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This study explores archetypes of luxury brand Chanel through the use of visual narrative art created from studying consumer blog entries. The chapter describes visual narrative art as a qualitative research tool. Mapping contexts and stories that blog entries describe figure out the archetype of the brand. This study extends understanding of archetypes of luxury brand from different consumers’ perspectives.

With the growth of the internet, more attention is being paid to new uses of the internet. This study examines loyalty to ‘virtual communities’ that internet users participate in. A research model is developed to describe the relationship between website evaluation factors and virtual community loyalty. Results are consistent with the predictions of the model.

Despite growing interest in misconduct spillovers – where unimplicated bystanders’ stock prices, reputations, resources, and opportunities are positively or negatively affected by others’ misconduct – theory about spillovers’ antecedents has largely focused on industry or product similarity, and has used the same characteristics to argue for both positive and negative spillovers. Furthermore, limited research has considered both positive and negative spillovers together, instead focusing on one kind of spillover or the other in isolation, thereby creating a lack of theoretical integration within the literature. In this chapter, we draw on attribution theory and expectancy violations theory to explain when and how misconduct incurs positive and negative spillovers. We argue that a spillover’s valence depends on the locus of attributions made by stakeholders, where the misconduct’s causes are attributed to the perpetrator alone (i.e., an isolated attribution) – resulting in positive spillovers – or the misconduct’s causes are perceived as indicative of a systemic problem shared among a broader set of organizations (i.e., a systemic attribution), leading to negative spillovers. We further suggest that the misconduct’s nature and misconduct prevalence within a perpetrator and among other firms influences stakeholders’ attributions, and ultimately the spillover’s valence. Our theory contributes to the organizational misconduct literature by providing a unifying theoretical framework to understand both positive and negative spillovers.

Despite the privatization of its various components, the bidding process and the preparations for the Olympics are still initiated and tightly managed by central governments. Moreover, intentionally and unintentionally, governments use mega sports events such as the Olympics as a soft power medium in which to pursue their goals such as economic development and social integration and a lot of literature has already reviewed the economic and sociocultural impact of hosting the event. This chapter argues that the Olympics have been used as the medium to assist in the formation of legitimacy for a weakened authoritarian leader in the early phase of democratization in Korea. In addition, the chapter tries to explain how the bureaucracy contributed to the success of the national event and how it eventually impacted political modernization and the attitude of bureaucrats. To these ends, first, this chapter explores the influence of soft power on international competition by providing an empirical statistical analysis. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the process by which countries compete with one another for the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games as an important field of global interaction between political actors Further, the chapter discusses which components of soft power can affect international competition. To investigate the explanatory power and concrete applicability of soft power theory, the chapter looks at the influence of democratic and government dimensions of soft power on the selection of Olympic host cities and the role of bureaucracy during that process.

Web 2.0 and the social networks have changed how organizations interact with their publics. They enable organizations to engage in symmetric dialogic communications with individuals. Various organizations are increasingly ­using different social media to enhance their visibility and relationships with their publics. They allow them to disseminate information, to participate, listen and actively engage in online conversations with different stakeholders. Some social networks have become a key instrument for corporate communication. Therefore, this chapter presents a critical review on the organizations’ dialogic communications with the publics via social networks. It puts forward a conceptual framework that comprises five key dimensions including ­“active presence,” “interactive attitude,” “interactive resources,” “responsiveness” and “conversation.” This contribution examines each dimension and explains their effect on the organizations’ dialogic communication with the publics. Hence, this contribution has resulted in important implications for corporate communication practitioners as well as for academia. Moreover, it opens future research avenues to academia.