An investigation of social media data during a product recall scandal

As social media has become an important part of modern daily life, users often share product opinions online and these tend to spike when large companies undergo crises. This paper investigates customer online responses to a large company crisis by uncovering hidden insights in social media comments and presents a framework for handling social media data and crisis management. Analysis of textual Facebook data from users responding to the 2013 horsemeat scandal is presented. In this study, we used a novel comprehensive data analysis framework alongside a text-mining framework to objectively classify and understand customer perceptions during this horsemeat scandal. This framework provides an effective approach for investigating customer perception during a company crisis and measures the effectiveness of crisis management practices which the company has adopted. Our analyses show that social media can provide important insights into customer behaviour during crisis communications.     

Evaluating information diffusion speed and its determinants in social media networks during humanitarian crises

The rapid diffusion of information is critical to combat the extreme levels of uncertainty and complexity that surround disaster relief operations. As a means of gathering and sharing information, humanitarian organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on social media platforms based on the Internet. In this paper, we present a field study that examines how effectively information diffuses through social media networks embedded in these platforms. Using a large dataset from Twitter during Hurricane Sandy, we first applied Information Diffusion Theory to characterize diffusion rates. Then, we empirically examined the impact of key elements on information propagation rates on social media. Our results revealed that internal diffusion through social media networks advances at a significantly higher speed than information in these networks coming from external sources. This finding is important because it suggests that social media networks are effective at passing information along during humanitarian crises that require urgent information diffusion. Our results also indicate that dissemination rates depend on the influence of those who originate the information. Moreover, they suggest that information posted earlier during a disaster exhibits a significantly higher speed of diffusion than information that is introduced later during more eventful stages in the disaster. This is because, over time, participation in the diffusion of information declines as more and more communications compete for attention among users.     

Contextual content analysis

This article suggests one way to systematically code textual data for research. The approach utilizes computer content analysis to examine patterns of emphasized ideas in text as well as the social context or underlying perspective reflected in the text. A conceptual dictionary is used to organize word meanings. An extensive profile of word meanings is used to characterize and discriminate social contexts. Social contexts are analyzed in relation to four reference dimensions (traditional, practical, emotional and analytic) which are used in the social science literature. The approach is illustrated with five widely varying texts, analyzed with selected comparative data. This approach has been useful in many social science investigations to system-atically score open-ended textual information. Scores can be incorporated into quantitative analysis with other data, used as a guide to qualitative studies, and to help integrate strengths of quantitative and qualitative approaches to research.     

Why gender and ‘difference’ matters: a critical appraisal of industrial relations research

Through a critical rereading of key UK workplace case studies this article explores why gender analysis matters to studies of people at work. We argue that the field of industrial relations could benefit from a greater engagement with feminist‐influenced methodologies. In particular, we analyse three methodological approaches that can assist in understanding the lives of workers; a framework that recognises intersectionality; an account that accommodates both material and cultural explanations; and a research process that is reflexive and recognises positionality. These are identified as intrinsic to a gender‐sensitive analysis, and through a comparison of key texts it is possible to highlight why their absence leads to much research in this field remaining ‘gender blind’.     

The third way: The repositioning of the voluntary sector

This paper explores some of the ways in which the voluntary sector can enter into a series of professional and creatively led communications alliances with the burgeoning media/communications industry. From design to advertising, from programme making to telecommunications, from regulatory bodies to multimedia companies, the paper demonstrates how the formation of the media/communications industry is at a critical stage of its life cycle having witnessed an almost meteoric proliferation of skills, profiles, professional codes and competences. The paper demonstrates that with its emphasis on creative skills, its ability to amplify and legitimise social messages and values and its constitution being determined by portfolio ‘specialist’ careers the media/communications industry presents a unique opportunity for the renewal of the voluntary sector. It also argues that the professional rules of the media/communications industry, its alliances and its ethical codification still have to be defined. Further, that this definition is integral to the growth of a profession and could, if channelled effectively, underpin the repositioning of the voluntary sector for the 21st century.     

An Ontological Turn in Categories Research: From Standards of Legitimacy to Evidence of Actuality

In this Counterpoint to Durand and Paolella, we argue that prior work on categories has neglected processes of category emergence and dissolution. In response, we call for studies of categories that focus on how they emerge and fall out of use and on what they come to mean. We call this an ontological turn in categories research because systems of categorization and their associated meanings capture and reflect what societies view as social realities, or ontologies. As a guide to this broad topic, we develop a framework that relates the effects of categories to the familiarity of (1) occasions and motivations for their usage and (2) meanings and ontologies they carry, and we use this framework to elaborate two paths by which previously unfamiliar categories become accepted as elements of common knowledge. These paths jointly inform the recognition front of the emergence question, an understudied problem in organization studies. Finally, we outline two methodologies – set theoretic analysis and network‐based analysis – that offer particular promise for analysing processes of category emergence and dissolution.     

Interpreting Nicknames: A Micropolitical Portal

Perhaps due to their ubiquitous and seemingly nonsensical nature, workplace nicknames have received little analytic attention to date. This exploratory study based on six case scenarios from the United States reveals nicknames often convey potent meanings. These monikers are found to have a wide variety of purposes: including among others, furthering social control, contributing to socialization, marking group boundaries, building camaraderie, catalysing joking, conveying discontent, cathartically venting frustrations, equalizing social exchanges and adjusting to labelling. Although the nicknaming and collateral social processes we encountered were not the product of formal planning, they are a complex and highly organized set of micropolitical activities. In the future, nicknames should be thought of as key symbols that can unlock many meanings when they are properly interpreted     

Evaluating and tracking qualitative content coder performance using item response theory

Content analysis of traditional and social media has a central role in investigating features of media content, measuring media exposure, and calculation of media effects. The reliability of content coding is usually evaluated using “kappa-centric” agreement measures, but these measures produce results that aggregate individual coder decisions which obscure the performance of individual coders. Using a data set of 105 advertisements for sports and energy drinks media content coded by five coders, we demonstrate that Item Response Theory can track coder performance over time and give coder-specific information on the consistency of decisions over qualitatively coded objects. We conclude that IRT should be added to content analysts’ tool kit of useful methodologies to track and evaluate content coders’ performance.

     

Corporate Sustainable Development and Marketing Communications on Social Media: Fortune 500 Enterprises

This study proposes a measurement to evaluate corporate sustainability marketing communications on social media implemented by Fortune 500 enterprises. The results reveal significant differences between sustainability marketing communications in blogs and on Facebook. This study makes theoretical contributions by proposing a customer‐centric SMC framework that integrates sustainability issues, stimulation of sustainable mindsets and encouragement of sustainable consumption. It also demonstrates how corporate sustainability marketing communications differ on different social media. In addition, practical suggestions are provided. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

How do social scientists use link data from search engines to understand Internet-based political and electoral communication?

As link data become more available from search engines, the data can play an important role in understanding socio-political activities in cyberspace. However, the majority of social scientists have not engaged in link data collection, transformation, and analysis to perform research using publicly available search engines. This article offers two case studies of Internet-based political and electoral communications conducted in Korea, where online communication is among the most well-established in the world. These cases reveal that link data collected from search engines have several merits for political communication research, including inexpensive access to web resources and ease of use. However, link data have some weakness, such as reliability issues: internal algorithms are not made in public and there are inconsistencies among search engines. This article examines the two case studies to draw conclusions about the use of link data drawn from search engines for research purposes.     

Analytic derivation of sociometric dimensions

Dimensional analysis has been defined variously as the synthesis of dimensionless variables and as a way of spatially representing data. While in sociometrics, one may not be able to devise models resembling those of the physical sciences because of the complexity of many social situations, one may in some cases successfully apply the techniques of classic dimensional analysis and get empirically valid results. More often we derive with analytic methods from the social sciences different kinds of dimensional frameworks in which to represent data. This paper will compare these approaches to the study of relationships and give examples of where each might be appropriate. Finally, a classification of the analytical methods will be presented.     

JOB EVALUATION AS INSTITUTIONAL MYTH

This article argues that the real function of job evaluation technique lies not in the rational claims upheld in the managerialist literature but rather in the more diffuse area of meaning management. the argument is based on an intensive case-survey analysis of the introduction of a formal job evaluation plan to one of Canada's ten provincial governments. From the complementary perspectives of social construction theory and institutional theory, job evaluation is ultimately defined as a rationalized institutional myth. First of all, job evaluation is rationalized because it takes the form of rules, specifying the procedures necessary to accomplish the end goal of determining an internally equitable and externally competitive pay structure. Job evaluation is institutional because actions are repeated and given similar meanings by the custodians of the system and those who fall under its administration. the set of meanings which evolves from job evaluation is expressed in a belief (ideology), an activity (norms and rituals), language and other symbolic forms through which the members of an organization both create and sustain views and images about the value of one job over another. Job evaluation is a myth because it is a process based on widely held beliefs that cannot be tested objectively. Despite a number of unexamined assumptions, the technique is accepted as ‘true’because it is believed.     

Methods for analyzing decision-making: a framework approach

In political science an eternal question concerns how decisions and policies arise. Modern society, characterized by more uncertainty and complexity than before, increases the challenge of providing valid answers. However, the general lack of methodological concern in several previous studies in this area stresses the need for elaborations of more suitable approaches. In this article we add a methodological perspective that deals with this very question. By reviewing and analyzing earlier research on how decision-making is reached, the overall ambition of this article is to create a framework that can lay the methodological foundation for further studies. Such a framework, which takes into account both the complexity of modern multi-governance societies and adds methodological perspectives of macro and micro standpoints as well as of causal mechanisms, can be used in future research to achieve richer pictures of how decision-making is carried out. In addition, we show how a certain technique of analysis is highly compatible to this framework and that jointly these features provide solutions for a better understanding of the complexity of modern decision-making. All in all, applying this strategy can be used to better systematize complex causal chains that reflect different analytical levels and thereby increase leverage on how to understand and explain the process of political decisions.     

需要层次的效用模型

本文从需要的层次理论出发,论述了人的需要得到满足的特征,给出了需求层次的效用模型和效用曲线,分析了不同层次的需求满足的直观模型。该模型证明了高层次需要是以较高层次的物质需要的满足为基础的。财富成为获得社会地位和个人尊严的基础,因此财富成为划分社会阶层的一个重要标志。     

The Political Uses of Some Economic Ideas: The Trade‐Off Between Efficiency and Equality

The notion of a trade‐off between efficiency and equality is pervasive in many disciplines across the social sciences. Moreover, an imprecise notion of this well‐known dilemma is an integral part of the discourse of politicians and policy‐makers. The scientific status of the idea of a trade‐off between efficiency and equality is, however, a matter of contention. Philosophical dissections of the idea have already deflated the analytical cogency of most of its versions, while the economic literature trying to assess the empirical relation between growth and equality has shown contradicting results. This article, by focusing on the role this idea plays both in the discourse and strategy of social‐democratic parties, and in the social science explanations of their trajectories, argues that the pervasiveness of the notion of the trade‐off between efficiency and equality is best explained in terms of the political functions it can fulfill.     

On Two Existing Approaches to Statistical Analysis of Social Media Data

Using social media data for statistical analysis of general population faces commonly two basic obstacles: firstly, social media data are collected for different objects than the population units of interest; secondly, the relevant measures are typically not available directly but need to be extracted by algorithms or machine learning techniques. In this paper, we examine and summarise two existing approaches to statistical analysis based on social media data, which can be discerned in the literature. In the first approach, analysis is applied to the social media data that are organised around the objects directly observed in the data; in the second one, a different analysis is applied to a constructed pseudo survey dataset, aimed to transform the observed social media data to a set of units from the target population. We elaborate systematically the relevant data quality frameworks, exemplify their applications and highlight some typical challenges associated with social media data.     

CONCEPTUALIZING LEADERSHIP PROCESSES: A STUDY OF SENIOR MANAGERS IN A FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY*

Established methodologies of leadership research have placed unnecessary constraints upon our capacity to examine creatively actual leadership practices and to generate fresh insights into their dynamics. A regeneration of leadership research depends upon the development of new frameworks of interpretation which yield new or deeper understanding of processes to which the term ‘leadership’is usually attributed. To this end, the article presents a conceptual framework founded upon well established traditions of social enquiry which have been underutilized in leadership research. The value of this framework is demonstrated through the analysis of data taken from an intensive field study of leadership processes amongst senior managers. It is argued that this methodology for leadership research serves to answer calls for increasing the practical relevance of leadership research without making unacceptable sacrifices to its intellectual credibility.     

Clusters and rivalry: does localization really matter?

This exploratory study addresses the link between rivalry—which we regard as a cognitive social dimension of competition— and localization. We adopt a visual-mapping technique to collect data on firms belonging to the packaging-machinery geographical cluster in Northern Italy.We can summarize our results as follows. Entrepreneurs identifying rivals within the cluster also tend to cite a larger number of rivals altogether. A firm's proximity to its rivals is a key to a deeper comparison with them. Geographical distance represents a tool for scanning the competitive environment; it is not used as a criterion by which to classify rivalry. From these results, we generate a few propositions that shed a new light on the relationship between rivalry and localization.