Search results

This study investigates the role of athlete brands for the international marketing of professional sports leagues by examining how athlete brands contribute to initiatives of football leagues.

Through a single case study of the German Bundesliga underpinned by 17 semi-structured interviews with league, club and media executives, we identify specific brand co-creation opportunities of athlete brands and the sports league brand.

Our findings reveal that athlete brands play a significant role in enhancing league visibility, engaging global audiences and unlocking new markets. Moreover, we identify specific opportunities for co-creating league brand meaning through strategic partnerships and athlete endorsements.

This research contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of athlete brands in sports league marketing and offering insights for practitioners on innovative marketing strategies. Using a multi-actor perspective, this study provides valuable insights by revealing how sports leagues can pursue innovative marketing strategies by considering the role of athlete brands, thereby offering new ways for fans and sponsors to engage with the sports league.

This chapter aims to trace how the theoretical frameworks of actuarialism and managerialism have been slowly introduced into the Latin–American scientific debate, focusing on the Argentinian and Chilean examples. With this objective in mind, we explore the journey of these theories in our region focusing on the work. Additionally, we address other academic contributions that highlight “actuarial techniques” of risk as central features to analyze contemporary penalty, policing tactics, or criminal court outcomes and practices (Hannah-Moffat, 2013a, 2013b; Harcourt, 2007; Marutto & Hannah-Moffat, 2006), even overlapping concepts like actuarialism and managerialism (Barker, 2009; Kohler-Hausmann, 2018). Subsequently, we describe the acclimation of these theories in Argentina and Chile, characterized for a limited impact on the scientific debate. We suggest that the main reason for this little impact is the different stages of the criminal justice system between Global North and Global South countries. While in the first one, actuarialism and managerialism were born to explain especially the field of risk analysis, and secondarily, the role of the new public management; in the case of Latin America, managerialism has been observed through the criminal justice system reform developed in the last three decades. This observation has focused especially on some organizational transformations and, for this reason, the analysis about actuarialism and risk assessment have been marginals. We concluded that although the influence of the literature about actuarialism and managerialism from the Global North in Latin–American is real, it is not possible to extrapolate all its elements to the penal systems in the region.

Considering mental health in organizations is crucial for several reasons, as it directly impacts the well-being and productivity of employees. This paper aims to delve into the role of the human resource (HR) department (HRD) in promoting mental health and mitigating associated organizational risks within emerging markets, with a specific focus on organizations in Jordan.

Using a qualitative research approach, 21 semistructured interviews were conducted with employees from diverse organizations and industries in Jordan.

The study’s findings illuminate a constrained role of HRD in supporting employees’ mental well-being, attributable to several factors: (i) a perceptual gap between the actual and desired roles of HRD in fostering mental health according to employees; (ii) institutional factors dictating initiatives for mental health support at work; and (iii) societal and cultural norms shaping attitudes toward mental health, both pre- and post-COVID-19.

This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on the intersection of HR practices and mental health support in the workplace in emerging markets, providing valuable insights for both academic and practical considerations. As organizations navigate the evolving landscape of employee well-being, this study’s findings offer a foundation for future research and the development of evidence-based strategies to enhance mental health support within organizational contexts and mitigate organizational risks.

This study illuminates the current landscape of human resources management development in fostering mental health at work in Jordan, serving as a foundation for future research agendas in the country and potentially the wider region.

The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to diagnose and analyze the current state of child sexual violence in the Metaverse through thematic analysis, identifying patterns and empirically diagnosing issues and (2) to enhance cybercrime investigation capabilities and public safety training in Metaverse investigations in the future.

By using thematic analysis, the study examines online child sexual violence victimization cases in the Metaverse, collecting data through keyword searches in newspapers and court records.

This study provides detailed policy recommendations for building trust between the government and citizens involved in the digital age.

The research endeavors harbor a dual focus: first, to meticulously dissect and comprehend the prevalent landscape of child sexual violence within the intricate realms of the Metaverse. Through rigorous thematic analysis, the authors endeavor to unearth underlying patterns, diagnose empirical realities and illuminate the pressing issues at hand. Second, the authors aspire to fortify the arsenal of cybercrime investigation techniques, bolstering the capacity for future Metaverse inquiries. Using thematic analysis, the study meticulously scrutinizes a dozen cases of online child sexual violence, meticulously gathering data from diverse sources such as newspapers and court records. The implications of the research extend far beyond academia, offering concrete policy recommendations to safeguard vulnerable denizens of the Metaverse.

Various employee engagement strategies are proposed to boost organisational performance and business prosperity. Interestingly scholars criticise that these strategies may not always work and mixed views are proposed, leaving a glaring knowledge gap. Drawing on the theories of high-performance-work-practices (HPWPs), this paper aims to conduct a qualitative study, aiming to explore how strategies affect employee engagement and analyse the underlying mechanism.

This paper gathers research data by interviewing five managers and 15 employees in the hospitality sector. It analyses data through thematic analysis and adopts “Abilities Motivation Opportunities” (AMO) model in improving the analytic rigour. Ethical practices are arranged throughout the project, including consent form, anonymity in participation, confidentiality in responses, freedom to withdraw and data protection.

Research findings have advanced employee engagement literatures in two ways. On the one hand, when managers recognise employees’ job ability and effort, employees support engagement strategies. On the other hand, however, if managers do not appreciate employees’ job ability and effort, engagement strategies may not necessarily work.

This paper suggests managers display a positive attitude towards subordinates, such as appreciating subordinates’ effort and showing trust and support, if they wish their engagement strategies maximise to the full potential, particularly when managers’ trust is perceived important by employees. Maintaining a healthy communication channel between managers and subordinates also benefits the employee engagement, working morale and overall performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current research is the first in its kind, examining hotel employee engagement practice and its implications on performance management in the sector of Nigeria hospitality. Unlike prior studies which link HPWPs to performance directly, our research findings have clarified how HPWPs affect performance through the underlying factors. These are employee engagement and managers’ attitude towards employees.

This study aims to explore the nexus between gender, conflict and climate change in Bor County, highlighting the negative feedback cycle between climate change and conflict and assuming gender as a framework through which individuals see and interpret climate change and instances of conflict.

The research employs a qualitative method utilizing carefully designed semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions conducted in Bor, Jonglei State. Data were collected from a diverse sample of 35 interviews and one focus group discussion (FGD) involving various stakeholders. The research study encompassed a total of 70 participants. The study employs reflexive thematic methods in the data analysis.

This research reveals Bor County’s enduring climate challenges: extreme temperatures, erratic rainfall and shifting seasonal patterns have led to droughts and severe floods. These disruptions affect livelihoods, trigger displacement and escalate community conflicts. Similarly, conflict exacerbates environmental degradation and undermines economic activities. In effect, climate change and conflict are self-perpetuating cycles. However, while climate change may contribute to conflicts in Bor, Jonglei state underlying causes predate current climate changes and would likely persist. The study further shows that gendered perceptions of climate change and conflict reveal distinct concerns among women and men, with women more attuned to resource implications while men prioritize immediate security. Moreover, women are disproportionately affected by both climate change and conflict, exacerbating their vulnerability due to structural inequalities.

This study provides policymakers and stakeholders valuable insights into climate change-conflict and Gender Nexus in Bor. Incorporating a gender-sensitive and inclusive perspective into developing justice procedures involving national consultations, bills and enforcement procedures is imperative.

This is the first work to examine climate, conflict and gender nexus in Bor County, South Sudan.

Online education enables location-independent learning, potentially providing university students with more flexible study programs and reducing traffic-related CO₂ emissions. This paper aims to examine whether online education can contribute to university-related sustainable everyday mobility, with particular consideration given to aspects of social sustainability and potential rebound effects. Specifically, it explores sustainability dilemmas that arise from conflicting social and ecological effects.

Drawing on qualitative data from mobility diaries and extensive semistructured interviews (n = 26) collected at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences in Germany, this study deploys thematic analysis and a typification approach to analyze and classify students’ daily practices related to studying, mobility and dwelling, which may be impacted by online education.

The study identifies six distinct student types with diverse practices in studying, mobility and dwelling. Comparisons between student types reveal stark differences regarding professional and social goals that students associate with their studies, influencing university-related mobility and residential choices. This leads to varying assessments of online education, with some students expecting benefits and others anticipating severe drawbacks.

The typology developed in this paper can assist Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in comparable contexts in understanding the distinct needs and motivations of students, thereby proactively identifying sustainability dilemmas associated with online education. By leveraging these findings, HEIs can effectively balance diverse interests and contribute meaningfully to sustainability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to systematically investigate conflicts and rebound effects of online education in the context of sustainable mobility within HEIs.

This paper contributes to discourse about complex disasters by applying cultural lenses to the study of coastal infrastructure (such as seawalls and dikes), thus departing from studies that focus on characterising, assessing, and predicting the physical resilience of hard structural forms that dominate knowledge about coastal infrastructure.

This ethnographic study nuances Philippine coastal infrastructure through examining the material registers of a seawall bordering an island inhabited by artisanal fisherfolk. By “material registers”, this research refers to the socially informed ways of regarding and constructing material configurations and how the latter are enacted and resisted. Data collection was accomplished through focus groups with community leaders, on-site and remote interviews with homeowners, and archival research to further understand the spatial and policy context of the structure.

The discussion focuses on the seawall’s three material registers (protection, fragility, and misrecognition) and reveals how infrastructure built for an island community of fisherfolk simultaneously fulfils, fails, and complicates the promise of disaster resilience.

This research demonstrates the potential of “material registers”, a term previously used to analyse architecture and housing, to understand the technopolitics of infrastructure and how materially informed tensions between homeowners' and state notions of infrastructure contribute to protracted experiences of disaster and coastal maladaptation.

This research signposts the need for disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, and sustainable development policies that legitimize the construction of infrastructure to recognize the latter's relationship and impact on multiple sphere of coastal life, including housing and citizenship implications.

This research highlights how infrastructure for coastal disaster risk management implicates geographically informed power relations within a community fisherfolk and between their “small” island community and more politically and economically dominant groups.

Whereas studies of coastal infrastructure are focused on quantitative and predictive research regarding hard structural forms in megacities, this study apprehends disaster complexity through examining the cultural and contested nature of infrastructure for coastal flood management in an island community of fisherfolk.

A learning-focused culture promotes creativity, innovativeness and the acquisition of novel insights and competencies. The study aims to explore the relationship between human resource development (HRD) practice and employee competencies using organizational learning culture as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 828 employees of 37 health care institutions comprising 24 (internationally-owned) and 13 (indigenously-owned). Construct reliability and validity was established through a confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Data supported the hypothesized relationships. The results show that training and development and employee competencies were significantly related. Career development and employee competencies were significantly related. Organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between training and development and employee competencies. However, organizational learning culture did not mediate the relationship between career development and employee competencies.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s health care focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers to policy makers and stakeholders of health care institutions in developing system-level capacities that promote continuous learning and adaptive learning cultures to ensure sustainability and competitive advantage.

By evidencing empirically that organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between HRD practices and employee competencies the study extends the literature.