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1 – 10 of 694Joaquin Cestino, Joseph Macey and Brian McCauley
This paper studies early stages of actor mobilization for institutional change within Swedish esports.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studies early stages of actor mobilization for institutional change within Swedish esports.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ interpretative phenomenological analysis.
Findings
The authors’ findings explain how actors become motivated to act in critical reflections linked to conflicting legitimacy judgments and emotionally charged personal struggles. Moreover, the findings show how, as actors get activated in collective action, they identify efficacy lines around valid domains and experience emotionally charged collective endeavors. Furthermore, the findings explain how particularities in early experiences project legitimacy aspirations that orient collective action toward validity ends and particular values and ideals shaping actors' grassroots movements.
Originality/value
This study adds to legitimacy and institutional change theory through individual actors' perspectives, providing key insights into how they are motivated, activated, and oriented. This study is the first to investigate grassroots activists' personal stories in esports.
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Ilkka Koiranen, Aki Koivula, Anna Kuusela and Arttu Saarinen
The study utilises unique survey data gathered from 12,427 party members. The dependent variable measures party members’ in-party commitment and is based on willingness to donate…
Abstract
Purpose
The study utilises unique survey data gathered from 12,427 party members. The dependent variable measures party members’ in-party commitment and is based on willingness to donate money, to contribute effort, the feeling of belonging in the party network and social trust in the party network.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article, we study how different extra-parliamentary online and offline activities are associated with in-party commitment amongst political party members from the six largest Finnish parties. We especially delve into the differences between members of the Finnish parties.
Findings
We found that extra-parliamentary political activity, including connective action through social media networks and collective action through civic organisations, is highly associated with members’ in-party commitment. Additionally, members of the newer identity parties more effectively utilised social media networks, whilst the traditional interest parties were still more linked to traditional forms of extra-parliamentary political action.
Originality/value
By employing the sociological network theory perspective, the study contributes to ongoing discussions surrounding the impact of social media on political participation amongst party members, both within and beyond the confines of political parties.
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Charles Kirschbaum and Luiz Ojima Sakuda
The purpose of the article is to explore the perceptions of Brazilian game developers about the power relations between them and the sponsors of digital game platforms. It also…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the article is to explore the perceptions of Brazilian game developers about the power relations between them and the sponsors of digital game platforms. It also aims to identify forms of collective action that developers can use to counteract the asymmetry of power.
Design/methodology/approach
The research employed an abductive approach, seeking empirical evidence that would challenge consolidated theory. To achieve this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 Brazilian developers. The data were analyzed qualitatively using NVivo software. The aim was to resolve theoretical ambiguities identified in the literature review and to explore unexpected findings.
Findings
The study explores Brazilian game developers' perceptions through interviews, revealing their experiences within the industry’s concentrated structure and their use of collective action to navigate power dynamics.
Research limitations/implications
The study's focus on Brazil limits the generalizability of its findings to the broader game development industry.
Practical implications
The study suggests Brazilian game devs can leverage collective action to counteract power imbalance with platforms, collaborate through events and projects and facilitate internationalization of their games.
Social implications
The study suggests collective action could empower developers to challenge platform dominance and foster a stronger community among Brazilian game developers.
Originality/value
The article’s value lies in examining Brazilian devs' experiences within their specific industry context and highlighting collective action as a potential strategy for developers.
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Francesc González-Reverté and Anna Soliguer Guix
Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The authors argue that activist groups use different narrative strategies to construct and legitimise their discourse of protest to convey social meanings for social action practices. This study represents an attempt to explain how anti-tourism activist groups have the agency to build different paradigms of protest rooted in particular views of tourism.
Design/methodology/approach
As a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology drawn on four case studies in the field of anti-tourism protest. Case study is deemed adequate to explore a complex social phenomenon, how activist groups differ from each other, in a specific socio-economic context. A critical discourse analysis method is used to study primary (interviews) and secondary sources (reports, websites and online campaigns documents) of information, which express the activist group motivations and objectives to protest against tourism.
Findings
This study’s findings provide evidence in how discourse differs among the protest groups. Three narrative paradigms of protest are identified, which guide their agency: scepticism, based on a global and ecological approach; non-interventionist transformation, rooted in local community issues; and direct transformation, based on a sectoral problem-solving approach. These differences are interpreted as the consequences of the emergence and the development of different paths of protest according to specific social contexts and power relations in which anti-tourism groups are embedded.
Originality/value
This paper provides a contemporary approach to anti-tourism activism within the context of social movements. This case study may be of interest to practitioners and international destination managers interested in gaining a better understanding of anti-tourism protest strategies, new anti-tourism narratives following COVID-19 and the opportunities and challenges for opening a dialogue with those involved in activism and social urban movements as part of sustainable tourism governance. Our results can also help activists to rethink how they integrate differences and particular strategic positions to avoid hindering collective action. This knowledge is especially useful for managers and authorities seeking to develop more accurate collaborative governance practices with local activists, and especially those interested in fostering participative action without marginalising the diverse range of local community perspectives.
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Saskia Stoker, Sue Rossano-Rivero, Sarah Davis, Ingrid Wakkee and Iulia Stroila
All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it…
Abstract
Purpose
All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.
Findings
A literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.
Originality/value
This work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.
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The article contributes to affective ethnography focussing on the fluidity of organizational spacing. Through the concept of affective space, it highlights those elements that are…
Abstract
Purpose
The article contributes to affective ethnography focussing on the fluidity of organizational spacing. Through the concept of affective space, it highlights those elements that are ephemeral and elusive – like affect, aesthetics, atmosphere, intensity, moods – and proposes to explore affect as spatialized and space as affective.
Design/methodology/approach
Fluidity is proposed as a conceptual lens that sits at the conjunction of space and affect, highlighting both the movement in time and space, and the mutable relationships that the capacity of affecting and being affected weaves. It experiments with “writing differently” in affective ethnography, thus performing the space of representation of affective space.
Findings
The article enriches the alternative to a conceptualization of organizations as stable entities, considering organizing in its spatial fluidity and in being a fragmented, affective and dispersed phenomenon.
Originality/value
The article's writing is an example of intertextuality constructed through five praxiographic stories that illustrate the multiple fluidity of affective spacing in terms of temporal fluidity, fluidity of boundaries, of participation, of the object of practice, and atmospheric fluidity.
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Winnie Nalubowa, Roberta Moruzzo, Paola Scarpellini and Giulia Granai
In Uganda, smallholder farmers produce about 70% of the food but receive very low prices on the sales channels they use. To improve farmers' livelihoods, other innovative sales…
Abstract
Purpose
In Uganda, smallholder farmers produce about 70% of the food but receive very low prices on the sales channels they use. To improve farmers' livelihoods, other innovative sales channels such as farmers' markets (FMs) have to be explored. Therefore, the study aimed to determine the potential of establishing farmers' markets in Uganda, focusing on Kampala district.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative methodology was used to understand farmers' perceptions and the factors that could influence the success of the farmers' markets. In addition, the potential of FMs has been analyzed through the components of the Localized Agri-Food System (LAFS).
Findings
The respondents had a positive perception of the farmers' markets, and farmers have an urgent need for other sales channels that could be profitable for them. Factors that could influence the success of the FMs were highlighted, including infrastructure in the marketplace, transportation and taxation by the government.
Research limitations/implications
The study had a limited sample size of the farmers, and it was carried out in 3 divisions of Kampala district, an urban area; thus, the findings cannot be generalized to fit the other regions of Uganda.
Originality/value
The LAFS showed that the foundation for establishing FMs is available; however, it has to be strengthened through the coordination of different stakeholders that work with the farmers.
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This paper aims to examine how a social entrepreneurial organisation in Sweden collectively learned to adapt itself to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how a social entrepreneurial organisation in Sweden collectively learned to adapt itself to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an abductive approach, this study conducted single case fieldwork on a social entrepreneurial organisation called SFE. The following research questions were asked: What are the changes in collective learning conditions that SFE has to face during the pandemic? What are the outcomes of collective learning during the pandemic in SFE?
Findings
This study results indicate that collective learning conditions were changed by restructuring the organisation’s design and teamwork during the pandemic, which facilitated sharing of knowledge and experiences. This collective learning helped the organisation develop new virtual projects during the pandemic. Another result of this collective learning was the members’ new shared understanding of the organisation’s vision.
Research limitations/implications
This study hopes to broaden the understanding of the relationship between collective learning in organisations and organisational adaptation in times of crisis.
Practical implications
This study can help leaders of social entrepreneurial organisations understand what changes are necessary to create a team that collectively learns.
Originality/value
The data had the advantage of being gathered as a real-time process, and the researcher witnessed how the organisation achieved adaptation as it happened and not just through its members’ reflection of it as a past phenomenon.
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Salla Lehtonen and Hannele Seeck
This paper reviews what has been written on leadership development from the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) perspective, which views leadership as emerging in everyday activities…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper reviews what has been written on leadership development from the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) perspective, which views leadership as emerging in everyday activities and interactions of a collective in a specific context. This paper aims to deepen the theoretical understanding of how leadership can be learned and developed from the L-A-P perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
An integrative literature review was undertaken to review and synthesise what has been written on the topic in journal articles and scholarly books.
Findings
The importance of the context and the practices that are embedded in it is the most central aspect affecting leadership development from the L-A-P perspective. This places workplace leadership development centre stage, but several papers also showed that leadership programmes have an important role. Not only collective capacity building is emphasised in the papers, but the importance of individual-level leader development is also recognised.
Originality/value
The contribution of this study is twofold: First, it brings the currently fractured information on L-A-P development together to enhance theory building by providing a synthesis of the literature. Second, a conceptual framework is constructed to show how the L-A-P perspective on leadership development can take both leadership development at the collective and individual levels into account, as well as the learning that takes place either inside or outside the workplace. This study’s results and framework show that the development has its own specific purpose and suggested methods in both levels, in both learning sites.
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Akram Hatami, Jan Hermes, Anne Keränen and Pauliina Ulkuniemi
To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how…
Abstract
Purpose
To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how corporate volunteering (CV), as one form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), creates sustainable happiness in business organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Theoretical knowledge of CSR and CV as well as the literature on happiness management was examined to form a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. The empirical section includes a qualitative multiple case study including two company cases of CV in Finland. The data were collected through qualitative interviews. Empirical analysis was made using thematical coding based on existing theory but also by allowing themes to emerge inductively from the data as well.
Findings
The study found that CV enables the emergence of sustainable happiness by allowing individual employee volunteers to transition from individual and rational mindsets to collective and emotional mindsets. A third transition was also identified, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life that the authors describe as “from actual to potential”.
Originality/value
The study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management by identifying the third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a state of being to becoming and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. The study also contributes to existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. This study concludes that companies' strategic activities that engage with society can create sustainable happiness for employees who participate. In order to achieve this, volunteering employees should have the chance to reflect on their experience and constant support from managers.
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