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The notion of communities of practice (CoP) has received great attention in educational and organisational practice and research. Although the concept originally refers to collaborative practices that emerge naturally, educational and HRD practitioners are increasingly searching for ways to create these practices intentionally in order to stimulate learning and professional development in specific fields. This paper aims to gain insight into ways in which communities of practice can be deliberately organised.

The study concerns a multiple case study of the deliberate initiation of 15 communities of practice of small and medium‐sized companies in the tourist sector, located in seven European countries. The analysis focuses on how meaningful, shared and coordinative activity is organised in each of the 15 cases. A multiple case study allowed for comparison between the various cases in order to target fruitful conditions and actions in organisation processes.

In the initiation of a CoP it is important that before an outsider starts to organise and coordinate activities questions such as “How are we relevant to one another?” and “Who are we and where are we going?” are answered first, and by the group itself. These questions relate to the development of meaningful activity (domain) and of shared activity (community). Following this, any coordinative system, any practice, should be subordinated to the motives of the group.

Besides identifying various actions for human resource developers who aim to apply the concept of CoP in professional work, the study contributes to the scientific formulation of pedagogical notions around communities of practice.

This paper aims to discuss recent criticism related to partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Using a combination of literature reviews, empirical examples, and simulation evidence, this research demonstrates that critical accounts of PLS-SEM paint an overly negative picture of PLS-SEM’s capabilities.

Criticisms of PLS-SEM often generalize from boundary conditions with little practical relevance to the method’s general performance, and disregard the metrics and analyses (e.g., Type I error assessment) that are important when assessing the method’s efficacy.

We believe the alleged “fallacies” and “untold facts” have already been addressed in prior research and that the discussion should shift toward constructive avenues by exploring future research areas that are relevant to PLS-SEM applications.

All statistical methods, including PLS-SEM, have strengths and weaknesses. Researchers need to consider established guidelines and recent advancements when using the method, especially given the fast pace of developments in the field.

This research addresses criticisms of PLS-SEM and offers researchers, reviewers, and journal editors a more constructive view of its capabilities.

In management accounting research, the capabilities of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) have only partially been utilized. These yet unexploited capabilities of PLS-SEM are a useful tool in the often explorative state of research in management accounting. After reviewing eleven top-ranked management accounting journals through the end of 2013, 37 articles in which PLS-SEM is used are identified. These articles are analysed based on multiple relevant criteria to determine the progress in this research area, including the reasons for using PLS-SEM, the characteristics of the data and the models, and model evaluation and reporting. A special focus is placed on the degree of importance of these analysed criteria for the future development of management accounting research. To ensure continued theoretical development in management accounting, this article also offers recommendations to avoid common pitfalls and provides guidance for the advanced use of PLS-SEM in management accounting research.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is an important statistical technique in the toolbox of methods that researchers in marketing and other social sciences disciplines frequently use in their empirical analyses. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on several misconceptions that have emerged as a result of the proposed “new guidelines” for PLS-SEM. The authors discuss various aspects related to current debates on when or when not to use PLS-SEM, and which model evaluation metrics to apply. In addition, this paper summarizes several important methodological extensions of PLS-SEM researchers can use to improve the quality of their analyses, results and findings.

The paper merges literature from various disciplines, including marketing, strategic management, information systems, accounting and statistics, to present a state-of-the-art review of PLS-SEM. Based on these findings, the paper offers a point of orientation on how to consider and apply these latest developments when executing or assessing PLS-SEM-based research.

This paper offers guidance regarding situations that favor the use of PLS-SEM and discusses the need to consider certain model evaluation metrics. It also summarizes how to deal with endogeneity in PLS-SEM, and critically comments on the recent proposal to adjust PLS-SEM estimates to mimic common factor models that are the foundation of covariance-based SEM. Finally, this paper opposes characterizing common concepts and practices of PLS-SEM as “out-of-date” without providing well-substantiated alternatives and solutions.

The paper paves the way for future discussions and suggests a way forward to reach consensus regarding situations that favor PLS-SEM use and its application.

This paper offers guidance on how to consider the latest methodological developments when executing or assessing PLS-SEM-based research.

This paper complements recently proposed “new guidelines” with the aim of offering a counter perspective on some strong claims made in the latest literature on PLS-SEM. It also clarifies some misconceptions regarding the application of PLS-SEM.

The COVID-19 crisis has sped up digital transformation and technologies by several years. Customers have dramatically shifted to online channels, and businesses have quickly responded by offering additional canals for online shopping and payment. Customers have also been exhibiting greater preferences for contactless payments, and mobile banking has therefore become a norm in both developed and developing countries. This study aims to understand the antecedents of mobile banking actual usage in an early adoption stage setting (i.e. Morocco) through a comprehensive conceptual model combining the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, the DeLone and McLean IS success model and additional constructs extracted from extent literature. The moderating effects of age, gender and education are also examined and analyzed using multigroup analysis.

Based on data collected from 616 Moroccan users, the authors empirically tested the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

First, consumer M-banking actual usage has a significant effect on customer satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty; at the same time, attitudinal loyalty was significantly influenced by customer satisfaction. Second, while M-banking actual usage was significantly influenced by effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, habit, service quality, trust, attitude and perceived security, the results show no significant impact of system quality and information quality. Third, the relationship between M-banking actual usage and its antecedents was significantly moderated by age, gender and education.

The findings help bank practitioners to understand the importance of meeting customers’ needs and expectations as a prerequisite in enhancing actual usage, satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. More importantly, the authors emphasize the need for demographically oriented strategies to target different demographic segments of customers.

The study bridges a gap in M-banking literature by offering a thorough understanding of consumers’ mobile banking use during the pandemic. The findings provide evidence of the applicability of the conceptual model proposed in this research. Furthermore, the reflection of the moderating effects of gender, age and education emphasizes the mobile banking usage disparities among dissimilar demographic segments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how project managers, influence the assignment of project team members by directly assigning or specifying who they want or by indirectly using lateral influence strategies to secure the appropriate resources. This study is part of a wider study investigating the balance between vertical and horizontal leadership in projects in which nomination (or assignment) was identified as a key event contributing to balancing the leadership. It focuses specifically on the nomination or assignment event at the start of a project.

Based on the philosophy of critical realism, case studies were used to collect data through 70 semi-structured interviews in Australia, Scandinavia and South Africa. Interviews were conducted with senior managers, project managers and project team members. Two project team members who worked with the same project manager were interviewed to gather diverse views. The data were analyzed individually by researchers from each location using a coding method proposed by Miles et al. (2014). The researchers then jointly analyzed the findings to arrive at five common themes from that explained how team members were assigned in practice.

Despite the recognized need for project managers to form their own teams, this study found that project team members were often assigned by others. This was because project managers lacked authority to secure their resources. Therefore, they used lateral influence strategies to help with assigning project team members. The study identified five lateral influencing strategies adopted by project managers to assign team members: creating an image of competence; creating coalitions; taking a gamble; waiting for the right moment; and reasoning with facts. Two of these lateral influencing strategies were not identified in the previous literature on influencing strategies used in organizations.

The findings should not be viewed as representative of the respective continents where the cases were studied. However, this study contributes to the literature on project management, illuminating how project teams are assigned and by whom and, specifically, the role that influence plays during this event of the balanced leadership theory. It also identifies the types of lateral influence strategies used by project managers when assigning team members to their projects. It provides a pathway to explore the use of lateral influencing strategies by project managers beyond the assignment process.

This study will help project managers to become aware of influencing strategies that they can use in practice while assigning team members to their projects. It will also highlight the importance of assigning the right resources to projects with a view to achieving balanced leadership.

This research is of value to organizations using projects to successfully deliver their strategies by assigning suitable resources to their projects.

The introductory chapter includes how to design-in good practices in theory, data collection procedures, analysis, and interpretations to avoid these bad practices. Given that bad practices in research are ingrained in the career training of scholars in sub-disciplines of business/management (e.g., through reading articles exhibiting bad practices usually without discussions of the severe weaknesses in these studies and by research courses stressing the use of regression analysis and structural equation modeling), this editorial is likely to have little impact. However, scholars and executives supporting good practices should not lose hope. The relevant literature includes a few brilliant contributions that can serve as beacons for eliminating the current pervasive bad practices and for performing highly competent research.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a financial fraud practice, known as affinity fraud, relies on building trust with victims based on shared affiliations or characteristics such as age, race, religion, ethnicity or professional designations, for the purpose of exploiting the trust factor for financial advantage.

Sources of information consisted of scholarly articles and articles retrieved from the web.

Findings suggest that these fraud offenders rely on a myriad of persuasion techniques to overcome offender skepticism coupled with victims engaging in a psychological concept known as projection bias to evaluate the credibility of these offenders. These factors create a negative synergy that dilutes the perceived need for due diligence normally required prior to engaging in securities transactions. In addition, these offenders display a predatory quality, debunking the myth that fraud offenders exhibit a homogenous crime group behavioral profile.

Social institutions that include both for profit and not for profit should consider evaluating their interactions with those who share similar characteristics and affiliations that attempt to offer goods or services by considering some of the factors contained within this article that may dilute due diligence protocol.

This paper serves to alert and educate anti‐fraud professionals, law enforcement and policy makers of a predatory fraud practice that targets organizations exploiting the inherent trust that these organizations rely upon.