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This chapter analyzes what happens to media use when everyday life is suddenly disrupted, focusing on how the COVID-19 pandemic transformed work, socializing, communication and everyday living. The empirical case is changing media use in Norway during the pandemic, building on a qualitative questionnaire survey conducted in early lockdown, and follow-up interviews eight months later. Expanding on the ideas of destabilization of media repertoires developed in the former chapter, this analysis discusses transforming media repertoires as more digital, as less mobile (but still smartphone-centric) and as essentially social. The chapter further explains new concepts for pandemic media use practices, such as doomscrolling and Zoom fatigue.

This article aims to examine instances of timeliness and temporality in information sharing conducted by members of the Finnish game design community. By doing so, it provides new knowledge into the ways in which organizational information practices may take place on an individual and interpersonal level, and the ways in which timeliness impact information sharing.

The article is based on three sets of interviews, gathered in 2012–2014, 2017–2018 and 2018–2020.

The authors identify six themes of information sharing and show that time is strongly tied to the ways in which people in the Finnish game development industry share information outside of their own companies.

This type of information sharing has not been previously researched. This study brings forth new knowledge on how timeliness influence information sharing within creative industries.

This chapter explores the concept of authenticity in the context of today’s highly competitive hospitality industry. Drawing on the multi-sited ethnographic case study of Ziferblat, the world’s first pay-per-minute cafe franchise, the author examines how the imperative of authenticity is addressed by small international enterprises falling in between the categories of chain and independent. By tracing how Ziferblat’s original concept, shaped by the personal and socioeconomic background of its founder, was subsequently transformed by the local teams and adapted to different cultural-geographical contexts, this chapter adds new empirical evidence to the dynamic and pluralistic notion of multiple authenticities.

This contribution explores intergenerational relations and negotiations in Viet-German families. Due to family members' diverging socialization experiences in Vietnam and Germany as well as social ties in both societies, we assume that different ideas of intergenerational relations and mutual obligations may be found in Viet-German families. We distinguish between interdependent and independent intergenerational patterns of solidarity. Based on interviews with young adults – the descendants of Vietnamese migrants – four thematic areas are identified, in and through the shaping of which intergenerational relations are continuously negotiated at the face of migration-related challenges. These are (1) a childhood for the future, (2) reciprocal support, (3) individualization of family members and intimization of the family and (4) boundaries against kinship and the Vietnamese community. Our analysis reveals the emergence of a new, hybrid pattern of intergenerational solidarity, for which we suggest the term “individualized interdependence.” The role of young adults in the elaboration of this new family order stands out.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the fluidity of the fieldwork roles “insider” and “outsider.” The paper aims to move the discussion of insiders from an a priori categorized status and contribute to the literary insider–outsider debate by unfolding the micro process of how the role of an insider is shaped in situ. Grounded in empirical examples, the paper illustrates how the researcher’s role is shaped through interactions with organizational members and by context.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study in an IT department of a Nordic bank and draws on empirical material generated through a combination of data: shadowing, interviews, observations and documents. Excerpts from fieldnotes are included to invite the reader into “the scenes” played out in the field and are analyzed in order to illustrate the shaping of roles in situ.

The study finds that, independent of the researcher’s role as sponsored by the organization, the interactions with organizational members and context determine whether the researcher is assigned a role as insider or outsider, or even both within the same context.

The paper contributes with a new discussion of how the roles of insiders and outsiders are fluid by discussing the shaping of the roles in situ. By drawing on relational identity theories, the paper illustrates how interactions and context influence the researcher’s role, grounded in empirical examples. In addition, the paper discusses what the assigned roles enable and constrain for the ethnographer in that particular situation.

In the context of the question of how entrepreneurship education can contribute to entrepreneurial competency development, this paper aims to outline the deliberate practice (DP) method and showcase how it can be applied in entrepreneurship education. To this end, this paper presents a learning innovation in which DP improves entrepreneurial competencies.

The paper describes an entrepreneurship training in which participants, over a seven-week period, learn about DP and use this approach to develop an aspect of an entrepreneurial competency of their choosing.

Evaluations show that participants find both short- and long-term gains in their competency development, and value having learnt a competency development method as well.

The presented format is designed in accordance with the DP principles as originally described in the literature on expert performance, and shows that DP can be applied in the context of entrepreneurial competency development at lower levels of proficiency. Entrepreneurship educators interested in competency development can consider to adopt (aspects of) the described approach.

The format applies DP principles as described in the literature on expert performance. The value lies in the short- and long term effects of the training.

Social hackathons are events designed to craft social change using technology that enables citizen empowerment or addresses societal issues by deploying data. Hackathons provide a framework for organizing to help create prototypes and business models through interaction with technology. The relevance of the sociomateriality of the emergent technology (prototype) and organizational structure raises the question if viable and impactful solutions can be developed within such frames.

This study applies an inductive research methodology based on ethnographic participant observation, interviews with participants and event organizers, and qualitative insights from surveys.

Events such as social hackathons are centered around technology and share a vision of creating opportunities for change. The materiality of prototypes may define their interaction patterns. The differentiation of the embodiment and emergent structuration of technology may be a breaking point for in-group dynamics and a barrier to social innovation. The emergent structuration of technology with a longer initial phase of problem definition and ideation within a group was found to have more potential for impactful embodiment with the technological artifact. Some cases reveal that “expert” participants who shared visions of change enabled by technology were constrained by other members.

The paper suggests an extended view on the connection of sociomateriality, organizing and social impact.

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

Many organizations expect their service engineers, or frontline employees (FLEs), to behave as brand advocates by engaging in favorable communication about the brand and its offerings toward customers. However, this approach is not without risk as customers may be disappointed or even frustrated with brand advocacy behavior in many service encounters. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of FLEs’ brand advocacy on customer satisfaction with the service encounter, and identify the conditions under which the effects are detrimental. This paper specifically considers service issue severity and product newness as contingency conditions.

Building on social identification theory, the paper builds a conceptual model, which is empirically tested using a data set that matches data from service engineers, customers, and archival records from the after-sales service department of a globally operating business-to-business print and document management solutions provider.

This paper finds that brand advocacy behavior harms customer satisfaction especially in service encounters that involve simple service issues (e.g. maintenance) for products that are new to the market. Fortunately, brand identification can compensate this negative effect under many service conditions. While the joint effect of brand identification and advocacy is most beneficial for severe service issues of new products, no effect on customer satisfaction was found for established products.

This paper identifies those service situations in which brand advocacy is advisable and guides managers toward achieving more favorable customer evaluations.

Past research has considered several FLE branding activities in the frontline but the effects of brand advocacy have not been isolated. In addition, most studies have assumed the effects of employee brand-related behaviors on customer satisfaction to be universally positive rather than negative and focused on antecedents and not on moderators and consequences.