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To connect students with the real world of management practice, the purpose of this paper is to extend and operationalize the situated cultural learning approach (SiCuLA) through five learning processes occurring within communities of practice. These include integration of cultural contexts, authentic activities, reflections, facilitation, and the construction of a collaborative learning community.

To investigate the complex processes and principles of cultural learning, a multi-method approach is applied to an extensive comparative study of default and intervened cases within three management classes. Evidence is drawn from multiple sources of qualitative data including class observations, meeting minutes, focus groups, and group interviews with students and instructors.

Results indicated that in default cases, little explicit attention was given to a situated perspective of culture, or to the rich sources of cultural knowledge available among members of the classroom community. In contrast, following the intervention cases where SiCuLA was applied, there was strong evidence that much more attention was given to enhancing student contextual knowledge. Nonetheless, there were some challenges in applying these processes within the classroom context.

This is the first study to extend and operationalize SiCuLA in a classroom setting. More importantly, the evidence forms the empirical basis for deriving theoretical principles for cross-cultural management (CCM) education and training. It contributes to studying cultural contexts as sources of knowledge for learning through active co-participation. It also contributes to positive CCM learning with an emphasis on human agency that encourages students to take more responsibility and ownership of their cultural learning.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficacy of the state policy of Ukraine in the sphere of protection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, measures of safeguarding cultural property in the event of armed conflict and to assess how and why the state funding of culture has changed.

The proposal is to investigate this by discussing the national and international policy frameworks through case study by using quantitative and qualitative methods to disclose if state cultural policy initiatives promote public interest in cultural issues and how the political events in the country affect the distribution of the state funding of culture.

Ukrainian state cultural policy initiatives appear to be effective in protecting cultural heritage at both central and local levels despite redistribution in the state funding of this sphere. In cooperation with international agencies, Ukraine effectively promotes its intangible cultural heritage properties. Interest of the public in the state cultural policy issues has grown considerably. Problems exist with the protection of Ukrainian cultural sites located in war zones and disputed territories.

These findings demonstrate how the state policies aimed at protecting Ukrainian cultural heritage may be effectively implemented at different levels in cooperation with international agencies; how the political landscape in the country promotes the public interest in cultural policy issues. This case forms an example of steps aimed at protecting cultural properties on disputed territories in cooperation with intermediaries, such as UNESCO.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of service flexibility in addressing consumer vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers within the funerary context.

Using phenomenological philosophy and a grounded approach, data was collected and analyzed through 12 depth interviews with funeral service providers, coupled with observations and photographs of three second-line funeral processionals.

Study results include the following three primary roles of service providers in supporting chronically-traumatized consumers: the role of service fluidity in addressing trauma, mitigating vulnerability via service providers as community members and alleviating suffering through compassionate service. Service flexibility and value co-creation efforts were executed through an expansive service ecosystem of vendors.

When consumers experience vulnerability that demands reliance upon service industries, service providers can intentionally implement fluidity and agility in service design, adopt understanding and altruistic practices, and operate with empathy and compassion to orchestrate mutually-beneficial service outcomes.

Rooted in transformative service research, providers are advised to consider modifying services to improve well-being and mitigate vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers via fluidity, community and compassion.

This study contributes originality to the body of service marketing literature by illustrating how service providers alleviate vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers through three adaptive service strategies.

A place in the boardroom is often considered a necessary if not sufficient condition for HR directors to exercise strategic influence on business decision‐making. The purpose of the paper is to explore the perceived importance of HR boardroom representation, both in a formal and symbolic sense, and to what extent HR directors can exercise strategic influence without it?

Evidence is explored from a survey of 1,188 UK HR practitioners, including 255 board members, and a series of follow‐up interviews with 16 HR directors.

Analysis of the survey findings suggests that boardroom versus non‐boardroom representation of HR appears to matter in four key areas: board members believe they have greater involvement and influence in business planning processes; they have more positive perceptions of the overall performance of HR; they give higher ratings of CEO perceptions of the HR function; and they believe they achieve greater integration of HR strategy with business strategy.

While there are increasingly other formal mechanisms and forums (e.g. executive committees, personal networks) outside the boardroom for HR directors to exercise their influence, it appears that the “symbolic capital” of boardroom recognition and esteem still retains enormous significance and rhetorical appeal for the HR profession.

The paper seeks to reframe the debates on the relative importance of HR boardroom versus executive committee representation as forums of strategic influence, by focusing on the continued symbolic significance of boardroom representation. It is concluded that a reworking of Bourdieu's concept of “symbolic capital” (i.e. professional esteem, recognition, status, or respect) as board capital may be useful in reframing future research on HR boardroom representation.

It's official! The Internet reveals Knowledge Management (KM) as one of the hottest management topics on companies' agendas. A recent search showed more than 37,900 web pages and 266 books taking aim at the subject. Add to that the conferences, consortia, societies, think tanks, and magazines dedicated to KM, and the theme's popularity throughout the business community is undeniable.

To describe how academic libraries can support digital humanities (DH) research by leveraging established library values and strengths to provide support for preservation and access and physical and digital spaces for researchers and communities, specifically focused on cultural heritage collections.

The experiences of the authors in collaborating with DH scholars and community organizations is discussed with references to the literature. The paper suggests how research libraries can use existing expertise and infrastructure to support the development of digital cultural heritage collections and DH research.

Developing working collaborations with DH researchers and community organizations is a productive way to engage in impactful cultural heritage digital projects. It can aid resource allocation decisions to support active research, strategic goals, community needs and the development and preservation of unique, locally relevant collections. Libraries do not need to radically transform themselves to do this work, they have established strengths that can be effective in meeting the challenges of DH research.

Academic libraries should strategically direct the work they already excel at to support DH research and work with scholars and communities to build collections and infrastructure to support these initiatives.

The paper recommends practical approaches, supported by literature and local examples, that could be taken when building DH and community-engaged cultural heritage projects.

This article seeks to analyse the skills and knowledge that have a positive impact on the reproduction of the core frames of social actors in the mass media.

The theoretical discussion is accompanied by a cross‐cultural case study of the debate surrounding the leaked e‐mail correspondence between climate researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2009. First, the authors analysed the framing work of the three main actors with their respective views, namely UEA and the blogs “Real climate”, “Climate audit” and “The air vent”. Second, they conducted an analysis of the media coverage of the issue in the UK, the USA, Germany and Norway, focusing on the importance of cultural factors, psychological biases and conformity to journalistic needs.

The literature review came to the conclusion that public relations practitioners stand good chances to succeed with their framing when they are able to conceive a message in a way that: is resonant with the underlying culture; appeals to psychological biases; and conforms to journalistic needs. The authors use “framing expertise” as an umbrella term for the knowledge and the skills related to these aspects when designing and promoting frames. In the case study, these theoretical assumptions were tested. While three different frames dominated the discourse, no clear winner of the framing contest was observed. Though qualitative differences in their framing expertise were noted, the frames of all of the strategic actors were accepted in the media, perhaps due to the norms of journalistic balance.

As this study is based on a single case, more research is needed to back up the findings and elaborate on the knowledge and skills needed when framing an issue.

The article pulls together, discusses and elaborates on a body of literature that thus far has been scattered, and makes contributions towards a better understanding of what it is that public relations practitioners actually do.

A stratified random sample of respondents was identified from databases compiled by associate researchers located in each of five countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia Taiwan, Indonesia and Japan. The aim of the study was to establish which dimensions of management skill are important to regional customers; to compare British management skills on these dimensions with those of major trading nations active in the region and to prioritise key areas for improvement if Britain is to become a valued member of the region. The major conclusion of this study was that British managers were generally perceived, amongst managers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan, to be inferior to Japanese and US managers and, in most areas, inferior to German managers. British managers were ranked fourth above Australian and Taiwanese managers, who were ranked as the weakest amongst the countries being investigated on a number of skills.

This paper aims to revisit the long-standing in the management literature argument of “matching managers to strategy” in the new empirical context of the top management team (TMT) and firm internationalisation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the consequences of matching nationalities of the TMT members to the multinational corporations’ (MNC) countries of operation.

This research is based on the quantitative methods. The authors use the traditional regression analysis, with the ordinary least squares estimation, in the moderated multiple regression models.

The study findings point to the importance of the asset-based exposure to international environments for the benefits of the TMT nationality matching to materialise. They re-affirm the critical remarks on the early “matching managers to strategy” frameworks, which indicated that the effectiveness of matching is underpinned by the detailed specification of the matching contingencies that influence the matching process.

The measure of matching the TMT foreign nationals to the MNCs’ host countries constitutes a novel way of capturing the TMT internationalisation, as opposed to measuring the incidence of foreigners on the TMTs or the TMT nationality diversity variable. It therefore underlines the aspect of matching in terms of the cultural fit between the TMT nationalities and countries of MNCs’ operations.

This publication is based on a research thesis which examined self‐help ethnic minority organisations and their activities in order to construct an accurate picture of the library and information needs of their members. It identified the kinds of co‐operation that existed between self‐help ethnic minority organisations and public libraries and other relevant official agencies. A series of models for co‐operation that could take place between public libraries, other relevant agencies and self‐help organisations was constructed.