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Why are some lean workfloor teams able to improve their already high performance, over time, and others not? By studying teams' and leaders' behaviour-value patterns, this abductive field study uncovers a dynamic capability at the team level.

Various methods were employed over three consecutive years to thoroughly examine five initially high-performing lean workfloor teams, including their leaders. These methods encompassed micro-behavioural coding of 59 h of film footage, surveys, individual and group interviews, participant observation and archival data, involving objective and perceptual team-performance indicators. Two of the five teams continued to improve and perform highly.

Continuously improving high lean team performance is found to be associated with (1) team behaviours such as frequent performance monitoring, information sharing, peer support and process improvement; (2) team leaders who balance, over time, task- and relations-oriented behaviours; (3) higher-level leaders who keep offering the team face-to-face support, strategic clarity and tangible resources; (4) these three actors' endorsement of self-transcendence and openness-to-change work values and alignment, over time, with their behaviours; and (5) coactive vicarious learning-by-doing as a “stable collective activity pattern” among team, team leader, and higher-level leadership.

Since lean has been undertheorised, the authors invoked insights from organisational behaviour and management theories, in combination with various fine- and coarse-grained data, over time. The authors uncovered actors' behaviour-value patterns and a collective learning-by-doing pattern that may explain continuous lean team performance improvement. Four theory-enriching propositions were developed and visualised in a refined model which may already benefit lean practitioners.

The objective of this research is to propose a framework which is apt to assess how a nation branding campaign could promote cultural identity by ultimately curbing political polarization.

By relying on a multidisciplinary approach that blends theoretical constructs from different fields the methodology is based on a mixed-method approach whereby the qualitative data stemming from a set of interviews with key-informants is coupled by a survey of Colombian citizens in order to gain in-depth insights over the impact of nation branding on political polarization.

From the findings, it emerges that a campaign based on nation branding and targeting domestic citizens could curb political polarization within Colombia, by also fostering cultural identity.

The study considers only Colombia. To fully assess the robustness of the framework it would be useful to extend the analysis to a broader range of countries and to a wider set of domestic issues.

The research not only provides in-depth insights on how nation branding can be used effectively in order to curb political polarization but also practical guidance on how a nation branding campaign can be effectively designed. The findings are relevant to policy-makers that have the opportunity to implement informed and educated nation branding campaigns not just overseas, but also to strategically address important domestic issues by engaging the domestic stakeholders.

While country branding has been extensively investigated within the context of international business, we have a relatively limited understanding of its domestic impact. In contrast to traditional country branding literature, this paper aims to theoretically advance our understanding of nation branding and its effect on political polarization, as well as gauging its impact on cultural identity.

This study, a conceptual paper, analyses the growth of curation in tourism and hospitality and the curator role in selecting and framing products and experiences. It considers the growth of expert, algorithmic, social and co-creative curation modes and their effects.

Narrative and integrative reviews of literature on curation and tourism and hospitality are used to develop a typology of curation and identify different curation modes.

Curational techniques are increasingly used to organise experience supply and distribution in mainstream fields, including media, retailing and fashion. In tourism and hospitality, curated tourism, curated hospitality brands and food offerings and place curation by destination marketing organisations are growing. Curation is undertaken by experts, algorithms and social groups and involves many of destination-related actors, producing a trend towards “hybrid curation” of places.

Research is needed on different forms of curation, their differential effects and the power roles of different curational modes.

Curation is a widespread intermediary function in tourism and hospitality, supporting better consumer choice. New curators influence experience supply and the distribution of consumer attention, shaping markets and co-creative activities. Increased curatorial activity should stimulate aesthetic and stylistic innovation and provide the basis for storytelling and narrative in tourism and hospitality.

This is the first study of curational strategies in tourism and hospitality, providing a definition and typology of curation, and linking micro and macro levels of analysis. It suggests the growth of choice-based logic alongside service-dominant logic in tourism and hospitality.

Healthcare providers are under pressure due to increasing and more complex demands for services. Increased pressure on budgets and human resources adds to an ever-growing problem set. Competent leaders are in demand to ensure effective and well-performing healthcare organisations that deliver balanced results and high-quality services. Researchers have made significant efforts to identify and define determining competencies for healthcare leadership. Broad terms such as competence are, however, inherently at risk of becoming too generic to add analytical value. The purpose of this study is to suggest a holistic framework for understanding healthcare leadership competence, that can be crucial for operationalising important healthcare leadership competencies for researchers, decision-makers as well as practitioners.

In the present study, a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) was conducted to analyse competency descriptions for healthcare leaders. The descriptions were retrieved from peer reviewed empirical studies published between 2010 and 2022 that aimed to identify healthcare services leadership competencies. Grounded theory was utilised to code the data and inductively develop new categories of healthcare leadership competencies. The categorisation was then analysed to suggest a holistic framework for healthcare leadership competence.

Forty-one papers were included in the review. Coding and analysing the competence descriptions resulted in 12 healthcare leadership competence categories: (1) character, (2) interpersonal relations, (3) leadership, (4) professionalism, (5) soft HRM, (6) management, (7) organisational knowledge, (8) technology, (9) knowledge of the healthcare environment, (10) change and innovation, (11) knowledge transformation and (12) boundary spanning. Based on this result, a holistic framework for understanding and analysing healthcare services leadership competencies was suggested. This framework suggests that the 12 categories of healthcare leadership competencies include a range of knowledge, skills and abilities that can be understood across the dimension personal – and technical, and organisational internal and – external competencies.

This literature review was conducted with the results of searching only two electronic databases. Because of this, there is a chance that there exist empirical studies that could have added to the development of the competence categories or could have contradicted some of the descriptions used in this analysis that were assessed as quite harmonised. A CIS also opens for a broader search, including the grey literature, books, policy documents and so on, but this study was limited to peer-reviewed empirical studies. This limitation could also have affected the result, as complex phenomenon such as competence might have been disclosed in greater details in, for example, books.

The holistic framework for healthcare leadership competences offers a common understanding of a “fuzzy” concept such as competence and can be used to identify specific competency needs in healthcare organisations, to develop strategic competency plans and educational programmes for healthcare leaders.

This study reveals a lack of consensus regarding the use and understanding of the concept of competence, and that key competencies addressed in the included papers are described vastly different in terms of what knowledge, skills and abilities they entail. This challenges the operationalisation of healthcare services leadership competencies. The proposed framework for healthcare services leadership competencies offers a common understanding of work-related competencies and a possibility to analyse key leadership competencies based on a holistic framework.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an exploratory study that investigates Portuguese academics’ conceptions concerning the temporal properties of e-learning, in the context of traditional Higher Education Institutions.

Grounded Theory methodology was used to systematically analyse data collected in semi-structured interviews with 62 academics. Data analysis followed the constant comparative method and its three-staged coding approach: open, axial and selective coding. Data collection and analysis developed until theoretical saturation was reached.

Emergent academics’ conceptions concerning the temporal properties of e-learning indicate the existence of unregulated and unaccounted for dynamics, which are a direct consequence of transitioning from campus-based lecturing to teaching online using the affordances of virtual learning environments. This transition produces disruptions to established workload metrics and work patterns, as well as conflicts with dominant modes of instructional delivery that are not synchronised with the demands of online interaction and immediacy.

This paper is valuable to e-learning strategists and administrators. An understanding of the temporal properties of e-learning as perceived by academics provides actionable knowledge that is directly applicable to the design of suitable work arrangements, normative frameworks and e-learning practices that address perceived time-related barriers. To mitigate the time-related conflicts and disruptions identified in the study the authors suggest the establishment of university-wide norms of virtual presence and the implementation of temporal protocols to sustain the productive engagement between instructors and learners.

The purpose of this paper is to generate insights into how multinational companies (MNCs) promote global mobility in their Employer Branding (EB) messages on Facebook.

The authors analyzed 13.340 EB messages found on the Facebook career pages of 30 major MNCs (10 of each in the US, UK and Germany) drawing on a methodological approach combining Grounded Theory and text-mining.

Building on the perspective of psychological contracts as sensitizing concept, the analysis of the overall sample reveals a range of core themes in EB messages across all MNCs studied. With regards to global mobility, MNCs emphasize relational, i.e. socio-emotional, contents, particularly, highlighting opportunities of experience and personal development. While global mobility is an overall marginal theme, German MNCs extensively promote global mobility, whereas US- and UK-based MNCs do not explicitly make it a subject of their messages. The findings are discussed in the light of institutional theory.

Despite mega-trend, little is known about social media EB, especially when it comes to the contents that MNCs communicate to (potential) employees. Applying an innovative methodological approach, the authors offer insights into these contents. Discussing the findings in the light of institutional theory, it is concluded that promoting global mobility in socio-emotional terms seems of high importance to reduce uncertainties associated with living and working abroad. This might help firms to hire internationally mobile employees, especially in countries where job mobility is generally low.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the rationale, technical framework, content creation workflow and evaluation for a multilingual massive open online course (MOOC) to facilitate information literacy (IL) considering cultural aspects.

A good practice analysis built the basis for the technical and content framework. The evaluation approach consisted of three phases: first, the students were asked to fill out a short self-assessment questionnaire and a shortened adapted version of a standardized IL test. Second, they completed the full version of the IL MOOC. Third, they were asked to fill out the full version of a standardized IL test and a user experience questionnaire.

The results show that first the designed workflow was suitable in practice and led to the implementation of a full-grown MOOC. Second, the implementation itself provides implications for future projects developing multilingual educational resources. Third, the evaluation results show that participants achieved significantly higher results in a standardized IL test after attending the MOOC as mandatory coursework. Variations between the different student groups in the participating countries were observed. Fourth, self-motivation to complete the MOOC showed to be a challenge for students asked to attend the MOOC as nonmandatory out-of-classroom task. It seems that multilingual facilitation alone is not sufficient to increase active MOOC participation.

This paper presents an innovative approach of developing multilingual IL teaching resources and is one of the first works to evaluate the impact of an IL MOOC on learners' experience and learning outcomes in an international evaluation study.

The present study aimed to identify the characteristics of effective messages in electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication on social networks to be considered in the planning of eWOM strategies. For this purpose, the present study tries to identify these factors through a qualitative approach.

A qualitative approach based on the thematic analysis was used with semi-structured interviews and opinions of 25 experts in the field of e-marketing and e-retailing. The collected data were analyzed and coded in the MaxQDA software.

The results of the study showed the extracted seven main themes of message sender specifications, aesthetic appearance, choosing the right content, sending strategy, message usefulness, correct targeting, type of information and also 47 subthemes. These seven criteria provide a way to design the right strategies.

Limited studies in this area were a challenge and also integrating the opinions of the interviewees due to contradictory and different views, as well as unfamiliarity with some new approaches to digital marketing, were among the limitations of the present study that managed and controlled their effects. Practical and theoretical implications for developing and planning effective eWOMs in social networks presented.

Understanding the way of creating appropriate features of effective and suitable messages in the planning of eWOM strategies is crucial to digital marketers. This study recommends considering the extracted features in designing effective messages.