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For attendees with allergies, intolerances and coeliac disease, accessing safe, nutritious and good quality food and drink is a vital but challenging dimension of events. This study sought to capture and analyse the lived event experiences of individuals with a variety of food-related health, wellbeing and safety needs.

This study adopted an inductive approach, using semi-structured interviews to gather qualitative data from participants with various food allergies and intolerances or coeliac disease.

Attendees had low expectations regarding food choice, quality and value, which stemmed from past event experiences. Poor information about suitable food and drink, coupled with frontline staffs' perceived knowledge, responsiveness and care were frequently seen as sources of service failures. The data stress how exposure to potentially harmful foods and food avoidance influenced attendees' experiences. The findings also help to appreciate consumers' agency, identifying various coping strategies used by affected individuals to anticipate risks, engage in compensatory behaviours and mitigate the effects of unsuitable food and drink.

This study is unique in examining the event experiences of individuals with food allergies, intolerances and coeliac disease. It demonstrates how practices in the crucial domain of food and drink provision can affect the overall event experience, with potential consequences at, across and potentially beyond the venue and occasion. From a theoretical perspective, the study conceptualises intersections of risk, value-creation/destruction and experiential consumption. It shows the “episodic” and “perpetual” impacts of “risk loaded” consumption, while arguing that diverse value-creation/destruction practices mediate pathways leading to different experiential outcomes.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation has led to the emergence of virtual teams in all organizations, and the role of leadership has become more pertinent. The current research focuses on understanding the factors for better team performance in virtual teams. Based on the contingency perspective, the behavioral complexity in leadership (BCL) theory is the most appropriate as BCL requires the leader to demonstrate multiple contrasting leadership behaviors according to the situation. Both internal as well external roles were explored, which could facilitate better communication quality and role clarity to increase interpersonal trust and leadership effectiveness in the current crisis.

Data were collected from employees who have worked in virtual teams during the crisis and who have experience of working in a virtual team environment. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed, and 175 were received. A path model was built applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Communication quality has come as a partial mediator for the relationship between internal and external leadership roles and trust. Role clarity fully mediated the relationship between external leadership roles and conflict. Internal and external leadership roles showed a significant effect on leadership effectiveness, which were further related to team performance in virtual teams. Additionally, synchronous technology was used more by virtual teams.

The study did not examine cultural differences or cultural adaptation in virtual teams. Instead of the BCL theory, future research may apply attribute-based or relational-based theory to examine leadership roles in virtual team performance.

Using the BCL theory, the current study contributes to an understanding of virtual team performance and the internal as well as external role of leaders. This is relevant in an environment of extreme ambiguity such as COVID-19.

Taking into account retailers' critical position in the value chain, their sector's economic significance and environmental externalities, in addition to the institutional agenda, this paper aims to explore the drivers influencing retailers to shift to more sustainable business models.

The paper utilises the institutional competing logic, including in-depth interviews with major supermarket retail chains and one expert group discussion. The data gathered in Germany and Lithuania were complemented by desk research analysis, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and management reports.

The paper provides empirical insights into how multiple drivers through institutional competing logic are brought about influencing the shift to more sustainable business models. The results show that retail chains in both countries implement their sustainability based on triple environmental-legal-financial drivers. However, different types of retail chains–namely premium retailers, typical retailers and discounters–implement their sustainability discourse differently.

Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

Interestingly, retailers “shift” their responsibility to the consumers rather than encourage themselves to make more sustainable choices. The authors observe a more passive and responsive role of retailing chains because of the inherent trade-off between revenue growth and sustainable consumption.

The original contribution lies in exploring how retail chains adapt institutional competing logic and are influenced by multiple drivers when implementing their sustainability activities. In addition, the authors propose a conceptual model for retailers' sustainability management, as well as formulate three research propositions.

The efficacy of the “rational” corporatist regulatory framework of Philippine financial reporting and, in particular, accounting has generally been questioned. We will show that the regulation of accounting in the Philippines is not corporatist at all in its implementation. A “traditionalist”/familial culture mediates the “rationalist”/legalistic regulatory process of Philippine accounting regulation. Two cases of apparent ethical misconduct in the practice of public accounting are examined to illustrate the process of mediation.

Drawing on research findings from an ethnography conducted with young children, exploring notions of difference, identity and peer interactions, this study uncovers how four- and five-year-olds initiated and maintained peer interactions within a linguistically diverse Early Years setting in the North of England.

This study adopted an applied ethnographic approach to gain the emic perspectives of children in the reception class at Sunnyside over a full academic year. Over the course of this school year I spent a day a week with the class undertaking non-participant and participant observations alongside unstructured informal conversations and focused on visual research activities.

Language and identity were closely intertwined in children’s patterns of interaction at Sunnyside. For some children language had a functional value while for others it was a symbolic marker of identity. Similarly, for some children their minority language held valuable linguistic capital while for others their first or home language was viewed as being something to shun. For all the children language was only one factor that played a role in initiating and maintaining their peer interactions at school. These implications will be discussed in this chapter.

Situated in a particular local context, this study provides an in-depth insight into the experiences of a linguistically diverse group of children from North and Sub-Saharan African countries who have come together in a single school setting where Somali and Arabic are the two key languages that are spoken by children in the class. This chapter discusses how these children viewed languages within the classroom context and how other identity markers associated with ethnicity, religion and nationality intersected with language within the context of ‘being friends’ at Sunnyside.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of consumers’ expectations and their antecedents on beliefs, attitude and behavioral intentions when they respond to new corporate social responsibility (CSR) information about a service firm.

Empirically, the authors measure prior beliefs, and then calibrate how those beliefs change in response to a piece of news. The authors develop a conceptual model articulating the nature and antecedents of three types of expectations: would, could and should. The authors use structural equation modeling to test how these expectations influence the consumer evaluation process.

The results show that the effect of could expectations on the evaluation process is felt via their influence on would expectations; that is, would expectations fully mediate the relationship between could expectations and attitude toward news. Similarly, attitude toward news fully mediates the relationship between would and should expectations and updated beliefs about the firm.

In the selected service industry, the findings show that expectations are mediated by the new information that consumers receive when they are updating their prior beliefs. The authors demonstrate the ability to understand the antecedents of expectations, which provides a vehicle by which the organization can influence the consumer evaluation process.

In practice, managers can identify the antecedents of consumer expectations and thus influence the reference points against which those consumers will evaluate news about their product.

CSR has important implications for multiple stakeholders and the authors calibrate the determinants of how news about the organization’s performance on it may affect consumer decision processes.

The paper introduces “could” expectations into the services literature, examines the antecedents of the different types of expectations, and studies how their effect is felt through the evaluation process.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the pricing strategy for viral marketing in the context of the hotel industry and propose three typical price‐network size schedules to be tested. The paper further proposes controlled experiments in hotel industry context to examine the performance of those schedules.

A simulated hotel booking web site with basic reservation functions will be constructed. Participants should be randomly drawn and asked to encourage their friends from social networks to book with the participant to achieve a better price. Each participant will be given a special promotion code embedded with different pricing information. The number of customers attracted, total revenue and time to achieve a sell‐out was collected after the experiments.

These were the expected performance differences associated with different network pricing strategies in the viral marketing campaigns.

Since participants do not need to pay for the booking, it is difficult to control their intentions. Also, in the quantity discount scenario, individual preference may not be met.

First, this paper proposed the possible pricing strategy to promote the effectiveness of viral marketing in hotel industry. Second, by initiating business with customers directly through viral marketing, hotels can have more control over the inventory and product prices.

Through a better understanding in viral marketing from the perspective of network discount strategies, the marketing opportunities enabled by social networks can be extended. This paper suggests that employing a price‐network size schedule that offers deduction in price as network size increases may be an effective tool in attracting potential customers to make purchases in a timely manner. This paper further suggests experiments to test typical pricing schedules that could be utilized in practices. The proposed experiments can provide a deeper insight into the implementation of viral marketing for hotel managers.

Examines the seventeenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.