Hybrid working can help recruit and retain talent, upskill leaders and boost team working, suggests a case study from an international professional services firm

Purpose This paper sets out the three-year people strategy at the core of a traditional professional services firm’s ambitious plans to transform into a progressive, agile and fast-growing business. The lynchpin of its acquisitions-led and people-centred cultural transformation programme is Project Zander, a pioneering hybrid working experience in its Jersey office that can be adapted to different geographic locations as the business expands. Design/methodology/approach Individual-level information gathered from the firm. Findings Nesting a hybrid working model within a clearly articulated people strategy aligned with corporate values appears to be setting the business well on the way to achieving its ambitions. Key is the ability of leaders to plan ahead for the future, mapping out a three-year journey with important milestones along the way. Although it is still early days, the business is already seeing a positive impact on collaboration, team working, staff recruitment and retention, leadership development, empowerment and creativity, employee engagement, and rebuilding the confidence of young people, many of whom have been negatively impacted by COVID-19 lockdowns. Originality/value The strategy has an innovative hybrid working approach as its cornerstone

Impact of COVID-19 Vaccines on Tourism Demand and Culture

The low supply of vaccines for COVID-19 has disrupted tourism development in Asia. The question is if the vaccine may change cultural divergence into cultural convergence at the tourist destination. The purpose of this study is to examine the culture and price elasticity of hotel demand to find the cultural convergence. The study has conducted autoregressive distributed lag model to test whether the vaccine would change the price and income elasticities of hotel demand to find the cultural transformation from divergence to convergence through tourism. Findings indicate that the impact of the vaccine on transferring culture from divergence to convergence was confirmed. Tourists from the divergent cultures specified by less levels of Hofstede's cultural dimensions will visit the country destination with high levels of Hofstede's cultural dimensions after COVID vaccination. Japan and the US that possess divergent levels of power will visit Vietnam for power convergence. China, Korea, and Russia that possess divergent levels of indulgence will visit Vietnam for indulgence convergence.

Self-determination and “the Right to Specificity”. Concerning Hegel’s Theory of Modern Freedom

In this paper, it will be shown that Hegel’s philosophical thematisation of subjective freedom has given a fundamental contribution to the historical innovation of modernity, which regards not only human rights, but also norms and values. Besides, it played an important role concerning the cultural transformation, i.e., the process of the realization of the historical innovation oriented towards the ideals of modern freedom. To show this, the author will focus on some passages from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right of 1820, in which Hegel regarded subjective freedom as universally-normative and, at the same time, as socially and historically contextualized (situated, respectively). Hegel, namely, explicates modern freedom in its ideality and moral normativity, addressing its realization in particular forms of life. Marriage, for instance, as it will be shown towards the end of this contribution, exemplified as the right to particularity, is the normative basis of modern subjective freedom. Tensions and collisions will permanently challenge this type of freedom and also require permanent (and self-defeating) efforts invested in striving for a (too contextualized and situated) „reconciliation“ (in Hegel´s terms Versöhnung).

The Training Setting as a Social and Liminal Space for Professional Hybridization

This article addresses the liminality concept as a way to explore a particular group context, relating to a training setting intended as a liminal space, and to highlight its potential to trigger evolutionary personal and organizational identity trajectories. Dealing with a contemporary uncertain, volatile, and ambiguous organizational scenario, people are asked for consistent and quick professional hybridization processes. This article refers to a case study related to an action research process aimed at a cultural transformation and nurturing organizational learning inside an extra-hospital Rehabilitation Center, challenged by a strong organizational reconfiguration and the creation of new functions and roles, among which the one coordinator, responsible for the operational activity to be managed within the units of the organizational context. This article also highlights both the main features that characterize a training setting as a liminal space and identifies the possible plots of professional hybridization paths that a training group as a liminal space can trigger and develop.

State Image of Mongolia: Between National Identity and Globalization

The article studies the construction of the state image of Mongolia and its peculiarities. Mongolia is a country undergoing social and cultural transformation that includes reevaluation of image strategies. State image is an international statement based on highlighting one’s original characteristics that make a country attractive to investors and international partners. At the same time, it should reflect real cultural practices and allow for advancing national interests. The present study deploys the methodology of case study, SWOT analysis, thematic analysis of connotations that form the external and internal image of Mongolia. The purpose of this article is to investigate the strategies of image construction in today’s Mongolia. The article is aimed to give a semantic vision of the external image of Mongolia by identifying the most common words and expressions that are used in media to describe modern Mongolia. The second objective was to lay out the problematic aspects of creating an image of Mongolia as a promising and growing country despite the fact that now it goes through a challenging period of its history. The third objective is to investigate the ways Mongolia attempts to address these problems. For this purpose, the authors analyze government programs set to form and establish a modern image of Mongolia. These programs include a variety of documents, such as the National Program for the Promotion of Mongolia Abroad and others. Another line of research included the analysis of the work on the inclusion of Mongolian natural and cultural heritage on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The novelty of the research comes from a unique perspective on the construction of state image of Mongolia as an ethnic and cultural brand from the point of view of marketing strategies. The authors conclude that building brand and image of Mongolia is based on the civilizational approach. This approach to re-evaluating and re-creating Mongolia’s image leads to combining opposite characteristics. The country is presented as both ancient and modern, traditional and responsive to change. Such combination of controversial aspects makes allows for implementing archaic elements into the discourse of the catch-up modernization resulting in a positive state image. Mongolia’s experience in making a new image shows the potential of equating national and ethnocultural identity.

Crowley, the Orient, and the Occult

This chapter examines the life and work of the British magus Aleister Crowley, focusing on the place of Orientalism and the subtle body in the development of his magical system. After a short biographical section where the chapter traces his life to the age of thirty when his occult vocation began in earnest, the chapter shifts to Crowley’s interest in the Orient, analyzing his engagement with Kabbalah, Daoism, yoga, and Islamic mysticism. The chapter then zeroes in on Crowley’s presentation of the subtle body in his magnum opus before moving on to theoretical analysis of the basic philosophical tenets of Crowley’s system, interrogating his skepticism and inductive method in engaging with occult and Astral phenomena. The chapter ends with a brief discussion on the process of cultural transformation, following the subtle body as it moves from a term of translation to a creolized fusion (ala Blavatsky) where Oriental terminology forms a sort of veneer over a Neoplatonic concept, to a fully hybrid concept (as in Crowley) that is neither fully a Neoplatonic idea nor an Oriental import, but something in between.

Do educators’ responsibilities stop at the classroom door?

Schools are crucial sites in the politics of social and cultural transformation. However, we should not limit our work to the internal structures, processes, and content of schooling. The struggles in schools should be organically connected to community-based struggles outside of schools. Therefore, critically democratic action in education needs to transform not only schools, but also the communities and societies in which these schools are situated. Actions in and around schools are even more powerful and long lasting when they are closely connected to real people and real movements and mobilizations outside as well as inside the places where so many of us work.

Analysis of migration processes in russian education in the context of the ongoing social and cultural transformation development and testing of a model of distance education

The article explores labor migration processes in modern Russian school education. The relevance of this research is due to the current shortage of teachers in Russian schools, especially young specialists. The main method was qualitative content analysis of documents, statistical data, and available resources on this issue presented in the scientific articles on this issue. This paper shows that the transitional state of modern Russian society – social and cultural transformation – has a significant impact on the processes of professional migration. The article reveals the connection between the ongoing social and cultural transformation and the processes of labor migration of Russian teachers and graduates of pedagogical universities, which is a new perspective for considering this issue, since the problem of labor migration has not been examined from this angle.

Visualization and Virtualization of Art as New Dimension of Communicative Interaction and Social Management System

Introduction. “Visual turn” in art has determined the specifics of the civilized development of modern society. Information technology and virtual nature of the visual space development have influenced not only the language of communication but in general the entire system of social management. Purpose and methods. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the influence of modern visual art on our everyday life, opportunities for self-expression, communication, and social management. Methodological basis of the study is presented by historical, axiological, comparative, system and structural, formal and logical methods. Results. The article considers the modern reading of the visual image, its demand in modern culture, the reasons, and backgrounds of the “visual turn” in art, which has led to the diffusion of high and low in art, synthesis of creativity, and everyday life. The influence of communication virtualization, urbanization of the society and massification of culture on the formation of the individual's visual space and picture of the world are proved. Conclusions. Both positive and negative aspects of such social and cultural transformation in the process of contemporary art visualization are substantiated. The article proves that visualization of art through advertising, fashion, performance, industrial design is becoming the most important factor in social management and determination of consumers', social and cultural, ideological matrix of individual behavior. Under conditions of this hypertrophied visual component of everyday life, constructing and modeling of the newest methods of visual literacy and culture formation are justified.