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The purpose of this brief paper is to highlight the role of culture in cross-cultural M&A environments.

Empirical work as consultants and participant-observers within multiple international organizations in the process of pre or post M&A restructuring has revealed the need to develop three key “best practices” linked to behaviors which facilitate organizational actors’ role in such dynamic and complex organizational environments.

Managers and practitioners may be able to re think their own positioning within the merged or merging firm and question some of their own cultural allegiances and behaviors, whether linked to national culture or organizational (corporate) culture.

The authors have identified three key behavioral skills crucial to effective intercultural interactions, when interacting in cross-border M&A contexts.

Contemporary mobilities research has demonstrated a fundamental blurring between work, leisure and tourism practices for migrants as they seek to construct new lifestyles whilst maintaining connections with their homelands. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the results of a research project that analysed the work and leisure experiences of Polish migrants living in the North East of England using a mobilities theoretical approach. In this paper, the authors focus on the reasons influencing their migration and their leisure and tourism mobility practices.

The results are based upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods gathering a sample of 90 questionnaires and 11 focus groups.

Based upon a statistical analysis of the questionnaires using SPSS and textual analysis applied to the focus group transcriptions, different gendered work, leisure and tourism mobilities were identified relating to family attachments and social ties.

The authors argue that seemingly mundane leisure and tourism practices can often be a catalyst for greater mobility, and this mobility has significant gender dimensions.

This paper thus provides new insights into the interweaving of different gendered work and leisure mobility practices based upon empirical findings of Polish migrants to the North East of England.

This study aims to develop an architectural prototype of a Cyber-Physical System (CPS), as well as lay a technological foundation for future smart housing with improved health and well-being outcomes for its occupants.

This study deploys smart sensors to monitor the key environmental parameters of a house. Using Internet of Things technology, a prototype of a CPS has been developed for capturing the environmental conditions over time. A case study involving a property in New Zealand was undertaken to validate the prototype.

The study proposes a monitoring platform, enabled by the CPS and smart sensing devices, that collects, shares, stores, analyses and visualises indoor environment data. The reliability and accuracy of the monitoring system were enhanced by comparing the activity of house occupants with sensor data.

Due to limited time, the prototype was tested in one house for a period of one month. Air quality was not considered in this study. However, the work suggests that such an approach provides an effective solution for government organisations and housing agencies to collect information for the purpose of assessing building thermal performance.

This research proposes a new lens consisting of a home environment monitoring application with health and well-being implications. It could also be used to inform the future design of healthy homes and buildings, both in New Zealand and internationally.

Geotechnologies have a long tradition in several areas of society and research. The recent development of the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies opened several doors to the contribution of tourism. Emergent technologies contributions to tourism and planning such as web mapping, augmented reality (AR), crowdsourcing and crowdsensing are relatively recent, and there is a lack of research around their potential for Creative Tourism enhancement. For example, combining web mapping with AR or storytelling can be an excellent contribution to operators, planners and tourists. For research purposes, new opportunities are open, particularly by integrating community-shared data. It is well known for the popularity of social networks, the exponential growth of photo sharing, but few studies have been implemented to understand their contribution to research. This chapter focuses on emerging geotechnologies concerning cultural mapping, Creative Tourism and sustainability. Since it is a new growing niche, more research is needed to develop and understand the potential of new approaches. Besides traditional techniques such as quantitative (e.g. surveys) and qualitative ones (e.g. interviews, focus groups and world café), it revises the role of geotechnologies on Creative Tourism development and growing activities. Results from case studies from Europe are analysed.

Purpose – The chapter outlines mixed methods as a recursive and co-operative approach to research. In doing so, it challenges the dominant conception of ‘real’ mixed methods research as requiring the use of methods from both qualitative and quantitative frameworks by outlining not only logistic and pragmatic issues requiring the attention of researchers but also the underlying philosophical tensions inherent in mixed method designs.

Design/methodology/approach – The process of designing a mixed methods project that investigated the sociological and phenomenological impact of running shoes is outlined with reference to the various pragmatic and epistemological considerations of the project.

Findings – Many researchers require mixed methods to draw on both quantitative and qualitative techniques. However, this chapter demonstrates that such an understanding of mixed methods marginalises critical and interpretivist techniques. It is argued that studies of sport and physical culture have frequently used more than one research method. However, in order for these to be considered mixed methods studies, an explicit attempt is required to connect each technique of data collection and analysis, regardless of the research paradigm in which they operate.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of mixed methods designs are discussed in relation to pragmatic and logistic concerns as well as the difficulty of connecting methods that present different underlying philosophical assumptions.

Originality/value – This chapter demonstrates the design of a mixed methods project from the initial process of identifying a research problem through to data collection, analysis and publication.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Distributed performance arrangements are increasingly used by organizations to structure dyadic and team interactions. Unfortunately, distributed teams are no panacea. This chapter reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the geographical and temporal distribution of team members. An extended discussion of the implications of distributed team performance for individual, team, and organizational decision making is provided, with particular attention paid to selected cultural factors. Best practices and key points are advanced for those stakeholders charged with offsetting the performance decrements in decision making that can result from distribution and culture.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.