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Technological innovations are rapidly transforming service frontlines, resulting in increasingly complex service touchpoints. These touchpoints place greater demands on frontline employees (FLEs) to deliver a positive customer experience. Despite the considerable extant body of knowledge on FLE competencies, the literature on frameworks for managing the complexity of contemporary frontlines from the FLE’s perspective is sparse. This paper aims to fill this critical gap by developing a framework that enables FLEs to deliver positive moments of truth (MOTs) while ensuring the well-being of all actors involved.

This paper uses a conceptual approach rooted in the organizational mindfulness and individual mindfulness literature as the theoretical lens. This is complemented by a comprehensive review of the FLE skills literature supported by marketplace examples to illustrate the optimal use of the said skills.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework of mindfulness orientation which delineates how FLE competencies underpinned by a set of key skills can deliver positive MOTs and actor well-being.

The research is conceptual in nature and does not contain validation through empirical data.

This comprehensive skill set provides a clear roadmap for firms in both recruitment and developing training for their FLEs, thus contributing to practice.

Firstly, we present a conceptual framework of mindfulness, combining organizational mindfulness and individual mindfulness that will enable employees to help facilitate the creation of positive MOTs. Secondly, we develop a comprehensive set of employee skills that underpin the mindfulness orientation framework.

The primary objective of this research is to explore the impact of the repeated two-syllable communication strategy on the interaction effectiveness between AI and customers.

This study adopts an experimental research methodology to investigate the role of the repeated two-syllable communication strategy employed by AI customer service agents.

Study 1 shows that AI agents using the repeated two-syllable strategy enhance the interaction effectiveness between AI and customers. Study 2 identifies humanization perception as a key factor linking the strategy to better interaction effectiveness. Study 3 highlights how consumer materialism moderates this effect, while Study 4 examines how the type of agent (AI vs. human) influences the results.

This study extends the application of AI communication strategies in interactive marketing, specifically how AI agents enhance consumer interaction through repeated two-syllable communication. It pioneers the exploration of AI-human interaction, enriching the humanization theory by revealing how AI can evoke emotional responses. The study also integrates consumer materialism as a moderating factor, offering new theoretical and practical insights for brands to optimize AI-customer service interactions and improve engagement in real-world marketing contexts.

This study explores the effects of competitive intensity and innovation orientation on export outcomes, including export entrepreneurship (EE) and export performance (EP), and determines the direct and moderating impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) among exporting agricultural and food (agri-food) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Iran.

Using systematic random sampling, 296 firms participating in the international food and agricultural industries exhibition filled out a questionnaire. Smart PLS3 software was used to analyze the data.

The competitive intensity has positive effects on export entrepreneurship of Iranian agri-food SMEs. Additionally, innovation orientation, CSR and EE positively impact EP. However, the moderating impact of CSR on the relationship between innovation orientation and EP was not supported by data.

The current study enriches the existing knowledge in international business in the specific setting of exporting agri-food SMEs operating in a developing economy.

This systematic review aims to comprehensively explore the existing literature on the use of corporate communication within the realm of social media.

A total of 136 peer-reviewed journal articles are explored and analysed using both performance and bibliometric analysis.

This review identifies five main findings: (1) trends in corporate social media research that highlight the growth trajectory of research on social media use for corporate disclosure, (2) geographical coverage of studies indicating the concentration of research in certain regions, such as the USA, followed by China and the UK, with notable gaps in others, such as developing countries, (3) theoretical frameworks employed demonstrate that various theoretical frameworks are utilized, although a significant portion of the studies do not specify any theoretical underpinning, (4) social media platforms studied, confirming Twitter to be the most studied channel followed by Facebook and (5) thematic analysis of articles on disclosure type that categorized the articles using bibliometric analysis into five themes of disclosure: general disclosure, corporate social responsibility-related information, financial information, CEO announcements and strategic news communication. A subsequent cross-theme analysis classifies disclosure determinants and consequences of corporate social media usage.

Through a comprehensive and systematic analysis of existing research, this review offers novel insights into the current state of corporate communication on social media. It consolidates current knowledge, highlights under-explored areas in the existing literature and proposes new directions and potential avenues for future research.

This study expanded the model of technology acceptance and investigated how the relationship between usefulness, ease of use, efficiency, personalization, safety and security and behavioural intention differ on Gen Z and silver tourists toward smart hotel. This study further applies multiple group analysis to examine whether there are substantial differences among these two groups of respondents.

Using an online survey, this study was undertaken with Gen Z and silver tourists in mainland China who had stayed in smart hotel over the past 12 months. A total of 474 valid responses were collected. Structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis were employed to test the proposed relationships.

This study revealed that personalization did not affect the behavioural intention among Gen Z tourists, meanwhile, there is no positive relationship between usefulness, efficiency and behavioural intention on silver group. Additionally, the findings revealed that there are no substantial differences among Gen Z (digital natives) and silver customers (digital immigrants) regarding smart hotel behavioural intentions.

This study offers strategic guidance for hotel managers to design and reposition smart hotel based on different customer sectors. Further, important implications for smart devices manufacturers are also provided to improve the functioning of hotel service robots.

This is the first study to compare the drivers and outcomes of behavioural intentions among different age groups of tourists toward smart hotels.

Data analytics (DA) is an emerging topic in management science at large organizations; however, accountants in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are believed to be lagging far behind in the usage of DA. This study aims to provide a deep understanding of the actual DA activities undertaken by management accountants (MA) and to draw on SMEs’ characteristics to take advantage of DA applications.

This study used a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews with 31 accounting and finance practitioners at senior levels of SMEs, following the use of the MAXQDA 2022 application for data analysis.

Findings in this study suggest variance and trend analysis as the two most popular tasks of DA, and advanced tasks such as contingency analysis, financial modeling, sentiment analysis and regression analysis are unfully performed in SMEs. The outcomes revealed that DA is not anticipated to affect the responsibilities but to expand the role and scope of management accounting.

This study simultaneously builds a theoretical framework about the antecedents, in terms of the external and internal drives and the characteristics of SMEs’ owner-managers, that are most common in all types of SMEs that encourage MA to use a specific technology, data analysis in a more advanced way instead of searching for determinants that affect the adoption of technology in general, as previous studies have conducted.

Although there are studies on DA usage, little has approached the mutual interconnections between how DA is applied by MA in SMEs and what changes in management accounting responsibilities by DA affect. Therefore, the point of this study was to look into how SMEs use DA and what activities MA actually do with DA to discover what traits SMEs need to use DA applications effectively as DA applications become more advanced.