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This study aims to outline the role of causal attributions in consumer responses to irresponsible corporate behaviour. Specifically, this paper presents a moderated mediation model that explains how four types of perceived motives behind an irresponsible action shape corporate blame and word-of-mouth recommendations.

To test the hypotheses, the study uses data from a large survey assessing consumer reactions to a real case of corporate socially irresponsible behaviour in the banking industry.

The findings show that market-, unethicality- and rogue employee-driven attributions increase corporate blame and subsequently make people more likely to spread negative comments regarding the culprit. The difficult situation of a bank, as a perceived reason for wrongdoing, does not reduce the blame attributed to the irresponsible organisation.

The literature offers little information on the attributions people make following egregious corporate behaviour; however, such cognitions can play an important role in stakeholders’ reactions to wrongdoing. This study therefore extends the understanding of how irresponsibility attributions affect consumers’ responses to misbehaviour. Given the empirical context, the findings might be particularly important for communication and bank managers.

This chapter aims to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of an ultraconservative group’s crisis communication. It delves into the communication strategies and narratives of the Taliban as they interact with the international media, particularly in relation to the women residing in Afghanistan. A qualitative content analysis of the Taliban’s initial press conference, subsequent interviews and statements on the women in Afghanistan after the Kabul takeover in August 2021 was conducted to understand how the group constructed its narrative on women. The findings suggest that the Taliban adopt a coherent communication strategy. Overall, the group seems to construct a positive image of free women in Afghanistan under their governance by representing image repair strategies of denying disadvantages and positioning themselves as supportive of women’s rights, embedded in hero narratives. Through an analysis of the data employed in this research, it transpired that the Taliban lay a special emphasis on a promising future for their home country through the implementation of the principles of human rights, with a special focus on their commitment to women’s rights and the respect they accord to women. With regard to the imposition of restrictions on Afghan women, the group can be seen to adopt an image repair strategy, employed by evading responsibility, coupled with a narrative of blaming foreign forces.

Despite some recent progress, gender inequality remains a persistent problem in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) organisations. This article seeks to better understand resistance to gender equality (GE) in this context with the aim of shedding light on the workplace-based impediments to equality and unlocking remediation opportunities.

The article draws on in-depth interviews with 20 STEMM leaders to examine how they talk about the problem of gender inequality in the organisations they lead. Because resistance is rarely expressed directly, we adopt an in-depth, granular approach to examining what we call STEMM leaders’ “resistance talk” by decoding expressions of GE resistance that may appear, ostensibly, as something else.

We found various ideas, arguments and other discursive practices which function to legitimate or justify the status quo. These are both described by leaders in relation to what they are dealing with in their own organisations and expressed themselves. While similar “legitimating discourses” operate in other gender-segregated workplaces, our findings show how they manifest specifically in STEMM contexts.

Our results provide much-needed granular level evidence of the discursive tactics deployed to legitimate the status quo and obstruct progress toward GE in STEMM. This extends understanding of barriers to GE in STEMM and, importantly, highlights where attention might be directed to both counter resistance and harness potentially changing attitudes to expedite the necessary change required for GE in STEMM.

Our study centered on activity-based workspaces (ABWs), unassigned open-plan configurations where users’ activities determine the workplace. These workspaces are conceived and shaped by accommodation professionals (APs) like managers and architects and are loaded with their ideas, ideals, norms and values; therefore, they are normative and hegemonic. Previous research has largely failed to consider how APs’ spatial conceptions materialize in the workplace. To address this omission, we adopted a narrative approach to study APs’ impact during the conceptualization stage.

The data were collected via a 10-year at-home ethnographic study at a Dutch university, including observations, interviews, documents and reports. Studying the researchers’ organization allowed for a longitudinal research approach and participative observations. The data focused on the narrative techniques of APs when establishing an ABW.

In introducing ABWs, APs resorted to two principal narrative strategies. Firstly, the ABW concept was lauded as a solution to a host of existing problems. Yet, in the face of shortcomings, lecturers were often blamed.

Despite the considerable influence of APs on both the physical layout of workspaces and the nature of academic labor, there is little insight into their conceptions of the academic workspace. Our research contributes a novel perspective by revealing how APs’ workspace conceptions drive the narratives that underpin the roll-out of ABWs and how they construct narratives of success and failure.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the construction sector are highly vulnerable to disruptions caused by political and economic decisions or even pandemics. This study evaluated the current operations of selected SMEs providing engineering design and consultancy services against Toyota Production System (TPS) lean tool. The purpose is to juxtapose SME operations and processes with TPS to ascertain the level of their operations conformity to the established TPS lean thinking tool.

This study used a qualitative data collection and analysis approach to evaluate the current processes of participating SMEs against Liker's 14 management principles of TPS. The data collected were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes that emerged from the qualitative data.

The analysis revealed that focus on short-term goals, immediate profit and duplication of effort resulting from insufficient collaboration is currently creating waste in participating SMEs' operations. Hence, the implementation of TPS was recommended as a lean tool and a framework based on TPS lean tool was developed for improving the operations of SMEs.

The study is limited to SMEs operating only as consultants providing project planning design within the construction industry. Data collection is limited to qualitative even though observations would improve the outcome of the study.

The study advances contemporary issues in promoting lean implementation in construction sector and developed an improved framework based on the TPS to enhance the performance of SME construction businesses.

Paramedics became nationally registered in 2018 in Australia. Prior to this, there was no central regulation of the profession with reliance on organisational regulation through employers. As paramedics expanded their scope, role and range of employers, especially outside statutory agencies, there was increasing need to engage in professional regulation. Regulation is more than a legal and bureaucratic framework. The purpose of the paper states that the way paramedics interact with their new regulatory environment impacts and is influenced by the professionalisation of the discipline. Regulation also redefines their positionality within the profession.

Two mixed-method surveys were undertaken. A pre-registration survey occurred in the month prior to regulation commencing (N = 419) followed by the second survey 31 months later (N = 407). This paper reports the analysis of qualitative data from the post-registration survey and provides comparison to the pre-registration survey which has been previously reported. Analysis was undertaken using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Themes from the pre-registration survey continued however became more nuanced. Participants broadly supported registration and saw it as empowering to the profession. Some supported registration but were disappointed by its outcome, others rejected registration and saw it as divisive and oppressive.

Paramedics are beginning to come to terms with increasing professionalisation, of which regulation is one component. Changes can be seen in professional identity and engagement with professional practice; however, this is nascent and is deserving of additional research to track the profession as it continues to evolve.

This study aims to identify the perception of people in a Portuguese company regarding the main barriers to the effectiveness of the existing performance measurement system (PMS) and whether those perceptions are dependent of people’s hierarchical levels, education levels, work shifts, gender and department.

Primary data was collected through structured interviews (adapted to three levels of interviewees in the company hierarchy) and Likert scale questionnaires. Descriptive statistical analysis of the collected data was performed as well as a chi-square test.

The results provide an insight on the perception of barriers to the PMS effectiveness in the company. After performing interviews and questionnaires it was possible to identify that the main perceived barriers were: poor communication system and issues on target definition, lack of trained resources, employee involvement, indicators understanding and use for improvement.

This study is the starting point to develop actions aiming to eliminate, or at least mitigate, the impact of the barriers on the PMS effectiveness.

PMSs play an essential role in an organization, so it is essential to identify what hinders its effectiveness. This study opens the discussion by diagnosing the company’s perception of the barriers to PMS effectiveness.

This research aims at explaining the phenomenon of the “black children” (heihaizi), a very little-known generation who lived with concealment under the one-child policy in China. The one-child policy was officially introduced to nationwide at the end of 1979 by permitting per couple to have one child only, later modified to a second child allowed if the first was a girl in rural China in 1984. It was officially replaced by a nation-wide two-child policy and most existing research focused on the parents’ sufferings and policy changes. The term “black children” has been mainly used to describe their absence from their family hukou registration and education. However, this research aims at expanding the meaning of being “black” to explain the children who were concealed more than at the level of family formal registration, but also physical freedom and emotional bond. What we do not yet know are the details of their lived experiences from a day-to-day base: where did they live? How were they raised up? Who were involved? Who benefited from it and who did not? In this way, this research challenges the existing scholarship on the one-child policy and repositions the “black children” as primary victims, and reveals the family as a key figure in co-producing their diminished status with the support of state power. It is very important to understand these children’s loss of citizenship and human freedom from the inside of the family because they were concealed in so many ways away from public view and interventions. This research focuses on illustrating how their lack of access to continued, stabilized, and reciprocally recognized family interactions framed their very idea of self-worth and identity.

This paper draws on 26 in-depth interviews with people living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) to explore how experiences and interpretations of disability redirect and transform reproductive trajectories. I apply Almeling's conceptualization of reproduction as the “biological and social process of having or not having children” as a framework for understanding what occurs at multiple analytical layers (structural and cultural, interactional, self, and body) across the life course and influences how and whether people with disabilities feel having children is something they want or need or is within their reach. Findings reveal the lasting impact of viewing the film Steel Magnolias, pivotal interactions with healthcare providers, and interpretations of embodied T1D experiences as major sources of tension for participants as they reflect on their reproductive trajectories and outlooks. Considering especially the structural and cultural layer, this paper enriches our understanding of disability by demonstrating that both women and men with less noticeable or visible disability are subject to similar social imperatives of risk management and moral reproduction as those with more noticeable physical or sensory disabilities, although gender also matters for how participants experience these imperatives. Findings lend support for viewing reproduction as a lifelong process beyond the sequence from conception to birth, as some significant disability experiences that transform or redirect reproductive trajectories fall outside this timeframe.