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Information is often defined in terms of meaning. Traditional theories of meaning, each with some drawbacks, have been rooted in language; but a more satisfactory theory of meaning may be rooted in information. Meaning can be defined as coordinated action toward some end. In this sense, the meaning of something is the way it affords and constrains actions, and it is therefore inextricable from its context. Meaning can be discussed in several senses, including personal, social, environmental, historical, political, etc. Because information studies is concerned with the intersection of people and information, two key conceptualizations of meaning are personal meaning and social meaning. When activities have this meaningful dimension, they make a person's life feel more valuable and worth living, as a person and/or as a member of a group. In general, personal and social meaning include aspects such as purpose and connection with others.

Based on the job demands-resources theory, the objective of the current research is to investigate the influence of contextual (i.e. change information), as well as, personal (i.e. meaning-making) change resources on the perceived change uncertainty (PCU) and employee burnout (i.e. emotional exhaustion, cynicism, professional efficacy) relationship.

The paper examines (1) whether PCU is related to burnout, (2) the extent to which change information and meaning-making are directly associated with burnout and (3) whether change information and meaning-making moderate the relationship between PCU and employee burnout. The research data were collected (in three sequential phases) from 293 employees of a group of Luxury Hotels and Resorts located in Southern Greece that has undergone a major cultural change.

The research findings suggest that change information is related to exhaustion and cynicism, as well as, that meaning-making is directly related to all of the burnout components. Change information buffered the negative relationship between PCU and exhaustion and between PCU and cynicism. Meaning-making moderated the negative relationship between PCU and exhaustion.

The results support that leaders and managers will benefit significantly if they realize how important is to ensure that these change resources (i.e. change information and meaning-making) are in place during organizational changes and constantly evaluate the factors that can increase their employees’ well-being.

The originality of this study lies in the finding that change information moderated the negative relationship between PCU and exhaustion, as well as, PCU and cynicism; and that meaning-making moderated the negative relationship between PCU and exhaustion. Further, the study refers to the Greek tourism industry (9th in the word in terms of international tourist arrivals) which plays a pivotal role to the Greek economy. Finally, the research findings contribute to the uncertainty reduction theory, as well as, other related notions.

The aim of this study was to examine whether, when a person reads, there is a boost to all material related to the context in Najdi Arabic (NA) as was found in English in was found in Rodd et al. (2013). The study employs Arabic language features of orthographic style and diglossia to answer the research question.

Forty-two participants were asked to come on two sessions to complete a reading task, a filler task and a word recognition task. The word recognition task included 14 homographs that could mean one thing in Modern Standard Arabic and another in NA.

The findings show that the assumption that all related materials are ready to be used when readers are exposed to the context is not valid for the two Arabic variants.

One limitation of this study was that the participants were all female.

The findings could help writers write better texts to help individuals who struggle with reading comprehension whether it is because of dyslexia, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as when researchers understand how priming works, they might be able to help readers in their reading fluency and comprehension (Rodd et al., 2016). This could be by producing better texts to comprehend or using semantic priming in classroom setups.

The digital platform-based sharing economy has become ubiquitous all over the world. In this paper, we explore how market actors’ conflicting interpretations of digital platforms’ business models give form and shape value co-creation and capture practices in contexts marked by weak institutions and underdeveloped markets.

Integrating insights from the broader literature on digital platforms and the contemporary turn to “meaning-making” in social theory, we adopt a problematization method to unpack the collective contest over the interpretation of value co-creation and capture from ridesharing platforms in contexts marked by weak institutions and underdeveloped markets.

Collective contest over the interpretation of digital business models may give rise to competing meanings that may enable (or impede) digital platform providers’ ability to co-create and capture value. We present an integrative framework that delineates how firms caught up in such collective contests in contexts marked by weak institutions and underdeveloped markets may utilise such conditions as marketing resources to reset their organising logic in ways that reconcile the conflicting perspectives.

The paper presents propositions constituting a contribution to a meaning-making perspective on ridesharing digital platforms by offering insights into how digital business models could potentially be localised and adapted to address and align with the peculiarities of contexts. It goes further to present a theoretical model to extend our understanding of the different sources of contestation of meaning of digital platforms.

The meaning-making perspective on digital platforms extends our understanding of how the collective contest over interpretations of value co-creation and capture may offer a set of contradictory frames that yield possibilities for ridesharing platform providers, and their users, to assimilate the organising logic of digital business models into new categories of understanding.

This study suggests that although there are no apparent clues in the built environment of informal housing settlements developed by immigrants from rural areas, urbanization processes lead to acculturation. It is possible to trace this transformation by utilizing semantic tools.

Istanbul has experienced a major population increase due to immigration from rural areas in the last two decades. Most buildings in the areas developed by these new citizens appear to be impermanent and unfinished. This study suggests that regarding to the evaluation of such settlements some of the widely accepted assumptions may not be valid, and new ways of understanding involved processes are necessary. This study suggests acculturation occurs in such areas, contrary to the general belief held until the end of 1990's. These processes are explained with the semantic model of the ‘home’ suggested in this study. This is a temporal and ‘living’ model, based on the idea that as a result of processes of urbanization people's meanings associated with their homes change. This model is used as a tool to predict these changes in the meanings and explain them in relevance with processes of acculturation. The results of the study are expected to contribute both to semantic research and research on illegal settlements.

While there is growing recognition of the role of leaders as managers of meanings, leadership theories have so far focused primarily on the articulation of a positive vision, the framing of organizational issues as opportunities, and emphasizing potential gains and benefits for the organization and its members. However, these positive frames may not be equally valid under all circumstances and with respect to all issues. This chapter concentrates on exploring leadership as management of meanings in times of crisis and recovery, when leaders attempt to stop deterioration, turn the organization around, and lead it to recovery. We label this leadership approach prevention-oriented leadership. On the basis of an analysis of a series of weekly e-mail letters sent by the CEO of a large company to all organizational members over a period of 22 months we suggest that prevention-oriented leaders may use three related ways to manage meanings, namely (1) generating a clear picture of the negative challenge, (2) strengthening the organizational members’ self-efficacy and confidence in the organization's resources available for coping with the crisis, and (3) creating a sense of progress.

Most of the literature on strategic management portrays the strategic leader as a planner, decision formulator, and implementer of structure and processes. Theories of strategic management have not paid much attention to the essence of all leadership roles, namely the role of influencing others, and have not been much informed by leadership theories in this regard. In this chapter, I argue that the existing gap between the field of leadership and the field of strategic management can be bridged by paying closer attention to the fundamentally social and interpretative nature of the strategy formation and implementation, and in particular to the role of strategic leaders as managers of meanings. The chapter presents the idea of leadership as the management of meanings, applies this idea to the role of strategic leaders, offers a set of meanings to focus on when we consider strategic leaders as managers of meanings, discusses the link between meaning making and organizational performance, and attends to some potential dangers involved in viewing leaders as managers of meanings.

The authors explore self-identity construction as a mechanism of institution­aliz­ation at the individual level. Building on in-depth analysis of life stories of yoga practitioners who are at different stages of practice, the authors found that as yoga practitioners are more exposed to the yogic institution, yogic meanings gradually infuse their general worldview and self-concept. The authors follow the line of research which focuses on professional identity construction as institutional work, yet, opening the “black box,” the authors argue that institutional meanings take root at the individual level beyond the institutional context and beneath the explicit level of identity.

The design of a job is deeply consequential for employees’ psychological experiences at work. Jobs are collections of tasks and relationships that are grouped together and assigned to an individual (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1992), and scholars have long been interested in the way these elements come together to constitute the experience of a job (Griffin, 1987; Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Research in this area has traditionally built on a core assumption that managers design jobs in a top-down fashion for employees, which places employees in the relatively passive role of being the recipients of the jobs they hold.