Co-Consuming a Pet Home : Balancing Functionality and Aesthetics of a Taste Regime

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Symbolicially embedded : essays on the creation and use of symbolic resources in furniture networks

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Object agency of living and non-living entities in home assemblage

Purpose: This chapter examines two rather extreme examples of non-human entities in home assemblage, interior objects, and companion animals, and how their agency appears distributed with human consumers in assembling home. The authors aim at drawing conceptual contrasts and overlappings in how agency expresses itself in these categories of living and non-living entities, highlighting the multifaceted manifestations of object agency. Methodology/Approach: This chapter employs multiple sets of ethnographi-cally inspired data, ranging from ethnographic interviews and an autoethno-graphic diary to three types of (auto-)netnographic data. Findings: The findings showcase oscillation of agency between these three analytic categories (human, non-human living, and non-human non-living), focusing on how it is distributed between two of the entities at a time, within the heterogeneous assemblage of home. Furthermore, the findings show instances in which agency emerges as shared between all three entities. Originality/Value: The contribution of this chapter comes from advancing existing discussion on object agency toward the focus on distributed and shared agency. The research adds to the prevailing discussion by exhibiting how agency oscillates between different types of interacting entities in the assemblage, and in particular, how the two types of non-human entities are agentic. The research demonstrates the variability and interwovenness of non-human and human, living and non-living agency as they appear intertwined in home assemblage

Lessons from the “Principles of Service Management” Course

Prior research on massive open online courses (MOOCs) suggests interaction to be a key characteristic in terms of improving learners’ engagement, skills development, and learning experience. This study investigates learners’ experiences of participating in MOOCs in order to develop a more detailed understanding of interaction behaviors and the factors that influence them. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with MOOC participants, the study sheds light on the factors that influence interaction as well as their alignment with the self-determination theory. The results indicate that five personal and five environmental factors play a role in either enhancing or hindering interaction. Supporting learners’ autonomy and personalized learning trajectories should serve to promote both interaction and engagement. Despite the autonomous nature of learning via MOOCs, educators’ guidance and encouragement are still required to enliven learners’ interactions. In fact, this study also elucidates the social nature of learning.peerReviewe

Dealing with discrepancies of a brand in change:recomposition of value and meanings in the network

Abstract Brands become shaped by interaction processes in the networks in which they are embedded. Research addressing this phenomenon has departed both from a co-creation angle, and to some extent by examining co-destruction. In this chapter, we adopt a process-oriented multiple stakeholder view to brands and explore the concept of brand discrepancies, i.e. inconsistencies and disruptions that can prompt brand co-destruction and lead to a reconfiguration of meanings and value in the brand’s ecosystem. The chapter presents a longitudinal case study from the context of food distribution to illustrate the ever-changing nature of brand reality. The findings add to the brand co-creation discussion by showing that brand co-destruction is not always negative, but the reconfiguration, recomposition, and reorchestration of brand meanings and value can also be seen as positive outcomes of brand discrepancies. These findings depict brand management as a process of orchestration in a multi-stakeholder setting, rather than as something conducted unilaterally by a brand governor