Practicing social e-atmospherics:French and Turkish web designers' perspectives

E-atmospherics have motivated an emerging body of research which reports that both virtual layouts and atmospherics encourage consumers to modify their shopping habits. While the literature has analyzed mainly the functional aspect of e-atmospherics, little has been done in terms of linking its characteristics’ to social (co-) creation. This paper focuses on the anatomy of social dimension in relation to e-atmospherics, which includes factors such as the aesthetic design of space, the influence of visual cues, interpretation of shopping as a social activity and meaning of appropriate interactivity. We argue that web designers are social agents who interact within intangible social reference sets, restricted by social standards, value, beliefs, status and duties embedded within their local geographies. We aim to review the current understanding of the importance and voluntary integration of social cues displayed by web designers from a mature market and an emerging market, and provides an analysis based recommendation towards the development of an integrated e-social atmospheric framework. Results report the findings from telephone interviews with an exploratory set of 10 web designers in each country. This allows us to re-interpret the web designers’ reality regarding social E-atmospherics. We contend that by comprehending (before any consumer input) social capital, daily micro practices, habits and routine, deeper understanding of social e-atmospherics preparatory, initial stages and expected functions will be acquired.

Challenging market conventions:supermarket diversification and consumer resistance in children's apparel purchases

Purpose – In the UK, while fashion apparel purchasing is available to the majority of consumers, the main supermarkets seem – rather against the odds and market conventions – to have created a new, socially-acceptable and legitimate, apparel market offer for young children. This study aims to explore parental purchasing decisions on apparel for young children (below ten years old) focusing on supermarket diversification into apparel and consumer resistance against other traditional brands. Design/methodology/approach – Data collection adopted a qualitative research mode: using semi-structured interviews in two locations (Cornwall Please correct and check againand Glasgow), each with a Tesco and ASDA located outside towns. A total of 59 parents participated in the study. Interviews took place in the stores, with parents seen buying children fashion apparel. Findings – The findings suggest that decisions are based not only on functionality (e.g. convenience, value for money, refund policy), but also on intuitive factors (e.g. style, image, quality) as well as broader processes of consumption from parental boundary setting (e.g. curbing premature adultness). Positive consumer resistance is leading to a re-drawing of the cultural boundaries of fashion. In some cases, concerns are expressed regarding items that seem too adult-like or otherwise not as children's apparel should be. Practical implications – The paper highlights the increasing importance of browsing as a modern choice practice (e.g. planned impulse buying, sanctuary of social activity). Particular attention is given to explaining why consumers positively resist buying from traditional label providers and voluntarily choose supermarket clothing ranges without any concerns over their children wearing such garments. Originality/value – The paper shows that supermarket shopping for children's apparel is now firmly part of UK consumption habits and choice. The findings provide theoretical insights into the significance of challenging market conventions, parental cultural boundary setting and positive resistance behaviour.

Sales force social exchange in problem resolution situations

While sales managers spend much of their time resolving sales force-related problems, existing theory offers little insight into the social exchange processes which occur in problem resolution situations. Using a qualitative inquiry method rooted in grounded theory, we uncover three key social exchange contributions used by sales managers when dealing with problem situations in the sales force: sales manager responsiveness, caring, and aggressiveness. We then show that the extent to which managers use these exchange contributions in problem situations is a function of manager characteristics, problem-specific characteristics, and the situational context. We also show that the extent to which managers invest in these three social exchange contributions has implications for the quality for the interpersonal relationships between salespeople and their managers, and for the effectiveness of problem resolution activity.

The Once and future pioneers? : the role of voluntary organizations in innovation in the personal social services

This thesis explores the innovative capacity of voluntary organizations in the field of the personal social services. It commences with a full literature review, which concludes that the wealth of research upon innovation in the organization studies field has not addressed this topic, whilst the specialist literatures upon voluntary organizations and upon the personal social services have neglected the study of innovation. The research contained in this thesis is intended to right this neglect and to integrate lessons from both fields. It combines a survey of the innovative activity of voluntary organizations in three localities with cross-sectional case studies of innovative, developmental and traditional organizations. The research concludes that innovation is an important, but not integral, characteristic of voluntary organizations. It develops a contingent model of this innovative capacity of voluntary organizations, which stresses the role of external environmental and institutional forces in shaping and releasing this capacity. It concludes by considering the contribution of this model both to organization studies and to the study of voluntary organizations.

Product design in the context of the social needs in less industrialised economies

This thesis is related to the subject of technical innovation, specifically to the activity of design in microenterprises operating in less industrialised economies. Design here is understood as a process, which is not the sole domain of formally trained categories such as engineers, architects or industrial designers. The 'professional boundary' discussion in this investigation is perceived as secondary as, in this context, products are designed, copied or adapted by workers, entrepreneurs themselves, or directly by the poor community. Design capacity at this level is considered to be important both in relation to the conception of capital and consumer goods and to the building up of technical knowledge. Although professional design emerged in Latin America little over three decades ago, this activity has remained marginalised throughout industry. Design activity tends to be concentrated in some product categories in the formalised industrial sector. For microenterprises operating informally, industrial design appears to be unknown. The existing literature pays little attention to 'informal design' capacity. Other areas of knowledge, such as development economies, recognise the importance of microenterprises and technological capability but neglect the potential role of industrial design in small manufacturing units. The management literature, though it focuses on technical innovation and design, has also paid little attention to 'informal design'. In less industrialised economies this neglect is felt by the lack of programmes specifically tailored to create or stimulate 'informal design'. There is a need for recognition of 'informal design' capacity and for the implementation of programmes which specifically target design as a central activity in the manufacturing firm, independent of their size and technological capability. Addressing 'design by the poor for the poor', requires a down-to-earth approach.

Elevated amygdala activity to sad facial expressions:a state marker of bipolar but not unipolar depression

Background - Difficulties in emotion processing and poor social function are common to bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) depression, resulting in many BD depressed individuals being misdiagnosed with MDD. The amygdala is a key region implicated in processing emotionally salient stimuli, including emotional facial expressions. It is unclear, however, whether abnormal amygdala activity during positive and negative emotion processing represents a persistent marker of BD regardless of illness phase or a state marker of depression common or specific to BD and MDD depression. Methods - Sixty adults were recruited: 15 depressed with BD type 1 (BDd), 15 depressed with recurrent MDD, 15 with BD in remission (BDr), diagnosed with DSM-IV and Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Research Version criteria; and 15 healthy control subjects (HC). Groups were age- and gender ratio-matched; patient groups were matched for age of illness onset and illness duration; depressed groups were matched for depression severity. The BDd were taking more psychotropic medication than other patient groups. All individuals participated in three separate 3T neuroimaging event-related experiments, where they viewed mild and intense emotional and neutral faces of fear, happiness, or sadness from a standardized series. Results - The BDd—relative to HC, BDr, and MDD—showed elevated left amygdala activity to mild and neutral facial expressions in the sad (p < .009) but not other emotion experiments that was not associated with medication. There were no other significant between-group differences in amygdala activity. Conclusions - Abnormally elevated left amygdala activity to mild sad and neutral faces might be a depression-specific marker in BD but not MDD, suggesting different pathophysiologic processes for BD versus MDD depression.

The psychosocial impact of an activity holiday for young children with severe food allergy:a longitudinal study

Background Food allergy has been shown to severely affect quality of life (QoL) in children and their families. The Anaphylaxis Campaign UK supports families with allergic children and as part of that support ran an activity holiday for those with food allergy. This study investigated the effectiveness of this activity holiday for reducing anxiety and improving QoL and food allergy management for these children. Methods Measures were taken at baseline, at the start of the activity holiday, at the end of the holiday, at 3 and 6 months follow-up. Children (n = 24) completed a paediatric food allergy–specific QoL questionnaire (PFA-QL), a generic QoL questionnaire (PedsQL™), the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and the Children's Health Locus of Control (CHLC) scale at all stages of the study. Results There were significant improvements in social QoL, food allergy–specific QoL, total CHLC and internal locus of control scores over time (p > 0.05). There were significant decreases in powerful others locus of control, total anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder scores (p < 0.05). Greater anxiety significantly correlated with poorer QoL at all time points; no correlations with locus of control were significant at the 3- and 6-month follow-up. Conclusions The activity holiday was of significant benefit to the children who took part, providing support for the need for activity holidays such as this for children with severe food allergy. Ways in which adaptive locus of control and improved quality of life can be facilitated need to be further explored.

An activity theory approach to strategy as practice

This chapter introduces activity theory as an approach for studying strategy as practice. Activity theory conceptualizes the ongoing construction of activity as a product of activity systems, comprising the actor, the community with which that actor interacts and those symbolic and material tools that mediate between actors, their community and their pursuit of activity. The focus on the mediating role of tools and cultural artefacts in human activity seems especially promising for advancing the strategy-as-practice agenda, for example as a theoretical resource for the growing interest in sociomateriality and the role of tools and artefacts in (strategy) practice (for example, Balogun et al. 2014; Lanzara 2009; Nicolini 2009; Spee and Jarzabkowski 2009; Stetsenko 2005). Despite its potential, in a recent review Vaara and Whittington (2012) identified only three strategy-as-practice articles explicitly applying an activity theory lens. In the wider area of practice-based studies in organizations, activity theory has been slightly more popular (for example, Blackler 1993; 1995; Blackler, Crump and McDonald 2000; Engeström, Kerosuo and Kajamaa 2007; Groleau 2006; Holt 2008; Miettinen and Virkkunen 2005). It still lags behind its potential, however, primarily because of its origins as a social psychology theory developed in Russia with little initial recognition outside the Russian context, particularly in the area of strategy and organization theory, until recently (Miettinen, Samra-Fredericks and Yanow 2009). This chapter explores activity theory as a resource for studying strategy as practice as it is socially accomplished by individuals in interaction with their wider social group and the artefacts of interaction. In particular, activity theory’s focus on actors as social individuals provides a conceptual basis for studying the core question in strategy-as-practice research: what strategy practitioners do. The chapter is structured in three parts. First, an overview of activity theory is provided. Second, activity theory as a practice-based approach to studying organizational action is introduced and an activity system conceptual framework is developed. Third, the elements of the activity system are explained in more detail and explicitly linked to each of the core SAP concepts: practitioners, practices and praxis. In doing so, links are made to existing strategy-as-practice research, with brief empirical examples of topics that might be addressed using activity theory. Throughout the chapter, we introduce key authors in the development of activity theory and its use in management and adjacent disciplinary fields, as further resources for those wishing to make greater use of activity theory.

Intellectual property activity by service sector and manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom, 1996-2000

This paper provides evidence from a newly constructed database of UK firms about the extent of their intellectual property acquisition activities over five years. We focus on service sector firms, which have not previously been studied, with comparisons for firms in manufacturing and other sectors, such as agriculture. The measures of IP include both trade marks, which are most important in services, and patents, which are predominantly sought by manufacturing firms. The analysis includes patents and trade marks applied for via both the UK and European routes. While IP assets sought through the UK Patent Office remained strong, more services firms were seeking European Community trade marks and more manufacturing firms were seeking patents via European Patent Office through time. Firm characteristics that are positively correlated with IP activity include larger firm size, stock market listed status and high product market diversification.

Entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behaviour:a social psychological perspective

Increasing the supply of entrepreneurs reduces unemployment and accelerates economic growth (Acs, 2006; Audretsch, 2007; Santarelli et el. 2009; Campbell, 1996; Carree & Thurik, 1996). The supply of entrepreneurs depends on the entrepreneurial intention and activity of the people (Kruger & Brazeal, 1994). Existing behavioural theories explain that entrepreneurial activity is an attitude driven process which is mediated by intention and regulated by behavioural control. These theories are: Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991; 2002, 2012); Entrepreneurial Event Model (Shapiro & Shokol, 1982), and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977; 1986; 2012). Meta-analysis of existing behavioural theories in different fields found that the theories are more effective to analyse behavioural intention and habitual behaviour, but less effective to analyse long-term and risky behaviour (McEachan et al., 2011). The objective of this dissertation is to improve entrepreneurship behaviour theory to advance our understanding of the determinants of the entrepreneurial intention and activity. To achieve this objective we asked three compelling questions in our research. These are: Firstly, why do differences exist in entrepreneurship among age groups. Secondly, how can we improve the theory to analyse entrepreneurial intention and behaviour? And, thirdly, is there any relationship between counterfactual or regretful thinking and entrepreneurial intention? We address these three questions in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of the dissertation. Earlier studies have identified that there is an inverse U shaped relationship between age and entrepreneurship (Parker, 2004; Hart et al., 2004). In our study, we explain the reasons for this inverse U shape (Chapter 2). To analyse the reasons we use Cognitive Life Cycle theory and Disuse theory. We assume that the stage in the life cycle of an individual moderates the influence of opportunity identification and skill to start a business. In our study, we analyse the moderation effect in early stage entrepreneurship and in serial entrepreneurship. In Chapter 3, the limitations of existing psychological theories are discussed, and a competency value theory of entrepreneurship (CVTE) is proposed to overcome the limitations and extend existing theories. We use a ‘weighted competency’ variable instead of a ‘perceived behavioural control’ variable for the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and self-efficacy variable for social cognitive theory. Weighted competency is the perceived competency ranking assigned by an individual for his total competencies to be an entrepreneur. The proposed theory was tested in a pilot survey in the UK and in a national adult population survey in a South Asian Country. The results show a significant relationship between competencies and entrepreneurial intention, and weighted competencies and entrepreneurial behaviour as per CVTE. To improve the theory further, in Chapter 4, we test the relationship between counterfactual thinking and entrepreneurial intention. Studies in cognitive psychology identify that ‘upward counterfactual thinking’ influences intention and behaviour (Epstude & Rose, 2008; Smallman & Roese, 2009). Upward counterfactual thinking is regretful thinking for missed opportunities of a problem. This study addresses the question of how an individual’s regretful thinking affects his or her future entrepreneurial career intention. To do so, we conducted a study among students in a business school in the UK, and we found that counterfactual thinking modifies the influence of attitude and opportunity identification in entrepreneurial career intention.

Assuming identities online:experimental linguistics applied to the policing of online paedophile activity

This article uses a research project into the online conversations of sex offenders and the children they abuse to further the arguments for the acceptability of experimental work as a research tool for linguists. The research reported here contributes to the growing body of work within linguistics that has found experimental methods to be useful in answering questions about representation and constraints on linguistic expression (Hemforth 2013). The wider project examines online identity assumption in online paedophile activity and the policing of such activity, and involves dealing with the linguistic analysis of highly sensitive sexual grooming transcripts. Within the linguistics portion of the project, we examine theories of idiolect and identity through analysis of the ‘talk’ of perpetrators of online sexual abuse, and of the undercover officers that must assume alternative identities in order to investigate such crimes. The essential linguistic question in this article is methodological and concerns the applicability of experimental work to exploration of online identity and identity disguise. Although we touch on empirical questions, such as the sufficiency of linguistic description that will enable convincing identity disguise, we do not explore the experimental results in detail. In spite of the preference within a range of discourse analytical paradigms for ‘naturally occurring’ data, we argue that not only does the term prove conceptually problematic, but in certain contexts, and particularly in the applied forensic context described, a rejection of experimentally elicited data would limit the possible types and extent of analyses. Thus, it would restrict the contribution that academic linguistics can make in addressing a serious social problem.

Privacy and the City:user identification and location semantics in location-based social networks

With the advent of GPS enabled smartphones, an increasing number of users is actively sharing their location through a variety of applications and services. Along with the continuing growth of Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs), security experts have increasingly warned the public of the dangers of exposing sensitive information such as personal location data. Most importantly, in addition to the geographical coordinates of the user’s location, LBSNs allow easy access to an additional set of characteristics of that location, such as the venue type or popularity. In this paper, we investigate the role of location semantics in the identification of LBSN users. We simulate a scenario in which the attacker’s goal is to reveal the identity of a set of LBSN users by observing their check-in activity. We then propose to answer the following question: what are the types of venues that a malicious user has to monitor to maximize the probability of success? Conversely, when should a user decide whether to make his/her check-in to a location public or not? We perform our study on more than 1 million check-ins distributed over 17 urban regions of the United States. Our analysis shows that different types of venues display different discriminative power in terms of user identity, with most of the venues in the “Residence” category providing the highest re-identification success across the urban regions. Interestingly, we also find that users with a high entropy of their check-ins distribution are not necessarily the hardest to identify, suggesting that it is the collective behaviour of the users’ population that determines the complexity of the identification task, rather than the individual behaviour.

Coding together at scale:GitHub as a collaborative social network

GitHub is the most popular repository for open source code (Finley 2011). It has more than 3.5 million users, as the company declared in April 2013, and more than 10 million repositories, as of December 2013. It has a publicly accessible API and, since March 2012, it also publishes a stream of all the events occurring on public projects. Interactions among GitHub users are of a complex nature and take place in different forms. Developers create and fork repositories, push code, approve code pushed by others, bookmark their favorite projects and follow other developers to keep track of their activities. In this paper we present a characterization of GitHub, as both a social network and a collaborative platform. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantitative study about the interactions happening on GitHub. We analyze the logs from the service over 18 months (between March 11, 2012 and September 11, 2013), describing 183.54 million events and we obtain information about 2.19 million users and 5.68 million repositories, both growing linearly in time. We show that the distributions of the number of contributors per project, watchers per project and followers per user show a power-law-like shape. We analyze social ties and repository-mediated collaboration patterns, and we observe a remarkably low level of reciprocity of the social connections. We also measure the activity of each user in terms of authored events and we observe that very active users do not necessarily have a large number of followers. Finally, we provide a geographic characterization of the centers of activity and we investigate how distance influences collaboration.