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The purpose of this paper is to present results from the action research project, where sustainability professionals, local businesses and academic researchers collaborated on exploring barriers for food waste recycling in SMEs food outlets in order to inform local policy and business practices in Bristol, UK.

The researchers conducted face-to-face, qualitative surveys of 79 catering businesses in three diverse areas of the city. The action research methodology was applied, where a range of co-researchers contributed towards study design and review.

The research reveals the main barriers to recycling and how such perceptions differ depending on whether the respondents do or do not recycle, with “convenience” and “cost” being the main issue according to the already recycling participants. On the other hand, participants who do not recycle state that their main reason is “not enough waste” and “lack of space”.

Participants recommended a range of measures, which could improve the current food waste services in Bristol. For example, they suggest that business engagement should address the barriers voiced by the participants applying the framings used by them, rather than assuming restaurants and cafes are not aware of the issue. By inviting a variety of non-academic stakeholders into the process of research design and analysis, the project addressed the imbalances in knowledge production and policy design.

Despite the local and qualitative focus of this paper, the results and research methodology could act as a useful guide for conducting food waste action research in the policy context.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between different styles of humorous communication (i.e. controlling and liberating) and conflict transformation in groups, in particular the transformation of task and process conflicts into relationship conflict. This study also examines the extent to which power distance moderates the association between controlling humor and relationship conflict.

The authors collected data using a survey from 536 participants from two different countries varying in power distance (Romania and The Netherlands) working in groups in organizations from various sectors.

Supporting the hypotheses presented in this study, multi-level data analyses showed that liberating humor has a positive association with task conflict, while controlling humor has a positive association with both process and relationship conflict. Moreover, task and process conflict mediate the relationship between liberating and controlling humor (predictors) and relationship conflict (outcome). The hypothesis regarding the moderating effect of power distance was not fully supported by the data.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the multilevel interplay of humor and intragroup conflict in cross-cultural settings and shows how various types of humor can shape the emergence of conflict and its transformation.

A variety of materials is available to assist those planning to travel for business or pleasure. Here, Elizabeth Lang evaluates 14 guides that address various areas of need and interest.

This study aims to explore the role of team personality and leader’s humor style on the use of humor in group communication and the extent to which group humor mediates the association between team personality on the one hand, psychological safety, collective emotional intelligence and group satisfaction on the other hand.

The authors used a survey to collect data from 304 employees nested in 83 groups working in organizations from various sectors in Romania.

The study results show that extraversion is positively associated with group affiliative humor, while neuroticism has a positive association with group aggressive humor. The leader’s affiliative humor style had a significant positive effect on group affiliative humor, while the effect of leader’s aggressive humor style on the use of aggressive humor in groups was not significant. Furthermore, the authors examined the mediation role of group humor in the relationship between team personality and team emergent states and satisfaction. The authors found that group aggressive humor mediates the association between neuroticism and group emotional intelligence, psychological safety and satisfaction, while affiliative humor mediates the association between extraversion and emotional intelligence and team satisfaction.

The study reports one of the first attempts to explore the multilevel interplay of team personality and humor in groups as they relate to emergent states.

Given the importance of humor in interpersonal communication in groups and the influence of the positive group atmosphere on group effectiveness, this paper aims to provide initial empirical evidence supporting the validity of a short measure for affiliative and aggressive humor.

Starting from existing individual-level measures of humor, this paper develops a short measure of affiliative and aggressive humor in groups. The reliability and validity of this scale in a combined Dutch and Romanian sample are tested.

The results support the reliability of the scale, its factorial structure and its predictive validity for positive group atmosphere. Moreover, this papers shows that the measure used in this study captures the affiliative and aggressive humor as group-level phenomena and it is shown that these two forms of humor are antecedents of collective emotional intelligence and group atmosphere.

This study provides a starting point for further research on the role of affiliative and aggressive humor in groups.

This paper develops a bi-dimensional measure capturing affiliative and aggressive humor in groups and opens new venues for research that extend the knowledge and understanding of the use of humor in interpersonal communication in groups.

This paper aims to explore how couples reflect gender role–related attitudes in their family formation process and whether these processes could be described through the lens of ambivalence. Using qualitative methods, semi-structured interviews with Estonian married and cohabiting couples were conducted (all together 24 interviewees). Analysis revealed themes of ambivalence toward gender roles among married and cohabiting couples. The present study could be classified as exploratory in identifying ambivalence, with open-ended and emergent analysis.

It is known that Estonians have adopted Western values and their family behavior resembles that of Nordic countries. However, our interviews showed that on the level of the individual, gender role–related attitudes in relationships have remained traditional. The reason for this might lie in the rapid change of values that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Western lifestyle was seen as an ideal, and copied in behavior before the actual family or gender role values could undergo the transformation needed to support egalitarian family values.

Our study reveals that the societal context of a rapid change in values and norms might create confusion and ambivalence in attitudes. Therefore, a high proportion of cohabiting couples might not be the product of egalitarian gender role–related attitudes but a product of ambivalent couple relations where the couple has not discussed thoroughly the vision and expectations they have for each other and their relationship.

Drawing on research on organisation-based self-esteem (OBSE) and self-consistency theory, this study aims to investigate whether, how and when leader aggressive humour (LAH) impacts hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP).

A total of 294 supervisor–employee dyads from eight hotels in China participated in the survey. The data were analysed by hierarchical multiple regression and PROCESS macro in SPSS.

LAH undermines hospitality employees’ PCSP by threatening their OBSE, and this effect is significant only for highly entitled employees.

Organisations could improve leaders’ awareness of the dark side of aggressive humour, especially for those who supervise highly entitled employees. Organisations could also cultivate positive leader–member relationships to improve employees’ OBSE and provide training for highly entitled employees to cope with leaders’ LAH.

This study contributes to the LAH literature by examining its influence on hospitality employees’ PCSP and identifying the mechanism and boundary conditions underlying this effect.

Much of the contemporary methodological literature tends to be self-referential and frequently ignorant of the breadth and depth of philosophical assumptions underpinning various methodological positions. Without a clear understanding of the philosophical underpinnings, logically deriving applicable validity criteria becomes very difficult (if not impossible). As a result, the purpose of this paper is to present a critical review of historical and more recent philosophical arguments for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research in social science.

A targeted review of seminal philosophy of science papers dealing with ontological and epistemological assumptions of, and relation between, natural and social science.

The paper highlights the link between ontological/epistemological assumptions and methodological choices in social science. Key differences between the natural and social science are discussed and situated within the main paradigms.

The paper draws attention to a range of difficulties associated with the adoption of the natural sciences and the related positivist approaches as a role model for work in the social sciences. Unique contributions of interpretive and critical approaches are highlighted. The paper may be of value to scholars who are interested in the historical context of the still-ongoing qualitative-quantitative debate.

Despite apparent consensus about the importance of leader rhetoric, the topic has not received systematic attention from leadership scholars. The purpose of this article is to advance the study of the relationship between rhetorical behavior and charismatic leadership in three ways: first, by presenting theoretically derived propositions about the expected contents of charismatic leaders’ speeches; second, by offering a thematic content analysis of a representative speech by a charismatic orator, in order to demonstrate the content themes suggested by the propositions; and third, by specifying the requirements for more systematic studies of the relationship between speech content and charisma.