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The purpose of this paper is to first present potential areas of research for measuring sustainability performance that emerged in a joint researcher–practitioner workshop at the 19th Environmental and Sustainability Management Accounting Network Europe Conference, organized in cooperation with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Second, the methodology applied to gain these insights, the world café approach, is critically reviewed.

The applied method, a world café approach, facilitates collaborative dialogue and was used in the workshop to uncover underlying research themes. A generalized process flow diagram for a world café is presented, highlighting critical aspects that can guide researchers considering the use of the world café method. The results are structured by means of the 5 W (who, what, where, when, why) and 2 H (how) questions, also known as the elements of circumstance.

Key topics discussed by conference attendees are identified and an overview of potential areas of research are established concerning “measuring sustainability performance”, with a topical focus on impact measurement and value of sustainability. Furthermore, based on the topics identified by practitioners and researchers, this paper develops a list of questions that can guide future research. Finally, the world café method as a means of generating insights into complex topics such as sustainability performance is evaluated.

The list of research questions identified in this paper can serve as guidance for researchers for selecting relevant, practice-oriented research topics. The value of the world café method as an approach to facilitating the generation of participatory and collaborative insights was confirmed for sustainability management. The generalized process flow diagram can act as a starting point when considering the world café method for facilitating large transdisciplinary groups.

The world café is a method for facilitating practitioners and researchers exchange, and thereby presents an opportunity for spanning the research–practice gap. By bringing practitioners and researchers together to identify research areas, future research is more likely to have positive social implications.

The paper presents a recent interpretation of future research gained from a large number of sustainability professionals, including practitioners and researchers, by bringing them together using a world café. The world café is a valuable method for a collaborative set-up with immediate feedback loops, which encourages dialogue, in contrast to surveys or individual interviews, on future developments in the field.

This paper aims to provide reflective practice insights on the use of the participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre as crime prevention education and research tools with young people and young adults through a social learning theory lens.

Four independent case-studies showcase World Café and Forum Theatre methodology. World Café events investigated new psychoactive substances (NPS) awareness with young hostel users and college pupils (N = 22) and race hate crime with school and college pupils (N = 57). Forum Theatre events explored loan shark crime with college and university students (N = 46) and domestic abuse crime with young hostel users and college and university students (N = 28). Anonymous survey data produced qualitative and descriptive statistical data.

Learning impacts from participatory crime prevention education and research events were evidenced. Participatory approaches were perceived positively, although large group discussion-based methodologies may not suit all young people or all criminological topics.

Participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre are vehicles for social learning and crime prevention with young people and young adults; eliciting crime victimisation data; and generating personal solutions alongside wider policy and practice improvement suggestions. Whilst World Café elicited greater lived experience accounts providing peer-level social learning, Forum Theatre provided crucial visual role modelling for communicating safeguarding messages.

The aim of this paper is to report on findings related to the use of a large group intervention method known as The World Café.

The intervention method and its philosophical genesis are described along with lessons learned from observation, personal use, and interviews with café participants.

While The World Café approach has the potential to make significant contributions to large group knowledge exchange and collective meaning making, it has suffered from being used by inexperienced facilitators and for reasons not well suited to the method. Participants, as a result, have failed to achieve the results expected and in some cases formed negative opinions of a lasting nature about the method and its proponents.

The limitations of this paper and its generalizability are framed within the nature of a case study, which is neither a representation of the whole nor a controlled experiment. Every effort has been made to fairly represent all perspectives as they were presented.

The World Café and its many imitations has been employed at numerous conferences, retreats, and gatherings during the last decade. Thousands of individuals around the world have been exposed to this method and many within the LO community have been exposed to it without understanding both its benefits and perils. Organizational leaders and practitioners can better analyze the value of this approach when measured against the learning goals of an event.

The paper makes an objective presentation of experiences with the method and shares lessons learned from the participant and practitioner perspective.

The purpose of this study is to share the experience of delivering a culturally responsive teaching program, the R.E.F.O.R.M. Café, at a historically Black college and university. The R.E.F.O.R.M. Café provided an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in dialogue that reinforces the need for social justice in preserving Black lives. Before participating in the R.E.F.O.R.M. Café, lectures using a critical perspective to connect health to the history of the modern-day civil rights movement were conducted.

Using the World Café as a model, a qualitative methodology was used to implement the R.E.F.O.R.M. Café as part of community health education course curriculum to address health disparities plaguing Black communities. The breakout room function in Zoom was used to substitute for the tables used in traditional World Cafés because of COVID-19 restrictions, which allowed for small, focus-group-like dialogues to occur.

The R.E.F.O.R.M. Café challenged students to consider the power and opportunity for individuals on the front line to contest racial disparities. Students indicated the R.E.F.O.R.M. Café reinforced the importance of meaningful conversations, the connection to confronting health disparities and the effectiveness of program design and implementation to engage in dialogue around issues of race and equity. Students indicated the importance of hearing the perspective of peers when considering their personal identities as change agents.

This paper contributes to the literature that extends the body of knowledge related to implementing culturally responsive teaching programs at a historically Black college and university. Studies currently available related to implementing culturally responsive teaching programs among undergraduate students do not focus specifically on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

This paper aims to develop an original Café Delphi historical method to research women's individual and collective experiences of sex, sexuality and sexism in public relations (PR) in 1990s’ Britain.

An original Café Delphi historical method is shaped by an interpretive paradigm providing a conceptual framework to model sex, sexuality and sexism. This approaches history as a social science drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology, reflexivity and ethics of care. A case study, employing oral history and participatory action research (PAR), is used to develop and test the practicality of the original Café Delphi historical method to research women's individual and collective experiences of PR in 1990s’ Britain.

Three main findings are identified. (1) Developing a new method is complex, time-consuming and surfaces practical problems; however, the Café Delphi historical method is a viable way to explore individual and collective experiences. (2) Undertaking methodological innovation and innovating research methods involves action learning and requires agility, reflexivity and ability to navigate messiness and order. (3) Testing the multiphase mixed method study revealed its power and potential as an ethical and collaborative co-research approach.

This study expands the repertoire of research methods in PR historiography and provides a new approach to capture collective as well as individual experiences. This study develops a feminine analytic tool employing metamodern oscillation to connect past, present and future.

This study aims to evaluate The World Café (TWC) method as a social collaborative learning environment. TWC is a widely used large-scale intervention for such things as organizational change and development or community development programs.

Three World Cafés were organized as part of a university research project on promoting sustainability-oriented innovation in the logistics sector. A total of 18 participants representing public and commercial organizations were interviewed on their experiences.

Learning processes are linked to social and cognitive aspects that TWC intervention effectively structures.

If a World Café is implemented according to the basic principles, it can be an effective environment for organizing non-formal learning in organizations.

Although the gray literature on World Cafés is full of anecdotal evidence about its effectiveness, there is a dearth of empirical research underpinning the claims.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate selling actors in multi-actor sales ecosystems. When selling actors start taking over tasks that were formerly performed by salespeople, the distribution of tasks, allocation of responsibilities and finally the role of the salespeople changes. However, little is known about salespersons’ perceptions of selling actors’ identities and participation behavior in multi-actor sales ecosystems.

The authors conducted a World Café, a new qualitative method to the field of sales research, to obtain first data on selling actor identities in multi-actor sales ecosystems. Salespeople, who had the chance to observe and interact with more than 98,000 selling actors, disclosed their perceptions of selling actors’ participation behavior in a multi-actor sales ecosystem. Four different data sources were analyzed using qualitative content analysis to develop a comprehensive understanding of the topic and to test validity through the convergence of information from different sources.

Using identity theory, a salesperson–selling actor relationship/behavior typology for multi-actor sales ecosystems was developed. Eight different selling actor identities were identified: avoider, observer, receptive actor, prepper, expecter, savvy actor, challenger and coworker.

The typology provides researchers and managers with a tool to better understand and evaluate sales ecosystems. This knowledge can be used as a starting point for the reassessment of the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for salespeople in multi-actor sales ecosystems and to improve their training and coaching. The firsthand experiences reported by the participants of the World Café enable salespeople to identify different selling actors faster and prepare fitting approaches for all selling actor identities.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

Women working in public relations (PR) in the 1990s developed the power of metamodern pragmatism to avoid being constrained in this decade of contradictions.

This was a time of promise for female empowerment and careers. The PR industry in Britain had quadrupled in size, yet increased feminisation and professionalisation did not resolve gender inequity. Indeed, alongside the existence of ‘old boys clubs’ and hedonistic macho agencies in the industry, the 1990s offered a lad's mag culture and an AbFab image of PR.

An original collaborative historical ‘Café Delphi’ method was developed using three themes (sex, sexuality and sexism) to explore women's careers and contributions in the expanding and increasingly powerful field of PR in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. It built on feminist critique of the industry and paradoxical portrayals of women resulting from significant changes in media, popular culture and a pluralistic marketplace.

Individual and collective experiences of women working in PR at the time reveal the power of attitudes to affect their ability to achieve equality and empowerment. Women navigated tensions between the benefits of accelerated pluralism and the patriarchal resistance in the workplace through performative choices and a deep sense of pragmatism.

A series of “learning lab” projects on disaster risk management for sustainable development (DRM-SD) have been accomplished from 2014 to 2016 in Malaysia, Vietnam, Lao PDR and Cambodia by the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies. The project is designed for professionals from the disaster risk management field to encourage integration of sustainable development (SD) concerns into the larger planning framework for DRM. As a case study for capacity building (CB) evaluation, the central purpose of this study is to explore the approaches, feedbacks and implications of the DRM-SD CB project that have been developed and carried out.

Three methods have been used which are participation observations, surveys and document analysis. The results show that the project had successfully applied seven different tools to enhance analytical skills and professional knowledge of development practitioners in specific areas of DRM-SD.

Based on the survey, the project received positive response and valuable information from participants for future project development. Regarding the perspective of outcomes, the result indicates that south–south, ASEAN regional and triangular cooperation and role of higher education in DRM-SD are significant impacts from this project which can bring several benefits and should be promoted as an approach for the DRM-CB project as a whole.

It is hoped that this study will serve as a transfer learning initiative to provide approach guidelines and innovative mechanisms for DRM practitioners who will have the know-how and potential for leadership in DRM-SD.