Search results

This paper aims to detail how consumers can harness the power of brands to reconstruct their lives.

The authors followed five brand devotees over several years, using various data collection methods (long interviews, observations, videos, photographs and secondary data) to study how they reconstructed their lives with a brand.

Consumers transform their existence through a distinctive form of brand appropriation that the authors call brand magnification, which unfolds: materially, narratively and socially. First, brand devotees scatter brand incarnations around themselves to remain in touch with the brand because the brand has become an especially positive dimension of their lives. Second, brand devotees mobilize the brand to craft a completely new life story. Finally, they build a branded clan of family and friends that socially validates their reconstructed identity.

The research extends more muted depictions of brands as soothing balms calming consumer anxieties; the authors document the mechanism through which consumers remake their lives with a brand.

The research helps rehabilitate the role of brands in contemporary consumer culture. Organizations can use the findings to help stimulate and engage employees by unveiling the brand’s life-transforming potential for consumers.

The authors characterize a distinctive, extreme and unique form of brand appropriation that positively transforms consumer lives.

This paper considers the utilisation of theatre as a means of exploring management and organising. It focuses upon Shakespeare’s Henry V and explores the alternative readings, performances and interpretations of this central character. In particular, it considers issues of power, leadership, identity, dissemblance and dissimulation.

Organizations are currently striving to become more sustainable, as resources dwindle and social desirability for sustainability increases. This is important in public sector organizations as well as private, and exemplars are needed. Therefore, this chapter provides a description of how a public housing authority in pursuit of a social mission parlayed an energy performance contract into a triple bottom line sustainability journey. The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's (CMHA) sustainability journey has been shaped most significantly by the commitment of CMHA leadership to collaboration (internal and external) as a core strategy. The chapter provides a rich description of CMHA's emergent partnerships with various organizations in their environment; focusing first on energy and later encompassing social, ecological, and economic sustainability. It describes and analyzes the leadership that emerged which played an essential role in supporting the complexity of increasing collaborative involvement. New theories of leadership, most specifically Complexity Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008), emergent leadership (Goldstein et al., 2010), and adaptive leadership (Heifetz, 1994) are used to make sense of the leadership philosophy and actions that worked in the sustainability journey.

This monograph summarises the key influences of leadership behaviour on the transformation process associated with creation of an effective and high performing team. It clarifies the key factors that are relevant to a team at each stage of the transformation process and the leadership roles that each team member can play. The role of an organisation's senior management is considered both in terms of the impact it has on the transformation process within specific teams and in terms of creating the necessary organisational environment to make effective teams the norm. Some reasons why senior management behaviour is often perceived as inconsistent and unhelpful are explored. Specific recommendations are made to help senior managers to adapt their behaviour, and in so doing become more context‐sensitive to the needs of the environment as it changes. Some tools and techniques are presented that have been found in practice to help senior managers adapt their behaviour to that most appropriate at a given time, and to create the organisational infrastructure needed to make effective teams the organisational norm rather than the exception. A case study is presented illustrating the networked nature of leadership and the culture change associated with making effective teams “the way we do things around here.”

This monograph seeks to summarise the key influences of a role‐based perspective on leadership when making decisions as to how organisational resources can best be deployed.

Application of new frameworks provides insight into the leadership roles executives can adopt when part of formal, informal and temporary groups within the organisation's senior management team and those parts of the organisation for which they are responsible. The methodology adopted is qualitative, focusing on application of previously developed frameworks.

Adoption of an appropriate leadership role, and the timely switch from one role to another as circumstances change, are found to facilitate improvement in the ability of executives to mobilise organisational resources, and in so doing effectively address those challenges with which the organisation is faced.

A one‐organisation intensive case study of a multinational engineering company engaged in the design, development and manufacture of rotating turbomachinery provides the platform for the research. The research intent is to validate two frameworks in a different organisation of a similar demographic profile to those in which the frameworks were developed. The frameworks will require validating in organisations of different demographic profiles.

The concepts advanced, and implications discussed, provide an insight into the role‐based nature of leadership. The practical steps individual executives can take to develop their ability to adopt different leadership roles are highlighted.

This monograph is an investigation into, and study of the contribution of theory that provides insight into, the process by which executives effectively mobilise organisational resources. This differs from the original contributions to theory, which focused on methodology, data gathering and validation in contrast with the current study that is focused on practical application.

The Fay and Riddell (F–R) formula is an empirical equation for estimating the stagnation-point heat flux on noncatalytic and fully catalytic surfaces, based on an assumption of equilibrium. Because of its simplicity, the F–R has been used extensively for reentry flight design as well as ground test facility applications. This study aims to investigate the uncertainties of the F-R formula by considering velocity gradient, chemical species at the boundary layer edge, and the thermochemical nonequilibrium (NEQ) behind the shock layer under various hypersonic NEQ flow environments.

The stagnation-point heat flux calculated with the F–R formula was evaluated by comparison with thermochemical NEQ calculations and existing flight experimental values.

The comparisons showed that the F–R underestimated the noncatalytic heat flux, because of the chemical composition at the surface. However, for fully catalytic heat flux, the F–R results were similar to values of surface heat flux from thermochemical NEQ calculations, because the F–R formula overestimates the diffusive heat flux. When compared with the surface heat flux results obtained from flight experimental data, the F–R overestimated the fully catalytic heat flux. The error was 50% at most.

The results provided guidelines for the F–R calculations under hypersonic flight conditions and for determining the approximate error range for noncatalytic and fully catalytic surfaces.

Despite the continuous growth of empirical studies exploring professional learning communities (PLCs) across different education systems, little is known about PLC instruments developed and used in existing research. This article aims to capture a full picture of existing PLC instruments developed since 1990. In so doing, the authors also pay attention to the seminal work of Karen Seashore Louis in alignment with the theme of the special issue.

Based on the authors’ searching databases, the authors identified eleven PLC instruments and 26 applied studies using the PLC instruments since 1990. Following this, the authors closely reviewed the identified studies and their relationships (i.e. which one influences which).

The authors’ review illuminates the measurement domains, conceptual origins and methodological soundness of the existing instruments and captures the impact of Louis's work on the applied studies using PLC instruments.

Given that PLCs are seen as a policy measure to sustain and scale up school improvement internationally, the authors’ review provides a better understanding of what and how researchers have measured the effect of PLCs on school improvement. As the first of its kind, the authors believe that their findings can give researchers valuable ideas about how to develop and use a PLC instrument.

This paper aims to show the direct and indirect effects of mindfulness on the employees’ commitment in the employees who perform monotonous work. Moreover, it also shows the role of basic psychological needs proposed by self-determination theory (SDT), on the relationship between mindfulness and commitment.

This paper has used a time-lagged approach. Data has been collected from the nurses in public sector hospitals through a survey strategy. Structural equation modeling has been used to validate the measure and to test the hypotheses.

The results of thi study reveal that there is a positive relationship between mindfulness and employee affective organizational commitment. This study also shows that in the existence of a high level of autonomy, mindfulness does have more effect on commitment. Moreover, this study also shows that this relationship is mediated by employee boredom. However, this mediation is not moderated by the satisfaction of the need for autonomy.

This study serves as a guide for frontline managers in situations where they want their subordinates who perform monotonous and boring work to remain committed to the organization. This study also emphasizes the recruitment of employees who may show more trait mindfulness.

This study enriches the literature in the field of organizational behavior by showing how basic psychological needs proposed by SDT collaborate with mindfulness in producing employees’ positive attitudes.