All submissions must include a structured abstract, following the format outlined

below.

These four sub-headings and their accompanying explanations must always be

included:

 Purpose
 Design/methodology/approach
 Findings
 Originality
Structured
abstract The following three sub-headings are optional and can be included, if applicable:

 Research limitations/implications
 Practical implications
 Social implications

You can find some useful tips in our write an article abstract how-to guide.

The maximum length of your abstract should be 250 words in total, including
keywords and article classification (see the sections below).
Headings must be concise, with a clear indication of the required hierarchy. 
Headings
The preferred format is for first level headings to be in bold, and subsequent sub-
headings to be in medium italics.

References All references in your manuscript must be formatted using one of the recognised
Harvard styles. You are welcome to use the Harvard style Emerald has adopted – we’ve
provided a detailed guide below. Want to use a different Harvard style? That’s fine, our
typesetters will make any necessary changes to your manuscript if it is accepted.
Please ensure you check all your citations for completeness, accuracy and consistency.

Emerald’s Harvard referencing style

References to other publications in your text should be written as follows:

 Single author: (Adams, 2006)

 Two authors: (Adams and Brown, 2006)

 Three or more authors: (Adams et al., 2006) Please note, ‘et al' should always
be written in italics.

A few other style points. These apply to both the main body of text and your final list
 of references.

 When referring to pages in a publication, use ‘p.(page number)’ for a single

page or ‘pp.(page numbers)’ to indicate a page range.

 Page numbers should always be written out in full, e.g. 175-179, not 175-9.

 Where a colon or dash appears in the title of an article or book chapter, the
letter that follows that colon or dash should always be lower case.

 When citing a work with multiple editors, use the abbreviation ‘Ed.s’.

At the end of your paper, please supply a reference list in alphabetical order using the
style guidelines below. Where a DOI is available, this should be included at the end of
the reference.

Surname, initials (year), title of book, publisher, place of publication.

For books
e.g. Harrow, R. (2005), No Place to Hide, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.

Surname, initials (year), "chapter title", editor's surname, initials (Ed.), title of book,
publisher, place of publication, page numbers.
For book
chapters e.g. Calabrese, F.A. (2005), "The early pathways: theory to practice – a continuum",
Stankosky, M. (Ed.), Creating the Discipline of Knowledge Management, Elsevier, New
York, NY, pp.15-20.

Surname, initials (year), "title of article", journal name, volume issue, page numbers.
For journals e.g. Capizzi, M.T. and Ferguson, R. (2005), "Loyalty trends for the twenty-first
century", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp.72-80.

Surname, initials (year of publication), "title of paper", in editor’s surname, initials

(Ed.), title of published proceeding which may include place and date(s) held, publisher,
For published  place of publication, page numbers.
conference e.g. Wilde, S. and Cox, C. (2008), “Principal factors contributing to the competitiveness
proceedings of tourism destinations at varying stages of development”, in Richardson, S., Fredline,
L., Patiar A., & Ternel, M. (Ed.s), CAUTHE 2008: Where the 'bloody hell' are we?, Griffith
University, Gold Coast, Qld, pp.115-118.

For unpublished  Surname, initials (year), "title of paper", paper presented at [name of conference],
conference [date of conference], [place of conference], available at: URL if freely available on the
proceedings internet (accessed date).

e.g. Aumueller, D. (2005), "Semantic authoring and retrieval within a wiki", paper
 presented at the European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), 29 May-1 June,
Heraklion, Crete, available
at: http://dbs.uni-leipzig.de/file/aumueller05wiksar.pdf (accessed 20 February 2007).

Surname, initials (year), "title of article", working paper [number if available],

institution or organization, place of organization, date.
For working
papers e.g. Moizer, P. (2003), "How published academic research can inform policy decisions:
the case of mandatory rotation of audit appointments", working paper, Leeds
University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, 28 March.

Title of encyclopaedia (year), "title of entry", volume, edition, title of encyclopaedia,

For publisher, place of publication, page numbers.
encyclopaedia
entries  e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926), "Psychology of culture contact", Vol. 1, 13th ed.,
(with no author Encyclopaedia Britannica, London and New York, NY, pp.765-771.
or editor)
(for authored entries, please refer to book chapter guidelines above)

For newspaper  Surname, initials (year), "article title", newspaper, date, page numbers.
articles
(authored) e.g. Smith, A. (2008), "Money for old rope", Daily News, 21 January, pp.1, 3-4.

For newspaper  Newspaper (year), "article title", date, page numbers.

articles (non-
authored) e.g. Daily News (2008), "Small change", 2 February, p.7.

Surname, initials (year), "title of document", unpublished manuscript, collection name,

For archival or inventory record, name of archive, location of archive.
other
unpublished e.g. Litman, S. (1902), "Mechanism & Technique of Commerce", unpublished
sources manuscript, Simon Litman Papers, Record series 9/5/29 Box 3, University of Illinois
Archives, Urbana-Champaign, IL.

For electronic If available online, the full URL should be supplied at the end of the reference, as well
sources as the date that the resource was accessed.

Surname, initials (year), “title of electronic source”, available at: persistent URL
(accessed date month year).

e.g. Weida, S. and Stolley, K. (2013), “Developing strong thesis statements”, available
at: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/588/1/ (accessed 20 June 2018)

Standalone URLs, i.e. those without an author or date, should be included either inside
parentheses within the main text, or preferably set as a note (Roman numeral within
 square brackets within text followed by the full URL address at the end of the paper).

Surname, initials (year), title of dataset, name of data repository, available at:

persistent URL, (accessed date month year).

For data e.g. Campbell, A. and Kahn, R.L. (2015), American National Election Study, 1948,
ICPSR07218-v4, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
(distributor), Ann Arbor, MI, available at: https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v4
(accessed 20 June 2018)

Double check your manuscript

Before submitting your work, it is your responsibility to check that the manuscript is complete,
grammatically correct, and without spelling or typographical errors. A few other important points:

 Give the journal aims and scope a final read. Is your manuscript definitely a good fit? If it isn’t,
the editor may decline it without peer review.

 Does your manuscript comply with our research and publishing ethics guidelines?

 Have you cleared any necessary publishing permissions?

 Have you followed all the formatting requirements laid out in these author guidelines?

 Does the manuscript contain any information that might help the reviewer identify you? This
could compromise the blind peer review process. A few tips:

o If you need to refer to your own work, use wording such as ‘previous research has
demonstrated’ not ‘our previous research has demonstrated’.

o If you need to refer to your own, currently unpublished work, don’t include this work in
the reference list.

o Any acknowledgments or author biographies should be uploaded as separate files.

o Carry out a final check to ensure that no author names appear anywhere in the
manuscript. This includes in figures or captions.

You will find a helpful submission checklist on the website Think.Check.Submit.