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The conclusions on the importance of corporate response timing to a crisis have remained inconsistent. Some studies suggest that active response may reduce negative impacts, whereas managers argue that issuing official response frustrates stakeholders and thus decreases the firm value. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of external media in the response timing strategy and the consequent stock market reaction.

Based on 130 corporate crises that befell publicly listed firms in China from 2007 to 2014, this paper uses the Baidu News Search Engine and Chinese Lexical Analysis System to construct the variables of the media characteristics. A structural equation model is established to test the hypotheses.

The results of this paper suggest that media coverage drives response timing after a crisis. Although an official response is a burden for firms, the timing strategy has multidimensional benefits including effectively alleviating negative effects (defined as buffering effects) and repairing the market (defined as restoring effects). Moreover, the buffering effects of response timing are stronger when completeness of response is low.

This study mainly contributes to crisis communication literature by introducing the role of media in prompting managers to make timing decisions. The findings of this study provide empirical support for the importance of timing response strategy.

Signalling theory suggests how “strong” or “weak” the signal quality detected by a receiver (defined as signalling strength) is distorted by noisy factors (defined as noise). Although corporate cooperation signals are known to lead to receiver reaction, the effects of distortion factors on signal credibility are generally unexplored in signalling process. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

After analysing 264 contract announcements in 2013–2015 that befall publicly listed firms in China, the authors explore the signalling impact of contract value. the authors also incorporate the signalling noises, namely, signalling environment, external referents and other signallers, into the contracting context and investigate their effects on distorting the relationship between signal strength and receiver reaction.

Results indicate that firms’ contract-signing announcement conveys an effective signal to investors: the larger the contract scale is, the more investor reaction the firms experience. The signalling effects of contract scale on investor reaction are moderated by the three distorting factors.

The findings contribute to the signalling theory literature on the effects of signalling noise on receivers’ perception of signal observability.

The purpose of this paper is to present a vision for the future development of Kybernetes under a new editorship.

The new Editors are introduced, the strengths and history of the journal reviewed, and plans for its future development described.

The future of Kybernetes will build on its long and distinguished heritage, noting especially the strengths of interdisplinarity, internationality, and strong links with major cybernetic societies across the world. While maintaining these strengths, the new Editors will seek to develop further the conversations between diverse fields contributing to the journal and to bring a new emphasis to the interdisciplinary study of information, to studies of the social implications of cybernetics and related fields, and to profiles of thinkers in cybernetics, systems and management science.

This is only the second time that there has been a change of editor in the more than 40 years that Kybernetes has been published. The journal (and the whole field of cybernetics and systems) owes the past editors a great debt of thanks for their outstanding work, but the time has come for change. This paper starts to identify new directions under the new Editors.

This paper contributes to, and links the areas of quality management and buyer‐supplier relationships. In doing so, we seek to address two broad research questions. To what extent do quality practices impact upon the various dimensions of quality performance, manufacturing performance and, in turn, business performance? To what extent is the relationship between quality practices and quality performance contingent upon the nature of buyer‐supplier relationships? To address these questions, we developed a path model incorporating quality practices, design quality, conformance quality, external quality‐in‐use, product cost, time‐to‐market, customer satisfaction, business performance and buyer‐seller relationships. The model was tested with data collected from 200 suppliers in the electronics sector in the Republic of Ireland. Data analysis of the data indicated considerable support for the conceptual model.

The purpose of this paper is to enrich the conceptual vocabulary of organisational learning by discussing the relevance of the interdisciplinary work of Gregory Bateson, an original and challenging twentieth century thinker.

The paper debates a number of principles identified by Bateson, which reflect patterns that appear in stories (including, for example, Sufi teaching stories) as well as in practical experiences of organisational learning.

Bateson's ideas have the potential to overturn assumptions about organisational learning and to offer new perspectives on the subject. The belief is that Bateson's thinking implies, for example, that communication is multi‐layered and paradoxical; that learning is always political; that organisational learning is emergent and transient; and that stories can provide more effective encapsulations of the complexities of organisational learning than rational analyses.

The paper offers fresh views on the conceptualisation of organisational learning that may assist practitioners to “think outside the box”, together with some practical insights and good stories.

To empirically consider work and career as potential influences of suicide.

In this qualitative study we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 individuals who were survivors (i.e. family members or intimates) of individuals who had committed suicide. Data was analyzed using a grounded theory methodology.

This exploratory study used purposive self-determination as the theoretical framework for analyzing their life histories. Factors of purposive self-determination, including lack of purpose, feeling controlled, experiencing failure, and social exclusion all figured prominently but differentially according to life-stage. Distinct work and career themes for early-career, mid-career and late-career suicides emerged. Early-career suicides were attributed to educational or work-related contexts, leading to a sense of hopelessness. Mid-career suicides emphasized despair based in failure. Finally, an attempt to escape from challenges associated with transitioning roles in retirements emerged as a key theme in late-career suicides.

Although suicide has been studied extensively from medical, psychopathological, sociological, anthropological, philosophical and religious perspectives, there is a dearth of research considering why certain individuals choose to end their own lives as a result of work and career related reasons. This study sought to contribute to our understanding of this under-researched phenomenon. Additionally, while extant careers theory and research has considered positive notions of career such as career success or careers as a calling, this work presents an alternate lens, the consideration of career failure and careers as a sentence.

Drawing upon the social identity theory, the authors argue that professionals' career identities have a positive indirect effect on identification with on-demand organizations through career networking behavior. In addition, the strength of these beneficial effects was also bound by extraversion and collectivism.

The hypothesized moderated mediation model was tested by multisource and time-lagged data about 242 Chinese accountants engaging in on-demand work.

The results demonstrated that professionals with a career identity tend to engage in career networking behaviors and identify themselves with a client company. In addition, extraverted professionals were more likely to engage in career networking behaviors, and collectivist professionals were more likely to identify with their on-demand organizations.

This research provides important guidelines on how managers in on-demand organizations leverage gig workers' career identities to establish deep relationships with them.

The authors expanded the traditional framework of identification in the setting of nontraditional work arrangements by establishing a link between career identity and organizational identification for on-demand professionals.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between coworking spaces and productivity.

A research model was designed to carry out the analysis. Specifically, this model attempts to reveal the influence of social interactions and the coworking environment on productivity. Furthermore, three moderated variables were incorporated into the model: gender, age and level of education. A Web-based survey was conducted.

The findings confirm the positive influence of social interactions and coworking environment on productivity.

There are two limitations. First, it is based on the perception of coworkers. It would be interesting to add the perception of coworking space managers to provide more solid findings. The second limitation is that it has not suggested any additional potential factors which could affect productivity.

Implications of this study are grouped into two categories. First, from an academic perspective, it contributes to the development of knowledge about the increasing use of coworking spaces. Second, from a managerial perspective, this paper highlights how environmental factors and the facilities of a workplace can help to achieve better conditions for productivity, in particular in coworking spaces.

Furthermore, the use of social interactions in professional relationships can be understood as an alternative way to carry out new ways of doing business.

This paper contributes to the enrichment of knowledge-concerning coworking spaces developed a pioneering study.