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This paper aims to investigate how direct mail consumption contributes to brand relationship quality. Store flyers and other direct mailings continue to play a significant role in many companies’ communication strategies. Research on this topic predominantly investigates driving store traffic and sales. Less is known regarding the consumer side, such as the value that consumers may derive from the consumption of direct mailings and the effects of such a value on brand relationship quality. To address this limitation, this paper tests a causal model of the contribution of direct mail value to brand commitment, drawing on a value framework that integrates social theory of engagement regimes and literature on experiential customer value.

The empirical work of this paper is based on a rigorous four-study mixed methods design, involving qualitative study, confirmatory factor analysis and partial least squares structural modeling.

The authors develop two second-order formatively designed scales – familiar value and planned value scales – that illustrate the role of engagement regimes in consumer behavior. Although both types of value contribute equally to direct mail attachment, they exert contrasting effects on other mediational consumer responses, such as reading and gratitude. Finally, the proposed theoretical model appears to be robust in predicting customers’ brand commitment.

This study provides new insights into the research on consumer value and brand relational communication.

This study is the first to consider consumer benefits from the social perspective of engagement regimes.

This paper aims to explore gender and legitimacy in family business succession.

Within the theoretical framework of French pragmatic sociology, the authors conceptualise the family business as the locus where two regimes of engagement are present, generating the co-presence of two orders of worth, namely the domestic and the industrial. Taking a processual approach to entrepreneuring, and using case studies of small enterprises in Italy, this paper explores the case of daughters taking over the family firms.

The paper shows how the daughters’ perceived gender inequality in the succession process is justified and how the justification work and the production of legitimacy are accomplished, shifting from one order of worth to the other.

The value of the contribution consists in pointing to how gender inequality is reproduced and justified inside the family business. The dual regime of engagement is what justifies the reproduction of a specific gender regime within the family business. Moreover, the paper adds a “gender” perspective to French pragmatist sociology.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an unexploited conceptual pragmatic sociological framework for analyses of action strategies among social assistance recipients, who are affected by contemporary politics of retrenchment.

Noting that existing literature on resistance and coping is mostly concerned with either collective public resistance or sub-public individualised coping strategies, the paper turns to theoretical insights from newer French pragmatic sociologist Laurent Thévenot, enabling the researcher to dissolve the stark boundaries between private/public and coping/resistance. The use of the concepts is demonstrated through a case study analysis of the various actions of Danish social assistance recipients, who were recently affected by a harsh workfare initiative.

The empirical demonstration points to a plurality of individualised strategies of action, taken on by the affected social assistance recipients. Thereby it points to some advantages of the proposed framework, as it makes visible the versatility of the contemporary “welfare client”, as he or she dynamically changes the scope of action and moves between the private and the public and between coping and resistance.

The paper applies hitherto unexploited concepts from French pragmatic sociology to strategies of action among welfare recipients in times of welfare retrenchment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore specific instances of junior doctors' responsibility. Learning is often understood to be a prerequisite for managing responsibility and risk but this paper aims to argue that this is insufficient because learning is integral to the management of responsibility and risk.

This is a “collective” case study of doctors designed to focus on the interrelationships between individual professionals and complex work settings. The authors focussed on two key points of transition: the transition to beginning clinical practice which is the move from medical student to foundation training (F1) and the transition from generalist to specialist clinical practice.

Responsibility in clinical settings is immediate, concrete, demands response and (in) action has an effect. Responsibility is learnt and is not always apparent; it shifts depending on time of day/night and who else is present. Responsibility does not necessarily increase incrementally and can decrease; it can be perceived differently by different actors. Responsibility is experienced as personal although it is distributed.

This detailed examination of practice has enabled the authors to foreground the particularities, urgency and fluidity of everyday clinical practice. It recasts their understandings of responsibility – and managing risk – as involving learning in practice. This is a critical insight because it suggests that the theoretical basis for the current approach to managing risk and responsibility is insufficient. This has significant implications for policy, employment, education and practice of new doctors and for the management of responsibility and risk.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the identity work undertaken by female next generation to navigate (in)visibility in family businesses with male successors. To enhance understanding of gendered identity work in family businesses, the authors offer important insights into how female next generation use (in)visibility to establish legitimacy and exercise power and humility in partnership with male next generation in their family business.

This empirical qualitative paper draws upon in-depth interviews with 14 next generation female leaders.

This study offers a model to show how female next generation establish their legitimacy amongst male next generation in power via a careful balancing act between vying for visibility (trouble) and forgoing visibility (exclusion). These female next generation gained acceptance by endorsing their own leadership identity and exercising humility in partnership or by endorsing their brother's leadership identity and exercising power in partnership.

This study highlights the need for the incumbent generation to prepare successors, regardless of gender, via equal opportunities for business exposure and leadership preparation. This study also shows that vocalizing female-centric issues and highlighting hidden power imbalances should be led by the entire management team and not simply delegated to a “family woman” in the management team to spearhead.

This study advances understanding of gender dynamics and identity in the family business literature by identifying specific strategies utilized by female next generation to navigate (in)visibility in family businesses with male successors.

Human beings spend about a third of their day working, so it is very important that they are integrated into a good community work environment. When the setting is teleworking in a family and housing context, it is important to keep a good environment and also a good physical, psychological and ergonomic aspects to attain job performance. The purpose of this paper is to characterize teleworking carried out in Portuguese communities in the context of the state of emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A survey questionnaire was used, which analyzed general information about teleworking and the individual’s adaptation process and the difficulties they faced during the teleworking period. The sample consists of 359 individuals aged 18 years or over, who were teleworking in their homes and in a family environment.

The results show that adapting to teleworking was easy or very easy and that it happened very quickly. The main difficulties encountered by the individuals were the lack of professional interaction/communication with coworkers, the lack of resources related to support infrastructures, such as the internet or a printer, and the reconciliation of teleworking with family life/household chores/dedication to children and time/schedule management.

This study hopes to contribute to the increase of the scientific knowledge in the teleworking field and to allow companies to rethink the teleworking strategies to optimize resources and costs and to improve the organization’s productivity without harming the quality of life and well-being of their workers.

Literature is not consistent in discussing the implications of teleworking on work–life balance (WLB). Even though teleworking may enhance work arrangements’ flexibility, it blurs boundaries between life and work, endangering the individual WLB. The paper intends to illuminate this issue, moving forward our understanding of teleworking’s implications using the Social Exchange Theory framework.

Secondary data were collected from Eurofound’s sixth European Working Condition Survey. A large sample of Europeans (n = 16,473) was involved in this study. The authors designed a serial mediation analysis to investigate the direct and indirect effects of teleworking on WLB. The authors included employees’ job motivation and job satisfaction as intervening variables that mediate the relationship between teleworking and WLB.

The authors found teleworking to negatively affect WLB, putting under stress the teleworkers’ ability to handle the interplay between work and life. However, the serial mediation analysis pointed out that teleworking triggers an improvement of job motivation, which, in turn, boosts job satisfaction. Increased job motivation and job satisfaction nurture positive employees’ perception of WLB.

The study results invite us to pay attention to the complex interplay between teleworking and WLB, emphasizing the mediating role of job motivation and job satisfaction. As a flexible work arrangement, teleworking may increase the employees’ sense of control over their work, which leads to better perceived WLB. However, confounding the boundaries between work and daily life, it may nourish work-to-life and life-to-work conflicts.

This paper advances what is currently known about teleworking’s implications on WLB, envisioning avenues for further conceptual and empirical developments.

This paper aims to shed light on the perception of the consequences of implementing home teleworking (TW) for employers and employees amid the pandemic. By doing so, the research analyzes the factors that explain employers' and employees' perceptions of home TW and the symmetry of their impact on its acceptance and rejection.

The analysis is done over the survey “Trends in the digital society during SARS-COV-2 crisis in Spain” by the Spanish “Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.” The explanatory variables were selected and classified using the well-known taxonomy of Baruch and Nicholson (i.e. individual factors, family/home, organizational and job-related).

The global judgment of HTW is positive, but factors such as gender, age, children in care or being an employer nuance that perception. While some factors, such as the attitude of employees toward information communication technologies (ICTs), perceived productivity or the distance from home to work, have a significant link with both positive and negative perceptions of HTW, other factors can only explain either positive or negative perceptions. Likewise, the authors observed that being female and having children on care had a detrimental influence on opinions about HTW.

A clearer regulation of TW is needed to prevent imbalances in rights and obligations between companies and employees. The authors also highlight the potentially favorable effects of telecommuting on mitigating depopulation in rural areas.

The authors have also measured not only the significance of assessed factors on the overall judgment of HTW for firms and workers but also whether these factors impact acceptance and resistance attitudes toward TW symmetrically.

This study aims to underline the importance of addressing gender issues in family firms. It reinvigorates research in this field by revealing its current state, identifying research gaps and suggesting future agendas.

A bibliometric approach using a co-word analysis of 376 papers from the Web of Science database and their 885 keywords was performed to reveal the thematic structure of gender and family firm research, research topics, associations among them and their evolution over the last 30 years (1991–2021).

This review provides an extensive literature base and suggests research topics that facilitate the adoption of a gendered lens in family firm literature and business practice.

This review demonstrates how gender issues are intertwined with management, leadership and family firm approaches. Our observations inform scholars, policymakers and practitioners on the need to integrate gender issues into organizational culture and to connect empowerment strategies with the sociocultural environment.

This study shows the need to address women’s empowerment in business, considering different sociocultural contexts in addition to a Western focus. It also calls for embracing gender and feminist perspectives in research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of government support and technology usage on family business entrepreneurial intention. The paper also investigates the moderating impacts of gender on the family business entrepreneurial intention with its two predictors.

This paper has used both resource-based view and dynamic capability view theory as well as literature on family business entrepreneurship to develop the theoretical model. Later, the theoretical model has been validated using structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) with respondents from Indian family business enterprises. This study has used a purposeful and convenience sampling approach.

This study has shown the significance of technology usage as well as government support to improve the family business enterprise. The study highlights that there is a moderating impact of gender on the relationship between government support and technology usage with entrepreneurial intention in family business.

This study adds value towards body of literature in entrepreneurship, gender, and business, as well as family business literature. The study shows how gender acts as a moderator in case of family business entrepreneurship. The study is cross sectional in nature and has limited number of respondents from India. Thus, the findings cannot be generalizable.

This study is a unique study as it investigates the influence of both government support as well as technology usage by the family business firms for entrepreneurial intention. The proposed theoretical model has a high predictive power which makes the model effective. Moreover, this study also examines the moderating impacts of gender on entrepreneurial intention in the family business which adds value to the existing body of knowledge.