Search results

Social media has become an inescapable part of our lives. However, recent research suggests that excessive use of social media may lead to fatigue and users’ disengagement. This study aims to examine which brand-related factors contribute to social media fatigue (SMF) and its subsequent role on driving lurking behaviors, particularly among young consumers.

Based on survey data from 282 young users of social media, a holistic model of brand-related drivers and outcomes of SMF was tested, emphasizing the contribution of brands’ social media presence to users’ disengagement.

Research shows that branded content overload and irrelevance, as well as branded ads intrusiveness significantly impact SMF, which in turn plays a mediating role between brand-related drivers and lurking behaviors. The authors further conclude that the impact of SMF on lurking is stronger for users who follow a larger set of brands.

The study contributes to social media research by addressing its “dark side” and empirically validating the role of brands’ social media presence in developing young users’ fatigue and disengagement. The study further adds to the scant literature on SMF, which was mostly developed outside the branding field. Research also provides valuable insights to brands on how to improve their social media performance.

This paper aims to focus on the need for an enhanced anti-money laundering (AML) regulation for decentralised finance (DeFi) to protect the integrity of global financial systems against illicit activities. Research highlights the requirement for a robust regulatory strategy for the fast-paced DeFi evolvement.

This study used doctrinal legal research by analysing legislation, which involved creating use cases to illustrate different aspects of potential illicit activities via the DeFi ecosystem. Various DeFi applications were assessed for the potential regulatory responses and outcomes.

This paper offers valuable insight into the regulatory challenges presented by DeFi. This study addresses the blind spots leveraged by criminals afforded by the DeFi’s decentralised nature. This paper offers a comprehensive examination of DeFi regulatory challenges based on use-case scenarios and provides recommendations for regulators on how to address them effectively.

This paper proposes measures for regulatory authorities to minimise money laundering risks through new channels such as decentralised exchanges, non-custodial wallets and cross-chain bridges. This study concludes with the future directions for DeFi regulation and AML compliance.

This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.

The empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.

This study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.

The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.

The findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.

This paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

Service research offering a view of both the dark and bright sides of smart technology remains scarce. This paper embraces a critical perspective and examines the conflicting outcomes of smart services on the customer experience (CX), with a specific focus on chatbots.

This study uses empirical research methods to examine a single case study where an online retail service provider implemented a chatbot for customer service. Using discourse analysis, we analysed 7,167 conversations between customers and the chatbot over a two-year period.

The analysis identifies seven general themes related to the effects of the chatbot on CX: interaction quality, information gathering, procedure literacy, task achievement, digital trust, shopping stress and shopping journey. We illuminate both positive (i.e. having a pleasant interaction, providing information, knowing procedures, improving tasks, increasing trust, reducing stress and completing the journey) and negative outcomes (i.e. having an unpleasant interaction, increasing confusion, ignoring procedures, worsening tasks, reducing trust, increasing stress and abandoning the journey).

The paper develops a comprehensive framework to offer a clearer view of chatbots as smart services in customer care. It delves into the conflicting effects of chatbots on CX by examining them through relational, cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions.

As research emerged in terms of how narcissism, a negative or dark trait, has been found to be constructive in enhancing entrepreneurial behaviour, there are mixed results regarding the significance of narcissism in the field of entrepreneurship. Additionally, this previous research has mostly been conducted on student or nascent entrepreneur samples within developed economies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore how narcissistic traits of established entrepreneurs in an emerging economy context infuence their entrepreneurial behaviour both positively and negatively.

Gioia methodology was applied in the qualitative study by means of in-depth interviews, which allowed for the unpacking of narcissistic traits among established entrepreneurs in South Africa. Four themes emerged from the data, and included insights related to entrepreneurial experience influencing behaviour; business growth linked to personal development; opportunity identification versus loss; and identity separation in relation to authentic identity versus an entrepreneurial identity.

The findings of the paper contribute to creating an understanding of how to hone individual narcissistic traits for positive influences that develop entrepreneurs while also contributing to their business development, opportunity realization and identity. In addition, the findings highlighted a separation between established entrepreneurs’ authentic personality and the inputs that end up resulting in the entrepreneurial personality.

This paper highlights the possibility of narcissism functioning as a business process involved in entrepreneurship rather than a necessary personality trait. An interesting dynamic contributed to what seems to be a constant battle between the authentic identity and the entrepreneur identity, gaining deeper insight surrounding established entrepreneurs’ experiences to survive and, more importantly, thrive as entrepreneurs.

A positive outlook on the impact of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) on sustainability prevails in the literature. However, some studies have highlighted potential areas of concern that have not yet been systematically addressed. The goal of this study is to challenge the assumption of a sustainable Fourth Industrial Revolution by (1) identifying the possible unintended negative impacts of I4.0 technologies on sustainability; (2) highlighting the underlying motivations and potential actions to mitigate such impacts; and (3) developing and evaluating alternative assumptions on the impacts of I4.0 technologies on sustainability.

Building on a problematization approach, a systematic literature review was conducted to develop potential alternative assumptions about the negative impacts of I4.0 on sustainability. Then, a Delphi study was carried out with 43 experts from academia and practice to evaluate the alternative assumptions. Two rounds of data collection were performed until reaching the convergence or stability of the responses.

The results highlight various unintended negative effects on environmental and social aspects that challenge the literature. The reasons behind the high/low probability of occurrence, the severity of each impact in the next five years and corrective actions are also identified. Unintended negative environmental effects are less controversial than social effects and are therefore more likely to generate widely accepted theoretical propositions. Finally, the alternative hypothesis ground is partially accepted by the panel, indicating that the problematization process has effectively opened up new perspectives for analysis.

This study is one of the few to systematically problematize the assumptions of the I4.0 and sustainability literature, generating research propositions that reveal several avenues for future research.

We investigated the relationship between personality and managerial assessment center (AC) dimensions, emphasizing age’s moderating role within volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity (VUCA) simulations.

We analyzed 327 managers and applied the AC method, examining areas like social skills, problem-solving, management and goal striving, openness to change, employee development using the VUCA framework.

We assessed personality metatraits through a questionnaire based on the circumplex model (CPM; Strus, Cieciuch, & Rowinski, 2014), identifying four bipolar metatraits. Results highlighted passiveness and disharmony as negatively correlated with all managerial AC dimensions, with passiveness adversely affecting social skills and problem-solving.

Age’s moderating role emerged as pivotal in the relationship between personality and managerial AC dimensions, especially in specific VUCA contexts. This underscores age’s influence on the interplay between personality and managerial efficacy, suggesting varying predictive capabilities across age groups. The research illuminates the complexities of these relationships, spotlighting age’s nuanced impact.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test the intelligent career framework in a public sector setting in a country with a clientelistic culture to inform human resource management strategies.

Based on a qualitative methodology and an interpretivist paradigm, 33 in-depth interviews were conducted with Greek civil servants before the COVID-19 pandemic. The interview recordings were subsequently transcribed and coded via a blend of inductive and deductive approaches.

Outcomes of the study indicate that in a public sector setting in a country with a clientelistic culture, the three dimensions of knowing-whom, knowing-how and knowing-why are less balanced than those reported by findings from private sector settings in countries with an individualistic culture. Instead, knowing-whom is a critical dimension and a necessary condition for career development that affects knowing-how and knowing-why.

The theoretical contribution comes from providing evidence of the dark side of careers and how imbalances between the three dimensions of the intelligent career framework reduce work satisfaction, hinder career success and affect organisational performance. The practical contribution offers recommendations for human resource management practices in the public sector, including training, mentoring, transparency in performance evaluations and fostering trust.

Little is known about the overall meaning of the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ) from the visitors’ point of view. Conceptualizing the zone as a storyscape and its narratives as intangible heritage resources, this study aims to investigate the visitors’ engagement with these resources and the resulting articulations from the engagements as translated into verbal and visual storytelling.

Participant observation and participant generated images in combination with in-depth interviews with different types of tourists were conducted. This paper uses the photographs chosen by the interviewees themselves as a photo essay to explore the evocation of stories through narrative engagement.

Through participant-oriented research, this study identified three dominant storytelling themes through which visitors focus their understanding of the CEZ. Visitors’ narrative engagements and visual storytelling co-produce the site and entail fluid and even conflicting narrative articulations about the CEZ and its cultural significance.

The discoveries of this study stem from a unique developing heritage site. This study provided a more nuanced understanding of the different visitor categories in the CEZ and their group-specific ways to articulate, imagine and co-produce the storyscape of Chernobyl.

Gaining insight into the verbal and visual storytelling of tourists will contribute to the discussion of narrative consumption of different consumption profiles in tourism sites in addition to the mediation and construction of entangled memory spaces.

This paper explores flexible working practices (FWPs) and takes a critical view that argues a need to consider not only access to digital technological resources but also the vast array of factors that constrain one’s ability to use technology for its intended benefits, as constituting the digital divide post-COVID-19 lockdown.

Using a critical evaluation of the extant literature, we engage in a conceptual undertaking to develop theoretical propositions that form the basis for future empirical undertakings. To theoretically ground the arguments raised, we deploy the ontological lens of actor-network theory to illuminate the socio-technical dimensions of the digital divide in light of FWPs.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to adopt socially distanced work practices has become a reality for many organisations. We find that the adoption of FWPs, enabled by digital technologies, simultaneously signals hidden inequalities. We also develop a conceptual framework which depicts user responses in different technology environments that can either be limiting or enabling for individuals’ work productivity.

With regards to the digital divide, attention has often focused on access to digital technologies, as the term “digital divide” portrays. The implication is that the array of factors and resources that individuals are heterogeneously networked to, which also constitute the digital divide, is often taken for granted. We take a different ontological view that brings to the fore other factors at play within an individual’s network of relations.

本文擬探索彈性工作安排,並以批判性的觀點、去論證當我們探討2019冠狀病毒病封鎖解除後的數字鴻溝究竟是由什麼組成時,我們必須考慮數字技術資源的使用權限,以及關注各個有關的因素,因這些因素限制了我們從應用技術獲得預期效益的能力。

我們對現存文獻作批判性的評價,藉此參與一項概念性的工作,以便能建立可以成為將來實證性工作基礎的理論命題;為使提出的論點能得到理論上的依據,我們使用行動者網絡理論的本體論鏡頭,去闡明鑒於彈性工作安排的數字鴻溝的各個社會技術維度。

由於2019冠狀病毒病大爆發的關係,許多機構和組織都因實際情況而需採用保持社交距離的工作安排。我們發現、當我們採用有賴數字技術的發展而成行的彈性工作安排時,我們同時也會使不為人知的不平等狀況浮現出來;我們也注意到、不同的技術環境會限制個人的工作生產力,又或相反地助其建立工作生產力;就此,我們建立了一個可以描繪就這些不同的技術環境、用戶會如何回應的概念框架。

就數字鴻溝而言,人們的關注總放在數字技術使用權限的差異上,就如數字鴻溝這個術語所塑造的形象一樣。這種關注可能帶來的影響是即使有不同的因素和資源、即使個人會以各種形式與不同的因素和資源聯繫起來,而這些因素和資源構成了數字鴻溝,人們卻把這些因素和資源視為理所當然。我們採用不同的本體論觀點,希望藉此使個人關係網絡內起著作用的其它因素能突顯出來、免被忽視。