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This study aims to provide supplements to the research on digital human avatar (DHA) and suggestions for brands to use DHA appropriately to build brand fans effect.

On the basis of integrating Avatar theory and Stimulus-organism-response theory, this study obtains data from 733 Chinese respondents aged 18–25 and uses regression analysis and bootstrap analysis to verify the relationships among the variables: DHA characteristics (form realism, behavioral realism and brand alignment) as the independent variables, brand fans effect as the dependent variable, consumer positive emotion as the mediating variable and product type (experience vs search) as the moderating variable.

The results show that DHA characteristics positively influence brand fans effect and consumer positive emotion, consumer positive emotion positively influences brand fans effect and consumer positive emotion plays a mediating role. Meanwhile, for experience products, the impact of DHA’s form realism and behavioral realism on consumer positive emotion is higher than that of brand alignment; for search products, the impact of DHA’s brand alignment on consumer positive emotion is higher than that of form realism and behavioral realism.

This study enriches and expands the empirical research perspectives and conclusions in the DHA field, improves its research framework and provides suggestions for brands to appropriately use DHA to build brand fans effect.

Outlines the development of globalization and related research; and takes the Middle East as a basis for examining regionalization in more depth. Discusses the definition of boundaries in economic, geographic and political terms; the impact of various types of regional trade associations and trade and investment; and five factors affecting regionalization in the Middle East; peace, political will, economic compatibility, socio‐cultural similarity and geographical proximity. Considers the implications for the corporate strategy of multinationals, e.g. market segmentation, integration, strategic sourcing etc.

Jennifer: There have been many meaningful experiences that have occurred throughout our time together. Being a part of this work has not only allowed me to develop a better understanding about myself and the path that I choose to take from this day on, but it has resulted in new friendships with women whose stories have become part of my own.

We began this chapter with storied experiences of relationships with children and youth and of questions around tensions they can experience as they make home, familial, community, and school transitions. These questions included: Why do we do it this way? Who decides? Can’t I think about what's best for my child? For Aboriginal children? As Khea, Jennifer, and Brenda Mary storied the experiences noted earlier, and as we collectively inquired into their stories, attentive to the intergenerational narrative reverberations of colonization made visible, it was their attentiveness to the particular life of a youth, Robbie; of a child, Rachel; and of a grandchild that we were first drawn. Their deep yearnings for something different in schools also turned our attention toward the counterstories to live by which they were composing. Across Khea's, Jennifer's, and Brenda Mary's earlier storied experiences the counterstories to live by around which they were threading new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations were focused on understanding children and youth as composing lives shaped by multiple contexts, that is, lives shaped through multiple relationships in places in and outside of school. This need for understanding the multiple places and relationships shaping the lives of children and youth as they enter into schools is, as shown in the earlier noted stories, vital in Aboriginal families and communities given the ways in which the narrative of colonization continues to reverberate in present lives.

As Jennifer, Lucy, Jerri-Lynn, Lulu, Brenda Mary, and Khea storied and restoried their lives in the ways earlier noted, we were in the midst of, as earlier noted, gradually growing in our wakefulness of attending to new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations made visible in their storied lives, in their stories to live by. As they storied their lives Jennifer, Lucy, Jerri-Lynn, Lulu, Brenda Mary, and Khea not only taught us of ways in which the intergenerational narrative reverberation of colonizing Aboriginal people continues to reverberate in their lives, in their stories to live by, but they also showed us the new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations they are composing. These new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations are poised to counter and to restory the colonization and oppression of Aboriginal people. In this way, by tracing the counter stories to live by they are composing so as to shape new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations we see that their counterstories to live by carry much potential for shaping a future in which the spirits of Aboriginal teachers, children, youth, families, and communities in Canada are strong.

Our Mi’kmaq and Anishinabe Elders, Sister Dorothy and Florence, remind us of the centrality of family in our lives and who we are becoming. When children are taken away from their families and familial contexts the suffering endured by the children, parents, family members, and community is unbearable. This removal of Aboriginal children from families, communities, and the places they knew was unnecessary. Aboriginal people have always known what they want for their children: “We all agree that respect is one of the foundations of what defines our values of our people.” This teaching of respect given to us by the Elders has sustained us in the past and in the present. These teachings will continue to sustain us into the future. The stories of our parents have sustained us too. When our mothers and fathers urged us to not lose our languages they were reminding us of who we are and where we come from. In this way they were giving us a legacy of being proud of our language, of our traditions, and of our ways of being Aboriginal people. It is as we claim and reconnect with these stories of the Elders and our ancestors that we know ways forward (Archibald, 2008; Cajete, 2001; Restoule, 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to foreground non-conformity in organisational life as it relates to black female managers. My intervention here is to problematise organisational theory in relation to its limited ability to engage with affect and to point to a more generative framework. Through centering the body, the author also seeks to offer a counter narrative to the field of Positive Organisation Scholarship and its drive to primarily engage with happy feelings and harmony.

The author gives a close reading of four black women's interview-based narratives to engage with the ways in which they refuse to conform to organisational scripts of happiness. The author makes a case for using both critical discourse-based and affective readings of everyday experience which social science readings cannot readily account for.

Non-conformity has a number of local effects including negotiating the present from a position of alternative histories of struggle and cultural values, and holding different and conflicting realities and subject positions. Moreover, a reading of these women's accounts suggests that affect is both personal and social and can manifest in multiple, embodied, transformative, and potentially destructive ways. The author comes to new ways of understanding organisations and resistance when the author uses affect as an investigative lens.

By virtue of the close reading necessitated by the nature of the study, the sample of this research is small. While the intention is not generality, the findings of the research have to be understood in context and applied within different settings with caution. The implications of this research are that there remains an urgent need for critical-orientated research which centers affect in order to counter the growing positive psychologies which relegate asymmetries to the margins.

In South Africa where black women constitute the numerical majority, there is an urgent need to understand and reverse their status as a minority in management and social life. This research goes some way in explicating this process.

While there is well-developed body of feminist research which seeks to study black women in South Africa, there is a dearth of research into black women in the workplace. This paper therefore presents an original look at black female managers by applying international theoretical tools to a context that is under theorised. This research presents new methodological and theoretical tools and analysis to the South African workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how visionary leadership influences employees’ creativity in R&D teams in China, and the role of employee knowledge sharing and goal orientation.

A survey was conducted on 331 professional technical engineers in R&D departments of 62 high-tech corporations in China. Hierarchical regression was used to model the relationships between visionary leadership style, employee goal orientations, knowledge sharing and employee creativity.

The results show that visionary leadership is positively associated with employee creativity in Chinese organizations and the relationship is positively mediated by employee knowledge sharing. Furthermore, employee “learning goal” orientation strengthens the relationship between visionary leadership and employee knowledge sharing, whereas employee “performance-avoid goal” orientation weakens the relationship between visionary leadership and employee knowledge sharing.

This study contributes to the literature on the effects of leadership on employee creativity by showing that, contrary to western organizations, where a less directive leadership style is generally recommended to enhance employee creativity, in Chinese organizations, visionary leadership is positively associated with employee creativity, but the effect is contingent on employees’ goal orientations and knowledge sharing.

In a paper shared at the 2004 Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE), Marie Battiste urged Canadian academics and policy makers to become part of a transformative process of reconstructing Canada's colonial education system which she describes as shaping “Indigenous peoples’ trauma and disconnection with many aspects of education and themselves” (p. 2). Battiste calls for the repositioning of Indigenous knowledges in post-secondary institutions, a process through which institutional structures and practices, curriculum foundations, and traditions are substantially changed and, in particular, that these are changed in ways that value and engage the capacities of Aboriginal students. Battiste's argument is significant for both Aboriginal post-secondary students and for their communities.