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The aim of this paper is to gain insights from a case study into how gamified loyalty programs enable and facilitate value co-creation and what underlying purpose organizations pursue when engaging with members in such a program.

A multimethod approach is deployed consisting of an observational and an explorative study. The authors collaborate with adidas, one of the leading (sports) retailers in the world. A five-month netnographic study is conducted on the adiClub, the online loyalty program of adidas. Based on the findings of this first study, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in a second study with adidas managers from diverse backgrounds currently involved in projects and day-to-day work related to the adiClub. The exclusive interview data provide further insights and help interpret and validate the netnographic observations.

Most value co-creation studies on engagement platforms in marketing relate to social media, physical events or online forums. Based on the multimethod approach of this study, existing research is extended on how online loyalty programs enable and facilitate value co-creation. Furthermore, the authors identify the organizational purpose behind engaging in value co-creation practices along the social, economic and ecological dimensions.

This case study offers implications for organizations on how online loyalty programs enable and facilitate value co-creation through gamification. In addition, it connects the value co-creation practices with the respective purpose that organizations pursue with related activities. Hence, it further enhances the knowledge and repertoire of managers for setting up and running gamified online loyalty programs.

Increased gamification driven by the advances of digital transformation enables and facilitates value co-creation, which initiates unprecedented digital sales potential for service organizations. Research about the digital transformation of value co-creation remains scarce. The authors seek to address this research gap by focusing on value co-creating activities within online loyalty programs.

Novel technologies such as tokenization have the potential to disrupt value co-creation in sport marketing. Tokenization in particular has generated a hype in sport marketing by facilitating engagement behavior. However, it remains unclear to what extent tokenization can serve as an engagement platform to enable new and innovative interactions between sport organizations and its network of actors.

The study investigated a tokenized governance platform of a professional sport club as engagement platform by means of a case study applying a multi-method approach combining document analyses and semi-structured interviews with sport management, sport club fans and blockchain experts.

Governance tokens indeed foster fan engagement by including fans in decision-making processes. The engagement platform is meant to enable two-way communication between fans and professional sport clubs. However, benefits could be overrated, and fans describe concerns about increasing commercialization due to the application of governance tokens. Thus, opportunities must be balanced out to foster engagement of sport club fans.

The findings contribute to extending the phenomenon of tokenization as a financing model and engagement platform in sport marketing. The results show how tokenized governance platforms can be applied in sport marketing and how they contribute to value co-creation in the digital world of sport clubs.

This study investigates the role of athlete brands for the international marketing of professional sports leagues by examining how athlete brands contribute to initiatives of football leagues.

Through a single case study of the German Bundesliga underpinned by 17 semi-structured interviews with league, club and media executives, we identify specific brand co-creation opportunities of athlete brands and the sports league brand.

Our findings reveal that athlete brands play a significant role in enhancing league visibility, engaging global audiences and unlocking new markets. Moreover, we identify specific opportunities for co-creating league brand meaning through strategic partnerships and athlete endorsements.

This research contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of athlete brands in sports league marketing and offering insights for practitioners on innovative marketing strategies. Using a multi-actor perspective, this study provides valuable insights by revealing how sports leagues can pursue innovative marketing strategies by considering the role of athlete brands, thereby offering new ways for fans and sponsors to engage with the sports league.

Turnover of employees is a key challenge for companies. The same is true for sports clubs that must set appropriate incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention. As salary caps and team budgets restrict monetary incentives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of organizational support on turnover intention of professional team sports athletes.

The paper applies a combined approach of qualitative and quantitative research and considers the specific requirements of European professional team sports. First, a qualitative study investigates organizational support in team sports and identifies relevant non-monetary incentives. Second, a quantitative study tests the effects of the identified organizational support incentives on turnover intention using a unique data set of professional team sports athletes. Third, a moderation analysis measures possible effects of age.

Through the qualitative study, three relevant non-monetary incentives could be identified in the context of professional team sports: integration of family (IOF), second career support, and private problem support. The subsequent quantitative study of football, ice hockey and handball athletes assesses the effectiveness of the identified incentives. All three incentives negatively influence athletes’ turnover intention, while IOF has a substantially stronger negative effect on turnover intention for younger athletes.

The findings indicate the importance of organizational support to decrease athletes’ turnover intention. Although money is relevant, sports clubs also need to address non-monetary incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention.

In this paper, we investigate how digital technology disruptors and the incumbents who stand to be disrupted by them frame their arguments to transform or sustain existing institutional frameworks to enable or deter the market entry of these technologies. Using a longitudinal, comparative case analysis of three digital technologies – namely, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), cloud antenna, and over-the-top (OTT) technologies – we explore how stakeholders use public interest frames for this purpose. We find that entrepreneurs use three specific frames to drive institutional change for the successful adoption of digital technologies in the presence of established incumbents and powerful regulators: frames that emphasize the broad public appeal of the new digital technology; frames that emphasize efficiency, democracy, and technological advancement; and frames that emphasize present as well as future benefits to the public. We find that constructing interpretations of what serves the public interest is the primary tactic used by disruptors to gain market entry, and an equally popular weapon for incumbents to block the entry of new digital technologies. These interpretations lead to a framing contest aimed at influencing regulators and obtaining a more favorable institutional environment. Our empirical findings illustrate that new digital technologies themselves are not the sole contributors to institutional change. Rather, institutional outcomes associated with the introduction of new digital technologies are shaped by how disruptors and incumbents use public interest frames and how regulators react to these frames.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Work-study programmes aim to support young adults transitioning from tertiary education to work and contribute to enhancing their employability. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed analysis of the learning experiences of trainees in work-study programmes within the broad field of engineering.

The data gathering procedures used interviews with participants of a specific work-study programme and conducting thematic analyses to identify and understand the motivations of these adults for enrolling in work-study programmes and their associated workplace learning experiences. Fifty-two alumni of electrical and logistics engineering programmes completed 12 months of a separate work-study programme and consented to participate in an hour-long interview. They elaborated upon their work-learn experiences to explicate their work-learn needs and challenges in those interviews.

Findings include workplaces facilitated skills development through providing combinations of work tasks comprising both routine and novel work assignments; challenging circumstances at the workplace provided trainees with opportunities to develop adaptive capacities; and engaging in non-routine work processes fosters integration into the engineering workplace community.

The findings contribute to the existing literature by exemplifying how routine engineering activities are practical affordances through which engineering trainees construct knowledge and dispositions for engaging in challenging, non-routine engineering work. Such experiences are crucial in preparing trainees for advanced roles in logistics or electronic sectors.

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this study examines how proactive skill development (PSD) influences job performance and mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying the above relationship.

Data were collected from a sample of 261 full-time workers in three waves, spaced by a six-week interval (Time 1, N = 360; Time 2, N = 320; Time 3, N = 261).

The results confirmed that career stress mediated the relationship between PSD and job performance. Additionally, high career decidedness strengthened this negative relationship between stress and performance. Furthermore, career decidedness significantly moderated the indirect PSD–performance relationship via career stress, accentuating the indirect effect when decidedness is higher.

This study sheds light on the important role of proactive skills development in influencing job performance and what factors can affect this relationship. It offers practical implications by highlighting how targeted training can boost employees' proactivity and performance.

Machiavelli's dictums in The Prince (1977) instigated the modern discourse on power. Arguing that “there's such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation” (Machiavelli, 1977, p. 44), his approach is a realist one. In this text, Machiavelli (1977, p. 3) endeavors to “discuss the rule of princes” and to “lay down principles for them.” Taking his lead, Foucault (1978, p. 97) argued that “if it is true that Machiavelli was among the few…who conceived the power of the Prince in terms of force relationships, perhaps we need to go one step further, do without the persona of the Prince, and decipher mechanisms on the basis of a strategy that is immanent in force relationships.” He believed that we should “investigate…how mechanisms of power have been able to function…how these mechanisms…have begun to become economically advantageous and politically useful…in a given context for specific reasons,” and, therefore, “we should…base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination” (Foucault, 1980, pp. 100–102). Conceptualizing such techniques and tactics as the “art of governance”, Foucault (1991), examined power as strategies geared toward managing civic populations through shaping people's dispositions and behaviors.