Search results

This study aims to examine the phenomenon of self-perceived age (SPA) identity for Generation X (GenX) women in the UK. Squeezed between the more ubiquitous “boomer” and “millennial” cohorts, and now with both gender and age stigma-related challenges, this study looks to provide insights for understanding this group for marketing.

This study adopts an existential phenomenological approach using a hybrid structured/hermeneutic research design. Data is collected using solicited diary research (SDR) that elicits autoethnographic insights into the lived experiences of GenX women, these in the context of SPA.

For this group, the authors find age a gendered phenomenon represented via seven “age frames”, collectively an “organisation of experience”. Age identity appears not to have unified meaning but is contingent upon individuals and their experiences. These frames then provide further insights into how diarists react to the stigma of gendered ageism.

SDR appeals to participants who like completing diaries and are motivated by the research topic. This limits both diversity of response and sample size, but coincidentally enhances elicitation potential – outweighing, the authors believe, these constraints. The sample comprises UK women only.

This study acknowledges GenX women as socially real, but from an SPA perspective they are heterogeneous, and consequently distributed across many segments. Here, age is a psychographic, not demographic, variable – a subjective rather than chronological condition requiring a nuanced response from marketers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first formal study into how SPA identity is manifested for GenX women. Methodologically, this study uses e-journals/diaries, an approach not yet fully exploited in marketing research.

This article surveys the status and potential of three small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in relation to the concept of the corporate university. It examines the dynamic context for their current training and development activities and their individual similarities and differences in emphasis and priorities. The study involves the use of taxonomies and model structures to articulate current status and to give pointers to further potential for corporate university or corporate academy development.

To convey the findings of an investigation into the relationship between poetry and business thinking, which began with the hypothesis that regular reading and analysis of poetry and its levels of meaning, subtle verbal and nonverbal contextual nuances, emotional content, and required associative thinking will help people deal with ambiguity, delay closure on decisions, and result in more systemic thinking and in better business decisions.

The research and workshops indicate that reading poetry can expand thinking space by enhancing associative thinking and access to preconceptual areas.

The findings are based on extensive interdisciplinary research and a small number of seminars and workshops. No formal studies have yet been conducted.

This provides a way to open thinking spaces that may be often unused by the business strategist, and that can lead to better decisions. By focusing on how executives can refine their thinking abilities to take them beyond the ordinary limits of cause‐and‐effect approaches, encourages the application of those radical judgments that can help differentiate one organization from another.

The authors believe they are the first to explore this relationship between reading poetry and business thinking.