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The current case study investigated how intentional, systematic planning can help organizations harness the energy of these willing allies who may be motivated to support change. The focus of the study is the development of a peer-to-peer approach, involving “Equity Leaders (ELs),” that was part of a larger, multi-level organization change initiative that addressed personal, interpersonal and structural considerations at a mid-sized public university in northeastern USA.

The authors used multiple methods to collect data for the current study, including observations and interviews. Over the course of four years, the authors attended more than 50 EL meetings. In these meetings, the authors took notes regarding ELs' discussions on workshop development and planning, debates on workshop substances and ELs' personal reflections on these workshops. Following the fourth year of the program, the first two authors invited all current ELs to participate in semi-structured, open-ended interviews about their experience.

The case study shows that through careful planning, peer change can play multiple roles in pushing organizational changes. By embracing their formal responsibilities and yielding their informal power, change agents are able to cause radiating impact across as organizations. Organizations can also capitalize on the fact that employees are more likely to be engaged in the change effort when it is promoted by peers. Finally, the support and resources from the organizational leaders is important because these inputs not only legitimize change agents' roles but they also signify the importance of the actions.

This study has limitations. First, the authors recognize that this was a qualitative study grounded in a single context. Although the study explored a novel context for understanding change agents—a deliberately planned initiative targeting social norms through addressing subtle biases like microaggressions—the authors recognize that additional examination would be necessary to understand how implementation may work in different contexts or organization types. Second, the authors also acknowledge that the authors’ positionality, as females studying a change initiative targeting gendered and intersectional microaggressions, may have shaped the role as researchers.

The findings underscore the notion that allies can serve as organized peer change agents to affect organizational culture. In alignment with the principles in the social ecological framework, the approach involved selecting change agents who are internal to the organization, have informal influence or power and can broaden the impact to other parts of the organization. Moreover, the results underscore the need for organizations to provide essential support and resources that can assist change agents to bridge organizational goals and individual actions.

This study aims to examine the effect of consumers’ gaming motivations on customer–brand engagement and the potential of this engagement to develop self–brand connections and affective commitment toward luxury brands. Second, it explores if the setup game mechanics and self-congruity with the brand can strengthen the effectiveness of motivation to engage with gamification on customer–brand engagement and self-brand connection.

Data were collected through the survey method using a structured questionnaire. The sample comprised 249 millennial luxury consumers in India. Data analysis was conducted using AMOS 25 and PROCESS Macro for SPSS.

The findings support the mediating role of customer–brand engagement and self–brand connection in the relationship between motivation to engage with gamification and affective commitment. While setup game mechanics and self-congruity with brand positively moderate the effect of motivation to engage with gamification on affective commitment via self–brand connection, a similar effect is not found for the relationship via customer–brand engagement. This study presents important implications for both marketers and academicians.

This study applies the mechanics–dynamics–emotions framework and social exchange theory to explain gamified services as a cocreation process between consumers and luxury brands, fostering customer engagement, connection and commitment with the brands. It highlights the role of setup game mechanics and self-congruity in strengthening the effect of luxury consumers’ gaming motivations on engagement and connection with the brand.

Bystander intervention mitigates the negative impact of bias incidents in the workplace. However, intervention tends to be viewed as binary: intervention occurred or it did not. Consequently, research has focused on conditions under which witnesses of bias incidents choose to intervene, and less is known about how witnesses may intervene. This paper elucidates the intervention behavior choices available to witnesses of bias incidents and develops a bystander intervention behavior (BIB) scale.

To develop the scale, the authors used the three-phased act frequency methodology. In phase I, the authors surveyed faculty who had both witnessed a bias incident and seen someone intervene to address it. The authors asked these faculties to list the observed bystander intervention behaviors they had personally observed. In Phase II, different survey respondents and subject matter experts assessed the prototypicality of each of the behaviors in relation to the concept of bystander intervention. In phase III, the authors tested the validity and reliability of the resulting 18-item scale and assessed the ability of bystander intervention behavior to mitigate the negative impact of bias incidents on the academic workplace.

The BIB scale consists of two theoretically derived, empirically validated and reliable dimensions; it can be used as a summary score to evaluate the extent to which colleagues intervene indirectly and directly when a bias incident occurs in the academic workplace.

This scale is valuable in advancing efforts to mitigate the negative effect of bias in the workplace and training colleagues to intervene in various ways when bias occurs.

Uses qualitative data to explore how contemporary religious beliefs mark conceptions of work, particularly with regards to the beliefs of conservative protestant women. Compares liberal protestant women and men as well as conservative men against this group. States that conservative women consider motherhood as their most important work yet they are also most likely to feel “called” to their paid work. Cites that this has important implications for the sociological literature on gender and work. Builds on the original work of Max Weber.

Family members provide the bulk of care to persons in later life, representing the vast majority of caregivers. However, studies confirm that men with a history of divorce are less likely than married men to view family members as potential caregivers. This chapter presents findings from a qualitative study on the experiences of 21 ex-wives who chose to provide mostly end-of-life care to their ex-husbands in mid- and late-life. We examine questions about the situational and motivating factors behind ex-wife caregivers’ decisions, and provide, as background, findings about their pre- and post-divorce relationships. Relational outcomes of the caregiving situation also are considered. Several themes emerge, including patterns of proximity and continued contact post-divorce, despite often chaotic former marital relationships; a desire to spare children from the burdens of care; and an opportunity to renew communication or connections with family through the process of caregiving. Implications of our findings include the need to acknowledge ex-spouses as potential caregivers and better understand the enduring bonds between ex-spouses.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a critical posthumanist orientation to social work as an approach to address the impediments to care experienced by interspecies families. Secondly, it challenges the anthropocentric assumptions that underpin this exclusion of nonhuman family members in human services disciplines such as social work.

This article presents primary data from a qualitative study into social work and other human services practice in the family violence and homelessness sectors in the state of Victoria, Australia.

Social workers undertook companion animal-inclusive practice to counter vulnerability to interspecies families caused by gender- and species-based violence, and by homelessness. Gender- and species-based violence was exacerbated by a lack of refuge options, and contributed to women considering their companion animals to be their children. The vulnerability that homelessness brought upon interspecies families was amplified by stigma within and external to social work and related professions, and the impediment that experiences of homelessness had on being able to provide care for their nonhuman family members. These factors shaped practice with interspecies families. Scope for future practice was also identified.

The research findings can be used to inform policy change that includes consideration of nonhuman family members, as well as critical posthuman program design in social work education.

Companion animal-inclusive practice with interspecies families in social work is an under researched area, and there is little empirical data available on the nature of this work in Australia. This paper addresses this gap by centring social workers' own accounts of practice. This paper has scope to contribute to education in social work and other welfare fields, with the potential to empower students to challenge assumptions about social work being solely focused on human-centred concerns.

Outlines previous research relevant to the risks involved in residential mortgages and suggests some reasons for the gap between theory and market practice. Develops a model which adds household income, ability to pay problems and mortgage underwriting constraints to the standard pricing models, using a combination of Monte Carlo simulation and the backward finite difference method to apply it to data on house prices, income and interest rates for 62 US metropolitan areas. Discusses the results which suggest that prepayment risk dominates default risk in all except very low growth housing markets. Adds that increasing loan‐to‐value levels decrease loan values in low growth markets, slightly increase them in high growth/low volatility markets (due to decline in prepayment risk), but have little impact on high growth/high volatility markets (because they are offset by changes in default and prepayment costs). Considers the practical implications of the findings, e.g. for portfolio managers.

Stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships are increasingly common as a result of relatively high rates of divorce and remarriage and increased longevity. When relationships are close, stepgrandparents may be valuable resources for stepgrandchildren, but the relational processes salient to the development of these ties remain largely unknown. The purposes of our research were: (1) to explore the complexity of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationships, and (2) to examine processes that affected stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development.

We present results from four grounded theory projects, which were based on semistructured interviews with 58 stepgrandchildren who provided data about 165 relationships with stepgrandparents. Collectively, these studies highlighted key processes of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild relationship development operating within four distinct pathways to stepgrandparenthood – long-term, later life, skip-generation, and inherited pathways.

Stepgrandchildren’s closeness to stepgrandparents was influenced by factors such as timing (the child’s age and when in their life courses intergenerational relationships began), stepgrandparents’ roles in the life of the middle-generation parent and the quality of those relationships, whether or not the stepfamily defined the stepgrandparent as kin (e.g., through the use of claiming language), intergenerational contact frequency, and stepgrandparents’ affinity-building.

Our study furthers understanding of stepgrandparent-stepgrandchild by attending to the importance of context in examining the processes that affect intergenerational steprelationship development. Exploring processes related to intergenerational steprelationships strengthens our understanding of the benefits and challenges associated with steprelationship development. Our study also sheds light on the “new look at kinship” and the processes that inform the social construction of family in a changing familial landscape.

Entrepreneurship is not limited to managing and creating a business; other diverse domains have been explored by various scholars. The concept has been defined and explored in various aspects including cultural entrepreneurship (Gupta & Anandaram, 2022) ethnic, feminist, institutional, and various others. To obtain further insights into entrepreneurship, Krueger and Welpe (2014) sought to collaborate on the cognitive and emotional aspects and termed it neuro-entrepreneurship. Literature trends on neuro-entrepreneurship are generally confined to opportunity recognition, risk-taking measures, and decision patterns. It is too early to reach any conclusion as no empirical research has been undertaken on the topic yet. Neuroscience techniques such as fMRI and Magneto-encephalography (MEG) are trying to reveal the hidden phenomenon behind the decision-making process in entrepreneurs. The COVID-19 pandemic forced entrepreneurs to face a new reality: That is not only the crisis in physical resources but also caused a disrupted mental state. Entrepreneurs are seeking new ways to get back on track and potentially neuroscience will assist them. This chapter discusses the background literature on neuro-entrepreneurship and an overview of the rationales of neuro-entrepreneurship in organisational settings. It explains the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the brain controlling decision-making in entrepreneurs. This chapter establishes a connection between decision-making and creativity at the workplace with the help of neuroscience techniques of entrepreneurs and future directions towards achieving a creative entrepreneurial system by amalgamating neuroscience techniques and decision-making for improving entrepreneurial activities.