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In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

The purpose of this paper is to summarise and reflect upon key issues at the interface of prices, information and regulation with a focus upon the stock market in context. Reflecting upon academic research in the area of efficient markets, and regulatory policy, the concern is to discern issues in terms of policy and support for policy. What does the research imply for policy? Is it possible that the research, perhaps given its rhetoric, can be misinterpreted in relation to policy? The study is also concerned to develop avenues for future research based on these considerations.

The paper is an analytical and critical review and writing.

The reading of the research suggests a pragmatic regulatory policy that should be concerned to improve stock market functioning, including with respect to information, as well as the context of which this is part. At the same time, the literature may be read as promoting anti-regulatory policy.

On the one hand, these are consistent with the pragmatic policy referred to above. On the other hand, further research is suggested to explore substantively the rhetoric of the research and its interpretation and to explore understandings of the research and its implications amongst key constituencies in practice.

The concern is to bring key insights from the academic literature together with a view to promoting a pragmatic policy orientation, while cautioning in a critical perspective about how this academic literature and research might be interpreted from a policy perspective.

This chapter explores the results of an international survey (RAAAP-2) to provide global insight into research management and administration (RMA) as a relatively new field of investigation within the area of higher education management (HEM). Building on that extensive survey, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate qualitatively how and why people become and remain research managers and administrators, focussing primarily on their skills, roles, and career paths.

Findings from the analysis confirm that a career in RMA is rarely an intentional choice and can be described as labyrinthine, which could be even compared and contrasted with a concertine academic career described by Whitchurch et al. (2021). While conclusions confirm the gender implications of the profession, which is overall highly ‘female’; further conclusion sheds light on RMAs across regions and suggests how this varied ecosystem could even undermine the recognition of RMA as a profession.

The agricultural industry is demanding a skilled workforce. Leadership is often identified as a desired employability skill but understanding the relationship between leader and follower during the leadership process in agricultural contexts is limited. The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand how employers contextualize the follower characteristics and skills desired when hiring individuals with an undergraduate agricultural degree for entry-level positions using a case study approach. Data collected from individual interviews, a focus group, observation, and artifacts were combined to triangulate emergent findings. When viewed through the lens of followership theory, the agricultural industry seeks graduates who are independently-directed followers. The themes of job skills, organizational skills, and values component describe the desired characteristics and behaviors of independently-directed followers.

Consumers increasingly rely on organisations for online services and data storage while these same institutions seek to digitise the information assets they hold to create economic value. Cybersecurity failures arising from malicious or accidental actions can lead to significant reputational and financial loss which organisations must guard against. Despite having some critical weaknesses, qualitative cybersecurity risk analysis is widely used in developing cybersecurity plans. This research explores these weaknesses, considers how quantitative methods might address the constraints and seeks the insights and recommendations of leading cybersecurity practitioners on the use of qualitative and quantitative cyber risk assessment methods.

The study is based upon a literature review and thematic analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews with 16 senior cybersecurity practitioners representing financial services and advisory companies from across the world.

While most organisations continue to rely on qualitative methods for cybersecurity risk assessment, some are also actively using quantitative approaches to enhance their cybersecurity planning efforts. The primary recommendation of this paper is that organisations should adopt both a qualitative and quantitative cyber risk assessment approach.

This work provides the first insight into how senior practitioners are using and combining qualitative and quantitative cybersecurity risk assessment, and highlights the need for in-depth comparisons of these two different approaches.

This study aims to explain the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions on firms’ export performance. The study has considered three dimensions of EO: innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Export performance has been measured through multifaceted determinants: financial, strategic and satisfaction levels of exporting firms.

To explain the association between such determinants, qualitative face-to-face, in-depth interviews were conducted with the respondents from the apparel manufacturing companies of Bangladesh. The study has also applied a content analysis technique to explore and triangulate the descriptions of EO dimensions on performance.

The research results reveal that EO has a meaningful explanation of export performance from the lived experience of the respondents. The study has also found frequent explanations and indicators about the association of innovativeness and proactiveness on export performance, but the risk-taking dimension has revealed no effects.

The research has different implications on theoretical, managerial and policy-making aspects of EO and export performance. Nevertheless, the findings are based on the opinions of a small sample of entrepreneurs and high-level managers. Thus, it is important to test the generalizability of these findings in future research using a larger sample.

This study indicated product, process and market creation innovativeness. Risks related to product innovation, new market entry and politics are considered for risk-taking measures, while proactive innovation, technology and new market searching are used for measuring proactiveness. Additionally, multifaceted performance determinants have been applied to evaluate export performance. Hence, this study is a unique qualitative analysis with important theoretical, practical and methodological implications.

This paper seeks to explore the functions of Christmas mythemes for children’s consumption culture development. In addition, the purpose of this study is to provide an insight on the development of Central European Children into customers and how mythemes are associated with the wishing behaviour.

Levi-Strauss’ (1955) structural analysis was used to uncover the mythemes of the Christmas story for Austrian children. These mythemes then informed a thematic analysis of 283 Austrian children’s Christmas letters. Campbell’s (1970) functions of myths were used to reflect on the findings.

The Christmas mythemes uncovered were found to encourage materialism by linking self-enhancement (good acquirement) with self-transcendent (good behaviour) values. The role of myths to relieve the tension between the incongruent values of collective/other-oriented and materialistic values is expanded upon. Such sanctification of selfish good acquisition is aided by the mythemes related especially to the Christkind and baby Jesus. Instead, marketers should use Christmas mythemes which emphasise family and collective/other-centred values.

By first uncovering the “mythemes” related to Christmas, the authors contribute to the academic understanding of Christmas, going beyond origin or single myth understandings and acknowledging the multifaceted components of Christmas. The second contribution is in exploring mytheme’s representation in children’s Christmas letters and reflecting on their functions. This differs from previous literature because it looks at one of the main cultural vehicles for Christmas socialisation and its intersection with the mythemes that feed children’s consumption culture formation. Through the authors’ presentation of a conceptual framework that links mytheme functions with proximal processes using a socioecological viewpoint, the authors demonstrate the guidance of mythemes in children’s development. The third contribution is a reflection on the potential ethical implications for children’s formation of their consumer culture based on the functions of the mythemes. Furthermore, the authors add to the existing body of research by investigating a Central European context.