Career capital development of self-initiated expatriates in Qatar: cosmopolitan globetrotters,experts and outsiders

This paper explores career capital development of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) in the Middle East, reporting on data gathered in Qatar from 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews. The findings challenge the notion that self-initiated expatriation always leads to career capital accumulation, arguing instead that contextual features impact individuals' agentic efforts towards career capital accumulation and lead them to experience ‘career capital stagnation’. Qatarisation is the overarching influence on the status of SIEs in the country and places structural constraints that translate into limited organisational opportunities and support for SIEs. Individually, SIEs reside rhetorically within complex dualities characterised by feelings of cosmopolitanism and isolation. Whilst individuals narrate the context in utilitarian terms as a means to a broader aim of global experience, everyday practicalities of their work and life are problematised. Narratives of career capital development are organised in three themes: SIEs as cosmopolitan globetrotters (micro-individual level), SIEs as experts (meso-organisational level) and SIEs as outsiders (macro-country level). The paper contributes to broadening the discussion on the relationship between self-initiated expatriation and context, and its implications on careers. Empirically, it adds to our understanding of SIEs, in particular their experiences of career capital development in the highly regulated context of the Middle East.     

Adopting International Entrepreneurial Finance Education to a Local Context

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to consider an approach to teaching entrepreneurial finance using proverbs. It explores a process framework with teaching strategies that provides prescribed guidelines on the key aspects that assist in teaching using this approach. This article demonstrates that teaching with proverbs creates the construct for linking prior knowledge (proverbs) to new entrepreneurial finance concepts in a meaningful way. It further highlights that entrepreneurial finance education in different regions around the world is most effective for students when it is tailored to the local culture of the region. The authors present five main entrepreneurial finance topics with two to three subheadings, each with proverbs accompanied by their related entrepreneurial finance concept. The article concludes that the use of proverbs in entrepreneurial finance instruction provides several benefits and that proverbs have the potential to become an effective teaching instrument in the fields of entrepreneurship and finance.     

A novel approach to portfolio selection using news volume and sentiment

In this study, we develop a novel approach to portfolio diversification by integrating information on news volume and sentiment with the k-nearest neighbors (kNN) algorithm. Our empirical analysis indicates that high news volume contributes to portfolio risk, whereas news sentiment contributes to portfolio return. Based on these findings, we propose a kNN algorithm for portfolio selection. Our in-sample and out-of-sample tests suggest that the proposed kNN portfolio selection approach outperforms the benchmark index portfolio. Overall, we show that incorporating news volume and sentiment into portfolio selection can enhance portfolio performance by improving returns and reducing risk.     

Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement

This study employed a content analysis of the creative strategies present in the social media content shared by a sample of top brands. The results reveal which social media channels are being used, which creative strategies/appeals are being used, and how these channels and strategies relate to consumer engagement in branded social media. Past research has suggested that brands should focus on maintaining a social presence across social channels with content that is fresh and frequent and includes incentives for consumer participation (Ling et al., 2004). This study confirmed the importance of frequent updates and incentives for participation. In addition, several creative strategies were associated with customer engagement, specifically experiential, image, and exclusivity messages. Despite the value of these creative approaches, most branded social content can be categorized as functional.     

Is It Time to Revisit the Savings Rate Floor in the ECCU?

Member states of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) experienced a secular decline in growth following the great recession circa 2008, resulting in increased unemployment and social dislocation. Given the ECCU's currency board arrangement and current fiscal challenges, policy options for resuscitating growth are limited to supply‐side adjustments. This paper contends that the 3 per cent interest rate floor on savings deposits has contributed to higher lending rates and lower levels of capital formation. Ultimately it is a drag on growth and a threat to the banking sector's health as it has resulted in reduced risk compensation when default and other banking sector risks have risen. Revisiting the floor is advocated as an integral component of this structural adjustment policy response.     

Individual differences in perceptions of service failure and recovery: the role of race and discriminatory bias

This article investigates the role of contextual cues in the evaluation of a service failure. Empirical data demonstrates that although discrimination is a factor in the evaluation of a service failure for black (vs. white) customers, contextual cues also play a role in the evaluation of the encounter. When a black customer experiences a service failure, the failure will be evaluated more severely when no other black customers are present. In addition, the context of the event differentially affects the negative emotions generated by the service failure and results in racially driven differences in the amount of remuneration perceived as necessary to successfully recover from the failure. The implication is that when serving customers, the race of both the customer and other customers can provide service providers with information relative to the appropriate service recovery effort to implement.

The role of the psychological contract in shaping graduate experiences: a study of public sector talent management programmes in the UK and Australia

Abstract

Although talent management is acknowledged for its role in building competitive advantage, very little research has examined the factors that influence the success of talent management programmes at an individual level. In this paper we explore participant experiences (n = 68) from two public sector ‘fast track’ graduate development programmes, one in the UK and one in Australia. Drawing on psychological contract theory we examine how talent management programmes shape individual expectations and how these expectations influence participant experiences and evaluations of the programme. Our findings highlight the role of both talent management strategy and talent management implementation as well as factors external to the organisation, (such as employer brand and the influence of family and friends), in shaping expectations. Our analysis highlights the impact of multiple agents, particularly line managers, in the ongoing development and fulfilment of the ‘graduate psychological contract’. At a practical level, we argue that organisations need to manage expectations by more explicitly communicating what will, or will not, be offered in a graduate fast-track programme. We also suggest that organisations need to consider the importance of line managers in the implementation of talent management.