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Diplomats are often considered to be masters of informality. Scholars and practitioners alike have long suggested that the real work of diplomacy happens in the corridor, during the coffee break and cocktail parties. But while everyone agrees that informality is a key ingredient of diplomatic work, few have explicitly explored it, and we lack a conceptualisation of how informality becomes meaningful. In this chapter, we unpack the question: through which spaces and practices is informality performed in diplomacy? Based on thick descriptions generated through ethnographic research in and around the institutions of the European Union (EU), we make two key contributions. First, we map local understandings of the term and give a grounded account of how diplomats use informality and interpret its functions. Second, we take these ‘tales from the field’ (van Maanen, 2011[1988]) and consider them in the light of theoretical debates on informality, particularly through the concept of boundary. Where and how is the boundary between the formal and informal constituted? Who has the power to draw and move these boundaries? How does it matter, politically, if something is ‘formal’ or ‘informal’? Based on our analysis, we find that informality comes in many forms and can be both politically productive and disruptive. In diplomacy, handling informality is a key diplomatic skill that is learned over time to be, eventually, mastered.

This article explores the ranging notions of a public library for all and the related conflicts on for all and the principle of neutrality in Norway and Denmark.

A document study of four profession magazines in a ten-year period is conducted, focusing on the problematizations of for all using the WPR approach: What’s the Problem Represented to be? Theories on public sphere and democracy frequently applied in Library and Information Science (LIS) are discussed in relation to the ranging notions.

The analysis shows that although for all is used as an argument by both advocates and opponents of the principle of neutrality, there are different notions of who constitutes for all. In total, five ranging notions of for all are identified and presented in a typology, to serve as a framework to understand the conflicts concerning neutrality and the public library for all.

The typology offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the nature of the conflicts and why they appear. The analysis indicates a need to discuss the use of for all in order to engage in more nuanced discussions of the democratic role of the public library.

With shorter product cycles and a growing number of knowledge-intensive business processes, time consumption is a highly relevant target factor in measuring the performance of contemporary business processes. This research aims to extend prior research on the effects of knowledge transfer velocity at the individual level by considering the effect of complexity, stickiness, competencies, and further demographic factors on knowledge-intensive business processes at the conversion-specific levels.

We empirically assess the impact of situation-dependent knowledge transfer velocities on time consumption in teams and individuals. Further, we issue the demographic effect on this relationship. We study a sample of 178 experiments of project teams and individuals applying ordinary least squares (OLS) for regression analysis-based modeling.

The authors find that time consumed at knowledge transfers is negatively associated with the complexity of tasks. Moreover, competence among team members has a complementary effect on this relationship and stickiness retards knowledge transfers. Thus, while demographic factors urgently need to be considered for effective and speedy knowledge transfers, these influencing factors should be addressed on a conversion-specific basis so that some tasks are realized in teams best while others are not. Guidelines and interventions are derived to identify best task realization variants, so that process performance is improved by a new kind of process improvement method.

This study establishes empirically the importance of conversion-specific influence factors and demographic factors as drivers of high knowledge transfer velocities in teams and among individuals. The contribution connects the field of knowledge management to important streams in the wider business literature: process improvement, management of knowledge resources, design of information systems, etc. Whereas the model is highly bound to the experiment tasks, it has high explanatory power and high generalizability to other contexts.

Team managers should take care to allow the optimal knowledge transfer situation within the team. This is particularly important when knowledge sharing is central, e.g. in product development and consulting processes. If this is not possible, interventions should be applied to the individual knowledge transfer situation to improve knowledge transfers among team members.

Faster and more effective knowledge transfers improve the performance of both commercial and non-commercial organizations. As nowadays, the individual is faced with time pressure to finalize tasks, the deliberated increase of knowledge transfer velocity is a core capability to realize this goal. Quantitative knowledge transfer models result in more reliable predictions about the duration of knowledge transfers. These allow the target-oriented modification of knowledge transfer situations so that processes speed up, private firms are more competitive and public services are faster to citizens.

Time consumption is an increasingly relevant factor in contemporary business but so far not been explored in experiments at all. This study extends current knowledge by considering quantitative effects on knowledge velocity and improved knowledge transfers.

The study aims to explore the discrepancy between the subjective and objective debt burdens across various household socio-demographic and debt characteristics. Additionally, it seeks to establish an optimal debt service-to-income ratio (DSTI) threshold for identifying over-indebtedness.

This study utilized a sample of 1,004 respondents from a nationwide survey conducted among Polish indebted households. A discrepancy ratio (DR) measure was proposed to evaluate the divergence between subjective and objective over-indebtedness. Binary logistic regression was employed to estimate the probability of being subjectively and objectively over-indebted, as well as the discrepancy between the two measures of over-indebtedness. The study also employed numerical simulations to determine the optimal DSTI threshold for identifying over-indebted households in general and based on their socio-economic characteristics.

The study established a debt service-to-income ratio (DSTI) threshold of 20% to minimize the discrepancy between subjective and objective debt burden, which is lower than thresholds found in other studies aimed at identifying over-indebted households. Age, number of loans, self-perceived needs satisfaction and type of debt were identified as significant socio-economic and debt-related determinants of over-indebtedness. Household socio-economic and debt-related characteristics significantly influence the threshold for identifying over-indebtedness using DSTI. It can vary widely, ranging from as low as 11% for well-educated women with multiple loan commitments to 43.7% for young males with vocational education, high incomes and originating from households with four or more members.

The paper proposes a more comprehensive approach to debt burden analysis by introducing a new methodology for determining a debt service-to-income (DSTI) threshold that could serve as a measure of over-indebtedness based on the discrepancy between subjective and objective over-indebtedness. It also emphasizes the significance of socio-economic and debt-related factors in evaluating subjective and objective over-indebtedness.

Social media (SM) platforms tempt individuals to communicate their perspectives in real-time, rousing engaging discussions on countless topics. People, besides using these platforms to put up their problems and solutions, also share activist content (AC). This study aims to understand why people participate in activist AC sharing on SM by investigating factors related to planned and unplanned human behaviour.

The study adopted a quantitative approach and administered a close-ended structured questionnaire to gather data from 431 respondents who shared AC on Facebook. The data was analysed using hierarchical regression in SPSS.

The study found a significant influence of both planned (perceived social gains (PSGs) , altruism and perceived knowledge (PK)) and unplanned (extraversion and impulsiveness) human behaviour on activist content-sharing behaviour on SM. The moderating effect of enculturation and general public opinion (GPO) was also examined.

Sharing AC on SM is not like sharing other forms of content such as holiday recommendations – the former can provoke consequences (sometimes undesirable) in some regions. Such content can easily leverage the firehose of deception, maximising the vulnerability of those involved. This work, by relating human behaviour to AC sharing on SM, offers significant insights to enable individuals to manage their shared content and waning probable consequences.

This work combined two opposite constructs of human behaviour: planned and unplanned to explain individual behaviour in a specific context of AC sharing on SM.

This systematic review (SR) aims to evaluate and summarize the effectiveness of using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) intervention among individuals diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as to highlight the standardized EMDR-based interventional protocol.

This SR is guided according to preferred reporting items for SRs and meta-analyses standards. Several online databases were used in searching for eligible studies in peer-reviewed journals relevant to the study keywords. The included studies were SRs and clinical trials that used EMDR interventions among patients experiencing PTSD symptoms, older than 18 years and were published in English language from 2015 to 2022. Three researchers independently contributed to study selections, data extraction and study evaluations from different aspects, including quality assessment, risk of bias and study synthesis.

A total of eight published studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this SR; four articles were randomized controlled trials and four were SR and meta-analysis studies. In all included studies, the EMDR was used as a primary psychotherapy intervention for PTSD symptoms. The results of this extensive and comprehensive review showed that EMDR is an effective psychotherapeutic intervention to reduce and control the severity of symptoms among individuals with PTSD.

It is important to acknowledge several limitations inherent in this study. First and foremost, it is noteworthy to mention that only studies conducted in the English language were included in this review, potentially restricting the overall scope and diversity of the findings. Furthermore, the number of studies incorporated into this review was limited, which may have implications for the comprehensiveness and generalizability of the results. Finally, it is worth noting that certain studies within this review had a relatively small sample size, which could potentially limit the statistical power and precision of the conclusions drawn.

This paper, a review of the literature, gives an overview of EMDR effectiveness, provides baseline information and plays a significant role in decreasing the gap in Jordanian literature regarding using EMDR as the strongest evident psychotherapy approach for PTSD treatment to help psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurses in the health-care sectors to design comprehensive strategies to enhance and improve the quality of health care and patients’ status.

EMDR intervention offers significant alternative treatment opportunities for individuals suffering from PTSD, depression and anxiety. The implementation of EMDR for depression, anxiety and PTSD improves patient outcomes as compared to standard therapeutic modalities in PTSD.

This SR gives an overview and explains strong supportive evidence for the effectiveness of EMDR interventions among individuals with PTSD. Therefore, EMDR therapy could be assumed as one standard treatment option for PTSD, aiming at reducing treatment duration and cost of treatment and restoring the mental well-being and functionality of those suffering from PTSD.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospect of using neurophenomenology to understand, design and test phygital consumer experiences. It aims to clarify interpretivist approaches to consumer neuroscience, wherein theoretical models of individual phenomenology can be combined with modern neuroimaging techniques to detect and interpret the first-person accounts of phygital experiences.

The argument is conceptual in nature, building its position through synthesizing insights from phenomenology, phygital marketing, theoretical neuroscience and other related fields.

Ultimately, the paper presents the argument that interpretivist neuroscience in general, and neurophenomenology specifically, provides a valuable new perspective on phygital marketing experiences. In particular, we argue that the approach to studying first-personal experiences within the phygital domain can be significantly refined by adopting this perspective.

One of the primary goals of this paper is to stimulate a novel approach to interpretivist phygital research, and in doing so, provide a foundation by which the impact of phygital interventions can be empirically tested through neuroscience, and through which future research into this topic can be developed. As such, the success of such an approach is yet untested.

Phygital marketing is distinguished by its focus on the quality of subjective first-personal consumer experiences, but few papers to date have explored how neuroscience can be used as a tool for exploring these inner landscapes. This paper addresses this lacuna by providing a novel perspective on “interpretivist neuroscience” and proposes ways that current neuroscientific models can be used as a practical methodology for addressing these questions.

Mentalization-based treatment (MBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to increase mentalizing capacity. The purpose of this meta-ethnography was to synthesize the available qualitative literature on MBT to allow for a more thorough understanding of the lived experience of those who have undergone this therapy.

A systematic search of seven databases was carried out. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme was used to appraise the papers suitable for inclusion. The data were synthesized using a meta-ethnographic approach in which the second-order constructs from each paper were translated and reinterpreted creating a line of argument synthesis.

A total of 11 studies were included in the meta-ethnography. Three overarching themes were identified within the included papers which outlined that participant experience of MBT consisted of three different developmental stages. Navigating the therapeutic process describes the participant’s experience of the therapeutic process of MBT. The processes of change in MBT outlined participant reports of mechanisms of change experienced in MBT. Mentalizing self and others described the experience of generalizing new knowledge and skills to the world outside of therapy and unveiled the impact that engaging in MBT had on participants.

This meta-ethnography offers new insights into how clients experience MBT as a therapeutic process and offers suggestions for implementation in clinical practice as well as areas of focus for research of this therapeutic approach.

This study aims to explore aesthetic atmospheres and their affordances in urban squares to advance knowledge on the research and design of attractive living environments.

Descriptions of pleasant and unpleasant experiences of urban squares were collected using qualitative questionnaires with open-ended questions. The theoretical framework and the lens of aesthetic affordances were applied to pinpoint and understand the connections between the place attributes and experiences.

This study found four distinct aesthetic atmospheres formed by perceived synergies of both the material and immaterial aspects of the environment. It was also found that the atmospheres may shift. A model that shows the aesthetic atmospheres and their potential affordances as layered and emerging is presented.

Everyday aesthetics considered as affordances open new research perspectives for the understanding of what generates attractive living environments – or not.

Aesthetics affordances may provide the design professionals and alike means on how to design places that engender specific aesthetic atmosphere.

Gathering and discussing commonplace aesthetic experiences in everyday life may enhance democratic participation in place development among people with different levels of design expertise.

This study combines theories of place with a novel concept of aesthetic affordances to identify distinct aesthetic atmospheres. A holistic overview structure of how the various constituents of aesthetic atmospheres relate to each other provides new ways of studying and understanding urban aesthetic atmospheres.