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This paper aims to explore practice innovation and organizational resiliency during exogenous service ecosystem disruptions. This inquiry focuses on the extreme disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which required service firms to recodify long-established service scripts, adapt digital and physical material elements of the service encounter and ultimately reconfigure a system of practices. The specific context is forced practice innovation in Starbucks servicescape (kiosks and coffeehouses). Starbucks is best known for its custom beverages and third-place strategy. Their strict adherence to a complex service script and unique ordering practices altered during pandemic stay-home disease prevention mandates.

Thematic coding consistent with prior research on practice innovation and diffusion and a grounded theory methodology was conducted. Data were triangulated and analyzed within and across a variety of sources. These include field notes from direct observation, interviews, focus groups, firm-authored collateral in the form of marketing communications and third-party authored secondary sources such as news, social media, blogs and forums.

Data reveal how practice innovation occurs through the reconfiguration of a system of practices, which support organizational resiliency and can force brand evolution, in prolonged exogenous service ecosystem disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic required service industries to adapt and recodify service scripts and alter physical and digital elements of service encounters. While the pandemic affected all firms in the sector, we argue that Starbucks' established scripts and third-place strategies, which characterized the brand experience, were particularly vulnerable. We find that practice innovation occurs through the reconfiguration of practice elements – competences, meanings and materiality – and restructures the service encounter. Practice codification, transposition, adaptation and stabilization support organizational resiliency and brand evolution. We find that Starbucks' brand experience emphasis on the third place is reconceptualized from an in-person community-based retailscape to a platform-based strategy necessitating script recodification and practice adaptation. Our analysis of Starbucks' kiosks and coffeehouses illuminates how a distinctly branded service encounter is constituted by a system of practices that can be reconfigured and diffused anew in the face of disruption.

The conceptualization of practice innovation as systems reconfiguration establishes a novel approach to understanding innovation in service ecosystems. The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique context to study a sector-wide exogenous extended service disruption. We focus on a firm with an elaborate pre-pandemic service script and commitment to a third-place brand experience guiding its system of practices. We reveal unique insights on practice innovation within service ecosystems during exogenous prolonged disruptions in which brands evolve through the recodification of service scripts and sustained reconfiguration of systems of practice.

This paper investigates the meaning of spirituality and empowerment from the perspective of women of color (WOC) in Fortune 500 companies how it impacts their leadership.

Detailed data were collected through in depth semi-structured interviews documenting their experience as lived in the context of their daily work environments. Twelve WOC in leadership positions were interviewed, and transcripts analyzed using thematic analysis. Their narratives provide insight into the experiences of discrimination and bias and the stress and disenfranchisement that result from these experiences.

Analysis shows that for these women, spirituality was more than a philosophical orientation but comprised a core facet of their identity, empowering them to cope with adversity and uplift others through a leadership style defined by compassion, trust, strong interpersonal relationships and purpose.

Implications for creating more compassionate and inclusive environments that draw on principles of empowerment and spiritual leadership are provided.

This study contributes uniquely to the literature by exploring the perspectives of understudied women leaders who identify as African American, South-Asian and Latina on spirituality and empowerment and their impact on their leadership.

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore leader identity development experiences of emerging adults at a large Midwest university and how retrospective family storytelling (Koenig Kellas, 2018) plays a role in the sense-making of the leader identity process. Through a unique, three-phase qualitative and narrative inquiry approach, this research further explores LID sense-making through retrospective family storytelling.

Qualitative phenomenology and narrative inquiry approach. Data collection consisted of three different data sets: (a) two semi-structured interviews, (b) leader artifacts and (c) journals.

The stories told by the emerging adults described how key messages influenced their identity within the context of leader identity development and their college experiences. Furthermore, a key finding in the narratives exhibited the stories emerging adults recalled in the sense-making of their leader identity centered on persevering, overcoming hardships and interpersonal connections and relationships. Findings from this research contribute to LID literature for leadership educators, researchers and practitioners in leader development.

The research presented in this article advances LID by using a narrative approach to explore the role of family narratives in identity development. Further, it approaches qualitative work with rigorous data collection and analysis processing using a cross-case analysis to develop leader identity archetypes. This study directly impacts those who work with emerging adult college students and supports the development of college student leaders.

The paper explores the relationships between identity struggles and their antecedents and consequences to understand identity dynamics across different professions as a process of reaction and counter-reaction to identity threats and struggles.

By adopting an integrated view of professional identity, the paper employs a systematic literature review, paying particular attention to the micro-politics and identity dynamics to explore the relationship threats, struggles and coping behaviours.

The paper maps out the threats, struggles and coping behaviours across different professions and the relationships existing between them. The paper also abstracts the findings into a conceptual model for understanding professional identity formation as an iterative process involving identity struggles, threats and coping behaviours.

The paper, bringing together studies with different theoretical and ontological approaches to professional identity, reconciles the literature to provide a detailed account of the nuances characterizing the identity work made by professionals to deal with events threatening their identities. Unlike previous studies, the paper elaborates on how threatening events and struggles shape professionals’ reactions, acknowledging the interdependency between macro, meso and micro levels. By doing so, the paper provides theoretical and practical insights into unstable identities and the work made by professionals to cope with identity uncertainty and crisis.