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The influx of mainland capital to different media sectors in Hong Kong has been commonly seen throughout the last decade (Leung, 2019). While the changes in ownership have been shaping the ecology of Hong Kong’s media industry, the rapid development of digital technology such as the internet and social media has also been important in the industry’s transformation. This study aims to investigate how and to what extent technology has shaped the Hong Kong media work culture.

Alibaba, the powerful e-commerce conglomerate, has sought to advance its development in the media industry and leverage its technological expertise by acquiring the century-old Hong Kong English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in 2016. This essay, by using the SCMP as a case study, focuses on the workers and their use of technologies in their daily work practices, which offers an alternative lens to investigate the influence of a Chinese tech ownership in transforming a Hong Kong media outlet’s culture.

This case study illustrates how the implementation of Alibaba work culture at the SCMP through technological application remained minimal over the four years following this Chinese tech giant’s acquisition, whereas a Silicon Valley-style start-up culture and techno-organisational gaze were profoundly found at this workplace and received both acceptance and resistance by the employees.

This study results in a revealing unique type of techno-organisational culture change that deviates from the previous Chinese organisational studies within and outside the Chinese contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how, in a context of economic, political, social and environmental transitions, SMart, a cultural and artistic social enterprise (CASE), has developed a relevant cooperative model to contribute to mitigate the structural labour precariousness of artists and creators.

The research design includes a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies with emphasis on the former. Namely, the organisation is SMartbe and its replication across nine European countries was studied as a revelatory case study. Five main types of techniques were deployed in the course of this research, including desk review, direct (participant) observation, interviews, focus group and questionnaire (Likert-scale survey).

CASEs constitute a specific institutional arrangement that offers innovative labour arrangements for cultural workers and artists to fight against precariousness. Social enterprises are embedded in the social and solidarity economy and stand at the crossroads of markets, civil society and the public, which places them in a critical position: depending on the logic, actors and contexts at play, social enterprises can ensure to varying degrees the general interest through their social mission, their sustainability via the real participation of all their stakeholders and the carrying out of economic activities that are fully consistent with their mission.

It is within this type of sustainability and participation that transformative social innovation can emerge within CASEs. Their potential to contribute to transformative social innovation is based on its four objectives: cultural (to imagine human, participative and sustainable alternatives); social (to achieve a social –including the environment – mission and join the ecosocial transition); participatory (empowering and impacting the public sphere); and economic (being financially sustainable and fair).

The purpose of this study is to explore how social entrepreneurship empowers women and how it influences the existing gender based intersectionalities in the society. This paper is based on a single case study of a social entrepreneurial startup called “Pahal,” which used social entrepreneurial strategies to encourage women to engage in economic activities, which helped them in gaining economic empowerment.

The researcher alongside the social entrepreneur visited the field for eight months from August 2016 to March 2017 and interviewed multiple stakeholder-employees (as partners) of the social enterprise. This study was done by conducting interviews with all the stakeholders in all the three social entrepreneurial phases, i.e. pre-Pahal, during-Pahal and after-Pahal. The interviews and observations were recorded and analysed using social entrepreneurial lens and intersectionality.

“Pahal Initiative” – is a social entrepreneurial intervention that helped the women in the household to start a food delivery business with the support of the social entrepreneur. Consequently, women gained confidence and self-respect. The attitude of men in the household changed when the women in the household generated additional income. It impacted their position and status which led to an increase in their participation in decision-making in the household and economic independence. The women become more interactive and expressive in a predominantly patriarchal household. Within one year, the entrepreneur had to stop the Pahal initiative. Then, this study observed and recorded that this event curtailed the economic activities undertaken by the women in their village and their social status reverted to what it was before the initiative.

First, social entrepreneurial strategies lead to economic value creation and lead overall socio-economic gains. Second, social entrepreneurial strategies address the problems of patriarchy and gender discrimination. Third, economic activities undertaken by women changed the social perceptions of the family members towards women in the families.

From this case study, one observes that social entrepreneurship has a strong potential to bring about social and economic change. This study helps policymakers and non-governmental organisations to solve poverty and gender discrimination related problems using social entrepreneurial strategies.

This study uses social entrepreneurial intervention to understand and bring about change in the socio-economic status of women in rural India. This study uses an intersectionality lens to make sense of the data, reality and reflects on how intersectional positions are altered when women are economically empowered either through training or through a proper organisation or both.

In this paper, the authors reflect critically on their experience as researchers on the Impacts 18 programme: a re-study concerned with the long-term effects of Liverpool European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2008. Situating Impacts 18 at the confluence of three important debates within the cultural policy field, the paper considers the causation, nature and significance of the shortcomings of the research, with a view to advancing cultural evaluation practices and encouraging re-studies in a field where they are seldom used.

The authors draw on documentary analysis of unpublished research outputs, along with their own research notes and critical reflections. The paper focuses on two projects from the Impacts 18 programme, in particular, in order to illustrate the broader issues raised in terms of the epistemological framing, methodological design and execution of the Impacts 18 research.

The paper highlights and explores the various issues that affected Impacts 18 in terms of its epistemological framing and methodological design, as well as problems encountered in terms of data management and stakeholder relationships.

As a large-scale re-study of a cultural event, Impacts 18 represents an exceedingly rare occurrence, despite the acknowledged dearth of evidence on the longer-term impacts of such events. Similarly unusual, however, are critical and candid retrospectives from research authors themselves. The paper is thus doubly unusual, in these two respects, and should help to advance research practice in an under-researched area.

This article investigates how medical specialists as professionals and elective cosmetic surgery tourists as consumers relationally negotiate decisions within the cosmetic surgery clinic. Drawing on a Goffmanian approach, this article explores the processual social structures that shape consumer logics in the clinic as a social space and as a type of professional institution.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in cosmetic surgery clinics in South Korea.

This article identifies two genres of professional strategies (spatial arrangements and dramaturgical performances) that are leveraged by medical specialists to assert control over and persuade consumers to purchase cosmetic surgery.

The valorization of surgery captured in this article suggests that surgical modifications may serve as another vehicle for entrenching class inequality between those able and those unable to afford surgery.

This article offers recommendations for future policymaking in terms of the regulatory oversight of the consumer profiles eligible for surgery and the marketing practices of clinics.

This article offers a micro-level account of how the high-risk good of cosmetic surgery is sold by medical specialists in charismatic and affective bids to enhance their legitimacy, authority and trust.

Political participation of young people has been examined, but there is a lack of research about how these participation forms are interpreted and what counts as participation for young people. The study aims to identify discourses of political participation in Hungary, where the COVID-19 restrictions during 2020–2021 have confined young people's everyday interactions and political activism to the online space for an extended period. The authors’ asteroid-effect hypothesis suggests that new discourses of political participation have become more widespread, which may have reinterpreted the previous dynamics between online and offline participation.

The authors analyse the results of six focus groups and eight interviews with young people conducted between 2021–2022 through discourse analysis.

The qualitative results show that to intellectualise the everyday discourses of youth political participation, extending its classical theories is worthwhile. While online participation has not emerged as a paramount, positive interpretational framework, a new discourse of political participation has emerged, making conversation a fundamental act.

While the results are limited to Hungarian youth, the strong appearance of participation as a communicative action can have consequences to theoretical approaches of political participation. The authors believe that COVID-19 restrictions had a significant role in this change, because family talks became more politicised.

The paper discusses how the management of a sports and fashion company, which we refer to as NULMA, successfully applied the neo/normative control technology “karma organisation” and gained employee engagement. Whereas other studies have documented employee resistance to organisational cultures when used for managerial control, our case demonstrates resistance to management practices that employees find inconsistent with the dominant karma culture.

The study is based on a six-year longitudinal organisational at-home ethnography conducted by one of the authors using methods of both participant and non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and collaborative production of secondary data in the case organisation.

While our research shows that management can successfully apply neo/normative control which employees accept and support, we further show that employees mobilise the same values to resist management when it fails to deliver on the commitments and promises of the organisational culture.

The study contributes to the literature on organisational culture and, in particular, neo/normative control by theorising employee resistance as being by “accident”, by which we mean an inherent negative potentiality co-invented and released by managers establishing a “karma organisation”. Our theorising culminates in a discussion of the study’s implications for research and practice.

This study aims to examine the functions of hijab fashion among hijab-wearing women and explore the role of social media and influencers in hijab fashion.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 29 hijab-wearing women in Turkey. The authors collected data in June–November 2020.

Findings show that hijab fashion functions as encouragement, attraction, modesty and social image among Turkish Muslim women. This study also shows that social media and influencers change the meaning of the hijab while promoting hijab fashion. Findings reveal that Instagram boutiques act as digital fashion magazines, which enable women to integrate faster into popular culture today. While influencers have increased the number of hijab-wearing women, they have also turned the hijab into a commodity in the market by degenerating its true meaning.

This study has several limitations regarding the sample and geographic context of consumers. This study may not represent Turkish Muslim women’s behavior as our sample consists of 29 women. Therefore, larger samples are needed to generalize our findings. Undertaking cross-cultural studies will also enable marketers to make cultural comparisons.

This study offers some insights for Islamic marketing practitioners in terms of influencer using in hijab fashion.

This study adds to the previous research on hijab fashion and hijab consumption on Instagram. This study also extends the previous literature by examining the role of social media and influencers in hijab fashion. Findings revealed that the hijab is gradually losing its spiritual value by becoming a commodity packaged and marketed through Instagram and influencers.

The purpose of this study is to frame the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions as the main actors in the organisational field. More precisely, Libyan commercial banks have been identified as empirical evidence, to identify constraints of the institutional environment governing the behaviour and decision-making of commercial banks, when adopting Islamic financial transactions.

A questionnaire has been designed for 14 Libyan commercial banks which is distributed to the Board of Directors, managers, directors of departments, and personnel. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the measurement model by using the first-order and second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have been applied as essential steps to embody the conceptual framework and test the research hypotheses.

The results of the EFA indicated sufficient correlation among the dimensions of the external environment. The CFA supported this study’s hypotheses. The modelling showed that the cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions are institutional constraints impeding Libyan commercial banks’ adoption of Islamic financial transactions. Interestingly, the findings of the CFA align with the EFA findings in supporting the conceptual framework of the research. They portrayed that the cultural-cognitive dimension has been identified by explicit and implicit cognition.

This study systematically embodies the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions, as the main factors in the organisational field to be conceptually rich lenses to investigate social considerations to reinforce institutional thought broadly. The results of this study were consistent with extant Islamic financial literature, reflecting symmetry and similarity across commercial banks, particularly at the first stage of adopting Islamic financial transactions.