Search results

Fans are proactive consumers of pop culture products, who can be seen as prosumers. Fanvideo production is one of their most widespread practices in the participatory culture scenario. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze how ludic prosumption is featured on plays performed in Brazilian fanvideos based on successful pop culture franchises.

Research based on the interpretive content analysis of fanvideos of plays produced by Brazilian fans based on five emblematic pop culture franchises and published on YouTube.

Results have shown six play types in the analyzed fanvideos – i.e. child's play, performing powers, cosplay, play in social rites, teaching to play and “zuêra” –, which revealed a way of having fun in different situations through different practices based on ludic consumption experiences in different spheres of social life.

CCT-based studies focused on investigating plays as ludic consumption phenomenon, as well as fan culture, remain at early research stage. Thus, the main contribution of the present study lies on associating such concepts based on the concept of prosumption.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to contribute to the field of workplace play by introducing the notion of social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of play in organizations.

The conceptualization of SLAs is built upon insights from the practice and organizational play literatures.

SLAs can be deployed not only for productively engaging with work but also as an instrument to resist authority, boycott work or challenge firm contingencies. The particular enactments of SLAs may be influenced by how employees perceive and interpret the organizational climate (i.e. corporate culture, management style, job design and task complexity, and intra-firm interactions) in which they are embedded.

The recognition that emergent forms of play may be conducive to the generation of valuable outcomes without managerial intervention can save managers’ time and efforts required for dealing with potential employees’ resistance. Taking advantage from spontaneous manifestations of play implies understanding the logic of players and creating favorable corporate contexts for the emergence of SLAs rather than attempting to interfere in the natural experiences of flow.

SLAs are conceived as an alternative form of organizational play that is a priori unselfconscious and emergent, inherits autotelic and rational dimensions from prior views of play, draws upon practice insights, and represents the employee perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature by examining the generation of collective tacit knowledge (CTK) in organizations through social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of playful micro-practice carried out by employees.

This paper builds upon socially distributed cognition (SDC) and transactive memory systems (TMS) to analyze SLAs’ contribution to CTK creation in the workplace. These theories provide conceptual underpinnings for comprehending how workers self-organize shared activities to store, retrieve and use each other’s tacit knowledge within the collective. An example is provided to illustrate SLAs’ manifestation in an agile-based software development firm.

SLAs may facilitate collective members’ knowing and learning whereby different solutions are sought and potential tactics to cope with work issues are attuned to changing conditions by the collective members at work. Four moderating factors, namely physical proximity, psychological safety, richness of communication pathways and intensity of interactions, are identified and propositions to conceptualize their role in CTK generation through SLAs are formulated.

SLA players’ efforts to solve dysfunctionalities at work are not merely prompted by interdependencies among work-related tasks but also driven by high levels of social embeddedness and interaction among employees. Managers should become more supportive of collective playful activities in their organizations by building a propitious corporate climate for the mobilization of CTK in the workplace. Understanding SLAs as a soft group device where CTK resides, transits, is enacted and continuously metamorphosed represents an important complement to hard devices offered by information systems.

Relying on the notion of SLAs as a means to cope with work concerns, the authors integrate insights from organizational play, knowledge management, SDC and TMS literatures to advance the authors’ understanding of CTK creation through collective playful undertakings at work.

In times of organizational thirst for employee engagement and meaning through designing corporate stories, the aim of this article is to explore and identify key sources (engines) of engagement during LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) corporate learning pre-pandemic events of various types and size in Poland.

This is a conceptual paper. The research was conducted using participant observation from the perspective of a certified facilitator of the method. This position ensures a prime access to the organizational events. Eight training sessions (four LSP and four non-LSP workshops) have been analysed using thematic analysis. The structure of thematic codes has been conceptualized and reflected as the EPIC framework.

The findings include (1) the importance of the experience of emerging realities as a key generator of engagement, (2) the significance of social collaboration and peer-to-peer interactions (experience of collective intelligence), (3) the observable rise in engagement and willingness to contribute when real business situations, especially labelled as “strategic issues” are discussed and (4) the role of image-capturing (“snapshot experience”) in creation of an engaging learning experience.

The limitations refer to the potential conflict of interests as the researcher is also the facilitator of the workshop. To ensure the neutral point of view of the researcher, the sessions have been recorded to enable transparency of the observation and non-biased logic of key findings. The “learning experience” research is also culture- and context-sensitive, thus it may be problematic to replicate the research procedure in different countries, however, the EPIC model can be treated as a universal framework to explore and identify the engines of engagement.

The concept of this paper is designed from the practical point of view. The findings are adaptable to the corporate practices aimed at empowering employees and are compatible with management models such as agile, human enablement and human-centred design in organizations.

Serious play methods of learning and experiencing are said to be of the highest importance when finding new ways of organizational learning in the pandemic situation and work from home as a standard learning environment.

The contribution of this paper is visible in the conceptualization of the moments that shape an engaging experience. This is also the first academic paper presenting the perspective of a certified facilitator of LSP from Central and Eastern Europe region.

To date, it remains unclear whether the experiences of large corporations with regard to knowledge transfer and process formalization can be successfully replicated in small companies. In this paper, the authors seek to contribute to the specialized literature on internal knowledge transfer processes and their degree of formalization in the context of small-sized innovative firms.

The authors adopt a multiple case study approach to perform an in-depth comparative analysis of processes deployed to transfer knowledge internally and their degree of formalization, relying on rich narratives shared by informants during the data gathering stage. This sample is composed of five small innovators operating in the software industry in Quebec and Ontario.

The authors identify seven knowledge transfer processes in our sample, namely communities of practice, within project teams, across project teams, non-project related meetings, in-house exchanges with clients, technological devices, and playful activities. Uncovering a high cross-case variation in terms of process formalization, the findings imply that the degree of formalization of intra-firm knowledge transfer processes has no direct bearing on the innovative success of small software companies.

The study sheds new light on the topic of heterogeneity of small organizations from the perspective of knowledge transfer endeavors and provides empirical evidence in support of equifinality for a subset of small-sized innovators from the software sector.

This study aims to determine whether it is possible to use information and communication technology (ICT) tools to share tacit knowledge. Few studies have considered this subject, and they have reported both the ineffectiveness and effectiveness of ICT tools for sharing tacit knowledge.

In this study, the participants comprised 217 knowledge workers from New Zealand and researchers who attended a knowledge management conference in the UK. In all, 59% of the sample was men and 41% women. The research model compared the scores of knowledge workers in two categories of ICT, those that allow dialogue and those that do not, in relation to knowledge sharing in organizations. The instrument used a Likert scale with five levels of response.

It was found that not all ICT technologies let tacit knowledge to be shared, but those ICT that facilitate dialogue, for example, text messaging and video conferences. Emails did not facilitate the exchange of tacit knowledge.

It is suggested to replicate the study with different countries to evaluate the role of culture in the communication of tacit knowledge.

An implication for practitioners based on this study is that email should not be the preferred mode for transferring knowledge between an organization and their workers. This mode is adequate for the exchange of explicit knowledge, but it has a limited capacity for transferring tacit knowledge. Thus, organizations may increase the use of audio and video tools to transfer electronically tacit knowledge. Interaction or socialization may facilitate the understanding and internalization of tacit knowledge by workers.

This study contributed to understand the reason for contradictory results from previous research. ICT tools are effective to share tacit knowledge when they facilitate dialogue. Results also support practitioners about how to obtain more effective exchange of tacit knowledge in organizations.

Brandfests are conceptualized as marketer-initiated events that facilitate consumers’ individual and social engagements with brands. After its inception in the late 1990s, the concept of brandfests was quickly folded into the concept of brand community, leaving conceptual and strategic opportunities untapped. The purpose of the paper is to suggest a broadened conceptualization of brandfests based on the play theory and the notion of ludic interagency.

This paper includes a longitudinal study and ethnographic method.

Unlike previously studied brandfests, this context entails a low-involvement product, a brand that is not the focal point for participants, a broad range of market-facing enactors, shifting roles and the realization of multiple meanings and values for multiple enactors. The findings demonstrate that brand meaning and value can be constituted through ludic engagement of a broad range of market-facing enactors through a ludic spectacle such as a brandfest. Moreover, the authors find that this can go on outside the established spatial and temporal frames normally considered by the marketing literature.

This has implications for theories of emplacement (servicescape) and brand meaning actualization in terms of where, when and whom is involved in brand meaning actualization.

The paper develops four strategic propositions which broaden the type of brandfests that allow managers to define a range of potential strategies for engaging consumers and other enactors in a broader range of brandfests.

The paper reconceptualizes a dormant concept in the marketing literature to develop strategic implications based on the play theory. It challenges the prevalent centrality of the brand and consumer brand involvement.

One of the most discernible initiatives of entrepreneurial universities constitutes the launch of innovation centers, where students and alumni can incubate their business ideas and collaborate on innovative projects with the purpose of converting them into start-up ventures. While incubators and accelerators are quintessential in Western academic contexts, educational institutions in emerging economies are lagging behind in the preparation of future-ready business leaders via the establishment of hubs that stimulate entrepreneurial intention and diffusion of innovation.

In this conceptual paper, the authors seek to contribute to the development of entrepreneurial education ecosystems in less advanced regions of the world through the activation of university-based centers of innovation. The authors rely on a general review of the specialized literature to identify best practice insights pertaining to curriculum design and draw on the combined expertise of the authors’ research team in delivering entrepreneurship and innovation (under)graduate courses and executive education programs in emerging countries.

The authors conceptualize the mission, vision and curriculum of an innovation hub that can be adopted by any institution of higher education from transitional and emerging market settings to build powerful entrepreneurial mindsets in the future generation of innovative leaders. The proposed innovation hub curriculum incorporates a number of practically relevant and learning boosting activities, including the “So, You Think You Can Innovate?” competition, networking events and guest speakers and training seminars and workshops.

To keep up with changing industry dynamics and secure the relevance of their programs, institutions of higher education in emerging economies need to embrace entrepreneurial models of instruction. They ought to allocate temporal, physical and mental spaces and infrastructure to students to facilitate the generation of innovative concepts and encourage them toward commercialization.

Innovative undertakings play a critical role in the economic value creation and wealth generation of a nation. This paper aims to contribute to the literature that positions innovation at the core of the tourism industry in the context of emerging markets.

The authors adopt a case study approach and draw on secondary sources of data to examine how the UAE is reaping the benefits of innovation to transform itself into a leading international leisure and entertainment hub.

The strategy of significant financial investment in complex mega-projects and major infrastructure development have offered the UAE a relative advantage over other industry giants worldwide. Nonetheless, the local government should continue tapping into the multiple and diverse opportunities that product/service and process innovation has to offer if the UAE ambitions to enhance its competitiveness and acquire the status of a global tourism hub.

While most research efforts to date focused on Western markets, this study contributes to the development of a knowledge base about the role of innovation in the tourism industry in emerging market settings.