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The theory of relatively closed systems first appeared in Kybernetes as two consecutive papers by Grubbström This work was a development of studies in cybernetic modelling performed by Lange and Klir and Valach. This paper deals with an application taken from the field of inventory control. The purpose is to show how the theory of relatively closed systems can be used to formulate models, analyse stability conditions and compute equilibrium values for the variables involved.

In Sweden, the care of older people and people with disabilities is increasingly carried out by informal carers, often family members, who are unpaid and outside a professional or formal framework. While there is an increasing awareness of the role of carers within service systems and their own needs for support, their involvement in research is underexplored. The purpose of this paper is to explore carers’ views and experiences of involvement in research and development (R&D) work.

A qualitative study was conducted, consisting of 12 individual interviews with carers from different local Swedish carer organizations.

Core findings included carers’ discussions of the perceived challenges and benefits of their involvement in research, both generally and more specifically, in the context of their involvement in the development of a national carer strategy.

Limitations included the relative lack of male carer participants and the convenience sample.

Authentic carer involvement in research demands a high level of engagement from researchers during the entire research process. The provided CRAC framework, with reference to the themes community, reciprocity, advocacy and circumstantiality, may help researchers to understand and interpret carer involvement in research and provide the prerequisites for their involvement.

There is a dearth of studies that systematically examine carer involvement in research. This paper attempts to redress this gap by providing a nuanced analysis of carer involvement in R&D work from the perspective of carers themselves.

Aims to identify possible marketing effects of a change in organizational design within the marketing function of an electrical equipment supplier on the international market. Develops a theoretical framework which can, it is claimed, be used in other practical decision situations.

This paper aims to identify content strategies on social media that influence engagement and to analyze those operations to describe important features for co-creation and trust.

This paper addresses the question of how social media content can influence engagement by using a medium-sized Swedish company for an empirical case study. This empirical study is based on a participatory action research methodology. By using the company account on LinkedIn, the authors experimented with relational content to understand the effects on customer-perceived value and trust.

Results reveal that action-oriented messages had a more significant impact on engagement than product-oriented messages and value-based messages.

This paper builds on the existing literature in two ways: drawing upon business-to-business relationships and perceived value and using recent advances in the use of social networking sites to understand the value of co-creation through a participatory culture.

During the last decades, different quality management concepts, including total quality management (TQM), six sigma and lean, have been applied by many different organisations. Although much important work has been documented regarding TQM, six sigma and lean, a number of questions remain concerning the applicability of these concepts in various organisations and contexts. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to describe the similarities and differences between the concepts, including an evaluation and criticism of each concept.

Within a case study, a literature review and face‐to‐face interviews in typical TQM, six sigma and lean organisations have been carried out.

While TQM, six sigma and lean have many similarities, especially concerning origin, methodologies, tools and effects, they differ in some areas, in particular concerning the main theory, approach and the main criticism. The lean concept is slightly different from TQM and six sigma. However, there is a lot to gain if organisations are able to combine these three concepts, as they are complementary. Six sigma and lean are excellent road‐maps, which could be used one by one or combined, together with the values in TQM.

The paper provides guidance to organisations regarding the applicability and properties of quality concepts. Organisations need to work continuously with customer‐orientated activities in order to survive; irrespective of how these activities are labelled. The paper will also serve as a basis for further research in this area, focusing on practical experience of these concepts.

Introduction – In recent years virtual reality and augmented reality (AR) applications, which are widely used in many sectors, have become important tools in marketing communication. The change and differentiation that takes place in a revolutionary digital environment also affect social change. This change has led to the use of AR applications as a communication tool to affect all decisions of consumers in the purchasing process.

Purpose – The focus of this study is on AR applications using an experimental application in the context of marketing communication with experiential marketing and new technologies.

Method – This experimentation was carried out on over 2 million downloaded mobile applications by Turkish users of an AR brand of wall paint. The experiment included 32 consumers, painters, and interior designers in Istanbul. These formed the groups of the study. The authors aimed to determine whether AR mobile applications are seen differently between these three groups in terms of attitudes and buying intentions vis-a-vis other brands. Thus, the authors will determine the importance of AR applications in marketing communication, satisfaction of experience, and the effect on purchase intention in terms of the different groups. In line with the results, strategies will be presented to marketing practitioners. The literature review of the study enabled the formation and design of the research method and scales.

Findings – The preliminary study revealed that the attitudes toward experiential marketing, brand attitudes, and purchase intention using the AR application were significantly different from the catalog application.

Evasive entrepreneurs innovate by circumventing or disrupting existing formal institutional frameworks. Since such evasions rarely go unnoticed, they usually lead to responses from lawmakers and regulators. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors introduce a conceptual model to illustrate and map the interdependencey between evasive entrepreneurship and the regulatory response it provokes. The authors apply this framework to the case of the file sharing platform The Pirate Bay, a venture with a number of clearly innovative and evasive features.

The platform was a radical, widely applied innovation that transformed the internet landscape, yet its founders became convicted criminals because of it.

Applying the evasive entrepreneurship framework to this case improves the understanding of the relationship between policymaking and entrepreneurship in the digital age, and is a first step toward exploring best responses for regulators facing evasive entrepreneurship.

Drawing on the social exchange theory and the stressor-strain framework, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between leaders’ narcissism and employee’s organizational cynicism. Specifically, the authors take a relational approach by introducing employee’s psychological strain as the mediator. The moderating role of psychological capital in the relationship between leaders’ narcissism and employee’s cynicism is also considered.

The data of this study encompass 1,215 certified nurses from 15 university hospitals in Turkey. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the proposed model.

The statistical results of this study supported the positive effect of leaders’ narcissism on employee’s cynicism as well as the mediating effect of employee’s psychological strain. Moreover, when the level of psychological capital is high, the relationship between leaders’ narcissism and organizational cynicism is weak, whereas the effect is strong when the level of psychological capital is low.

The findings of this study suggest that managers in the healthcare industry should be sensitive in treating their subordinates, as it will lead to positive interpersonal relationship, which, in turn, will reduce employee cynicism. Moreover, managers should pay more attention to the buffering role of psychological capital for those employees with high psychological strain and showing organizational cynicism.

As the healthcare sector continues to go through a transformational change, it is important to identify organizational factors that affect employee attitudes. There is limited empirical evidence about the determinants of cynicism, particularly in the healthcare sector environment. This study contributes to the literature on organizational cynicism by revealing the relational mechanism between leaders’ narcissism and employee cynicism. The paper also offers a practical assistance to employees in the healthcare management and their leaders interested in building trust, increasing leader-employee relationship and reducing organizational cynicism.

Purpose – This study explores subsidiaries' local network embeddedness and how it contributes to localised subsidiary innovation output from a social network perspective. In particular, we are interested in analysing the consequences of local network density, diversity and, subsidiaries' network position on its innovation outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach – Data are derived from a longitudinal quantitative study of the entire R&D network within one of the largest life science cluster in Germany, the ‘BioRegion Rhein-Neckar-Dreieck’.

Findings – Our findings indicate that the size (density) of the local network has an inverted U-shaped effect on the innovation outcomes of MNC subsidiaries. Our findings further indicate that a strong brokerage position in the local network has a significant positive influence on the innovation output while a position in the core of the network has a significant negative effect on the innovation output.

Research implications – Our results shed new light on the relationship between local embeddedness, brokerage, the danger of overembeddedness and innovation output of MNC subsidiaries.