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Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) natural language processing may see the emergence of algorithmic word of mouth (aWOM), content created and shared by automated tools. As AI tools improve, aWOM will increase in volume and sophistication, displacing eWOM as an influence on customer decision-making. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the socio technological trends that have encouraged the evolution of informal infulence strategies from WOM to aWOM.

This paper examines the origins and path of development of influential customer communications from word of mouth (WOM) to electronic word of mouth (eWOM) and the emerging trend of aWOM. The growth of aWOM is theorized as a result of new developments in AI natural language processing tools along with autonomous distribution systems in the form of software robots and virtual assistants.

aWOM may become a dominant source of information for tourists, as it can support multimodal delivery of useful contextual information. Individuals, organizations and social media platforms will have to ensure that aWOM is developed and deployed responsibly and ethically.

aWOM may emerge as the dominant source of information for tourist decision-making, displacing WOM or eWOM. aWOM may also impact online opinion leaders, as they may be challenged by algorithmically generated content. aWOM tools may also generate content using sensors on personal devices, creating privacy and information security concerns if users did not give permission for such activities.

This paper is the first to theorize the emergence of aWOM as autonomous AI communication within the framework of unpaid influence or WOM. As customer engagement will increasingly occur in algorithmic environments that comprise person–machine interactions, aWOM will influence future tourism research and practice.

The use of “special events” as an attractor for destinations in the smart tourism paradigm has been suggested as one element of an effective destination strategy. This study aims to create new understandings of this potentiality by exploring an event from a participant perspective in smart tourism contexts by creating a model integrating factors impacting the smart event experience.

The authors conducted five online focus groups by using Facebook secret groups to engage spectators of an international sports event. Discussions focussed on the digital event experience with particular reference to the event app. A subsequent interpretative phenomenological analysis facilitated the examination of how people make sense of this digital phenomenon and the impact on the overall event experience.

The findings demonstrate an increasing demand for real-time event integrative information, with more immersive and augmented experiences often sought by users. This has significant implications for the management of the digital event experience for all event stakeholders.

This study is limited in its analysis of the smart event experience because of the use of a purposive sample from the International NW200 Event in Northern Ireland, which may limit the generalisability of research findings.

The study therefore, meets a critical gap in existent literature by providing the first event experience model in a smart tourism context and presenting the interlocking elements through the 4P’s (people, processes, personalisation and places) and 7R’s (rituals, realms, realities, renewal, review, relational and resourcing) of digital event experience.

Describes the framework of a methodology (BASE) for systematically planning substantial (revolutionary) business improvement and coherently managing incremental (evolutionary) progress towards that goal. Particularly, the paper emphasises that an improvement plan should integrate business changes with the development of computing facilities to ensure that they are adequately aligned. The methodology addresses changes in two dimensions: (1) the incremental steps in the co‐evaluation of the business process and its computing support; and (2) the maintenance of alignment between business activities and computing support when either is modified. The paper concentrates on the building and maintenance of the central evolutionary change plan.

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

EVERY OTHER MONTH the Institute of Directors writes to a representative section of its membership, 200 in all. They are asked their opinion of the economy in general and how the immediate future looks to them.

OUR EDITORIAL in the January NLW dealt with the terminology for resource centres and their content. Since then we have dipped into Advances in librarianship, vol 1 1970, read Chase Dane's article on ‘The changing school library’, and do not like the term ‘instructional media center’, either. Nor do we like the insistence in the article that the purpose of an imc is different from that of a conventional library. ‘The new facilities it demands’, says Dane, ‘reflect a new approach with emphasis on individualized instruction, and a fresh way of helping students learn’. ‘Always before’, we read, ‘the value of the school library has been limited to students who could read or who liked books or who were able to use them effectively. The imc has changed all this. It appeals to the non‐reader as well as to the reader. A student doesn't have to be a good reader to get help from the library. Even if he is a poor reader, there is now a way, through audio‐visual materials, for him to acquire the knowledge he wants’.

This paper aims to accomplish two things: to build on current research which interrogates the role of management history in the neglect of women leaders and labor programs and to draw attention to Hallie Flanagan and the Federal Theater Project and their lost contributions to management and organizational studies.

This paper adopts a feminist poststructural lens fused with critical discourse analysis to capture the role of discourses in concealing a more fragmented view of history.

The findings are openly discursive and aim to disrupt current knowledge and thinking in the practice of making history. The paper calls for an undoing of history and an examination of the powerful forces, which result in a gendered and limited understanding of the past.

The objective of this paper is to help scholarship continue to transform management and organizational studies and management history and to raise the profile of remarkable leaders, like Flanagan and similarly remarkable programs like the Federal Theater Project. Flanagan managed arguably the most ambitious and novel labor program under the New Deal, which resulted in an average of 10,000 workers in the arts being employed over four years, in a project which engaged audiences of over 30,000,000 Americans.