Máire O Sullivan and Brendan Richardson
This paper aims to highlight the role of consumption communities as a self-help support group to ameliorate loneliness. The authors suggest that the self-help element of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight the role of consumption communities as a self-help support group to ameliorate loneliness. The authors suggest that the self-help element of consumption communities has been overlooked because of a focus on communities pursuing hegemonic masculinity. Instead, the authors focus on a female-led and – dominated consumption community.
Design/methodology/approach
A longitudinal ethnography was undertaken with the aim of understanding consumer behaviour in a “hyper-feminine” environment. Participant observation, depth interviews and netnography were carried out over five years within the Knitting community, focussing on an Irish Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group.
Findings
A dimension of consumption communities has been overlooked in the extant literature; this female-led and -dominated community functions as a self-help support group used as a “treatment” for loneliness. It also demonstrates all the characteristics of a support group.
Research limitations/implications
This study offers a framework with which new studies of community consumption can be examined or existing studies can be re-examined, through rather than cases of loneliness and self-help support groups.
Practical implications
Marketers have an opportunity to build supportive consumption communities that provide a safe space for support where commerce and brand-building can also occur. Groups aimed at ameliorating loneliness may wish to consider integration of the consumption community model.
Originality/value
Calls have been made for a reconceptualisation of consumption communities as current typologies seem inadequate. This paper responds with a critical examination through the lens of the self-help support group, while also taking steps towards resolving the gender imbalance in the consumption community literature. The paper explores loneliness, a previously underexamined motivator for consumption community membership.
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Negotiating the ‘middle-ground’ (Lear, 2006) between New Zealand universities and Maori whare wananga is the issue discussed in this chapter. It is suggested that the Maori…
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Negotiating the ‘middle-ground’ (Lear, 2006) between New Zealand universities and Maori whare wananga is the issue discussed in this chapter. It is suggested that the Maori institution of the marae, used as a ‘mediating structure’ (Berger, 1979) is ideally placed as the negotiating space to enhance the learning and scholarship of all students who seek a sense of belonging as well as the opportunity to increase their potential as global citizens. It is argued that choosing to make a contribution to the betterment of all New Zealanders is the prior intellectual and cultural engagement.
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– The aim of this article is to explore how, and to what extent, American advertising and its consumerist messages infiltrated Irish society in the period 1922-1960.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this article is to explore how, and to what extent, American advertising and its consumerist messages infiltrated Irish society in the period 1922-1960.
Design/methodology/approach
The article is based on an analysis of primary and secondary sources.
Findings
The article argues that American advertising practices and messages influenced the advertising industry in Ireland. It also contributed to the technical, style and content of Irish advertising and informed the Irish woman's view of American consumerism. Finally, it suggests that Irish society was more open to external influences, which challenges the narrative of Ireland as a closed society before 1960.
Originality/value
The article is based on extensive original research and opens up a number of new areas of research relating to the history of consumerism and advertising in Ireland.
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DURING the past year no little stir was caused by Lord Rosebery's speech at the opening of the new Mitchell Library. Comments on the speech were world‐wide; the “Cemetery of…
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DURING the past year no little stir was caused by Lord Rosebery's speech at the opening of the new Mitchell Library. Comments on the speech were world‐wide; the “Cemetery of Books” appealed to the imagination of all. The halfpenny papers and the high class literary journals alike opened their columns to innumerable letter writers. After it is all over now and the opinions calmed down the following sentence is not far wrong: “There is little doubt that Lord Rosebery was in facetious vein, but it is curious that (in spite of the ‘surgical operation’ supposed to be necessary) only the papers north of the Tweed seem to have realized this.”
Keshab Ray and Meenakshi Sharma
There is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
There is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing literature due to lack of benchmarking framework, and IT organizations are yet to make progress in benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual benchmarking framework for Indian IT organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with thirty middle-level managers from two Indian IT organizations, two US-based global IT organizations and one UK-based leading bank, which is a customer of these IT organizations.
Findings
Results show a positive relationship between brand strength and global branding, between customer loyalty and global branding, between brand loyalty and competitive advantage and between global branding and competitive advantage. Indian IT organizations can benchmark global IT organizations to improve delivering brand promise, positioning, awareness building and authenticity toward making Indian IT organizations future ready to address the entire breadth of opportunities in the evolving world of cloud and digital.
Practical implications
This research helps managers with a brand strength-based benchmarking framework toward global branding of Indian IT organizations.
Social implications
IT is instrumental for rapid growth of Indian’s economy. India should optimally utilize its greatest wealth, its human potential, with the latent global demand in IT through building global IT brands.
Originality/value
The originality of the study lies in conducting a qualitative study on global branding of Indian IT organizations and also proposing a conceptual benchmarking framework. The study further validates the model using qualitative analysis.
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Matthew Russell Scobie, Markus J. Milne and Tyron Rakeiora Love
This paper explores diverse practices of the giving and demanding of democratic accountability within a case of conflict around deep-sea petroleum exploration in Aotearoa New…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores diverse practices of the giving and demanding of democratic accountability within a case of conflict around deep-sea petroleum exploration in Aotearoa New Zealand. These practices include submissions and consultations, partnership between Indigenous Peoples and a settler-colonial government and dissensus. These are theorised through the political thought of Jacques Rancière.
Design/methodology/approach
A single case study approach is employed that seeks to particularise and draws on interview, documentary and media materials.
Findings
By examining a case of conflict, the authors find that as opportunities for participation in democratic accountability processes are eroded, political dissensus emerges to demand parts in the accountability process. Dissensus creates counter forums within a wider understanding of democratic accountability. In this case, individuals and organisations move between police (where hierarchy counts those with a part) and politics (exercised when this hierarchy is disrupted by dissensus) to demand parts as police logics become more and less democratic. These parts are then utilised towards particular interests, but in this case to also create additional parts for those with none.
Originality/value
This study privileges demands for accountability through dissensus as fundamental to democratic accountability, rather than just account giving and receiving. That is, who is or who is not included – who has a stake or a part – is crucial in a broader understanding of democratic accountability. This provides democratic accountability with a radical potential for creating change. The study also advances thinking on democratic accountability by drawing from Indigenous perspectives and experiences in a settler-colonial context.
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Suwit Srimai, Chris S. Wright and Jack Radford
The purpose of this paper is to consider the presence and consequences of functional overlap in organizational performance management (PM) systems.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the presence and consequences of functional overlap in organizational performance management (PM) systems.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is speculative in that it considers the consequences of organizations applying multiple PM systems. Four widely‐used PM systems from various management perspectives are selected as proxies to demonstrate that overlap can occur across a broad array of extant PM systems. The content of the selected PM systems literature was used for analysis.
Findings
The analysis found evidence of substantial functional overlap among the selected PM systems. Significant niche overlap occurred in the functions: assisting strategy formulation and implementation processes; supporting strategic decision making; and facilitating strategic learning.
Practical implications
This study and its findings should help scholars to reframe their understanding of PM systems and let managers recognize and take action to optimize the benefits and costs of functional overlap.
Originality/value
The paper identifies functional overlap; a concept not explicitly addressed in the PM literature.