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Successful supply chain management requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into the key supply chain process. The advantages far outweigh the effort involved in accessing the final product; a seamless supply chain that operates fluidly and benefits the entire chain. In this paper, the merit of supply chain and B2B is discussed, and the impacts on each other identified. With the groundwork built, the concept of B2B marketplaces as the participating units in a supply chain process in order to enhance the business process is employed. Virtual enterprises can use this extended form of supply chain as its building‐blocks.

In recent years, the World Wide Web (WWW) has become incredibly popular in homes and offices alike. Consumers need to search for relevant information to help solve purchasing problems on various Web sites. Although there is no question that great numbers of WWW users will continue using search engines for information retrieval, consumers still hesitate before making a final decision, often because only rough and limited information about the products is made available. Consequently, consumers need the help of data mining in order to help them make informed decisions. Herein we propose a new approach to integrating a search engine with data mining in an effort to help support customer‐oriented information search action. This approach also illustrates how to reduce the consumer’s information search perplexity.

Existing shape‐based fuzzy clustering algorithms are all designed to explicitly segment regular geometrically shaped objects in an image, with the consequence that this restricts their capability to separate arbitrarily shaped objects. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new detection and separation of generic‐shaped object algorithm.

With the aim of separating arbitrary‐shaped objects in an image, this paper presents a new detection and separation of generic‐shaped objects (FKG) algorithm that analytically integrates arbitrary shape information into a fuzzy clustering framework, by introducing a shape constraint that preserves the original object shape during iterative scaling.

Both qualitative and numerical empirical results analysis corroborate the improved object segmentation performance achieved by the FKG strategy upon different image types and disparately shaped objects.

The proposed FKG algorithm can be highly used in applications where object segmentation is necessary. Likewise, this algorithm can be applied in Moving Picture Experts Group‐4 for real object segmentation that is already applied in synthetic object segmentation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze households’ acquisition of healthy food away from home (FAFH) from restaurants. Specifically, determinants of households’ decision to purchase healthy FAFH, the share of households’ FAFH expenditures allocated to healthy FAFH and the share of households’ FAFH calories obtained from healthy items are identified.

Using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey, the UK Food Standards Agency’s Nutrient Profiling Model is used to classify the healthfulness of households’ FAFH purchases. A double-hurdle model is estimated to identify determinants of households’ decision to purchase healthy FAFH and the share of their FAFH expenditures and calories allocated to healthy items.

Households’ acquisition of healthy FAFH varies with income, food assistance, FAFH purchase frequency, dieting, restaurant type, household composition, region and season. There is little difference in the impact of these factors on healthy FAFH expenditure shares vs calorie shares, suggesting that healthy FAFH expenditures proxy the contribution of healthy FAFH to a households’ diet.

Results suggest that increased availability of healthy FAFH may need to be supplemented by targeted advertising and promotions, revisions to nutrition education programs, improved nutrition information transparency and value pricing in order to improve the dietary quality of households’ FAFH acquisitions.

This study is the first to analyze household acquisition of healthy FAFH.

Extant literature has looked at the effect of alliance capability and organizational culture on alliance portfolio performance, but the relationship between the two has not been explored. The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that an alliance supportive culture is not only fostered by a firm’s alliance capabilities, but that it mediates the relationship between capabilities and performance.

Survey responses from 190 alliance managers, collected using a two-stage process, were analyzed to investigate the interrelationship of firm-level alliance capability, alliance supportive culture and portfolio performance.

Alliance supportive culture was found to mediate the relationship between alliance capability and alliance portfolio performance. This finding suggests that in order to effectively manage a firm’s portfolio of alliances, the benefits of alliance capability must be transferred broadly into the organization’s cultural orientation toward alliances.

Further research may extend this analysis to explore the effect of subcomponents of alliance capability and alliance culture to better understand fine-grained influences on alliance performance. The findings of this study also may be extended to inform how supportive culture orientation affects partner selection, negotiation and time to performance.

Managers should utilize culture-building actions as a way of extending the value of their firms’ alliance capabilities in order to improve their effectiveness across the portfolio.

Extant studies have considered the discrete effects of capability and cultural orientation on alliance portfolio success, but the mediation effect has not previously been investigated. The findings also identify a boundary condition for the benefit of alliance capabilities on portfolio performance.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which organizational culture affects alliance performance. The literature has begun to focus on intra-firm antecedents of alliance success, but so far has mainly focused on structural aspects like the presence of an alliance department. This paper proposes that interrelated processes of sense-making in alliances and sense-making about alliances shape organizational culture to make it more supportive of alliances.

A survey was developed to operationalize an alliance supportive culture construct. Results from 179 alliance managers were analyzed to investigate the inter-relationship of alliance experience, alliance supportive culture and alliance performance.

Alliance supportive culture was found to fully mediate the relationship between alliance experience and performance. This finding suggests that experience with alliances leads to better alliance performance when this experience is translated into the organizational culture.

Further research may explore how alliance culture interacts with structural elements of alliance management as identified in the alliance capability literature. The interaction between alliance culture and alliance capability is as yet unexplored. In addition, research may take place to explore which elements determine sense-making about alliances.

Managers should not only focus on tools and processes to improve their alliance success. They should also augment the sense-making process about alliances and remove cultural impediments to working with alliances.

Many studies have found a relationship between alliance experience and success. This paper shows this is not a direct relationship, but that it operates via cultural change based on sense-making about alliance experience. This mediation effect has not been established before.

Anchored in a social control theory framework, this study aims to investigate the mediating effect of defensive silence in the relationship between employees' perception of supervisor ostracism and their creative performance, as well as the buffering role of proactivity in this process.

The hypotheses were tested using three-wave survey data collected from employees in North American organizations.

The authors found that an important reason for supervisor ostracism adversely affecting employee creativity is their observance of defensive silence. This mechanism, in turn, is less prominent among employees who show agency and change-oriented behavior (i.e. proactivity).

For practitioners, this study identifies defensive silence as a key mechanism through which supervisor ostracism hinders employee creativity. Further, this process is less likely to escalate when their proactivity makes them less vulnerable to experience such social exclusion.

This study establishes a more complete understanding of the connection between supervisor ostracism and employee creativity, with particular attention to mediating mechanism of defensive silence and the moderating role of proactivity in this relationship.