Management – Culture – Interpretation – serie

The editors bring two terms, narrative and innovation, together in an interdisciplinary and interactive way. Narratives are ubiquitous and hold the potential to indicate future changes in politics, economies and markets. As “stressors” and stabilizers in organizations, narratives and changes in the consensus narrative indicate the need for strategic change or organizational stasis and may be utilized as a source for early recognition in strategic management. The use of narratives in management, however, makes it necessary to adopt a new perspective. This volume offers a polyphonic forum for the development of an interpretive approach towards business administration, strategic management, and entrepreneurship, by introducing instruments of semiotics, linguistics, narratology, and others. This compilation, therefore, presents a comprehensive overview of scientific and industrial perspectives beyond the mainstream.

Sweeping transformation of brands has led to a warranted need to conquer space for brand performances. Branded spaces emplace agents like consumers or other stakeholders to have an experience that is in multisensual association with a brand. In a fast changing world, branded spaces are becoming lighthouses for brands, for their image and for their relationship to agents. Additionally, the editors and contributors often use a story-like framework to explore how branded spaces are approached as well as to what degree they afford success. Management, branding, marketing, sociology, psychology, and philosophy are some of the disciplines that deal with branded spaces. To address the complexity and the multidisciplinary challenge of branded spaces, this topic is approached via different categories: places and possibilities, facts and figures, senses and sensualities, stories and situations as well as critiques and consequences.

This book attempts to confront spatial, performative and cultural interrelations between tourism and social economic behavior by providing a critical platform for the articulation of touring consumption in our contemporary world. Tourism has become a significant area of scholarship especially given the industry’s product development opportunities on a global scale. However, the emphasis placed on such research has largely been from a supply-side perspective. What needs to be explored is the shift towards the agencies of the tourist or traveler as consumer and consumption as being embodied as a moment of practice in continuous states of touring.

This volume entails a collection of new ideas, themes and questions towards a phenomenon which we are used to refer to with the key term “diversity”. The aim of the book is to offer a cultural sciences perspective on “diversity”, to advance knowledge about it and enrich the dialogue between academics and practitioners in related domains of action. Today, changes in the demographic structures of the population, the migration flux, multiculturalism, the rising awareness concerning minorities’ rights, gender studies and so on lead to a complex picture of what “diversity” means. The narrative of a society and of most organizations is constituted by multiple layers of social categorization, segregation and identity. Therefore, “diversity” defies simple definition. The contributions in this volume approach the phenomenon from different angles and reveal new theoretical, methodological and practical perspectives on it.