The impact of airline internal branding on work outcomes using job satisfaction as a mediator

Within the context of the airline industry, this study offers an integrated approach measuring the effects of internal brand communication, brand-centered training, transformational leadership, brand ideology, and internal brand communities on job satisfaction and work outcomes. It further explores the role of job satisfaction as a mediator between internal branding and work outcomes. Following an analysis of 485 responses, we find that leadership, ideology, and communities positively influence job satisfaction, which in turn affects intention-to-stay, team performance, and brand commitment. Job satisfaction is also found to mediate the relationships between internal branding (i.e., transformational leadership, brand ideology, and internal brand communities) and work outcomes. These findings highlight that appropriate branding strategies can enhance airline development through employee satisfaction.     

The acerbity of the social: how to include the social in governmental risk assessments

This paper addresses the expansion of risk practices through a case study of a government led project in Sweden purposed to develop a method to include social events in mandatory risk practices. Social heterogeneity was to be transformed into straightforward causality in order to turn the social into a manageable object. In this regard, the project was quite successful. By inviting social scientists into the process, otherwise often marginalized within risk practice, causality and quantifiable risk factors could be established and the model became a rigorous and legitimate scientific model. Although experts were granted significant autonomy and became experts far beyond their own area of expertise, the success of the model lies rather in allowing experts authority within confined boundaries. Grand narratives and critical perspectives are disregarded as too abstract and if social scientists are to infuse aspects of social critique they must adapt to these circumstances: they must become instrumentalists.     

我国扶贫历程及其探索

我国扶贫工作在改革开放以后经历了三个阶段,今后扶贫工作面临新的挑战.根据我国扶贫工作需要,结合当前社区建设的发展,应采取农村社区扶贫这一扶贫方式,把扶贫开发与农村社区建设结合起来.     

社区经济自治存在的问题及制度创新

从业主经济自治组织制度建设存在的问题出发,剖析了业主自治组织处境艰难,不能有效行使管理主体的权利,同时也难以承担管理主体责任的原因,进而对北京社区物业管理中业主经济自治组织的制度创新提出了若干建议.     

Sharing my way to success: A case study on developing entrepreneurial ventures using social capital in an OSS community

While Open Source Software (OSS) communities provide opportunities for knowledge creation, we have a limited understanding of how entrepreneurs leverage OSS communities for their entrepreneurial ventures. Using social capital theory in a mixed methods case study, we compare entrepreneur and non-entrepreneur behaviors to investigate how entrepreneurs build social capital within an OSS community. This study shows that entrepreneurs differentiate themselves from non-entrepreneurs by focusing on cognitive and relational capital building activities, which in return makes it possible for them to leverage their social capital to influence and shape the environment in which they are operating. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs strategically select which activities within the community to expend their limited resources on (e.g., developing code over participating in email conversations) and build their social capital more through their actions than through their words (e.g., showing their commitment to the community through code commits, bug fixes, and documentation). Given the liabilities of newness and smallness as well as other challenges faced by entrepreneurs, applying an open innovation strategy in OSS communities could be one approach where entrepreneurs, by developing and freely revealing their intellectual property to the community, share their way to success via OSS-infused entrepreneurial business ventures.     

Potential for co-management approaches to strengthen livelihoods of forest dependent communities: A Kenyan case

Many natural resource management researchers have focused either on institutional design and evaluation or on livelihood outcomes per se without explicitly acknowledging and rigorously examining linkages between the two. Thus, a major gap in the current literature on co-management institutional arrangements is the extent to which co-management has strengthened the livelihoods of poor forest-dependent communities. This gap is addressed in this paper by developing and testing an argument that well-designed co-management arrangements have strengthened the livelihood outcomes of poor forest-dependent communities in a Kenyan case study. The hybrid analytical framework developed for this analysis situates Ostrom's (1990) design criteria for co-management institutions in the broader context of the Sustainable Livelihood Framework. It then uses this analytical framework to evaluate the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve (ASFR) co-management initiative in Kenya, based on a three-step process. First, the paper provides an overview of current institutional arrangements for governance of the ASFR co-management regime. Second, it evaluates the extent to which these governance arrangements can be characterized as devolved collaborative governance, informed by Ostrom's (1990) design principles and; third, it evaluates the extent to which the livelihood outcomes of forest dependent communities that are participants in the co-management project have had their livelihoods strengthened as a result of the ASFR co-management governance arrangements. The paper demonstrates that the institutional arrangements for ASFR co-management are relatively nascent and emerging because the governance arrangements for the ASFR co-management project cannot be characterized as fully devolved de jure collaborative governance. Notwithstanding this, the findings reveal that participant forest-dependent communities in the co-management project had improved livelihoods compared to forest-dependent communities outside the co-management scheme. It is suggested that this is due to the de facto co-management arrangements.     

Current issues and research trends on open-source software communities

Open source software (OSS) projects represent a new paradigm of software creation and development based on hundreds or even thousands of developers and users organised in the form of a virtual community. The success of an OSS project is closely linked to the successful organisation and development of the virtual community of support group. This paper reviews different fields and research topics related to the OSS communities such as collective intelligence, the structure of OSS communities, their success, communities as virtual organisations, motivation, shared knowledge, innovation and learning. The main challenges, results obtained, and the knowledge areas are detailed for each topic.     

‘I didn't feel like I was alone anymore’: evaluating self‐organised employee coping practices conducted via Facebook

The long‐term fracturing of the labour movement has led to increased attention to employee coping practices under new management practices and labour processes. However, the literature caters little for the recent rise of employees taking to social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, to find ways to cope with the pressures of contemporary employment. To explore the self‐organised coping qualities of SNSs, interviews were conducted with front line workers, employed by a large anti‐trade union US retailer, who contribute to a self‐organised Facebook group set up as a place for fellow employees to deal with collective employment‐related problems. The main findings suggest employee self‐organised Facebook groups represent an important development and extension to the coping practices available to individual and groups of employees. The main implication of the findings is that Facebook groups appear to strengthen and widen the options for employee resilience in an age of continuing trade union retreat.     

Agro-pastoralism under climate change: Institutions and local climate adaptations in northern China

The livelihoods of resource-dependent peoples are vulnerable to climate variability. This study focuses on how local climate adaptations, which have been sustained through long-term interactions with local ecologies, have changed in the face of the challenges caused by climate change and policy interventions. Case studies were conducted in two agro-pastoral counties of northern China, a region that confronts frequent drought and that has experienced extensive institutional changes over recent decades. Based on the exploration of four adaptation strategies, the field results show that both counties have experienced an acceleration of livelihood diversification, an increase in storage and market exchanges, and a dramatic reduction in previously common pooling. The findings reveal that these adaptations are not a direct result of coping with climate risks but rather are indicative of livelihood strategies that result from the combined impacts of institutional, socioeconomic and climatic changes. Current institutional arrangements have negative impacts on local climate adaptations. This is particularly true for those with limited livelihood options, and such arrangements may therefore foster an increase in inequality with regard to household adaptive capacities over the long term. Therefore, this study recommends flexible policies that facilitate local arrangements rather than the current one-for-all policy.     

治理机制对顾客参与价值共创行为的影响——虚拟品牌社区的实证研究

虚拟品牌社区是企业与顾客进行价值共创的重要平台,顾客参与价值共创行为对企业长远发展具有十分重要的作用。现有研究多是基于不同的理论从顾客视角出发探索顾客参与价值共创行为受到的心理动机和个人特征等因素的影响,鲜有从企业视角出发,探索治理机制对虚拟品牌社区中顾客参与价值共创行为的影响。本文立足交易成本理论与社会交换理论,从企业视角切入,引入关系质量作为中介变量,构建虚拟品牌社区治理机制、关系质量与顾客参与价值共创行为的关系整合模型。采用问卷调查法对模型进行验证,研究结果显示:(1)契约治理机制只对知识贡献行为产生显著正向影响,对顾客公民行为的影响不显著,而关系治理机制对知识贡献行为与顾客公民行为均具有显著正向影响。(2)关系质量在契约治理机制与顾客公民行为的关系中起完全中介作用,在契约治理机制与知识贡献行为、关系治理机制与知识贡献行为以及关系治理机制与顾客公民行为的关系中起部分中介作用。由研究结论可知,虚拟品牌社区一方面应综合运用契约治理机制与关系治理机制来有效地促进顾客参与价值共创行为,以弥补单独运用某一种治理机制存在的不足;另一方面也应注重关系质量在虚拟品牌社区中促进顾客参与价值共创行为的重要作用。这些研究发现为促进虚拟品牌社区的可持续发展提供了有价值的启示。