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Recent calls in international management (IM) research ask scholars to conduct more context-sensitive research, however; little attention has been paid to the methodological particularities that inform such context sensitivity. This paper aims to addresses this shortcoming by exploring how emic concepts implicate IM research processes during qualitative field studies.

We carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Brazilian subsidiaries of three German multinational enterprises. We relied on the researchers’ experiences and data from a larger research project including 63 semi-structured interviews, 7 focus groups, documents and field notes. Adopting a culturally sensitive and self-reflexive lens, we reflect on the researchers’ experiences in the Brazilian sociocultural context from an interpretive paradigm.

Our findings reveal how seven identified emic concepts affect four prototypical phases of the research process: securing access, collecting data, analyzing data and presenting findings. We discuss how these seven emic concepts influenced the research process and impacted research outcomes, as experienced by the researchers.

Findings are limited by our self-reflexive capabilities as foreign researchers, the limited explanatory power of emic categories, our paradigmatic positioning and the research context.

We contribute to research practice by providing eight suggestions for conducting international fieldwork and proposing avenues for future research.

This research contributes to the epistemological and methodological debate on context-sensitive research by arguing that intercultural sensitivity needs to be managed as an integral dimension for any form of international fieldwork. Findings contribute to interpretive approaches showing how emic concepts affect research practices, with implications for critical management perspectives.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

Since March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted refugees by compounding preexisting and systemic health, social and economic inequities. In Canada, approximately 50,000 Syrian refugees arrived between 2015 and 2020 and were in the process of rebuilding their lives when the pandemic started. This study aims to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic for Syrian refugees in Canada and identify supports needed.

Drawing on frameworks for refugee psychosocial adaptation and social integration and a qualitative descriptive design, the study used thematic analysis to examine semi-structured interviews with 10 Syrians.

Findings indicated four themes that provide a snapshot of impacts relatively early in the pandemic: facing ongoing development, inequity and insecurity during integration; disruption of settlement, integration and adaptation due to the pandemic; ongoing adaptation and resilience during integration in Canada; and ongoing needs and solutions for integration and adaptation.

This study builds upon growing research concerning Syrian refugees and psychosocial adaptation, particularly during the pandemic. The findings highlight the impacts of the pandemic on a population already facing inequities in a resettlement country. While the findings emphasize the resilience of the Syrian refugee community, the study also demonstrates the need for ongoing supports and justice-oriented action to fulfill resettlement commitments, especially in the face of additional stressors like the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications for policy, practice and future research are discussed.

This case study aims to enrich research on language teacher identity and cognition by detailing the experiences of English language teachers instructing students with visual impairments in Türkiye, exploring the (re)formation of their identity and cognition within this context.

This study uses a qualitative approach, combining interviews, observations, field notes and legal document analysis. Hiver and Al-Hoorie's (2016) Complexity Theory guides data collection and analysis, supported by MAXQDA software.

The findings highlight the influences of personal, social, cultural and educational factors on language teacher identity and cognition, with a focus on interactions in preservice education, institutional requirements and instructional methods at the School for the Blind.

This case study provides practical and theoretical insights into language teacher identity and cognition within special education schools, contributing to the broader discourse on diversity in this field.

This study aims to investigate a unique approach to learning languages through self-directed online learning. Specifically, it explores the self-management abilities and skills learners need while learning a language outside traditional classroom settings when using mobile-assisted learning technology.

A mixed-methods approach was used in this study, including an online survey of 84 people and 10 semi-structured interviews.

Findings reveal the significant role of specific and well-defined learning goals in enhancing learners’ performance. These goals can be either self-initiated by the learners themselves or defined by the technological features of the learning platform. However, the presence of distractions in learners’ daily lives presents challenges to effective time management, affecting learners both physically and psychologically. A key aspect of self-directed language learning lies in the learners’ ability to seek out relevant human and material resources beyond the confines of a single mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) tool. The authenticity of these resources is crucial in ensuring meaningful and effective learning experiences.

Understanding how learners navigate and discover valuable resources is a central focus of this study. This research offers valuable insights into the field of self-directed language learning, revealing the pivotal role of self-management skills with mobile-assisted learning technology. The findings contribute to the broader field of language education and offer practical implications for educators and developers seeking to optimize self-directed language learning experiences through innovative and technologically driven approaches.

MALL is often ideal for individualized informal learning, but the existing literature focuses heavily on formal learning situations, underestimating the importance of MALL practices in various informal settings. Most research reports on MALL-based self-directed learning primarily sample traditional English-learning university students. Therefore, there is a need for research on how nontraditional older adult learners self-direct their language learning with mobile technology outside the classroom.

Technical advantages embraced by blockchain, such as distributed ledger, P2P networks, consensus mechanisms and smart contracts, are highly compatible with addressing the security issues of transferring and storing judicial documents and obtaining the feedback and evaluation of judicial translation services in cases with foreign elements. Therefore, based on this, a consortium blockchain-based model for supervising the overall process of judicial translation services in cases with foreign elements is proposed.

Some judicial documents are required to be translated when there are language barriers in cases with foreign elements. The purpose of this paper is expected to address security issues, which is ignored, in the process of translating judicial documents.

The experimental results show that the model constructed in this paper can effectively guarantee the security and privacy of transferring and storing translated judicial documents in cases with foreign elements, and realize the credibility and traceability of feedbacks and evaluations of judicial translation services. In addition, the underlying network communications is stable and the speed for processing data can meet the requirements of practical application.

The research in this paper provides an innovative scheme for judicial translation services in cases with foreign elements. The model constructed is conducive to protecting the security of the transfer and storage of judicial documents and improving the efficiency and modernization ability of hearing cases with foreign elements.

The study employs two independent experimental studies to collect data. It focuses on the matching effect between advertising appeals and product types. The Elaboration Likelihood Model serves as the theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive processing involved in consumers' responses to these advertising appeals and product combinations.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising appeals on consumers' intentions to purchase organic food. We explored the interaction between advertising appeals (egoistic vs altruistic) and product types (virtue vs vice) and purchase intention. The goal is to provide insights that can enhance the advertising effectiveness of organic food manufacturers and retailers.

The analysis reveals significant effects on consumers' purchase intentions based on the matching of advertising appeals with product types. Specifically, when egoistic appeals align with virtuous products, there is an improvement in consumers' purchase intentions. When altruistic appeals match vice products, a positive impact on purchase intention is observed. The results suggest that the matching of advertising appeals with product types enhances processing fluency, contributing to increased purchase intention.

This research contributes to the field by providing nuanced insights into the interplay between advertising appeals and product types within the context of organic food. The findings highlight the importance of considering the synergy between egoistic appeals and virtuous products, as well as altruistic appeals and vice products. This understanding can be strategically employed by organic food manufacturers and retailers to optimize their advertising strategies, thereby improving their overall effectiveness in influencing consumers' purchase intentions.

This study aims to deepen our understanding of how inclusionary practices are used within organizations and how they satisfy specific inclusion needs.

We adopt a qualitative research design, reporting on data from semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 diversity and inclusion (D&I) directors/leads and using a thematic approach to analysis.

Our study expands understanding of inclusion practices, showing that they are not uniformly implemented and that practices may satisfy both needs to belong and differences valued, with interviewees prioritizing belonging. Well-being and career development are seen as important inclusion practices demonstrating support and appreciation of difference, thus as inputs, not outputs, of inclusion challenging existing assumptions. Inclusionary practices are malleable, and their impact depends critically on the leaders involved and their commitment to EDI.

Our study shows how practices satisfy inclusion needs and that the implementation of practices varies depending on the leaders involved.

Despite the unparalleled importance of value within healthcare, value-based models remain underutilised in the procurement of medical devices. Research is needed to understand what factors incentivise standard, low-priced device purchasing as opposed to value-adding devices with potentially higher overall health outcomes. Framed in agency theory, we examine the conditions under which different actors involved in purchasing decisions select premium-priced, value-adding medical devices over low-priced, standard medical devices.

We conducted 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects scenario-based vignette experiments on three UK-based online samples of managers (n = 599), medical professionals (n = 279) and purchasing managers (n = 449) with subjects randomly assigned to three treatments: (1) cost-saving incentives, (2) risk-sharing contracts and (3) stronger (versus weaker) clinical evidence.

Our analysis demonstrates the harmful effects of intra-organisational cost-saving incentives on value-based purchasing (VBP) adoption; the positive impact of inter-organisational risk-sharing contracts, especially when medical professionals are involved in decision-making; and the challenge of leveraging clinical evidence to support value claims.

Our results demonstrate the need to align incentives in a context with multiple intra- and inter-organisational agency relationships at play, as well as the difficulty of reducing information asymmetry when information is not easily interpretable to all decision-makers. Overall, the intra-organisational agency factors strongly influenced the choices for the inter-organisational agency relationship.

We contribute to VBP in healthcare by examining the role of intra- and inter-organisational agency relationships and incentives concerning VBP (non-) adoption. We also examine how the impact of such mechanisms differs between medical and purchasing (management) professionals.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch in the context of China and to further explore the potential mechanisms concerning how noncognitive skills determine mismatch outcomes.

This paper uses the Chinese Family Panel Survey of 2018, which provides the Big Five Personality Inventory to assess respondents' noncognitive skills and contains information on educational mismatch. The authors estimate the effects of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch by means of a probit model. Additionally, the correlated random effects (CRE) model and instrumental variable (IV) approach have also been exploited in the robust checks.

The findings show that the composite score of noncognitive skills reduces the probability of being overeducated and, conversely, increases the likelihood of being undereducated. When distinguishing the effects of different personality traits, the authors find significantly negative effects of agreeableness and openness on overeducation and a positive effect of openness on undereducation. With regard to heterogeneous analysis, the effects of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch exist mostly among white-collar employees and employees with fewer than 5 years of work experience. Finally, the authors provide two likely mechanisms related to job search effort and social capital, followed by the presentation of supporting evidence.

The results of this paper underline the importance of noncognitive skills in raising the quality of jobs that individuals can obtain. This suggests that the development of noncognitive skills should be encouraged to be integrated into formal education systems and social job training programs in China.

Despite a growing interest in its consequences in the labor market, the role of noncognitive skills in determining educational mismatch has rarely been discussed in developing countries. This study provides the first evidence regarding the effects of noncognitive skills on education mismatch in China. It contributes to the research on noncognitive skills' labor market outcomes and enhances the understanding of the factors driving educational mismatch.