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This article presents a history of the visual merchandising of American firearms from the mid-19th century until the present day. Although the scholarly literature has investigated visual representations of guns in advertising and popular media, it has paid far less attention to how sellers have displayed these objects at or near the point of purchase.

Primary sources include frescoes, engravings and photographs, plus papers, advertising and illustrations in popular newspapers and trade magazines. These and other period visual data are supplemented by secondary sources from a variety of fields, especially retailing and firearms history.

Evidence shows that American firearms were merchandised visually by Samuel Colt at three world expositions in the 1850s, by gunmakers and retailers in the latter 19th century, by Winchester and Remington dealers in the 1920s and 1930s, by high- and low-end retailers in New York in the first half of the 20th century and by gun stores, auctions and shows up to the present day.

The history of visual merchandising generally has focused upon major department stores, their alluring street-front windows and their fancy interior displays. This research explores past and present visual merchandising of firearms by manufacturers and smaller retailers. To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is the first such history of the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between employee empowerment (structural empowerment [SE] and psychological empowerment [PE]), employee commitment (EC) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) within the unique context of a learning organization in the Indian retail sector.

The investigation was conducted using a survey-based questionnaire approach. Data were gathered from 222 frontline employees working in different retail stores in India. The researcher used AMOS 22.0 version and SPSS 22.0 version for the data analysis.

This study concluded that SE and PE have a positive and significant influence on OCB and EC. In addition, EC is a mediator between employee empowerment (SE and PE) and OCB.

This research is built on cross-sectional data with a limited sample size, that is, 222 sample size. This study also offers some practical insights to managers of retail stores.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to empirically investigate the mediating role of EC between SE and OCB. By focusing on the interplay of these variables within a learning organization, this study sheds light on the mechanisms driving employee behavior and organizational dynamics in this rapidly evolving retail sector.

The effect of digital transition on knowledge management (KM) processes is becoming relevant for companies operating in different industries and the body of literature examining this impact is rapidly growing. This paper aims to critically analyse the literature on the impact of digital transition on KM by rethinking the SECI model proposed by Nonaka and proposing the WISED model for the digital knowledge-creating company.

The systematisation of existing studies on the topic and the analysis of the evolution of knowledge creation process in the era of digital transition was carried out through a bibliometric approach.

According to the traditional epistemological and ontological dimensions and considering the innovative KM processes identified by this study (i.e. webification, informalisation, systematisation, explicitation and digitalisation), the results highlight how the proposed WISED model can be adopted by organizations to manage knowledge through the use of digital technologies.

Digital transition seems to open up new horizons that can expand the potential use of the WISED model for organisations and society.