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This research aims to apply the contingency approach to explore the effectiveness of the improvisational behavior of salespeople on their sales performance by considering the moderating role of functional customer orientation.

Survey data were obtained from a sample of 227 salespeople in Bangkok, Thailand. The data analysis was implemented by partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The overall results indicate that the association between improvisational behavior and sales performance is significantly contingent on the level of functional customer orientation that salespeople exhibit. For salespeople with high functional customer orientation, improvisational behavior clearly shows a positive association with sales performance. In contrast, for salespeople with low functional customer orientation, improvisational behavior appears to have a negative association with sales performance.

This research broadens the knowledge in the literature by showing that improvisational behavior of salespeople needs to be combined with functional customer orientation to yield a benefit to their sales performance.

This study aims to examine the contribution of cultural intelligence (CQ) to the level of adaptive selling behavior and customer-oriented selling behavior of salespeople in a cross-cultural selling context.

This study collected data from a total of 210 Thai salespeople who had been assigned to work at trade shows in Japan (n = 110) and in Vietnam (n = 100).

The findings show that salespeople with higher CQ tend to demonstrate a higher degree of adaptive selling behavior and customer-oriented selling behavior in both countries. The moderating effect analysis shows that the positive relationship between CQ and adaptive selling behavior is significantly higher for Thai salespeople in Japanese trade shows than in Vietnamese trade shows.

This study uses cross-sectional data collection; therefore, the results have been interpreted as associations, but not causations.

The study suggests that CQ development programs could be considered as part of the training that organizations provide to salespeople to develop cross-cultural competencies to deal effectively with foreign customers.

This study provides additional evidence concerning the benefits of CQ in an occupational area that has not been previously explored. More importantly, the result regarding the positive linkage between CQ and adaptive selling behavior was significantly stronger in the country characterized by higher cultural differences. This also contributed to CQ research by showing that differences in a cultural context might also influence the benefits of CQ in relation to the outcome variables.

This study aims to analyze the impact of the bottom-line mentality (BLM) of sales managers on the emotional exhaustion of salespeople, and also examines its subsequent impact on the affective organizational commitment of salespeople. This research also analyzes whether the effect of the BLM of sales managers on the emotional exhaustion of salespeople could be lessened when the sales managers exhibit political skill.

This research used self-administered paper questionnaires to collect multisource survey data from 245 salespeople and their sales managers working at 50 export firms in Thailand. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used as the method for statistical data analysis.

This research obtains evidence to support the impact that the perceived BLM of sales managers has on the emotional exhaustion of salespeople, which in turn lowers the affective organizational commitment of salespeople. Moreover, the evidence also supported the moderating effect of sales managers’ political skill which lessens the impact of perceived BLM on the emotional exhaustion of salespeople.

While the focus on the bottom line is crucial for firms, management must be sensitive toward the psychological impacts it might potentially have on employees in the long run. To achieve sustainable development, the management should not prioritize financial objectives over the well-being of its employees, as this could potentially undermine employees’ commitment to the organization and ultimately affect overall productivity.

This study helps scholars gain more understanding about the role of the political skill of the manager that could interact with their BLM to minimize its negative impact on employees’ emotional exhaustion.

This paper aims to examine the effect of the cultural intelligence (CQ) of salespeople, who engage in cross-cultural selling, on the quality of cross-cultural sales presentations (CSSP) they demonstrate. Based on the self-efficacy theory, this research proposes that the effect of CQ on the quality of CSSP is mediated by sales self-efficacy (SSEF). Moreover, this research explores whether the effect of CQ on SSEF and the quality of CSSP can be moderated by the level of challenge orientation (CHO) that salespeople exhibit.

Survey data were collected from 282 salespeople who work at international tradeshows in Japan, India and Vietnam. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

The results support the significant effect of sales-efficacy that partially mediates the association between CQ and CSSP. Moreover, the analysis of the moderating effect of CHO significantly shows that the positive association between CQ and CSSP is stronger for salespeople who possess low levels of CHO than those who possess high levels of CHO.

From the theoretical perspective, this research contributes to CQ literature by using the self-efficacy theory as a framework to provide a theoretical explanation as to why CQ could allow salespeople to perform better in sales communication with foreign customers. Moreover, this research broadens the knowledge of previous CQ research by showing that CQ might be particularly more important for individuals who lack CHO attitude toward the tasks they perform.

Collaborative filtering based recommender systems (CF–RS) are widely used to recommend products based on consumers' preference similarity. Recommendations by CF–RS merely provide suggestions as “people who bought this also bought this” while, consumers are unaware about the source of these recommendations. By amalgamating CF–RS with consumers' social network information, e-commerce sites can offer recommendation from social networks of consumers. These social network embedded systems are known as social recommender systems (SRS). The extant literature has researched on the algorithms and implementation of these systems; however, SRS have not been understood from consumers' psychological perspective. This study aims to qualitatively explore consumers' motives to accept SRS in e-commerce websites.

This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews of frequent online shoppers. SRS are currently not very widespread in the Indian e-commerce space; hence, a vignette was shown to respondents before they responded to the questions. Inductive qualitative content analysis method was used to analyse these interviews.

Three main themes (social-gratification, self-gratification and information-gratification) emerged from the analysis. Out of these, social-gratification acts as an enabler, while self-gratification along with some elements of information-gratification act as inhibitors towards acceptance of social recommendations. Based on these gratifications, we present a conceptual model on consumer's acceptance of social recommendations.

This study is an initial attempt to qualitatively understand consumers' attitudes and acceptance of social recommendations on e-commerce websites, which in itself is a fairly new phenomenon.

The aim of this study is to empirically examine firm-specific factors that influence the financing decisions of companies listed on BSE-500 index. Firm-specific variables such as profitability, company size, growth potential, liquidity, non-debt tax shields, age and tangibility were evaluated in this study.

This empirical research is performed using longitudinal data of 366 companies listed on the BSE 500 index during 2006–2020. Pooled ordinary least square method is employed to classify primary determinants of capital structure.

The results show that profitability, liquidity and non-debt tax shield are negatively associated whereas, company size, growth potential, age and tangibility are positively associated with the capital structure. The authors’ observations are aligned with either the trade-off hypothesis or the principle of the pecking order.

This study helps to better understand how firm-specific factors play a vital part in deciding the capital structure of businesses and makes a significant contribution to the literature. Thus, the present study examines the drivers of the capital structure among sample Indian companies, which allow firm managers and regulators to recognise relevant variables that optimise performance. This study is limited to Indian companies and only firm-specific variables were considered.

The current research focuses on the impact of firm-specific variables upon the financing decisions of Indian companies. In the background of developed countries, numerous studies in this field have been carried out. In the Indian context, however, there are not many researches in this area. However, the existing studies use one or two ordinary least square (OLS) models, resulting in a lack of thorough research and robust results. To address this gap in the analysis, the current study used four models and used a 15-year time frame, as well as a bigger sample size, which was not used in earlier investigations.

This study aims to examine the variables that impact the adoption of human resource (HR) analytics in Industry 5.0 and in the volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. The paper examines the elements that either promote or hinder the use of HR analytics.

This study used a mixed-methods approach. Initially, while conducting a qualitative study of 15 companies, 30 respondents became willing to participate in the interviews and share their experiences. Subsequently, a quantitative study was performed by a random selection of 26 organizations to get pertinent responses. The researchers conducted a random survey of 259 workers from these firms.

The research revealed that strong leadership support is crucial in building trust and minimizing employee resistance to using a data-driven strategy in HR analytics, particularly in a VUCA environment. Training programmes and support systems within a VUCA environment may help workers overcome skill gaps and alleviate fear of job security in the midst of transition.

The present study used a cross-sectional approach, so the ability to identify cause-and-effect linkages between elements and the use of HR analytics will be limited. In addition, researchers might use a longitudinal study design to monitor and analyse changes that occur over time.

First, it goes beyond a simple examination of HR analytics usage. It occupies a distinct and exceptional position in relation to the VUCA world, as well as the increasing challenges of Industry 5.0. This study also identifies the significance of employee’s personal characteristics while implementing HR analytics. This also leads to fascinating congruity between the results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the interactive effects of message framing, perceived threat and efficacy appeals on attitudes/intentions toward consumer healthcare communications, particularly, cataract surgery.

This paper develops two conceptual models dealing with threat, efficacy and framing and tests them with data collected from two field experiments.

The results reveal that high efficacy messages in combination with high threat or loss-framed messages have a significant positive influence on consumer attitudes and intentions in the consumer healthcare arena.

The findings have managerial value and public policy implications for healthcare officials in developing effective communications material. Specifically, this paper recommends that high threat, high efficacy and loss-framed efficacy messages be used.

This research extends previous work by demonstrating the effectiveness of threat appeals and framing on consumer attitudes and intentions to undergo cataract surgery. It also demonstrates the use of communication models in the healthcare domain.

Predicting the final status of an ongoing process or a subsequent activity in a process is an important aspect of process management. Semi-structured business processes cannot be predicted by precise and mathematical methods. Therefore, artificial intelligence is one of the successful methods. This study aims to propose a method that is a combination of deep learning methods, in particular, the recurrent neural network and Markov chain.

The proposed method applies the BestFirst algorithm for the search section and the Cfssubseteval algorithm for the feature comparison section. This study focuses on the prediction systems of social insurance and tries to present a method that is less costly in providing real-world results based on the past history of an event.

The proposed method is simulated with real data obtained from Iranian Social Security Organization, and the results demonstrate that using the proposed method increases the memory utilization slightly more than the Markov method; however, the CPU usage time has dramatically decreased in comparison with the Markov method and the recurrent neural network and has, therefore, significantly increased the accuracy and efficiency.

This research tries to provide an approach capable of producing the findings closer to the real world with fewer time and processing overheads, given the previous records of an event and the prediction systems of social insurance.