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This chapter seeks to analyse neighbouring in times of rapid change in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai. Using the local neighbourhood of Tianzifang as a case study, this chapter shows how the pace of change in Shanghai since the 1950s has reshaped the social fabric of the area, including traditional neighbour relations. As Tianzifang has shifted from an unknown neighbourhood comprised of traditional lilong dwellings, where social relations played out in private communal settings, to one of Shanghai’s most famous tourist spots, the relationships between residents, as well as with ‘outsiders’ and the familiar local environment, have also changed. Traditional neighbourly ties have been broken, rebuilt and transformed again through waves of new residents coming into the area and the displacement of others who can no longer afford to live there. For those who remain, the question of who is, and thus who is not, a ‘real’ neighbour has been narrowed to include only ‘insiders’ with a deep sense of belonging and connection to the area – i.e. the urban working class who have always lived in Tianzifang and own rather than rent their homes. Yet even this is no longer sufficient. The disruption that Tianzifang’s physical and social transformation has brought to residents’ lives has also imposed new social norms about how neighbours should behave in this new, intermediary space of public and private. ‘Real’ neighbours are those who conform to changing social norms while neighbours who breach them can be ostracised and excluded by others who once saw them as an insider.

IT governance has become the recognized norm system for chief information officers. The purpose of this paper is to understand how CIOs relate to these norms, by studying how they legitimate incompliance with the norms.

The paper uses an interpretive, qualitative, structured interview study with 18 CIOs in large Swedish organizations regarded as having excellent IT governance practice, using motive talk as analytical lens to identify the informants’ relationship to norms.

The study identifies norm‐specific patterns for how CIOs legitimate incompliance with IT governance, finding that CIOs use a combination of excuse and justifications as strategies of legitimation. The study also finds that CIOs display a tendency of not contesting IT governance‐related norms unless these are in conflict with neighboring professional jurisdictions. This is regarded as an identification of the “margins” of IT governance.

The study illustrates how the theory of motive talk is a viable road ahead for future studies of IT professionals. The generalizability of the identified patterns of legitimation is limited by the selection of large organizations with solely male CIOs, as well as the selection of solely organizations that have succeeded in establishing external legitimacy concerning IT governance and the organizations being Swedish.

CIOs aspiring to increase their legitimacy should avoid direct conflicts with neighboring professions. In addition to this, they should also aspire to be clear in a separation of motive talk and actual practice, since full norm compliance may be detrimental to their factual operations.

The originality of this paper lies in the methodological approach of combining motive talk and speech acts to investigate CIO legitimation practices.

How much goodness do we expect from our neighbours? People living nearby might be locked with each other in interdependencies by spatial proximity but often do not know each other more personally. This chapter explores the question of how latent neighbourliness – an expectation that neighbours will have our back even though we might not know them – emerges. We draw on statistical analyses of survey data from four neighbourhoods in Berlin, Germany, and a pre- and post-COVID-19 methodology, therefore capturing a time when people were asked to stay home and within their neighbourhoods. Our findings demonstrate that latent neighbourliness is neither significantly associated with personal support from neighbours when facing important challenges, nor personal support experienced in the neighbourhood with others whom we know, but who are not neighbours (e.g., family members). Neither is latent neighbourliness a fixed attitude that can be explained by individual characteristics and/or positions (such as age, gender, education, income, one’s employment situation and others). In contrast, we find that, apart from individual generalised trust towards others, the neighbourhood setting itself shapes levels of latent neighbourliness among all demographics. Additionally, those with younger children show higher latent neighbourliness, most likely a result of moral geographies. We argue that caring for children in public and experiencing or displaying moral codes that others can read makes it easier to develop an expectation of goodwill (or for that matter, hostility) from neighbours, without having more durable ties to them.

Artificial intelligence (AI) allows the brand to co-create value with young customers through mobile apps. However, as many brands claim that their mobile apps are using the most updated AI technology, young customers face app fatigue and start questioning the authenticity of this touchpoint. This paper aims to study the mediating effect of authenticity for the value co-creation of AI-powered branded applications.

Drawing from regulatory engagement theory, this study conceptualize authenticity as the key construct in customers’ value experience process, which triggers customer value co-creation. Two scenario-based online experiments are conducted to collect data from 444 young customers. Data analysis is performed using ANOVA and Process Hayes.

The results reveal that perceived authenticity is an important mediator between media richness (chatbot vs AI text vs augmented reality) and value co-creation. There is no interaction effect of co-brand fit (high vs low) and source endorsement (doctor vs government) on the relationship between media richness and perceived authenticity, whereas injunctive norms (high vs low) strengthen this relationship.

The finding provides insights for marketing managers on engaging young customers suffering from app fatigue. Authenticity holds the key to young customers’ technological perceptions.

This research highlights the importance of perceived authenticity in encouraging young customers to co-create value. Young customers consider authenticity as a motivational force experience that involves customers through the app’s attributes (e.g. media richness) and social standards (e.g. norms), rather than brand factors (e.g. co-brand fit, source endorsement).

This chapter examines how religion and religiosity shape economic norms in Villa Israel, an urban squatter settlement in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In Villa Israel, residents share water with others to help overcome limited access to drinking water. Using a mixed methods approach, we draw on the results of ethnographic research and economic experiments. The analyses yield three key results. First, there were strong norms of generosity and charitable giving in the community. Second, religiosity was positively associated with generosity. People who adhered to Christian conceptions of charity and frequently attended religious services were more likely to give generously. While wealth was a limiting factor on some families' ability to give water, there was no evidence that the rich and poor endorsed different norms of fair giving. Third, the norms of fair giving varied in the context of the three most common reciprocal relationships in the community (family members, coreligionists, and neighbors). Compared with neighbors, exchanges between family members and coreligionists were relatively generous and permissive of self-interest. Based on these results, we conclude that the presence of strong Christian norms of generosity and fair giving is an important institutional mechanism for facilitating water reciprocity in this community.

Contemporary urban change is predominantly driven by migration and capital accumulation, with associated urban (re-)development projects – such as new-build gentrification – typically favouring the middle classes. Low-income residents in gentrifying neighbourhoods are often said to be displaced from their homes, either directly or indirectly, or to experience a loss of sense of place induced by the physical and social changes to the area. With the latter in mind, we investigate the perceived opportunities and threats of urban renewal experienced by stay-put communities in the wake of new developments and demonstrate how a loss of sense of place occurs via conflict between neighbours affected by the change. Our focus on transnational spaces comprising co-migrant Kurdish/Turkish communities in the two cities of Istanbul (Turkey) and Vienna (Austria) reveals not only how profoundly the impacts of neighbour conflict are felt as once-close and supportive neighbourly ties are severed but also how well-established neighbourly norms and obligations in transnational spaces accentuate the conflict in the first place. Moral codes that require neighbours to look after one another, along with local power dynamics of support in return for loyalty, set expectations that neighbours will take each other’s side when needed. Our findings reveal that the situatedness of residents to the development projects (in terms of proximity, residential tenure and openness to change) causes neighbours to take opposing sides and that the conflicts generated are accentuated by the perceived failure of neighbours to meet their neighbourly obligations. The result is a loss of sense of place and belonging for all residents – not just those detrimentally impacted by the development – wrought by rising hostility and avoidance among neighbours, and an overall weakening of neighbourly ties.

Singapore, a multiracial nation, where 80% of the population resides in mid- to high-rise public housing estates, provides an interesting milieu to study neighbouring in the context of high-density living. Its geopolitical position and socio-demographic features – such as an ageing demographic, changing family structure, and increasingly diverse population – have rendered social cohesion an integral aspect of national and neighbourhood-level policies, programmes, and institutions. However, these programmes and policies are built on a relatively static national narrative around mutuality, harmony, and community bonding that rarely takes into consideration current social, temporal, and spatial constructions of neighbouring. It is in this light that we re-examine the social construction of ‘neighbours’ and ‘neighbourliness’ in Singapore using a holistic quality of life (QoL) framework to better understand both institutional and lived forms of neighbourliness. A mixed-methods research approach, comprising 243 semi-structured interviews (161 with a Q method component) and a large-scale survey comprising 3,134 participants, was conducted to explore and assess current norms, attitudes, and practices around neighbouring. Our findings show a dominant set of practices around neighbouring that are polite, minimal, and often referred to as ‘hi/bye’. we note two particular perspectives of the relative importance of neighbours in contributing to QoL and consider the effects of hi/bye neighbouring upon an older group of residents for whom neighbours are still important. This deeper understanding around neighbouring in public housing estates also brings relevant insights to related social cohesion policies and programmes.

Plastic pollution is a widespread problem around the world. However, the problem is more severe and ever increasing in developing countries. The literature suggests that the majority of the work and the solutions that have been proposed to address plastic littering have been undertaken in developed countries. Thus, there is a need to explore the problem in developing countries to better understand the issue and to develop context-specific solutions. We explored the norms perspective using ‘The Focus Theory of Normative Conduct’, individual ethical position and place attachment factors. Interviews were conducted in Pakistan with 16 people who were recently at a beach at which there was a large amount of plastic litter. Results showed that people are influenced by the pro-littering social norms of their friends and neighbours. However, people with strong anti-littering personal norms are not influenced by pro-littering social norms. We also found that people have varying moral position, and their lack of attachment with the public place also influences their littering behaviour. Moreover, people believe that other people litter due to lack of education and awareness, lack of garbage bins and a general level of carelessness. Future research needs to focus on activating an individual's idealist moral position and an individuals' attachment with the place to enhance the activation of anti-littering personal norms which will help reduce littering behaviour. Further still, government needs to set up campaigns at public places to create awareness among people about the impact of littering, and government also needs to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of waste management. Businesses can also play a role by providing waste bins which may be used as a source of promoting their support for reducing litter.