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When an audience mentally counterargues a spokesperson, the message is backfiring. In such cases, audience members are practically persuading themselves to take the opposite position advocated by the spokesperson. Yet spokespeople who are professional persuaders serving corporations often seem to instill counterargument. This paper examines the role of counterargument as the conduit through which a spokesperson's different message types affect a company during a crisis. The authors explore the paradox of spokespeople's (in)effectiveness by testing divides in research drawn from normative crisis communication theory, narrative persuasion theory and the theory of reporting bias.

Two controlled, randomized experiments are reported. Participants (total N = 828) watch video clips of media interviews of a company spokesperson fielding questions about a scandal.

In the first study, non-narrative information most effectively bolsters purchase intentions and reduces negative word-of-mouth. The effect is mediated by decreased counterargument. The second study replicates the results concerning on-topic narratives compared with spinning, while on-topic narratives and non-narratives perform equally well.

This study addresses conflicts between two distinct traditions of theory as well as between normative crisis communication and its frequent practice. Reducing counterargument matters in the context of non-narrative persuasion, and non-narratives can perform at least as well as narratives in crisis communication.

This study aims to critically review recent contributions to the methodology of financial economics and discuss how they relate to one another and directions for further research.

A critical review of recent literature on new methodologies for financial economics.

Recent books have made important contributions to the study of financial economics. They suggest new approaches that include an emphasis on radical uncertainty, adaptive markets, agent-based modeling and narrative economics, as well as extensions of behavioral finance to include concepts such as diagnostic expectations. Many of these contributions can be seen more as complements than substitutes and provide fruitful directions for further research. Efficient markets can be seen as holding under particular circumstances. A major them of most of these contributions is that the study of financial crises and other aspects of financial economics requires the use of multiple theories and approaches. No one approach will be sufficient.

There are great opportunities for further research in financial economics making use of these new approaches.

These recent contributions can be quite useful for improved analysis by researchers, private participants in the financial sector and macroeconomic and regulatory officials.

Provides an introduction to these new approaches and highlights fruitful areas for their extensions and applications.

The paper's purpose is to explore a theoretical and methodological dilemma.

Commencing doctoral research, and committed to an orthodox grounded theory approach, a unique story was uncovered which, to do it and the research justice, required an alternative form of representation. Intuition decreed that this should be narrative. However, grounded theory and narrative entail epistemologically and ontologically incommensurate paradigms. The paper seeks to consider whether inclusion of the unique story would compromise, or subvert, the already emergent grounded theory. An exploration of the relationship between different epistemological and ontological traditions is also to be made, based on the assumption that method “slurring,” and a more eclectic approach to using incommensurate paradigms, may be valuable.

In transcribing and coding data using strictly orthodox grounded theory methods, the researcher runs the risk of “stripping” the research story of some critical dimension(s). However, combining a narrative approach with that of grounded theory, the paper allows for the representation of an atypical “Maverick” case, along‐side other more typical cases.

The paper points out, to the early career qualitative researcher in particular, that it is legitimate to combine seemingly incommensurate methodologies, notably where not to do so would result in the loss of enriching and powerful insights into basic social processes.

Based on narrative theory, emotional contagion theory, and anticipated emotions theory, the purpose of this paper is to adopt an experimental design intended to understand how narrative advertising video on internet, narrator flow and online audience characteristics influence the health communication effects and depression prevention messages of public service advertisements.

This study uses two experimental designs. The first contrasts the effectiveness of persuasion between narrative and argument advertising videos on internet, while the second contrasts the effectiveness of persuasion between narrators with high and low flow. This study employed partial least squares path modeling to validate the research structure hypothesis.

Empirical results indicate that internet narrative advertising video is not direct, but rather draws on flow and positive anticipated emotions to stimulate the production of online audience intention to adopt health risk-reducing behaviors. Compared with narrative advertising video, which influences intention to adopt health risk-reducing behaviors through flow and positive anticipated emotions, narrator advertising video with an emotionally invested high-flow narrator can strengthen online audience intention to adopt risk-reducing behaviors more directly and positively.

The study results can provide elements to assist in the design of online advertising video on depression prevention and health promotion.

In this study, the dialogue among narrative theory, emotional contagion theory, and anticipated emotions theory is constructed, and an integrated conceptual framework is developed for the relationship between internet advertising video type and the health communication.

The purpose of this article is to explore the ability of a novel psychological theory of how people make decisions, narrative‐based decision theory, to help explain people's decisions about whether to continue investment in a research and development (R&D) project (R&D progress decisions).

The paper applies the new theory to an empirical finding of existing research on R&D progress decisions; the finding that instruction in the sunk cost principle seems to mitigate the sunk cost effect in R&D progress decision‐making.

By interpreting the empirical finding in terms of narrative‐based decision theory, the paper is able to clarify and extend an earlier explanation for the empirical finding. More specifically, by drawing on narrative‐based decision theory the paper is able to provide a more detailed explanation of how the predictor variable (sunk cost) and the moderator variable (instruction in the sunk cost principle) may exert an influence.

Based on the result of the exploration, the authors call for further investigations into narrative‐based decision theory's value in explaining R&D progress decisions, and other management decisions.

Furthermore, the authors call for investigations into how narrative‐based decision theory may help decision‐makers in improving the quality of R&D progress decisions.

Narrative‐based decision theory is a recent theory from the field of naturalistic decision‐making. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first article that, by using an example, illustrates how the theory may help in explaining the findings of empirical research on management decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the manner and impact of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure. To frame the discussion, elements of Giddens' “structuration” theory and narrative theory are used to analyse change from within an organisation.

Using a case study approach, this paper explores the impact of the narrative disclosure of IC by an Australian public sector organisation, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Lands (Lands), which is the first Australian government organisation to externally disclose IC.

By taking a structuralist approach to analysing the narrative disclosure of IC this paper moved beyond attempting to quantify or identify the wealth created by IC, and thus account for IC. By investigating the narrative disclosure of IC, initially in the form of the IC statement as a supplement to the annual report, it was shown how at Lands the use of narrative became routinized in the activities of management. Thus narrative was no longer used to only provide understanding of the IC measures and the reasoning behind the use of IC, but to provide a mechanism that engendered further management action and subsequent organisational change.

The limitation of this paper is that it provides a lone example of a particular organisation from which generalisations are not possible. But it is possible to extend this research, using the structuration framework, to other organisations that have engendered the use of narrative to disclose IC to both internal and external stakeholders. Doing so will further question the domination of “accounting” within the IC paradigm and provide additional insights that allows practitioners and academics to develop additional tools for understanding and utilising IC.

This paper investigates the manner and impact of IC disclosure from within an organisation by use of “structuration” and narrative theory to analyse change as a result of the implementation of IC practices.

This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making “invisible” intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants.

A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative.

Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way.

These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for “material” or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance.

This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators.

The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies.

Twenty years ago, Hindy Schachter (1989) posed a question about the foundation we use to structure the Public Administration theory narrative. Would an approach based on an art model, rather than the more common science model, produce a narrative with less distortion? This essay employs a definition of modernism developed by Thomas Vargish and Delo Mook outside the purview of public administration and a famous M. C. Escher lithograph as a basis for proposing an alternate way to construct the narrative. It then applies the alternative approach to Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo.

Operations and supply chain management (OSCM) is a theoretically and philosophically fragmented field. Researchers must consider how they use theory and explain empirical phenomena. This paper aims to use critical realism to introduce more coherence into this fragmented field.

This paper draws on existing critical realism and abduction literature and this study uses a research process from two PhD projects to investigate critical realism’s role in OSCM research. This paper uses a narrative approach to collect data over a long timeframe, capturing data not commonly used in OSCM research.

Research that struggles to bridge the gap between theory and data benefits from critical realism, which provides a philosophy and associated methods to identify a suitable theory and guide researchers when they encounter obstacles. While clear steps often outline established methods, researchers are sometimes unable to identify when their research process has reached an obstacle. This paper argues that such obstacles can be treated as “crossroads” offering new research opportunities when correctly evaluated and addressed.

Importantly, researchers should be able to reflect upon their own research processes, enabling a better understanding of these processes and the discovery of new research directions. Researchers can use critical realism, abduction and systematic combining to bridge the divide between theory and data in OSCM.

This paper contributes to the field’s discussion regarding the roles of critical realism and abduction, synthesizing multiple academic sources, highlighting critical realism’s importance and providing a novel means of addressing difficulties in navigating an eclectic research area. This paper offers a philosophical alternate to the field, which is often instead considered from a positivistic standpoint. The paper is valuable to researchers in the OSCM field, who can use the research to improve their selection of data and theories, as well as their understanding of their own research processes.