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The purpose of this study is to integrate divergent discussions located within the marketing, economic geography and economic sociology literature about trade fairs and their functions, around an exchange-based view of trade fairs.

Following an integrative review approach and drawing on thematic discussions found in social exchange theory, a large corpus of research articles on trade fairs was systematically reviewed and integrated.

Trade fairs facilitate five major exchange functions: transactional, informational, social, symbolic and cultural. Each of these functions is characterized by a distinctive combination of exchange structures, exchange rules, exchange resources and organizational outcomes.

The study offers practical guidelines regarding how exhibitors, visitors and organizers can develop and benefit from an exchange-based view of trade fairs.

The current study integrates three divergent literature streams into an exchange-based view of trade fairs. In so doing, the study offers a common conceptual foundation upon which future trade fair research can intersect and cross-fertilize.

The purpose of this study is to enhance and further an understanding of business to business (B2B) contexts in relation to sensemaking “translations” between “performing” and “representing” of meanings that evolve within an interacting duality. The implications for research are outlined and a need for a corresponding duality in research methods is emphasised.

This is a conceptual paper exploring some of the main implications for indistrial marketing & purchasing group (IMP) and other B2B research of abandoning Cartesian privileging of generalised cognitive ideas over embodied activities in context.

Dualities of general structures and contextual practices are mutually constituted by performing and representing translations. They are described as “chiasmic” or “polyphonic” and regarded as polyvalent, dynamic and non-linear. Embodied contextual activities are described as of equal importance to de-contextual cognitive structures in meaning-making.

Practical actors within business networks are encouraged to continue relying upon practical improvisational coping skills that enable them to be effective, embodied “bricoleurs” within complex, often unpredictable and regularly unmanageable, eventful B2B contexts.

A post-Cartesian focus upon ideas and activities, structure and agency as dynamically evolving multiple dualities promotes an appreciation that contextual practices and decontextualised structures are mutually constituted; supporting a practical and pragmatic turn towards polyvalent and ephemeral, contextualised solutions to a diverse multiplicity of problems and issues. A post-Cartesian focus upon ideas and activities, and structure and agency as dynamically evolving multiple dualities promotes an appreciation that contextual practices and decontextualised structures are mutually constituted and a practical and pragmatic “turn” towards polyvalent and ephemeral, contextualised solutions to diverse problems and issues involving business relationships and interaction.

Contemporary emphasis on language and communication in mental health research and practice establishes the need for a communication model that addresses the variety of contexts – institutional, social, and cultural – in which attribution of mental disorders, treatment, and recovery occur. A ‘triadic’ approach to communication considers sufferers’: (1) transactions with environmental circumstances; (2) interpretive engagement with symbolic/discursive resources; and (3) relational interactions with others. Foundations for the model derive from pragmatism, systems theory, and theories of dialogue. A brief case study of depressive illness illustrates the value of the model. Implications for the organization of professional expertise in mental health fields are discussed.

International investment law has become a powerful tool of global economic governance. With its global network of international investment treaties and effective arbitration mechanism, it has made an extraordinary leap from a relatively niche and underrated area of international law to one of the most prominent legal regimes. This paper aims to illustrate how the evolutionary trajectories of globalization and international investment law have been intertwined.

This paper follows the historical unfolding of international investment law against the background of the globalization phenomenon, tracing the history of globalization processes since the expansion of European interests and export of capital and the onset of the international investment legal framework.

The evolution of globalization and international investment law has always been intertwined and co-dependent, experiencing similar phases of acceleration, transformation, adjustment and progress. This paper finds that the current era of globalization is characterized by an increasing complexity and diversity of transnational interests and global connections; this is also true for international investment law, which is undergoing changes aimed at including wider contexts and interests in international investment relations.

The analysis contributes to a more holistic understanding of the interdependence of these two phenomena, helping to explain how international investment law has become such a powerful, globally recognized and applied legal regime.

This chapter examines the issue of the “astructural bias” critique of symbolic interactionist theory and research practice by reconsidering the conception of structure in light of work within the French social theoretical tradition that reflects upon this concept. Proceeding through the work of Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Marshall Sahlins, the chapter examines the evolving theorization of symbolic structures. Bataille’s theory of the “general economy” and the “labyrinth” provides an initial expansion of the concept of structures and formulating symbolic practices as fundamental to the structuring of the social order. Baudrillard expands this work on symbolic structures with his analysis of symbolic exchange and seduction, taking Bataille’s initial work into a more nuanced analytical perspective and applies it to a range of cultural practices, including fashion, an area of particular interest to symbolic interactionism. Marshall Sahlins, directly influenced by Baudrillard, refines much of this thinking through his theorization of cultural reason, and provides anthropological field research to illustrate some of this theory, taking this thought into more conventional social scientific territory and offering examples of its methodological possibilities. The chapter suggests that symbolic interactionists can move from a defensive position regarding the presumed astructural character of their work to a more positive case for its status as a particularly acute form of engagement with a range of social structures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge exchange between academics and clinicians in Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs) is influenced by their social position based on their symbolic and social capitals, that is, their personal professional status and connections to high-status professional peers, knowledge brokers, and unfamiliar professional peers.

Using an online survey, the author triangulates the cross-sectional measurement of the effects of academic and clinicians’ social position in the initial and later phases of CLAHRCs with the longitudinal measurement of these effects over a two-year period.

First, academics and clinicians with a higher personal professional status are more likely to develop joint networks and decision making both in the early and later phases of a CLAHRC. Second, academics and clinicians who are more connected to higher status occupational peers are more likely to develop joint networks in the early phase of a knowledge exchange partnership but are less likely to become engaged in joint networks over time. Third, involvement of knowledge brokers in the networks of academics and clinicians is likely to facilitate their inter-professional networking only in the later partnership phase.

Academics and clinicians’ capitals have a distinctive influence on knowledge exchange in the early and later phases of CLAHRCs and on a change in knowledge exchange over a two-year period.

Prior research on CLAHRCs has examined how knowledge exchange between academics and clinicians can be encouraged by the creation of shared governance mechanisms. The author advances this research by highlighting the role of their social position in facilitating knowledge exchange.

Reforms of the Vietnamese economy have been widely credited for stabilizing the value of the state-issued currency in the marketplace. Nevertheless, how people evaluate the Vietnamese dong as a symbolic form can be read as a symptom of shifting economic and political forces, above all in Ho Chi Minh City, a city associated with commerce. Through three ethnographic cases – the introduction of “big money,” the scarcity of “new money” in 2002, and the campaign to build Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), this paper analyzes the contentious politics around symbolic exchange that shape confidence in Vietnamese currency.