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This study extends work from home (WFH) literature by recasting WFH performances that emphasise agents’ manipulation of scene. Drawing on the dramatist paradigm, the study uses Burke’s pentadic criticism to code the social media application Pinterest’s ‘work from home’ and ‘home office’ pinboards for act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose. Pinterest is a social media application that users post pins (images with verbal tags and link to external sites, especially blog sites) and collect pins by subject on an electronic pinboard, which other users can like, follow, and share. Analysis of WFH pins reveals that the agent–scene ratio saturates pins emphasising the agency of WFH agents to control their scenes or home office spaces. The idealism of the agent–scene ratio in pins further demonstrates an unrealistic approach to popular culture’s shift to WFH and a romanticisation of WFH as idyllic working conditions. Scripts for employees and employers are explored to equip them with the rhetorical resources to more closely align their agent–scene ideals with the scene–agent realities.

This paper reports on findings from an ethnographic study of international student adjustment. The paper recommends the use of ethnography as a way to research the experiences of tourists and migrants to build up a body of knowledge on the outcome of cross-cultural contact for these two groups. The aim of my ethnographic study was to capture the adjustment journey of a group of international postgraduate students at a university in the South of England. The ethnographic approach involved regular in-depth individual interviews with 13 students of different nationalities and overt participant observation of the entire postgraduate cohort of 150 students. Research began on the first day of induction in September 2003 and ended upon completion and submission of the Masters dissertation in October 2004. Students' experience of adjustment to academic and socio-cultural life was therefore captured from arrival in the new country to the return home one full year later. This study finds that stress was at its height in the initial stage of the academic sojourn; the struggle to cope with the challenges of foreign language use and an unfamiliar academic and the socio-cultural environment at a time when students were beset with homesickness and loneliness are the causes of this stress. An association was made between the passage of time and a gradual decrease in acculturative stress; however, this was not a generalisable process; there was fluctuation not only in experience across the student body but also in the individual's subjective sense of success across different aspects of life in the new country. This led to the conceptualisation of the adjustment journey as an unpredictable and dynamic process that is experienced differently among sojourners and fluctuates throughout the sojourn as a result of a host of individual, cultural and external factors. The relevance of this study to tourism scholars comes from drawing parallels between the long-stay tourist and the international student who represents an important segment of international travel. However, a gap in the literature exists on the impact of tourism on the tourist that this study helps to fill.

Faced with institutional demands, organizations often create departments whose work is divorced from technical imperatives. This paper examines workers in one such department: Human Resources. Analysis of HR’s recent history and evidence from an ethnographic study of HR work highlight the institutional origins of conflict between HR’s established “compliance police” role and the “business partner” expectations of line managers. The paper outlines a theory of how organizational responses to institutional complexity contribute to persistent tension in HR and other heteronomous occupations.

Conceptualizing trust alone or as the starting point for understanding both trust and distrust is insufficient. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the construction of phenotypic trustscapes and distrustscapes that permit an abstract exploration of the concepts of trust and distrust using societal and dyadic relationships and perceptions of the individual as the units of analysis. For theoretical understanding of trust and distrust, it uses social and evolutionary biologic multi-level theory. This chapter builds on the existing trust literature in three ways: (1) by triangulating on trust and distrust through the use of a number of research methodologies; (2) by placing trust and distrust in value orientation theory and models; and (3) by extricating trust and distrust from reciprocity constructs, and placing them into separate phenotypes: trustscapes and distrustscapes. These efforts show that both trust and distrust are naturally occurring phenomena, with one or the other predominant in specific contexts. The chapter includes scenarios in Japan, Bulgaria, and Indonesia to demonstrate how micro- and macro-level examples of trustscapes and distrustscapes function.

This paper seeks to explore the role of ombuds processes on commitment and trust to the organization.

This research is framed by and builds on theories about cooperation‐competition, procedural justice, and third party intervention (ombudsman processes) in managing organizational relationships. Data for this study come from semi‐structured longitudinal interviews with 45 participants (138 interviews total) during active pursuit of a grievance through the ombuds process.

Organizational commitment and trust are fluid processes created through symbolic interaction with organizational actors. Interaction with these actors, over time, influences commitment to the organization.

This study reports on the perspective of the person pursuing the grievance through one ombuds office. Future research should explore perspectives of both parties and in different organizational contexts.

The use of ombuds processes to manage conflicts may restore trust and commitment in the organization. Key to this is the use of processes that demonstrate fair procedures and effective communication by high status organizations actors.

This paper provides new insight into the effects of conflict and conflict management in organizations and is of value to organizational leaders, managers, ombudspersons, and other conflict management specialists.

The purpose of this paper is to review the techniques involved in participant observation and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the method as related to event research.

A review of the literature examines applications of the research method and discusses the steps of the research cycle. Using the example of the Swell Sculpture Festival, participant observation is demonstrated to be a highly appropriate method to gather data on interactions and relationships through the recording of behaviour, conversation and experience in situ.

Participant observation has been used to inform the development of management strategies, including management of crowd behavior, public risk and safety.

The paper suggests that methods of participant observation can be used to gain a deeper understanding of social dynamics of audiences and the affective dimensions of their behaviour. It is suggested that the method is highly appropriate to the context of event environments, where the use of surveys can interrupt the flow of the event experience for audiences, or be made impossible by the structure of the event.

The case study demonstrates the application of the methodology by event managers to gaining a better understanding of audience behaviour and expectations.

The methods of participant observation, as part of the broader qualitative research paradigm, are somewhat neglected by event researchers, despite their utility in other disciplines such as retail, education and tourism. This paper highlights the potential of the method for use in future studies of events and their audiences.

The purpose of this research was to understand the sensemaking processes people use to determine their responses to organizational change initiatives as they unfold overtime. Based on a longitudinal comparative case study of five business units in a $900-million manufacturing organization in the United States, it shows that people continuously assess how the initiatives will enhance or diminish their individual and organizational identities using four kinds of trust: trust in the organization, trust in leadership, trust in the process, and trust in outcomes. The complex dynamics among these “four trusts” and their influence on responses to change are described. A four trusts model is proposed to help change leaders formulate specific trust-building strategies to increase the probability of success of organizational change initiatives. Implications for research and practice are discussed.