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The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of the concept to thinking about Research Data Management (RDM). The concept of “wicked problems” seeks to differentiate very complex, intractable challenges from tamer issues where approaches to problem solving are well-understood.

The paper is based on and co-authored by a collaboration of practitioners from libraries, information technology and research administration, with facilitators from the Sheffield Information School. Participants worked together in two-day-long workshops to understand the wicked problem concept and advice on leadership in wicked problem contexts.

Participants concurred that RDM had many features of a wicked problem and most of Grint’s advice on leadership for wicked problems also resonated. Some elements of the issue were simple; participants were optimistic about improving the situation over time. Participants were resistant to the more negative or fatalistic connotations of the phrase “wicked problem”. Viewing RDM as a wicked problem is an interesting way of looking at it as a challenge for support professionals.

The notion of a wicked problem is a generative concept that can be usefully added to professional vocabulary.

The paper captures an in-depth response from practitioners to the notion of wicked problems as a lens for examining RDM.

This study compares filmic and televisual representations of fictional black presidents to white Americans’ reactions to the advent of the United States’s first African American president. My main goal is to determine if there is convergence between these mediated representations and whites’ real-world representations of Barack Obama. I then weigh the evidence for media pundits’ speculations that Obama owes his election to positive portrayals of these fictional heads of state.

The film and television analyses examine each black president’s social network, personality, character traits, preparation for office, and leadership ability. I then compare the ideological messages conveyed through these portrayals to the messages implicated in white Americans’ discursive and pictorial representations of Barack Obama.

Both filmic and televisual narratives and public discourses and images construct and portray black presidents with stereotypical character traits and abilities. These representations are overwhelmingly negative and provide no support for the argument that there is a cause–effect relationship between filmic and televisual black presidents and Obama’s election victory.

Neither reel nor real-life black presidents can elude the representational quagmire that distorts African Americans’ abilities and diversity. Discourses, iconography, narratives, and other representations that define black presidents through negative tropes imply that blacks are incapable of effective leadership. These hegemonic representations seek to delegitimize black presidents and symbolically return them to subordinate statuses.

The authors aim to contribute to current knowledge on women's networks in organizations by exploring the strategies employed by members of women's networks, Human Resources (HR) management and senior line management to negotiate the role of these networks in their organizations.

The authors employ the theoretical perspective of micro-politics to analyze qualitative data they collected in an action research project using open-ended interviews and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with network board and active members, and members of their organizations' HR departments and senior management. Participant observation of the interviewees' interactions took place during facilitated workshops.

Adding to the literature, the authors find that members of the different parties employ different micro-political strategies. Many senior HR and management members demand that the networks' activities contribute to the organizations' diversity aims and bottom line. They largely avoid strategic cooperation with the networks. Most network members, in turn, resist the restricted role of the networks as an instrument to realize their organizations' business case. They claim some freedom to independently decide on the networks' strategies and activities. They resist being attributed tasks and responsibilities that they consider to reside with their organizations. Moreover, they try to sustain cooperative relationships with senior HR and management in an advisory role.

The action research approach enabled the authors to contribute to existing knowledge and extend the micro-politics theoretical perspective to include the collective agency of members of organizational groups and cooperation between these groups.

I build on a strong foundation of prior studies about expatriate compensation in general to provide an overview of changes in expatriate compensation, from home- to host-based approaches, during the past 10 years.

Underpinned by findings from academic and practitioner literature, I review and integrate studies of expatriate compensation and global talent management to outline the challenges and opportunities home- and host-based compensation approaches present to MNEs.

Home-based compensation is becoming an outdated and overly expensive model that is often ineffective in moving MNEs’ global competitive advantage to where it needs to be, leaving host-based approaches as the only alternative. But the use of host-based “cheaper” compensation approaches can also lead to unintended outcomes for MNEs in terms of unforeseen opportunity costs (such as the loss of critical talent) arising from shortsighted compensation decisions.

I argue that expatriate compensation works best when it is not based on an employees’ home-country status but instead on the role that he or she performs locally. I suggest a host-based compensation approach — global compensation — that is based on the worth of the position rather than where the individual has come from. Such an approach is more equitable because it is performance-based thereby eliminating overpaying and perceived unfairness. It is much simpler to administer than home-based compensation because it represents an extension of most MNEs already existing domestic (home country) pay-for-performance model.

Despite more than 10 years of new compensation practices being implemented and reported by global mobility practitioners, very little has been studied or written by scholars about some of the recent changes in expatriate compensation over the past decade. The chapter addresses this gap in academic literature.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) has become so prevalent that a new term, the extended enterprise, has arisen to describe this approach to structuring an organization. The purpose of this paper is to integrate the information systems and the interfirm governance literatures to develop a framework for the role of trust in the governance of extended enterprises.

This paper uses transaction cost economics (TCE) to identify the elements and stages of BPO relationships. This paper then integrates those elements with the types of trust identified in the information systems (IS) literature to develop a framework.

TCE identifies three elements that influence the design and function of interfirm relationships: the transaction, the transaction environment and the parties (the client and the vendors). TCE also recognizes three stages in the transaction: contact, contract, and control. The IS literature identifies three types of trust: trusted systems, trusted institutions, and trusted partners. The paper links the two literatures into a framework identifying the type of trust related to each of the TCE elements; it then uses these linkages to identify the types of trust appropriate for each stage of the BPO relationship.

This paper integrates the IS and interfirm governance literatures concerning trust in interorganizational relationships in an effort to offer a framework for building and sustaining trust between BPO vendors and clients and to identify potential directions for future research.

Global trends like digitalization and verticalization increase the complexity within the retail industry and decrease the explanatory power of prevailing retail concepts. This paper responds to the call for new ways of understanding retailers’ business activities. The purpose of this paper is to structure and stimulate the emerging conceptual debate about retail business models (RBM) by developing a literature-based and empirically-substantiated generic retail business model framework (generic RBM).

The research is based on a systematic literature review and a qualitative study with 16 expert interviews in the German retail industry.

The paper identifies six core elements and respective sub-elements of a generic RBM. Contrasting the literature with empirical data, it confirms some common elements (e.g. “value proposition”) but invalidates others (e.g. “organization” or “governance”). The empirical findings add retail specifics like “horizontal integration,” “vertical integration” and “partners and networks” as core elements of a generic RBM.

The paper is the first to develop a generic RBM based on a systematic literature review and an empirical study across retailers. The resulting generic RBM can be used as a retail concept for systemizing and typifying the appearances of retailers in retailing theory. It can also be used for building, analyzing and comparing RBMs in retailing practice. The paper further provides a guideline for generic business model design with a hybrid approach based on literature and qualitative data.

Issues such as managing brand image, assessing advertising medium effectiveness and collecting market intelligence are common practice for higher education institutions (HEIs). Consequently, understanding the information needs of potential students to the HEI when they make their decisions is paramount. The aim of this survey is to analyse the decision‐making criteria of new undergraduates enrolling at a UK HEI on their first day in terms of marketing activities employed throughout the decision‐making period during their last 12 months. Focusing in particular on the effectiveness of the dissemination of information with the influences on their decisions of whether or not to keep this HEI in their preferred set and to enrol (purchase) will be investigated.

The research was designed to establish the key marketing communication activities that contribute to the student decision‐making process. A survey of 318 students enrolling on their first day at a Welsh (traditional) university was achieved from a sampling frame of 469. In order to supplement the literature, four semi structured in‐depth interviews with university staff (the School Manager, School Admissions Tutor, Head of Central Marketing, and Head of Central Recruitment) were also held. These interviews identified the key marketing communication themes (information sources with the application of new technologies in disseminating information during the decision‐making period) that acted as the foundation for the questionnaire. The respondents were asked to consider each phase of the decision‐making process and rank the information sources that had the most impact upon them. Hence a critical incident approach was employed.

The results show that the respondents did receive adequate information, with details of the programme of study being most important, but they would have preferred greater use of electronic sources and especially from current undergraduates on a regular basis. If the HE senior management knows the impact in terms of the timing and content of marketing activities on potential HE students, there is a better chance of matching the information sources to the needs of the students.

HEIs can do more for potential HE students by trying to offer the most relevant information that will satisfy each of their information needs. It is beneficial for all parties concerned that potential students are better informed and prepared to make those decisions. This is especially true as potential students are frequently young and living at home, planning to consume this “good experience” over a relatively long period of time, and the financial risks with opportunity costs involved are substantial. By addressing potential students' concerns and offering more “tailor‐made” communication strategies to suit them, HEIs can easily segment the market place and then position themselves within the competitive environment.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of management and colleagues on the perception of work harassment and outcomes of local government employees in Australia and the USA.

Completed surveys from local government employees (265 from the USA and 250 from Australia) were analysed using structural equation modelling and an ANOVA.

The results depict support for the overall measurement and structural models showing that workplace relationships impact on work harassment, and in turn employee outcomes (psychological wellbeing and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour-Individual (OCB-I)), although not all paths were accepted for each country. Statistically significant differences were found between the Australian and USA samples for both the measurement and structural models, with the sample from the USA showing much higher levels of satisfaction with workplace relationships, higher levels of psychological wellbeing, OCB-I, and lower perceptions of work harassment.

The findings provide implications that Australian and US local government employees, positioned closest to the public, experience work harassment probably as a result of chronic under-resourcing both in terms of manpower and other resources, and coupled with unrealistically high-performance targets. The results depict that such work harassment is resulting in lower psychological wellbeing (USA only) and lower extra-role behaviour associated with OCB-I (Australia and USA).

The value of this paper is that it benchmarks the impact of workplace relationships on work harassment for local government employees across two Anglo-American countries.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama campaigned for the office of President of the United States on a message of hope and change. Included in this message was an avowed commitment to fighting for equality and social justice. This chapter evaluates the Obama administration's record on social justice issues from a black feminist perspective. I find that although the administration has made some notable achievements, the universalist paradigm from which it operates may cause policymakers to overlook multiply oppressed groups. It might likewise blind them to the processes that generate and maintain social inequality. I argue that the results could hinder Obama from succeeding with much of his social justice agenda. I conclude by discussing how examining inequality through a black feminist prism would enable the Obama administration to speed up its program and develop and implement more effective policies. Finally, I also recommend a social justice project that might help the president create a legacy that will promote his goals long after he leaves office.

This paper aims to examine the ways in which discourses of talent management (TM) reinforce and perpetuate structural barriers of exclusion and discrimination. The argument is made that dominant TM discourses must be interrogated if authentic talent development (ATD) practices are to succeed. This interrogation will require a shift from an organizational emphasis on talent identification towards ATD’s focus on talent cultivation.

A conceptual approach is used to critically analyse TM discourses to assess the degree to which they are inclusive. Building upon the work of Debebe (2017), an alternative ATD approach is suggested that, together with the novel concept of authentic otherness, may enable scholars and practitioners to reflect upon current organizational practices and devise new approaches that encourage talent cultivation in diverse employees. This, in turn, may foster a greater sense of organizational belonging.

Findings identify a number of ways in which organizational norms and structures are maintained and perpetuated through dominant, mainstream TM practices. This hinders ATD for many due to social ascription processes. By exploring the concept of “authentic otherness” (Gardiner, 2017), alongside Debebe’s (2017) approach to ATD, the argument is made that systemic inequities in the workplace may be addressed when we create conditions to support the cultivation of talent for all employees.

This paper builds on recent arguments in the critical TM literature concerning the exclusionary nature of mainstream TM practices in organizations. The concept of authentic otherness is clarified and defined with a view to using this new term as a heuristic device to encourage a reflective understanding of how ATD practices can be developed.