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When an audience mentally counterargues a spokesperson, the message is backfiring. In such cases, audience members are practically persuading themselves to take the opposite position advocated by the spokesperson. Yet spokespeople who are professional persuaders serving corporations often seem to instill counterargument. This paper examines the role of counterargument as the conduit through which a spokesperson's different message types affect a company during a crisis. The authors explore the paradox of spokespeople's (in)effectiveness by testing divides in research drawn from normative crisis communication theory, narrative persuasion theory and the theory of reporting bias.

Two controlled, randomized experiments are reported. Participants (total N = 828) watch video clips of media interviews of a company spokesperson fielding questions about a scandal.

In the first study, non-narrative information most effectively bolsters purchase intentions and reduces negative word-of-mouth. The effect is mediated by decreased counterargument. The second study replicates the results concerning on-topic narratives compared with spinning, while on-topic narratives and non-narratives perform equally well.

This study addresses conflicts between two distinct traditions of theory as well as between normative crisis communication and its frequent practice. Reducing counterargument matters in the context of non-narrative persuasion, and non-narratives can perform at least as well as narratives in crisis communication.

In order to understand the range of e‐government initiatives that occur in practice, this study aims to explore diverse applications that have involved one locale, the City of Tyler, Texas.

The first case briefly describes the TylerTexas e‐government portal, an initiative that illustrates government‐to‐citizen and government‐to‐business applications. The second case describes a city/county government information technology integration effort that could support government‐to‐government applications if it is successful. Finally, the paper describes TexasOnline, a public‐private state government initiative that may have a large impact on local e‐government projects.

The paper explores some of the ways in which business process management approaches can help city and civic leaders manage the significant social and technical changes that will be needed to achieve the desired e‐government outcomes.

These examples illustrate many of the opportunities and the challenges involved in e‐government initiatives and, as such, may interest others who engage in similar efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to review the “state of the art” in research on police legitimacy. The authors consider two bodies of theory and empirical research on police legitimacy: one rooted in social psychology and concerned with individual attitudes, and the other based on organizational institutionalism. The authors contrast the theories, discuss the methods with which propositions have been examined, and take stock of the empirical evidence. The authors then turn to a direct comparison of the theories and their predictions.

Critical review and comparison of two bodies of literature.

Police legitimacy is a phenomenon that can be properly understood only when it is addressed at both individual and organizational levels. A large body of social psychological research on police legitimacy has been conducted at the individual level, though it has dwelled mainly on attitudes, and the empirical evidence on the relationships of attitudes to behavior is weak. A much smaller body of research on organizational legitimacy in policing has accumulated, and it appears to have promise for advancing our understanding of police legitimacy.

The understanding of police legitimacy can be deepened by the juxtaposition of these two bodies of theory and research.

This paper aims to explore the “Fellowship-Tale” as an alternative tale type for narrating entrepreneur stories. The authors illustrate this by telling the Pilgrim business story. It is common for the deeds of men who founded businesses to be narrated as heroic entrepreneur stories. Such fairy tales are dominant narratives in Western culture but do not resonate with everyone, particularly women. Consequentially, many businesswomen do not engage in the rhetoric of enterprise.

The qualitative, analytic approaches adopted in this study include narratology, semiotics and aesthetics. This complementary triage helps us appreciate the complexity of entrepreneur stories while unravelling the nuances of the tale. It also permits triangulation of the data gathered from an in-depth interview of the respondent with newspaper and Internet research.

The research indicates that “fellowship-tales” provide a viable and credible alternative to the fairy-tale rendition common in entrepreneur and business stories.

An obvious limitation is that one merely swaps one narrative framework for another, albeit it offers dissenting voices a real choice.

This study has the potential to be far reaching because at a practical level, it allows disengaged entrepreneurs and significant others the freedom to exercise their individual and collective voices within a framework of nested stories.

A key contribution is to challenge the hegemony of a dominant and embedded social construct allowing new understandings to emerge via a novel combination of research methodologies.

Reviews a research project which examines a small team of lecturers participating in peer observation of teaching performance. Provides a review of background literature from which this project was derived. Includes details of the model adopted and the process from the first meeting with the relevant head of department, induction of team members, the programme of visits, to a review by the team members. Considers how such a scheme could be implemented in institutions of higher education and concludes that teachers observed should be provided with a summary derived from the observed visits. A teaching portfolio can then be built up to use at the staff appraisal interview to justify good teaching performance in the classroom.

The purpose of this paper is to identify attention, cognitive and affective responses towards a fashion retailer's website and the behavioural outcomes when shopping online.

52 eye-tracking tests and 52 qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted.

Consumer attention and behaviour differ across web pages throughout the shopping journey depending on its content, function and consumers' goal. Top-down attention is more dominant than bottom-up attention when consumers are shopping online for fashion items. The product listings page was the most frequented and had the most time spent on it. Consumers enjoy browsing for products and adding them to their basket to evaluate them together later. Customisation and personalisation features are the most valued due to their ability to make the experience more convenient and enjoyable.

This article contributes novel findings that the content and design of the website affects attention in different ways. It demonstrates that research cannot simplify viewing patterns for fashion shopping online. The study extends the SOR framework, showing that top-down attention, when provided with personalisation and customisation features, results in approach behaviour. A lack of personalisation or customisation features results in avoidance behaviour. The complex nature of consumer attention and behaviour during their holistic shopping journey advocates the need for eye-tracking research to be conducted on a live website for ecological validity, providing a methodological contribution which can be used for future research.

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of a Nurse-led Long-term Support Group (NLLTSG) as an intervention for Latina women survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) as well as to discuss a process for facilitation.

Yalom’s (2005) group therapy principles guided the creation of the NLLTSGs. According to Yolam, interaction with others and sharing stories reinforces connections within group members and leads to interpersonal learning (Yalom, 2005).

Latina women survivors of IPV do not have adequate support post IPV relationships. In this case study, the authors describe the process for developing and facilitating a NLLTSG for Latina women survivors.

The case study intervention only included Latina women living in the US Texas–Mexico border. Questions remain regarding the effectiveness of LTNLSGs with women from other cultures and geographic regions.

Nurses, nurse practitioners and other professionals can partner with community service agencies to offer this vital intervention to support and empower Latina women survivors and their families. Implications for future research include theory development and quantitative studies to measure empowerment and healing in Latina women survivors of IPV. The intervention and process should expand to include women of other cultures and geographic region.

The case study established a NLLTSG as an effective intervention for initiating and maintaining a NLLTSG with Latina women survivors of IPV as well. NLLTSGs seem to be an essential intervention for recovery in this vulnerable population.

The content of this paper describes an innovative, culturally sensitive, practitioner-engaged response to intimate partner violence in Latina women survivors.

This paper, an exploration into Black women cultural consumers of Tyler Perry Productions, examines the ways cultural consumption practices contribute to transformative ideologies and behaviors.

This regionally diverse ethnography using yo-yo fieldwork in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, and New Orleans, is based upon the author’s experiences over the course of five years engaging theater attendees and the casts and crew members of multiple Perry productions.

The author first discusses the dichotomous and provocative responses to Perry’s work by scholars, critics, and consumers of Tyler Perry Productions. After an ethnographically rich discussion of the setting surrounding a performance of the stage play Madea’s Big Happy Family, the author discusses how Black women report Perry’s work as a site of resistance to, and resources for responding to, microaggressions and other structures of oppression.

Building on the work of black feminist theory (Bobo, 2001, B. Smith, 1998) and black feminist theater aesthetic (Anderson, 2008), this paper, by crafting a Black Women’s Theatre Aesthetic that, for the first time, engages with and gives primacy to the consumers of theatrical productions, opens a portal for understanding the creative ways Black women call into play cultural consumption practices as tools and devices for transformative praxis.

Despite the rapid adoption of smartphones among digital fashion consumers, their attitude to retailers' mobile apps and websites is one of increasing dissatisfaction. This suggests that understanding how mobile consumers use smartphones for fashion shopping is important in developing digital shopping platforms that fulfil consumer' expectations.

For this research, mobile eye-tracking technology was employed in order to develop unique shopping journeys for 30 consumers, using fashion retailers' websites on smartphones, documenting their differences and similarities in browsing and purchasing behaviour.

Based on scan path visualisations and observed shopping experiences, three prominent mobile shopping journeys and shopper types were identified: “directed by retailer's website”, “efficient self-selected journey” and “challenging shopper”. These prominent behaviour patterns were used to characterise mixed cluster behaviours; three distinct mixed clusters were identified, namely, “extended self-selected journey”, “challenging shoppers directed by retailer's website” and “focused challenging shopper”.

This research argues that mobile consumers can be segmented based on their activities and behaviours on the mobile website. Knowing the prominent shopping behaviour types any other complex behaviour patterns can be identified, analysed and described.

The findings of this research can be used in developing personalised shopping experiences on smartphones by feeding these shopper types into retailers' digital marketing strategy and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

This paper contributes to consumer behaviour literature by proposing a novel mobile consumer segmentation approach based on detailed shopping journey analysis using mobile eye-tracking technology.