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Despite turning a recent eye toward work teams, motivation research has largely treated the group as a contextual influence affecting an individual’s motivation, leaving explanations of motivational forces within a group cached in theories of intrapersonal motivation. As a result, our understanding of the processes of motivation that operate beyond the individual remains lacking. Moving beyond this individual paradigm, the present paper seeks to clarify a process through which the motivational forces circulating within a team per se produce nascent member motivation through a motivational contagion. Specifically, we examine how motivational dynamics within a group serve as a unique motivational stimulus for its members and thereby operate as a process-altering collective effort as a consequence of its presence.

This paper is a conceptual analysis.

Either through an intrinsically driven adoption that promotes member persistence in effortful action or an extrinsic compelling that engenders intensity of effort, apparent motivation may spread through a connected social network.

Through providing a top-down explanation of how broader group-level motivation in and of itself may serve as an impetus for future motivation within the group, this paper takes an important first step to clarify how team-level motivation operates beyond a mere contextual influence on pre-existing individual motivation.

Telepresence robots have gained prominence as a novel technological modality for mobile videoconferencing. Although the technology has mass appeal in the realm of telehealth and patient–health provider communication, its integration in community living settings for older adults has not been extensively studied. The aim of this study was to gather the perspectives of residents, trainers and staff at a retirement facility on their experience with a telepresence robot during and following a five-week wellness program.

The study employed semi-structured interviews with ten stakeholders who were involved in the wellness program followed by a qualitative content analysis of the data. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology served as the interview framework to explore the facilitators and barriers to the implementation of the robot.

Independent coding of the data by the study investigators identified discrete as well as interconnected categories among the stakeholders. Residents expressed their changing ideation of the robot, affinity toward the technology, preference for human connection and future value. Perspectives of the trainers, the fellow residents (ambassadors) and staff pertained to their need for increased engagement, growing comfort with the technology, usability challenges and importance of coordination and training.

Older adults' outlook and comfort with telepresence robots improve with continuing exposure to the technology for healthcare and social connectivity needs. However, in-person care is also preferred initially and periodically to engage with their health providers meaningfully and effectively via the robot. To address long term feasibility and usability, the authors propose a hierarchical approach when integrating telepresence robots in community living facilities for older adults. Information technology education, staff training and reliable internet connectivity are the precursors to optimizing the value and perceived usefulness of the technology.

This chapter considers how phenomenology and ethnography can be combined as an interpretive strategy for studying mobile media practices in everyday life. We argue that haptic methodologies in mobile media research generate an overflow of data that are often difficult to capture in written form. The dilemma of data excess is discussed in the context of a 4-year research project on gendered mobile media practices, exploring how mobile devices are often intertwined with the experience of bodily safety in urban environments. Our primary aim was to investigate the relationship between networked connectivity, mobile media and perceptions of risk in terms of bodily experience, including affective or emotional feelings. This chapter focuses on the haptic methods and techniques used during home visits with participants and the various ways that the volume and density of data are subsequently thinned out to become manageable and publishable. We first situate our research within haptic and mobile media studies, followed by an explanation of phenomenology and how it can be used to inform ethnographic methods in ways that are particularly useful for researching haptic media practices. This chapter then provides some examples of how the data are always in excess, an overflow resulting from the variability and individuality of participant experience and the difficulty of describing and accounting for personal histories and feelings. Finally, we show how the data can be strategically ‘contained’ in the process of writing for the purposes of publication, thematic framing and knowledge translation.

In October 2016, Timothy Sloan, the newly appointed CEO of American banking giant Wells Fargo, faced a massive public-relations crisis. A few weeks earlier, a United States government agency had announced the results of its regulatory review of the bank and exposed a shocking practice common in the retail division, in which aggressive community bankers had created more than a million fraudulent accounts and credit card applications on behalf of unaware customers for the past several years. Over the next few weeks, the bank—and Sloan's predecessor, John Stumpf, in particular—suffered from harsh criticism from politicians, journalists, and former employees alike, ultimately forcing Stumpf's resignation. As Sloan sought to minimize the public-image backlash and restore general trust in Wells Fargo, he struggled to construct the best communication strategy for the bank's next chapter.

This study argues that online user comments on social media platforms provide feedback and evaluation functions. These functions can provide services for the relevant departments of organizations or institutions to formulate corresponding public opinion response strategies.

This study considers Chinese universities’ public opinion events on the Weibo platform as the research object. It collects online comments on Chinese universities’ network public opinion governance strategy texts on Weibo, constructs the sentiment index based on sentiment analysis and evaluates the effectiveness of the network public opinion governance strategy adopted by university officials.

This study found the following: First, a complete information release process can effectively improve the effect of public opinion governance strategies. Second, the effect of network public opinion governance strategies was significantly influenced by the type of public opinion event. Finally, the effect of public opinion governance strategies is closely related to the severity of punishment for the subjects involved.

The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the application of image repair theory and strategies in the field of network public opinion governance, which further broadens the scope of the application of image repair theory and strategies.

This study expands online user comment research to network public opinion governance and provides a quantitative method for evaluating the effect of governance strategies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2022-0269