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Superstars, or prominent managers who are responsible for strategic external relationships, are a resource for domestic firms and multinational corporations (MNCs). Theory suggests that MNCs employ superstars to manage organizational legitimacy and offer greater compensation and promotion potential. Domestic firms may employ superstars to enhance their organizational identity and offer them status and a supportive organizational environment. Empirical analysis of 411 advertising agencies in the U.S. and 239 superstars in advertising suggests that domestic agencies have a slight but statistically significant advantage in attracting and retaining superstars relative to MNCs. The strategic implications for domestic firms and MNCs are discussed.

This paper provides an opportunity to reflect on some of the questions that have been raised both in empirical work on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the household (Silverstone, 1991; Silverstone and Hirsch, 1992) and previous attempts to conceptualize the place and significance of ICTs in everyday life (Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley, 1992). It is intended to raise questions both about the cultural politics of information and communication technologies and, more broadly, about the politics of culture — about information and communication technologies' mediation of public and private spheres. It also raises questions about the nature, direction and speed of the ‘information revolution’.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the inconsistency of explicit and implicit domestic country bias (DCB) across different types of products and in the context of two countries.

Two studies in two countries are conducted to examine the inconsistencies in implicit and explicit DCB. The first study collected data through mall intercept survey method in Taiwan and identified 189 valid respondents. The second study applied a mixed (within and between subjects) factorial experiment in China using 200 subjects.

Results show that explicit and implicit attitudes are moderately related to each other. The results also confirm that ethnic product typicality can explain inconsistencies in both explicit and implicit DCB. For ethnically typical products, DCB is more pronounced in consumers’ explicit attitudes than in consumers’ implicit attitudes. On the contrary, for ethnically atypical goods, DCB makes itself present in both explicit and implicit attitudes.

The results shed new light on DCB and confirm that the bias could divaricate between explicit and implicit attitudes in the case of ethnically typical products.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of brand personality dimensions on purchase intention. Furthermore, the brand personality dimensions are compared to study the differences between users and non-users of 12 brands.

An estimated 400 undergraduate students participated. They were given a questionnaire divided into two sessions (six brands of think products in one session and six brands of feel products in another session). In the end, 313 participants completed the questionnaire on the six brands of think products, and 320 completed the questionnaire on the six brands of feel products.

Multiple regression analysis revealed that Hipness/Vivacity, Success, Sincerity and Sophistication brand personality dimensions are significant predictors of purchase intention. In addition, Domesticity/Emotionality and Professionalism also explain purchase intention but with a negative weight. The results are also broken down into product categories. Compared with non-users of the brands, the users rate the brands higher in all the brand personality dimensions.

This paper should prove useful to marketing practitioners to understand how Mexican customers perceive their brands and those of their competitors and, therefore, to understand what competitors of these brands can do to increase purchase intention.

The results found regarding purchase intention are important, as they can be used to identify those personality brand dimensions that appear to be most important in explaining consumer preferences.

As Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott have pointed out, the US TV serial Supernatural owes much of its success to the way it combines horror with family drama, strengthening the affective involvement of viewers in the lives of its protagonists, the monster-hunting Winchester brothers. The notion of home – presented variously as a domestic, feminine space from which the Winchesters and their compatriots are excluded; a mobile and contingent space of masculine bonding; and a hybrid space which allows for self-expression outside prescribed gender norms, but which also holds the potential for danger – is central.

Heather L. Duda has pointed to the ways monster hunters are excluded from the normative institutions of their societies, and this is certainly true of the Winchesters, who live in their family car and are unable to maintain ‘normal’ homes. Later seasons give them a home in the form of an underground bunker, not designed as a domestic space, but nonetheless a place where their hypermasculine behaviours can be relaxed. This chapter examines the tensions that emerge in this apparent move from a traditional narrative of the home as feminine space under threat to something more ambivalent, where masculine identity itself may be in danger.

This study aims to explicate the role of “respectable femininity” norms in the work lives of professional women and investigate the extent to which they impact female career advancement (or lack thereof) by way of creating a clash with the traditional career management techniques of accumulating social capital and managing desirable impression.

The qualitative research design was deemed appropriate for the study to gain an insight of the incumbents’ work experiences. The opinions, thoughts, experiences and expressions of the participants were gauged through in-depth, semi-structured interviews to ensure the coverage of all the relevant aspects while retaining the flexibility to obtain rich and detailed data beyond the preconceived questions.

It was found that working women in Pakistan feeling guilty of violating the norm of “confinement to private spheres” appeared obliged to abide by the respectable femininity principles of “domesticity”, “restrained networking” and “toning down their femininity” to maintain an “honourable” reputation/image in the society; however, these norms, in turn, created a significant hurdle in their career advancement by way of constraining their capacity to exploit the career management techniques of accumulating “social capital” and employing “impression management” tactics.

This research will add credence to the scant literature pertaining to the role of “respectable femininity” in the professional lives of working women. The study showcases the female’s enigmatic struggle of becoming a “good woman” and a “successful careerist” at the same time which culminates in to a series of subtle barriers in their professional careers mounting ultimately to become a significant panel of “glass ceiling” in their progression.

This paper investigates the integration of the home computer into the domestic sphere through a gender perspective on the notions of domesticity and domestication. The study is based on a series of interviews with seven British families in the late 1990s. The analysis is used to identify some of the characteristics that contribute to make the home computer domestic or undomestic, and to explore the processes of domestication. A focus on fears and anxieties around the computer as well as the emergence of myths and magical notions allows for deeper insights into the gender‐domestication “problématique”.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a distinctive strategy used in the Australian non‐profit community services sector to recruit and retain care workers. The paper argues that the implementation of salary sacrificing illuminates a wilful blindness to the interests and rights of paid care workers and the genesis of this blindness lies in the gendered nature of care work.

The paper draws on a brief review of relevant literature on the gendered nature of paid care work, Australian industry debates, interviews and data from a small case study to examine the context and paradoxical outcomes of salary sacrificing.

The findings illustrate the consequences of New Public Management models of funding and management in the non‐profit community sector, including how inadequate resourcing of agencies can work to pit the interests of clients against the interests of workers. The findings also suggest the limited impact of salary sacrificing as a retention strategy, while revealing the links between gender, domesticity and care that play out in the undervaluing of paid care work.

The research suggests that sustainable change to address the looming “crisis of care” in community services needs a rethinking by governments of funding and service models so that quality services are supported by properly valued and remunerated care workers.

The paper explores the paradoxical effects of an Australian industry recruitment and retention strategy.

Based on 178 in-depth interviews with evangelical Protestants in 23 states and data from the Evangelical Identity and Influence Survey (n=2,087), this chapter assesses the articulation of evangelical subcultural ideals with gendered family life, democratic individualism, and a two-earner, middle class lifestyle. Compared to other Protestants, evangelicals put more emphasis on husbands’ spiritual leadership, authority, and engaged fatherhood, and interpret wives’ employment as a pragmatic necessity and the outcome of expressive individualism. These ideals, in tension, produce a sense of “invested individualism” that embodies evangelical subcultural identity and facilitates the management and negotiation of gender, work, and family life.