Maria Raciti

First-year, first-time (FYFT) students enter university with expectations shaped by institutional recruitment communications, social media, and broader media narratives. During transition, lived experiences may diverge from these expectations, creating expectation-experience mismatch. While student expectations and satisfaction are well researched, less is known about how students respond to expectation-experience mismatch and how these responses influence satisfaction. Drawing on cognitive dissonance and coping response literature, this study examines FYFT students in regional Australian universities. Data were collected through a national survey of 405 students and analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings show that expectations were associated with both positive and negative emotional response outcomes, and that these outcomes influenced satisfaction. Positive emotional response outcomes had a stronger relationship with satisfaction than negative emotional response outcomes. The study reframes expectation-experience mismatch as a common feature of transition and highlights the value of student-driven strategies that strengthen constructive action and student agency during the first year.

Purpose
There is a wealth of literature about factors that support the success of doctoral candidates, yet the support that doctoral candidates receive from more-than-human, spiritual elements is rarely addressed. Emerging evidence suggests that spiritual, ancestral and religious practices and beliefs can provide support to doctoral candidates. Research is now shedding light upon the role of spirituality in doctoral education, particularly its supportive influence for women candidates. This paper aims to investigate the complex role spirituality played in the doctoral education journeys of women candidates.

Design/methodology/approach
Using feminist and postcolonial/decolonial theories, this multi-sited case study interviewed 47 South African, Kenyan and Australian women of colour doctoral candidates to explore the entangled experiences of gender, race and class in doctoral education.

Findings
This study traces the complex ways in which spirituality was experienced by these women of colour during their doctoral education journey. While some participants drew strength from their spiritual practices, others foregrounded the demands of religious and cultural rituals and their movement from organised religion towards a form of feminist spirituality.

Research limitations/implications
This research has significant implications for doctoral education, particularly by demonstrating that spirituality operates not as a private belief but as a collective and epistemic practice that underpins resilience, identity formation and ethical research engagement in doctoral journeys.

Originality/value
This study offers a tri-country, nuanced and multidimensional analysis of how more-than-human elements shape doctoral education. Focusing on spirituality, this study challenges doctoral education approaches that are only framed by secular rationality and calls for greater recognition of spiritual dimensions as sources of support.

Media representations of Indigenous business shape public perceptions, investor confidence and consumer demand, influencing how Indigenous enterprises are valued and understood. This Indigenous-led study systematically reviews grey literature on Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses published between 2006 and 2024, analysing 1256 records from Australian and international outlets. Using an Indigenist research approach and applying PRISMA protocols, it examines how different geopolitical and cultural contexts construct Australian Indigenous economic participation. Findings show that Australian media attention fluctuates around policy milestones, especially the Indigenous Procurement Policy. Australian outlets often apply a dual framing logic, combining deficit-oriented scrutiny of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations with supportive portrayals of private enterprise and government-led initiatives. International coverage, led by India and the United States, has expanded steadily in line with diplomatic, policy, and trade interests. These outlets more often frame Australian Indigenous business as evidence of progressive national policy. Although Indigenous Australian voices appear more frequently over time, their narrative authority has declined, and deficit framings remain. The study shows that media shape not only how Australian Indigenous business is described but also how it is publicly understood. Strengthening media and policy practices that centre Australian Indigenous voices is essential for future economic narratives.

This chapter provides a “state-of-play” of Indigenous education in Australia. Over the past half century or so, the process of, and advocacy for, decolonization of Indigenous education has gathered pace, culminating with recent developments in Indigenizing the curriculum at both tertiary and school-level education systems. The challenges and opportunities faced in the delivery of national curriculum demands and managing the complexities of the private/public interface of Australian education for Indigenous education are explored. This chapter will draw on a range of literature and research, including the findings from Indigenous-led Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (previously The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education) funded research projects. The coauthors have drawn on the findings from two projects led by Professor Bronwyn Fredericks: one on the success factors for Indigenous student university completion (Fredericks B, Barney K, Bunda T, Hausia K, Martin A, Elston J, Bernardino B, Griffiths D, Building the evidence to improve completion rates for Indigenous students, 2022) and a project on links between enabling/pathway programs and Indigenous student completion (Fredericks et al. 2025). It will reflect on changes in Indigenous student success rates in the Australian tertiary sector and ask what has changed since the Australian Government’s Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People: Final Report (Behrendt L, Larkin S, Griew R, Kelly P, Review of higher education access and outcomes for aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: final report, 2012). We will conclude by suggesting what universities can do to lead stronger university pathway programs and post-enrollment mechanisms to support Indigenous student success and degree completion. Thousands of Indigenous peoples have pursued university studies through a range of pathways since Indigenous Australians first enrolled in undergraduate programs in Australian universities in the 1960s. University completion rates for Indigenous Australian students remain significantly lower than for non-Indigenous students.

THE DESIGN FLAW AT THE HEART OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Maria Raciti, Janine Gertz and Sam Raciti

There is a design flaw at the heart of social change. In our editorial, we name it, explain it and show what can be done about it.

The flaw

Most social marketing programs are typically funded for one to three years. Meaningful behaviour change usually takes longer. People need time to notice a problem, try something different and keep doing it. Programs need time to understand participants, work with partners and learn from results.

When funding horizons are shorter than change horizons, three predictable distortions follow.

• Output capture. Highly visible deliverables such as workshops run, people reached and resources distributed become funder-encouraged proxies or signals for behaviour change.
• Outcome drift. Program goals quietly shift toward what can be funded and measured within the contract period.
• Performative evaluation. Measures of success begin to drift towards that needed to secure the next round of funding.

Each of these follows logically from the incentives built into short-term social change funding. The system with an increasing focus on communicating impact rewards visible activity over durable change, and we adapt accordingly.

Projectification: complex change, sliced thin

There is a name for the bigger pattern too. Projectification means turning long-term social change into a string of short projects, each with its own deadline, milestones and reporting cycle. It makes the work easier to manage on paper, but harder to sustain in practice. Staff contracts end just as relationships mature. Audience insight leaves with departing teams. Communities are asked to start again with a new project name and a fresh set of promises.

For social marketing, this matters because participant trust, insight and partnership are part of how successful change happens. When funding stops and starts, those critical mechanisms are weakened.

Elections move the goalposts

Government funding adds a second layer of volatility. When governments change, policy language and priorities change with them. A program can remain vital to the people it serves yet no longer fit the new funding framework. Organisations then spend scarce time reframing their work for the next round. This dynamic plays out in every country where social programs depend on public funds.

What better looks like

Better funding would be designed around change horizons, not just budget and election cycles. That means longer commitments where the problem demands them, staged learning milestones instead of premature outcome claims. It also means funding the infrastructure of authentic impact, such as relationships, local capability building and evaluation that helps programs improve while they are still running.

In such instances, accountability matches how change actually occurs. Sharper measurement and better theories of change matter, but they cannot compensate for funding structures that keep pulling programs back to the start.

Feels familiar? Read more

If this feels familiar, the editorial gives language to a problem many people in social marketing, policy and community work already recognise. It synthesises learnings from collaborative governance, resource dependence, distributive politics and nonprofit resilience scholarship and practice.

The editorial is open access: Raciti, M., Gertz, J. and Raciti, S. (2026), "Navigating short-term funding and government election cycles to achieve sustainable, transformative social impact", Journal of Social Impact in Business Research, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 73-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIBR-03-2026-0004

Indigenous peoples’ worldviews permeate the businesses they run, providing them with a unique competitive advantage to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) for success. Indigenous worldviews encompass understandings of complex, dynamic relationships. Such understandings position Indigenous businesses to better optimize economic sovereignty, well-being, and prosperity than mainstream businesses. AI-mediated marketing systems shape how businesses are recognized, ranked, and integrated into digital market streams. Indigenous worldviews understand the world as a complex constellation of relationships encompassing human and more-than-human kin that form an indivisible, perpetually fluxing relational ecosystem. As such, Indigenous worldviews provide Indigenous businesses with innate “relational fluency” with sophisticated understandings for engaging with AI as non-human kin within marketing systems. Anchored in the sister concepts of Indigenous survivance (an ongoing, self-determined Indigenous presence) and thrivance (flourishing grounded in Indigenous lifeways), this chapter presents the Indigenous Business Algorithmic Futures (IBAF) conceptual framework and a “blakprint” guiding its operationalization. The IBAF describes how Indigenous relational fluency interacts with algorithmic infrastructures through three intertwined dimensions. First, algorithmic recognition captures how AI systems detect and interpret Indigenous business identities; second, algorithmic mediation highlights how AI systems govern provenance and credibility signals; and third, algorithmic sovereignty concerns the governance frameworks for Indigenous custodianship of Indigenous data, cultural and intellectual property. Overall, Indigenous businesses are uniquely advantaged by their relational fluency, which positions them for success in marketing ecosystems increasingly characterized by non-human intelligence.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to introduce a special issue that surfaces the under-documented structural flaw at the heart of social impact work, exposing how short-term funding horizons and government election cycles influence the achievement of sustainable, transformative social impact.

Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual synthesis is offered, integrating insights from collaborative governance, resource dependence theory, distributive politics, nonprofit resilience and projectification scholarship. Inspired by an Australian Indigenous community-controlled organisation’s experiences, this special issue foregrounds the conditions that hinder durable social impact.

Findings
Short-term funding and government election cycles create structural distortions, including output capture, outcome drift, performative evaluation, relational erosion, workforce churn and the projectification of complex social change into siloed, piecemeal activities. These dynamics erode the conditions necessary for sustainable, transformative social change. This editorial synthesises the literature and locates the special issue contributions. This study also presents an Indigenous Knowledge System-informed special issue design that is practitioner-driven and Indigenous-led with a whole-circle practice-research-practice feedback loop that exemplifies how social impact learnings can be mobilised.

Practical implications
Social change scholars and practitioners will find an evidence base to advocate for structural reforms. Many readers may also find this editorial affirming, as it makes visible the shared lived experiences of funding and election cycle volatility, calling out the associated hidden labour and disrupted social impact trajectories.

Originality/value
This special issue shows how short-term funding and election cycles operate as structural headwinds that shape social impact programs capacity to achieve sustainable transformation. This study also models and encourages social impact whole-circle practice-research-practice feedback loops.

This paper assembles key Indigenous concepts and culturally adapts them into resources for use by mainstream services to support all customers experiencing vulnerability. Using Bartlet et al.’s (2012) Two-Eyed Seeing approach, eight influential Indigenous concepts were chosen for their capacity to extend existing service thinking beyond Western assumptions, being: cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), radical hope (Lear, 2006), survivance (Vizenor, 1999), thrivance (Baumann, 2023), relationality (Moreton-Robinson, 2017), storying (Phillips & Bunda, 2018), Dadirri (Ungunmerr-Baumann, 2022) and Indigenous self-determination (Rademaker & Rowse, 2020). Drawing on the author’s lived experience as an Indigenous marketing scholar, eight principles, a micro-meso-macro framework, and a reflective questioning tool were developed to assist service marketers. As Indigenous knowledges are inherently strengths-based and holistic, these resources apply across all forms of customer vulnerability and service ecologies. A positionality-informed protocol guides appropriate use across Indigenous and non-Indigenous service contexts. These Indigenous-informed resources provide the opportunity to enrich service ecologies.

Social marketing has carefully built an extensive, credible evidence base for influencing behaviour in ways that benefit individuals, communities and the broader public good. As the discipline has matured, so too has its ambition, extending from a heavy focus on downstream individual behaviour change towards systems-level thinking and structural reform. However, one dimension of the discipline’s maturity remains underdeveloped. Although the need to centre Indigenous peoples’ knowledges, perspectives and experiences in social marketing is widely recognised, social marketing scholarship has not kept pace.

Recently, there has been growing interest among the global marketing research community to create space for Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. This article introduces EveryWhen, positioning it as both an Australian Indigenous knowledge system that offers a nonlinear perception of time and a methodology with wide-ranging applications in marketing research. Time is culturally constructed, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’, EveryWhen represents time as the infinite present—unmeasured, indivisible, and elastic, where the past, present, and future co-exist. Through a case study with Australian Indigenous doctoral student consumers, this article demonstrates how the multisensory EveryWhen methodology utilises Australian Indigenous storytelling/yarning, three-dimensional earth-drawn artefact creation, and an adaptation of Bishop and Tynan’s (2025) Kin and Country five-perspective analytical lens to capture nonlinear consumer temporalities. Conducted by and with Indigenous Australians and adhering to Indigenous research design principles, the case study also models best practice in Indigenous research. The EveryWhen findings revealed layered, dynamic consumer journeys, showing how new marketing research insights emerge when temporality is foregrounded. EveryWhen is portable across a range of contexts and applicable to all consumers, representing a pathway to decolonisation and Indigenising marketing research. For marketing researchers, the value of EveryWhen lies not only in introducing nonlinear temporalities but also in extending multisensory methodologies to broaden the ways consumer journeys are accessed, captured, and represented in marketing research.