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Social countermarketing (SCM) aims at influencing existing socio-cultural norms, public policies or political decision-making. Existing empirical accounts of SCM give limited insights into their success. The authors analyze SCM strategies and their public resonance by studying the diagnostic and prognostic frames and responsibility attributions that are used in the debates.

The authors focus on two online SCM campaigns in the Netherlands that are targeted against over-feeding of chickens for consumption and the selling of low-priced meat. The authors conducted a quantitative content analysis (N = 3,902) of these debates on Twitter for a two-year period (July 2015 to June 2017).

The results show that citizens play an important role for the amplification of SCM campaigns. Diagnostic and prognostic frames about meat selling practices are among the most popular ones while the importance of mobilization messages differs per case. This can be explained by the proximity of these frames to citizens' daily life experiences.

The apparent willingness of citizens to both tweet and retweet calls for mobilization might give messages by environmental NGOs third-party endorsement. This strengthens their position and visibility in the debates, which are both of strategic value. The analysis of actor responsibility can identify reputational risks for companies in contested industries such as mass meat production.

The findings enhance professional understanding of designing campaign messages and refine SCM success in terms of resonance, since resonance indicates amplification and third-party endorsement.

Visibility in the media is considered important for organizations, as it is alleged to affect their reputation, public legitimacy, and stakeholder relations. Strategies for media relations often discern corporations, public organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The media attention for those organizations is, however, often studied in isolation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of media positioning to compare media coverage for corporations, public organizations, and NGOs.

A quantitative content analysis of the media coverage of 61 Dutch organizations was conducted. The comparison focused on three aspects of media positioning: prominence, context, and evaluation.

Public organizations and corporations were most similar, whereas corporations and NGOs differed most strongly in their media positioning. Corporations appeared most prominently in the media. While corporations and public organizations were more often related to organizational issues, NGOs were more often linked to substantial issues and received more positive coverage.

Insight into the content, amount, and tone of organizational media coverage is crucial for the formulation of public relations strategies by corporate communication professionals. The analysis shows whether and how the prominence, context, and evaluation differs among corporations, public organizations, and NGOs. The findings shed light on institutional factors that affect the visibility of different types of organizations, thus enabling future scholars in the field of visibility analyses in corporate communication to refine theories on drivers and characteristics of media coverage regarding different types of organizations.

Since public sector organizations provide services to citizens but struggle with poor perceptions of their functioning, it is valuable to examine how their online responses to complaints on social media could impact their reputation. Yet, surprisingly little is known about effects of public organizations' webcare. Therefore, this study assesses the impact of the webcare's tone, response strategy and user's involvement on participants’ continuance intention and perceptions of reputation.

Two experimental studies (Study 1: N = 424; Study 2: N = 203) with an interval of one week were carried out to assess the effects of singular and repeated exposure to webcare by a Dutch public transport organization on the participants' continuance intention and perceived organizational reputation. Study 1 examined the effects of the webcare's tone (corporate vs conversational human voice (CHV)) and response strategy (accommodative vs defensive); Study 2 contained tone of voice and user's involvement (observer vs complainer). The effects of repeated exposure to the webcare's tone were also examined.

The results indicate that perceptions of CHV in webcare contribute to webcare as reputation management tool, since it leads to immediate higher reputation scores that also remain stable after repeated exposure. Furthermore, people's continuance intention increased after repeated exposure to webcare responses that were perceived as CHV, thus a natural and engaging communication style, indicating this is an effective strategy for customer care as well. No substantial impact was found for response strategy and user's involvement in the complaint handling.

The novelty of this study is that the authors assess the effects of the webcare's tone combined with response strategy and user's involvement in a public sector context with a sector-specific conceptualization of reputation and continuance intention measured after singular and repeated exposure to webcare.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a professional self-efficacy scale for counsellors and psychologists encompassing identified competencies within professional standards from national and related international frameworks for psychologists and counsellors.

An initial opportune sample of postgraduate psychology and counselling students (n=199) completed a ten-minute self-report survey. A subsequent independent sample (n=213) was recruited for cross-validation.

A series of exploratory analyses, consolidated through confirmatory factor analyses and Rasch analysis, identified a well-functioning scale composed of 31 items and five factors (research, ethics, legal matters, assessment and measurement, intervention).

The Psychologist and Counsellor Self-Efficacy Scale (PCES) appears a promising measure, with potential applications for reflective learning and practice, clinical supervision and professional development, and research studies involving psychologists’ and counsellors’ self-perceived competencies. It is unique in being ecologically grounded in national competency frameworks, and extending previous work on self-efficacy for particular competencies to the set of specified attributes outlined in Australian national competency documents. The PCES has potential utility in a variety of applications, including research about training efficacy and clinical supervision, and could be used as one component of a multi-method approach to formative and summative competence assessment for psychologists and counsellors. The scale may be used to assess students’ perceived competencies relative to actual competency growth against national standards, and to identify trainees’ and practitioners’ self-perceived knowledge deficits and target areas for additional training.

This chapter is concerned with the varied legitimizing discourses used by midwives to frame their identities in relation to their work. This sociological issue is particularly important in the context of an occupation, such as this one, that exists at the border of competing service claims. Drawing on 26 in-depth interviews, I use narrative analysis to examine the stories that midwives tell about their work. Through these women’s work narratives, I show the complex intersection of narrative, culture, institution, and biography (Chase, 1995, 2001; DeVault, 1999).

This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.

The design uses embodied hermeneutic phenomenology. The data comprise 10 participant interviews and visual “body maps” produced in response to guided questions.

The findings about student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships include a core theme of nurturing a trusting learning community and five related themes of attunement to mentees, commonality of experiences, friends with boundaries, reciprocity in learning and varied learning spaces.

The study contributes original insights by highlighting complexity, shifting boundaries, liminality, embodied social understanding and trusting intersubjective relations as key considerations in student peer mentor relationships.

Digitally oriented firms are faced with new opportunities and risks in today’s ever-changing world. Drawing upon organisational entrainment theory, this study investigates how supply chain (SC) entrainment improves the effects of digital orientation on firm performance through absorbing risks and exploiting opportunities.

Survey data were collected from 307 Chinese manufactures and analysed using structural equation modelling and regression analysis.

The results show digital orientation absorbs risk through evoking three SC entrainment dimensions (i.e. internal entrainment, entrainment with customers and entrainment with suppliers). Entrainment with customers and suppliers mediate the relationship between internal entrainment and firm performance. An opportunity exploitation mechanism is evidenced by the moderating effects of internal and external entrainment on the relationship between digital orientation and firm performance.

The empirical findings provide timely insights for managers to fully harness the benefits of digital orientation by using SC entrainment, i.e. to match the tempo and pace of internal and external cyclical activities to reduce the risks and increase the benefits of adopting advanced digital technologies. The authors show managers how to adjust their organization’s actions to keep tempo and synchronous phase with their SC partners.

The study introduces and conceptualizes a construct (i.e. SC entrainment) to understand how risks and opportunities arising from digital transformation can be addressed to maximize the value of advanced digital technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices are affected and potentially transformed when mediated by translation. Adopting a postcolonial lens, the authors consider the ways in which translation functions and how intermediaries act as cultural translators in the context of microfinance.

The authors take a qualitative approach to a case study of a microfinance organization based in South Africa. Fieldwork allowed for the collection of data by means of direct observations, interviews, documents and a fieldwork diary.

The study demonstrates the presence of spaces of hybridity that co-exist within the same organizational context (Bhabha, 1994). Two spaces of hybridity are highlighted, in which translation processes were possible because of the proximity between borrowers and fieldworkers. The first space of hybridity was found locally and here translation shaped an accountability that aimed at leveraging local cultures and favoring cultural framing. The second space of hybridity was characterized by the interaction between oral and written cultures and the translation of responsibilities and expectations was predominantly unidirectional, prioritizing accountability practices consistent with organizational requirements.

This research offers in-depth insights into the links between intermediation, translation and accountability practices. It differs from prior research in considering intermediaries as active translators of accountability practices who act in-between cultures. The authors contend that the translation process reinscribes culture allowing dominant accountability practices to prevail and local cultural traditions to merely contextualize accountability practices.

Alcohol sponsorship of sport is common in Australia, with much debate about the appropriateness of linking sport with alcohol advertising and promotion. This paper provides examples of such sponsorships to appreciate the extent and nature of the complex relationship between sport and alcohol sponsors. The public health and policy implications of alcohol sponsorship of sport extending to creating a sporting competition purely to promote an alcohol brand are considered.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.