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Until recently, motivation has been considered to be an individual phenomenon. Motivational theorists have accordingly conceptualised key constructs in individualistic terms and emphasised the individual origins and nature of motivation, although they have also long recognised that contextual or social factors have a significant influence on these individual processes. Recently this conceptualisation has been questioned as theorists have suggested, after Vygotsky, that motivation, like learning and thinking, might be social in nature. This idea was first suggested by Sivan (1986) more than twenty years ago but it received a major impetus with the publication of an article by Hickey (1997) eleven years later. Since that time interest in the social nature of motivation has grown as a small number of book chapters and journal articles have been published and conference papers have been presented on the topic. Although some motivational theorists remain sceptical (e.g. Winne, 2004) of this theoretical development, the inclusion of a section on sociocultural approaches to motivation in Perry, Turner, and Meyer's (2006) chapter on classrooms as contexts for motivating learning in the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Educational Psychology suggests that this perspective is being seriously considered by motivational researchers. Similarly, the inclusion of a chapter (Walker, in press-b) on the sociocultural approach to motivation in the 3rd edition of the International Encyclopedia of Education indicates that this approach has achieved some recognition.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceived challenges of attempting to integrate topics related to social and cultural issues into the coursework in graduate programs in Instructional Design and Technology (IDT).

An open‐ended online survey instrument was developed for this study for three reasons. First, the study aimed at investigating what is actually happening in IDT programs in terms of integration of social and cultural issues into coursework. Using an online questionnaire, data were collected from IDT instructors and instructional designers.

Findings of the study indicated that while there is a general agreement and interest in infusing content that addresses socio‐cultural perspectives challenges into courses, the challenges include the existence of a common framework for defining and prioritizing socio‐cultural issues, and difficulties in identifying the most important issues to address, and appropriate instructional approaches to address sensitive topics.

There were some limitations to this study. First, the data were collected primarily through a survey instrument as indicated above. Nonetheless, the qualitative data collected were rich and informative. Second, as noted earlier, a majority of the participants indicated they are based in the USA. Thus, study findings may be more specific to IDT programs in this context. Third, participation in the study was voluntary, hence demographics were not controlled for. However, this opened up opportunities for attaining multiple perspectives from the participants.

A recommendation that this study brings out is that while it is impossible practically to address all potential topics, a starting point may be to identify and address the most pertinent topics, such as those which may cause misunderstanding or reinforce the wrong ideas.

While instructional designers and instructors cannot be expected to be cultural experts in every single context or topic, there are certain content issues, such as authentic activities and design strategies that would warrant further attention. Of course this will vary by content and context and instructors and instructional designers should at least be prepared to recognize these unique issues.

The paper highlights some issues worth discussing: the complexity of directly incorporating socio‐cultural issues into IDT curricula; the broad elusive nature of the knowledge of socio‐cultural issues; and the difficulty in defining socio‐cultural content, including what to teach and how to teach it. These three issues address the role of coursework in professional preparation, and the structure of instructional design courses and curricula.

The objectives of the study were to identify the effects of blockchain technology (BT) on the university librarians, the impact of BT on the university library services and to reveal the challenges to adopt BT in the university libraries.

A systematic literature review was applied to address the objectives of the study. Around 25 studies published in peer-reviewed journals were selected to conduct the study.

The findings of the study revealed that blockchain technology (BT) has positive effects on the university librarians as it assists them in digital resources management, provision of integrated library services, effective records management and continued professional development. The study also displayed that BT has a positive impact on the university libraries through effective information management, user privacy, collaboration, technological innovation and access control. Results also revealed that technical issues, financial constraints, security problems, skill issues and sociocultural issues created challenges to adopt BT in the university libraries.

The study has offered theoretical implications for future investigators through the provision of innovative literature on the prospectus and challenges associated with blockchain in the context of librarianship. The study has also provided practical implications for management bodies by offering recommendations for the successful adoption of blockchain in the university libraries. Additionally, a framework has been developed to adopt BT successfully in the university libraries for the delivery of smart library services to library patrons.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of international students in terms of their information needs and to highlight the role of social media.

In this paper, a systematic literature survey was conducted in order to investigate information-seeking trends among international students while using social media. As a result, an exhaustive systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out in order to investigate social media as a source for the observation of the behaviours of international students. For this purpose, 71 articles were selected from various well-known sources after an intensive SLR process of searching, filtering and enforcing the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

As an outcome of this study, the information-seeking behaviour of international students was highlighted with respect to social media as a source of information. In addition, this research identifies the information needs of the international students and categorizes them by the roles played by the social media in fulfilling the information needs.

A comparative study that highlighted the dearth of studies which merge the social media and information-seeking behaviour of international students as well as identify the future direction for the researchers and for benefits of international students.

A detail SLR which highlights the need of shifting the information seeking behaviour from libraries to social media in regard to the new environment for international students.

Sociocultural aspects of populations residing in disaster-prone areas have not often been discussed in disaster evacuation studies. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to describe the sociocultural factors affecting evacuation decision-making.

This was an exploratory research study which used in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect the data. Selection of the informants was also fulfilled via the purposive sampling method with regard to specific criteria. The informants consisted of 20 villagers that had faced a disaster and eight staff members of the Regional Board of Disaster Management of the Republic of Indonesia which is Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD), Ponorogo, who had managed it. The data analysis was ultimately performed through thematic coding.

The results of the coding analysis revealed that sociocultural aspects were among the primary reasons for evacuation decisions before disasters. In this paper, sociocultural factors shaping evacuation decision behavior could be a result of norms, roles, language, leadership, rules, habits, jobs, perceptions, family engagement, as well as other behaviors demonstrated by individuals and the community.

This study is not analyzing the role of the social organization or a religious one and also the economic aspect in the evacuation decision-making.

This paper includes implications for the local government and the BPBD Ponorogo to establish an efficient communication strategy persuading villagers to evacuate. In general, formal policies cannot always be implemented in managing disaster; therefore, visible dedication and solidarity of the members are always needed in order to manage evacuation problems.

This paper meets needs for a study delineating sociocultural factors affecting evacuation decisions before disasters strike. Sociocultural theory could also describe real aspects of culture inherent in the daily lives of populations living in disaster-prone areas.

Western business expatriates, mostly from the USA, France, the UK and Sweden, responded to a mail survey exploring career issues and their degree of international adjustment. Unexpectedly, it was found that meeting career goals within the corporation does not significantly affect work adjustment, but it does have a positive impact on the other two dimensions of sociocultural adjustment, general and interaction adjustment. As predicted, it does also have a positive affect on psychological adjustment, as measured by subjective well‐being. Surprisingly, none of the other variables depicting career issues for expatriates, career development fit, wrong/ useful career move, and supportive corporate attitude to expatriation, had any significant effect on either sociocultural or psychological adjustment. These unexpected findings are discussed in detail and approaches for further research in this area are recommended.

This paper aims to evaluate the literature dealing with the sociocultural influences on undergraduate students’ information ethics (IE) cognition and behaviour. Much of the reviewed literature draws on the experiences of countries that differ in terms of cultural and economic aspects.

This structured review uses an integrative approach to synthesize the existing literature relevant to the factors in question. Correspondingly, limitations, agreements and disagreements within the relevant literature are indicated. A set of relevance criteria is developed, and analytical information for each study is then organized and summarized into aggregate findings.

Despite the significant explanatory power of the reciprocal correlation between individualism and economic wealth to predict declines in unethical information practices, IE studies persist in producing inconsistent findings in this regard. Thus, further facets of cross-cultural differences should be addressed beyond the individualistic/collectivistic typology.

This paper has pedagogical worth for students, researchers and developers of IE educational programs at the tertiary level. It also possesses methodological value for studying the sociocultural effects on the IE behaviour of computing professionals within the broader context of global IE research.

This paper aims to present the host experience of student hosts in Hong Kong, a popular educational destination for international students from mainland China and other countries. This study examines the interconnection between the experience-based and sociocultural dimensions of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel, considering the overall host experience, the host–guest relationship and post-hosting changes in perception of both the VFR experience and destination.

This research adopts a qualitative approach to compare the experience-based and sociocultural dimensions of VFR travel considering international university students as VFR hosts in Hong Kong, taking a student sample from both mainland Chinese and overseas students. Based on a voluntary sampling approach, the research team had face-to-face interviews with the students that agreed to participate. The interviews were conducted voluntarily and anonymously and included those students who had hosted any friends or relatives in the past 12 months. A total of 26 interviews were successfully completed, including 10 mainland Chinese and 16 non-mainland Chinese students.

The results confirm that the VFR host experience is generally shaped by an integration of internal characteristics (sociocultural characteristics of both hosts and visitors) and external environment (urban infrastructure and tourism resources). The two groups distinctively express their host experience that shows some areas of cultural barriers and geographical proximity.

The limitations of this research mainly lie on its relatively small sample size because of constraints in accessing the contact information of international students across universities. These shortcomings should be improved by adopting a research design that uses other sampling approaches, such as snowball sampling, to include a wider scope of students from different local universities, or convenience sampling, to interview and compare responses of international students from various educational destinations. Alternative data sources may be considered, for example, through user-generated contents from online and social media platforms that contain sharing of students as hosts.

The geographical and cultural proximities influence VFR tourism development and social construction of values and the consequent hosting behaviour. The unique role of international students should be further explored, especially in the Asian context. The outcome of VFR travel must be evaluated and studied more from cultural and personal dimensions than economic gain, which should be relevant to host perspective such as improved quality of life, social ties and place attachment and psychological benefits. The changing risk perception caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may be examined through some forms of travel intention.

Firstly, the destination marketing organisations of the educational destination should address the difficulty faced by student hosts in terms of external attributes such as local culture, urban infrastructure, tourism resources and information accessibility. Secondly, to target the hosts, some specific VFR-related products and services may be developed for international students through local tertiary institutions such that the role of hosts as ambassadors can be facilitated and enhanced. Thirdly, the functional role of international students can be distinctive based on their unique network, activities and knowledge constructed upon learning during the period of education.

The studentification of many educational destination cities, the dynamism of the role of international students as VFR hosts and their cultural differences between places of origin have provided an opportunity for deepening the understanding of VFR tourism.

Despite the expansion of women's entrepreneurial activities and its positive effects on the economic development of societies, women still face numerous difficulties in starting and running a business compared to men, especially in developing countries because of gender discrimination in the field. The cultural context in societies is a significant factor affecting the status of entrepreneurship among the Iranian women. Therefore, the present research is an attempt to identify the challenges affecting entrepreneurship among Iranian women. The results obtained from 30 semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs and women with entrepreneurial roles showed that sociocultural challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are classified into: “the society's perception of entrepreneurship among women,” “women's social security,” and “common family norms governing a society.”

This study focusses on exploring the little-researched adjustment experiences of those expatriates who self-initiate (SIE) their employment in foreign countries. The Black et al. (1991) model of expatriate adjustment is the theoretical foundation used for this study.

An online survey was administered to expatriate academics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Quantitative data analysis was subsequently performed to include factor analysis, Pearson correlation, regression modeling, ANOVA, and Tukey HSD analysis.

Hypotheses regarding correlation of previous overseas work experience and culture novelty with adjustment for this SIE population were supported, whereas hypotheses regarding foreign language ability were not supported. In addition, exploratory analysis through the use of regression models and ANOVA determined an influence on SIE adjustment by factors such as age, gender, length of employment, and location.

The results indicate that further research into this area is warranted, particularly given the dearth of information currently available on the adjustment experiences of SIEs. In addition, this research is limited by its narrow focus on academics in the UAE; therefore it should be replicated in other locations with different types of SIEs to ensure generalizability.

This paper provides suggestions for practical HRM implications, particularly with regards to recruitment and selection stages for organizations that target SIEs as potential employees.

This paper provides suggestions for practical HRM implications, particularly with regards to recruitment and selection stages for organizations that target SIEs as potential employees.

This study provides new evidence regarding factors which influence SIE sociocultural adjustment and, through exploratory analysis, highlights factors which may need to be explored further in order to develop a more thorough understanding of SIE sociocultural adjustment.