title: Vicarious learning in SME internationalization: A systematic review and thematic synthesis

authors: Perera, Shanika Rangani

subjects: vicarious learning

abstract: Vicarious learning helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) acquire foreign market knowledge by observing and interpreting other firms’ actions and outcomes in international markets. We searched Scopus, ProQuest, and EBSCOhost (2000–2025) and retained 27 studies (2007–2025). The synthesis organizes prior studies into four analytically derived categories that summarize how vicarious learning is conceptualized and operationalized in SME internationalization research: (T1) peer performance benchmarking, (T2) imitation and leader-following, (T3) institutional mimetic pressures, and (T4) network-, cluster-, and advisor-enabled vicarious learning. Across themes, a subset of studies suggests that absorptive capacity may condition whether external experience is recognized, assimilated, and exploited, although direct tests remain uneven and in some cases the contingency is inferred rather than explicitly tested. We translate these insights into an organizing framework and a future agenda on boundary conditions, measurement, and multi-level designs, positioning the review as mechanism clarification that imposes conceptual order on a fragmented literature, rather than as field-level consolidation.

text: Vicarious learning in SME internationalization: A systematic review and thematic synthesis Vicarious learning helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) acquire foreign market knowledge by observing and interpreting other firms’ actions and outcomes in international markets. We searched Scopus, ProQuest, and EBSCOhost (2000–2025) and retained 27 studies (2007–2025). The synthesis organizes prior studies into four analytically derived categories that summarize how vicarious learning is conceptualized and operationalized in SME internationalization research: (T1) peer performance benchmarking, (T2) imitation and leader-following, (T3) institutional mimetic pressures, and (T4) network-, cluster-, and advisor-enabled vicarious learning. Across themes, a subset of studies suggests that absorptive capacity may condition whether external experience is recognized, assimilated, and exploited, although direct tests remain uneven and in some cases the contingency is inferred rather than explicitly tested. We translate these insights into an organizing framework and a future agenda on boundary conditions, measurement, and multi-level designs, positioning the review as mechanism clarification that imposes conceptual order on a fragmented literature, rather than as field-level consolidation.

year: 2026

title: News of domestic violence: Journalistic imperatives in television news reporting of domestic violence

authors: Schott, Gareth R.

subjects: Domestic Violence

abstract: In 2018, a nationwide study of Pakistan (with a population of 207.7 million) found that at least 28 percent of women have experienced physical, sexual and/or emotional violence in domestic settings. With a posited high number of unreported incidents, domestic violence in Pakistan is considered prevalent in all social spheres. News coverage of domestic violence plays a central role in communicating the nature and extent of this major social problem and influencing understanding of its causes and consequences. Yet, in Pakistan, changing attitudes toward domestic violence is compounded by the presentation of crime news stories throug entertainment orientated rather than ‘solution-driven’ journalism (Khan et al., 2016). This research set out to form a better understanding of Pakistani television news journalists’ knowledge and understanding of domestic violence to gain insight into the way news channel currently address this social problem. The paper reports on interviews conducted with Pakistani news journalists (n = 11). All journalists identified physical abuse as a form of domestic violence while only half included emotional abuse in its scope. The issue of sexual abuse within a marriage was considered contentious and complicated topic especially in terms of whether it should be given news coverage. While domestic violence was conceptualized as a problem resulting from and maintained by Pakistan’s patriarchal social structures, in news reporting it was largely represented as incident based and minimal resources are set aside for its coverage.

text: News of domestic violence: Journalistic imperatives in television news reporting of domestic violence In 2018, a nationwide study of Pakistan (with a population of 207.7 million) found that at least 28 percent of women have experienced physical, sexual and/or emotional violence in domestic settings. With a posited high number of unreported incidents, domestic violence in Pakistan is considered prevalent in all social spheres. News coverage of domestic violence plays a central role in communicating the nature and extent of this major social problem and influencing understanding of its causes and consequences. Yet, in Pakistan, changing attitudes toward domestic violence is compounded by the presentation of crime news stories throug entertainment orientated rather than ‘solution-driven’ journalism (Khan et al., 2016). This research set out to form a better understanding of Pakistani television news journalists’ knowledge and understanding of domestic violence to gain insight into the way news channel currently address this social problem. The paper reports on interviews conducted with Pakistani news journalists (n = 11). All journalists identified physical abuse as a form of domestic violence while only half included emotional abuse in its scope. The issue of sexual abuse within a marriage was considered contentious and complicated topic especially in terms of whether it should be given news coverage. While domestic violence was conceptualized as a problem resulting from and maintained by Pakistan’s patriarchal social structures, in news reporting it was largely represented as incident based and minimal resources are set aside for its coverage.

year: 2021-05

title: Te Puea Herangi: an ethno-biographical study

authors: King, Michael

abstract: Early explanations of Maori leadership (for example Buck 1950) tended to emphasize the principle of male primogeniture - the expectation that community leadership would in the normal course of affairs pass to the eldest sons of lines of first-born males. Later studies of Western-educated leaders and those with a non-traditional power base (see Butterworth 1969, Cody 1953, Condliffe 1971, and Henderson 1972) continued to emphasize male primacy. Against the tenor of these studies, however, is the fact that in the first half of the twentieth century the Maori King Movement was dominated and welded together by a woman who preached male primogeniture though her life seemed to contradict the principle; Te Puea Herangi was not of a senior descent line and neither compensated for its absence by a substantial degree of European education nor consolidated her position by marriage. Nor was she simply a forceful leader in Maori terms only: Professor J.G.A. Pocock (in The Maori and New Zealand Politics) called her “possibly the most influential woman in our political history”.

This study examines Te Puea's leadership role: how she came to assume it, how she exercised it, and its consequences. Analytical concepts like Max Weber's distinctions between charismatic, traditional and rational-legal authority, have been avoided. The danger of adopting them is that the themes and emphases of research material can be easily and unintentionally warped to fit the model, in the interests of tidiness and intelligibility. Instead, this study proceeds by way of a detailed and chronological examination of the major events of Te Puea's life, and an evaluation of actions and statements as they occur and in the context in which they occur. It is, in other words, a consideration of Te Puea's life in terms of her own concepts, and in relation to the Maori and wider public affairs of her day. Explanations for her behaviour are sought within the boundaries of her own life and culture rather than from the imposition of alien models.

text: Te Puea Herangi: an ethno-biographical study Early explanations of Maori leadership (for example Buck 1950) tended to emphasize the principle of male primogeniture - the expectation that community leadership would in the normal course of affairs pass to the eldest sons of lines of first-born males. Later studies of Western-educated leaders and those with a non-traditional power base (see Butterworth 1969, Cody 1953, Condliffe 1971, and Henderson 1972) continued to emphasize male primacy. Against the tenor of these studies, however, is the fact that in the first half of the twentieth century the Maori King Movement was dominated and welded together by a woman who preached male primogeniture though her life seemed to contradict the principle; Te Puea Herangi was not of a senior descent line and neither compensated for its absence by a substantial degree of European education nor consolidated her position by marriage. Nor was she simply a forceful leader in Maori terms only: Professor J.G.A. Pocock (in The Maori and New Zealand Politics) called her “possibly the most influential woman in our political history”.

This study examines Te Puea's leadership role: how she came to assume it, how she exercised it, and its consequences. Analytical concepts like Max Weber's distinctions between charismatic, traditional and rational-legal authority, have been avoided. The danger of adopting them is that the themes and emphases of research material can be easily and unintentionally warped to fit the model, in the interests of tidiness and intelligibility. Instead, this study proceeds by way of a detailed and chronological examination of the major events of Te Puea's life, and an evaluation of actions and statements as they occur and in the context in which they occur. It is, in other words, a consideration of Te Puea's life in terms of her own concepts, and in relation to the Maori and wider public affairs of her day. Explanations for her behaviour are sought within the boundaries of her own life and culture rather than from the imposition of alien models.

year: 1977