Volunteerism and community healing

It is acknowledged that volunteering may help a community heal when it faces a tragic event. The purpose of this study is to analyze the interplay between volunteerism and community healing. Our empirical study focuses on volunteering in the context of memorial playgrounds and is based on extensive secondary data collected from 63 memorial playgrounds. Our research adds renewal and resilience as components of community healing, demonstrates how volunteer orientation toward individual and collective healing changes over the course of the healing process, and emphasizes the significance of making volunteering visible for healing the community. Furthermore, by exploring children’s volunteering and how it might aid in community reconciliation, our findings expand our understanding of inclusive volunteering

Memorial playgrounds: Special ways of coping with extreme loss

The purpose of this study was to understand how active coping with extreme loss takes place when creating memorial playgrounds, as well as in relation to existing memorial playgrounds. Using qualitative methods and drawing from 63 cases, the research enriches our understanding of bereavement by revealing the central mechanisms through which active coping takes place and by presenting the distinct elements that the mechanisms are composed of. The study contributes to the research on bereavement by showing how active coping takes place both as an outcome of and during the memorial creation process

The long and winding road? ̶ Towards entrepreneurial internationalisation through positive and negative experiences

Do we need to fail before we can really succeed? Does failure prepare us to take into consideration the challenges in the competition better than success? Can success make us blinded from difficulties and too trusting to the continuation of that success? Rather than to require companies to make mistakes and fail before they can really obtain sustainable success, we could bring into the foreground the process of learning. Learning by doing and experiencing can turn mistakes to success and failures to strength. This learning process can be particularly useful in the case of entrepreneurial internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises, which is filled with risk-taking, opportunity seizing and entering unknown territories. So far main stream entrepreneurship and international business research has focused on studying success stories, where entrepreneurs establish firms, innovate and create new combinations, as well as companies expand their operations across national borders. However, several studies and popular press articles have highlighted the important educative role and meaning of mistakes and failures. Success is often taken for granted afterwards, whereas failures are often treated with more analysis and scrutiny to find out what really went wrong and why. This gives a good starting point for research combining entrepreneurial internationalisation, opportunities, failures and mistakes, and learning in the process. The results of the study are directed to entrepreneurs, small business managers and the academia.</p

Balancing service inclusion for primary and secondary customers experiencing vulnerabilities

Purpose – Secondary customers often experience secondary vulnerabilities that manifest in family-centred transformative services as other- and self-related customer needs. Yet, a relational perspective on primary and secondary customers’ needs is lacking. The study analyses secondary customers’ needs and their relationship to primary customers’ needs to enhance well-being in customer entities. The service inclusion lens is used to understand customers’ experiences of vulnerability.Design/methodology/approach – The study uses an exploratory approach. The data consists of ethnographic observations and interviews of elderly residents (primary customers), their family members (secondary customers) and nurses in two nursing homes.Findings – Primary and secondary customers’ needs are interrelated (or unrelated) in four ways: they are separate, congruent, intertwined or discrepant. The vulnerability experiences fluctuate in intensity and over time, individually reflecting on these need dimensions.Research limitations/implications – The study contributes to service research concerning customers’ experiences of vulnerability, secondary customers and their inclusion in services. Primary customers’ service inclusion may increase/decrease secondary customers’ service inclusion and their experience of vulnerability. Moreover, secondary customers’ inclusion is often necessary to foster primary customers’ inclusion and well-being.Practical implications – Fostering service inclusion and well-being for primary and secondary customers requires balanced inclusion and acknowledging the needs of both groups. Service providers may need to act as moderators within customer entities if discrepant needs occur. Originality/value – The study addresses the under-researched areas of family members’ customer needs, their relation to primary customers’ needs, experiences of secondary vulnerability and context-related vulnerability.</p

The interplay between customers’ incidental and integral affects in value experience

Current understandings of emotional value focus on integral affects that are directly related to present judgements and choices. This neglects recent research on the complexity of affect and dismisses affects triggered by situations, events, or persons encountered in daily life outside of the decision-making situation or process; that is, incidental affects. In this article, we analyse the interplay between customers’ incidental and integral affects in value experience during life transitions. Based on the qualitative data collected on real-estate services, we unveil the internal dynamics of affective value by showing the intrapersonal and interpersonal forms of interplay (spillover, ambivalence, divergence and convergence) between integral and incidental affects. This advances knowledge on the composition and dynamics of the concept of affective value and on the affective value experience in life transitions. </p

Declining Fitness Levels are a Challenge to Well-Being in Finland – effective actions to increase physical activity and reverse the downward spiral of fitness

The physical functional capacity of Finns has been declining for decades: • The number of young men entering military service with poor physical fitness has increased eightfold • The number of men with poor muscle fitness has increased manifold • The average weight of new recruits has increased by 8 kg • The results of the MOVE! measurements of schoolchildren show the same alarming trend also in schoolchildren. As a result of the prolonged negative trend described above, the physical fitness of Finns of working age will continue to deteriorate significantly also in the coming decades. By 2040, according to a very conservative forecast, only very few people aged 50 or over in Finland will be in good physical fitness. This vicious cycle will lead to an increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases (such as type 2 diabetes, depression, cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal diseases, etc.). Being ill leads to increased sickness absences, earlier disability, and lower labour productivity. Unless this negative trend can be reversed, we will not be able to extend working life, the economic backbone of the state, municipalities, and cities will be broken, and the base of the national defence (the reserve army) will not hold up. The steady decline in fitness and increase in obesity will cause problems across all sectors of government. No amount of economic growth will be enough if the downward spiral of the physical functional capacity and fitness of working-age Finns is not reversed. We need multiple, simultaneous, effective measures across all sectors, at the national as well as the local level. These simultaneous, multi-sectoral actions require strong leadership and coordination between different sectors. Therefore, at the national level, the Prime Minister's Office and, at the local level, the municipal or city management group, are capable actors to lead these simultaneous measures that are needed across sectors of government. Effective measures are needed for those in the working life today who are struggling with their physical functional capacity, as well as to ensure the functional capacity of the workforce in the future. This policy brief is the second in its series from the Healthy Lifestyles to Boost Sustainable Growth (STYLE) project, combining interdisciplinary knowledge on trends in transport and physical activity. Interpreting them through infrastructure and service designs and changing lifestyles, we generate insight on novel business opportunities and intervention models that induce physical activity. This provides innovative pathways towards current national policy targets and promotion of the societal vision. The project is funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. Read more: www.styletutkimus.fi/e

Escaping into sexual play: A consumer experience perspective

Sexual play may offer an escape from everyday stress. As the consumer culture has extended into our bedrooms, escapism through sexual play can be regarded as an affective consumer experience. This study analyses how experiential value is created through escapism in sexual play enabled by the use of sex toys. The study follows a mixed-methods strategy, combining results from a consumer survey (n = 517) with expert interviews (n = 26). A principal outcome is an advanced conceptual framework where playfulness operates as a dynamic motor for consumers’ sexual boundary transgressions. Loosening these sexual boundaries may have its downsides. The larger is the realm of regular sexual life, the harder it is to escape it to gain experiential value. The balance between sexual play and everyday life ensures that the dynamic motor of playfulness operates steadily, upkeeping the elasticity of boundaries. The practical implications are discussed.</p