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This paper aims to examine brand-generated communities from the community managers’ point of view and investigate how social media influences managerial perceptions, attitudes and practises around brand communities.

The literature review examines the most prominent constructs describing consumer groupings around brands. It then focuses on how the term “brand community” has evolved throughout the years and transformed in the social media environment. Research involving one survey and one focus group among agency-employed brand community managers was conducted to explore and interpret their views and their work.

Brand community managers aim to increase platform metrics. They encourage interaction between each user and the brand, but not between users. While they execute pre-planned content calendars handling comments, they do not have the experience and autonomy to foster a communal environment. Finally, managers rely on extrinsic incentives, and even antagonise users, regarding control over the community.

The sample covers the majority of agency-employed brand community managers in one country: Greece. The findings call for a re-examination of the construct of brand community, as well as for a new assessment of groupings consumers form around brands in social media.

For actual brand communities to emerge in social media, community managers should have more training, experience and initiative to tailor content and metrics, use intrinsic incentives and propose engaging activities. The quest for platform-imposed measurements inhibits this opportunity, and so do centralised processes that define global brand management.

The managerial aspect of brand-generated communities is understudied, especially when management is outsourced. This paper provides insight on how platform priorities and managerial practises dilute expectations that consumer-generated communities have created.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the degree of investment and involvement attributed to specific product categories, affect content marketing plans and practices on the Web and social media.

This is a conceptual paper based on the classification proposed by Morton and Devine (1985) on the axes of investment and involvement. The author uses secondary research evidence from both academic and industry sources to document content marketing trends in the US and the EU markets and allocates such trends using the semiotic square.

The findings indicate that products in each quadrant follow similar practices regarding content publishing, campaign planning and community management.

Further research may test this model empirically and assess its merits in different markets.

Managers can use this model for content planning, considering category-related opportunities and limitations. The model may also serve as a teaching tool to familiarize students with older research and its potential contribution in current settings.

By applying an old model in the current US/EU context, this paper helps document and understand content marketing practices, paving the way toward their optimization.

The purpose of this chapter is to combine research findings around gender bias and the challenges women face in academia, and to present a unified conceptual framework. Ample research indicates that the issue is far from sufficiently addressed. Even in cases where policies are in place, mediocre outcomes are observed. Fewer women climb the ladder of academic progression all the way up to senior positions, especially in certain institutions and certain disciplines.

After thoroughly reviewing the literature, the authors integrate and organize the different multifaceted causes that appear to obstruct women in academia. They propose a scheme that divides between contextual and non-contextual factors, emphasizing their interplay.

Even when policies are in place, they appear to have limited results, because they mainly address isolated factors rather than taking a multifaceted, integrative approach.

Future research should further examine the interplay of contextual and non-contextual factors by combining multiple variables that contribute to gender bias in academia.

Policy-making should consider both contextual and non-contextual factors, thus providing more integrative solutions and taking a broader perspective on the issue.

Despite the ample and rising amount of research findings, there is no coherent framework to adequately include all the factors that contribute to gender bias in academia. By integrating and organizing the different, multifaceted causes already pointed out by previous findings, the authors hope to contribute to future research with specific variables to test and correlate, as well as to the formulation of more sophisticated policies.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the research presented in this edited volume.

This report is based on 13 chapters, which vary in terms of research approach, design, and method, yet aims to present different types of diversity in organizations.

The chapters shed light on existing practices promulgating the value of diversity, while opening the road toward diverse definitions of diversity. Contributors provide a critical reflection of the current discourse on different types of diversity around the world. Findings indicate that multinational organizations are regularly confronted with the absence of the necessary sensitivity on behalf of their top management team and spokespeople. Empirical studies advocate strategies that could potentially facilitate both organizations and immigrants to overcome a plethora of challenges.

The report summarizes and integrates novel insights on how organizations approach, view, and manage different types of diversity.