping strategies and to engage in smoking behaviour. Stress was not found to have a significant direct effect on smoking behaviour when depression, active coping abilities and social support were included as mediators in the model. Thus, if stress is high yet coping skills are also high and personal beliefs are anti‐smoking, the likelihood of smoking was low.

Disengagement coping strategies significantly increased the likelihood of smoking when stress heightened depression level. However, stress did not independently increase the chance of smoking when active coping and social support were moderating the effects of depression on smoking behaviour. Personal beliefs also acted as an independent contributor to increase the likelihood of smoking when pro‐smoking beliefs were held by individuals. Overall, this study suggests that personal coping strategies and personal beliefs, with social support, are important protective mechanisms through which stress and depression influence smoking behaviour.

Health promotion programmes to encourage smoking cessation should therefore include measures to encourage young adults to adopt active coping strategies (e.g. exercise, recreational activities) to make interventions effective in reducing smoking rate.

This study identifies important mechanisms that underpin smoking behaviour among university students. The results provide evidence that supports the resilience perspective that personal coping resources, personal beliefs and protective factors, such as social support, are important factors either to lead people to adopt smoking behaviour, or to decrease the likelihood of smoking.