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Despite an increasing trend in adoption of social media by for-profit organizations and their chief executive officers (CEOs), there is little understanding of how these new channels of communication are incorporated into the broader communication domain of a firm to discharge accountability during a crisis, when accountability is of critical importance. More importantly, research on how people perceive a crisis and voice their opinions to firms and CEOs on social media in reaction to that crisis is rather limited. Therefore, in this study the authors investigate these questions.

This study is based on a case. The authors focus on the biggest data breach in Internet history in a pioneer technology firm, the Yahoo data breach. The authors conduct descriptive and dramaturgical analyses informed by Goffman to investigate how Yahoo manages its several front stages (communication channels), including social media during and after the Yahoo data breach announcements, and how people respond to the Yahoo's front stage management.

The results show that, during this crisis, Yahoo engages in management of its front stages by first limiting them to a few, then by redrawing the line between its back and front stages, and finally by expanding its front stages to include two-way communication channels, including social media. An ongoing accountability process back stage guides Yahoo's management of its front stages and undermines Yahoo's accountability in front stages. However, social media audiences challenge Yahoo's control of its front stages by using various frames to make sense of the crisis, and to demand accountability.

This study furthers the understanding of how social media platforms are positioned in a firm's broader communication channels during a crisis. It also enhances understanding of accountability demand, especially during critical times in a digitized era.

The Communist revolution in China has led to the appearance in this country of increasing numbers of Chinese books in Russian translation. The Chinese names in Cyrillic transcription have presented many librarians and students with a new problem, that of identifying the Cyrillic form of a name with the customary Wade‐Giles transcription. The average cataloguer, the first to meet the problem, has two obvious lines of action, and neither is satisfactory. He can save up the names until he has a chance to consult an expert in Chinese. Apart altogether from the delay, the expert, confronted with a few isolated names, might simply reply that he could do nothing without the Chinese characters, and it is only rarely that Soviet books supply them. Alternatively, he can transliterate the Cyrillic letters according to the system in use in his library and leave the matter there for fear of making bad worse. As long as the writers are not well known, he may feel only faintly uneasy; but the appearance of Chzhou Ėn‐lai (or Čžou En‐laj) upsets his equanimity. Obviously this must be entered under Chou; and we must have Mao Tse‐tung and not Mao Tsze‐dun, Ch'en Po‐ta and not Chėn' Bo‐da. But what happens when we have another . . . We can hardly write Ch'en unless we know how to represent the remaining elements in the name; yet we are loth to write Ch'en in one name and Chėn' in another.

Previous research has advanced in two-stage construction project productivity (CPP) evaluation by integrating site efficiency (SE) in the delivery and utilisation effectiveness (UE) in the post-delivery stages. The literature has separately addressed the factors affecting these three constructs. However, the interrelationships among them are rarely discussed together. This study aims to systematically identify the influencing factors of CPP, SE and UE and disentangle interrelationships among the three constructs.

The paper first reviews the literature about the two-stage project productivity evaluation framework for government construction projects. Then this paper proposes hypotheses regarding the relationships between the three constructs and identifies influencing factors associated with the constructs. Based on questionnaire survey from over 200 government construction project professionals in China, the structural equation modelling is adopted to validate the hypotheses.

The paper provides empirical insights that CPP can be directly influenced by UE to a large extent but indirectly impacted by SE through its effects on UE. The findings indicate that CPP is not a simple sum of SE and UE, and consequently reveals the complex, non-linear and indirect relationships between SE and CPP.

Future research should further extend the timeframe boundary to merge the pre-delivery stage (e.g. design and planning), findings of which may propose a more generalised understanding and reduce the bias resulting from pre-delivery activities.

This paper contributes to construction facility management literature by explaining the mediating role of UE on the relationship between SE and CPP. Therefore, this paper offers practitioners an integrated management logic in strategically combining project and facility management into government project management.

The rising occurrence of digitally driven public consumer complaints has made it necessary for enterprises to obtain consumer forgiveness. However, existing research has provided little understanding regarding how to obtain consumer forgiveness effectively. Thus, the present study examined how brand avatars can improve consumer forgiveness in the context of public apology.

This study tested the mechanism of a brand avatar on consumer forgiveness using three studies. Specifically, we explored the direct and mediating effect of empathy toward a brand (Study 1); we identified the moderating mediating effect of humorous responses (Study 2) and product type (Study 3). Data for these studies were collected on Credamo. We analyzed the data using SPSS (26.0) for the primary analysis and PROCESS (3.5) for the mediating and moderating mediating analysis.

The results indicate that brand avatars enhance consumer forgiveness. Moreover, empathy toward a brand plays a mediating role in the effect of brand avatars on consumer forgiveness. Additionally, when a humorous response is present, a brand avatar can enhance customer forgiveness through empathy toward that brand. Compared to utilitarian products, hedonic products can also increase the impact of a brand avatar on empathy toward the brand, thus enhancing consumers' forgiveness.

From the perspective of emotion, this study explored the impact of brand avatars on consumer forgiveness via empathy toward a brand. It augments the research on brand avatars and consumer forgiveness. The study also verified the moderating mediating effect of humor response and product type while expanding the brand avatar research boundary.