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Recent innovations in payment instruments have fundamentally changed the ways we pay. These innovations, such as mobile/SMS payments and online banking, contain features that are likely to influence how people choose to pay. The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that impact payers’ choice of payment instruments.

Through in-depth interviews using the repertory grid technique, the authors explored 15 payers’ perceptions of six payment instruments, including coins, banknotes, debit cards, credit cards, mobile payments, and online banking. The approach draws heavily on organizational systematics to better understand payers’ choice of payment instruments.

A four-category taxonomy of payments was developed. The authors refer to the taxonomy as the 4Ps: the purchase, the payer, the payment instrument, and the physical technology. The taxonomy comprises 16 payment characteristics consisting 76 payment features that influence payers’ instrument choice. One characteristic not known in prior research was identified – that is, “cancellation” – a characteristic more frequently associated with digital payment instruments than with cash or checks.

The findings suggest that payers view payment instruments in a much broader sense, including context, control, or cultural beliefs. Consequently, the authors suggest that researchers try to understand the essence of an innovation before assuming any economic rationalism in human or organizational behavior. The authors also urge researchers to understand the underlying meaning behind constructs of interest; as this study has shown that concepts like context and convenience have many different interpretations.

According to McKinsey (2014) there are over 12,000 startups in the payment arena. For them, the taxonomy can function as a template for the design of payment instruments, as well as understanding the various factors that influence payer choice of payment instruments.

The main contribution of this paper is the 4Ps taxonomy of payments. The taxonomy builds on and extends the work by Hirschman (1982). Since this work, and despite recent trends in payments, there has not been a comprehensive investigation that takes into account more recent innovations in payment instruments.

This study aims to examine the determinant factors of perceived online community usefulness from a motivational point of view. The researchers have combined the use of the expectancy value model and the information system continuous-use model to predict continuous knowledge-sharing behaviour between online community members. This research provides an additional view of current literature focusing on technology-related factors.

This research has adopted a quantitative research method, with data being collected through a Web survey technique. The members of online business communities were invited to participate in the survey. A total of 220 respondents participated in the online survey. These data were then analysed using structural equation modelling.

The research findings revealed that motivation-related factors have a moderate ability to predict members’ perception of online community usefulness. The research findings have shown that attainment and utility values are two significant motivational factors, which can positively influence perceived online community usefulness. By promoting these values, continuous knowledge-sharing intentions can be encouraged through perceived online community usefulness.

Having members from communities other than online business communities might deliver different results, given that they have different needs and values. Also, this study only received responses from active contributors within selected online business communities. The responses from non-active contributors were not included in this study.

This study provides practical suggestions on how the administrators and designers of an online community can promote positive values within their community platform, using motivation-related mechanisms.

The existing literature that examines the determinants of perceived online community usefulness have mainly directed attention towards technology-related factors. This study fills the gap by examining the determinant factors of this construct from a motivation perspective.

This paper proposes a new multi-criteria decision-making method, called the vital-immaterial-mediocre method (VIMM), to determine the weight of multiple conflicting and subjective criteria in a decision-making problem.

The novel method utilizes pairwise comparisons, vector-based procedures and a scoring approach to determine weights of criteria. The VIMM compares alternatives by the three crucial components, namely the vital, immaterial and mediocre criteria. The vital criterion has the largest effect on the final results, followed by the mediocre criterion and then the immaterial criterion, which is the least impactful on the prioritization of alternatives. VIMM is developed in two forms where the first scenario is designed to solve one-goal decision-making problems, while the second scenario embraces multiple goals.

To validate the method’s performance and applicability, VIMM is applied to a problem of sustainable supplier selection. Comparisons between VIMM, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and best-worst method (BWM) reveal that VIMM significantly requires fewer comparisons. Moreover, VIMM works well with both fractional and integer numbers in its comparison procedures.

As an implication for research, we have added the development of the VIMM under fuzzy and grey environments as the direction for optimization of the method.

As managerial implications, VIMM not only provides less complex process for the evaluation of the criteria in the managerial decision-making process, but it also generates consistent results, which make VIMM a reliable tool to apply to a large number of potential decision-making problems.

As a novel subjective weighting method, there exist five major values that VIMM brings over AHP and BWM methods: VIMM requires fewer comparisons compared with AHP and BWM; it is not sensitive to the number of criteria; as a goal-oriented method, it exclusively takes the decision-making goals into account; it keeps the validity and reliability of the Decision-Makers’ (DMs’) opinions and works well with integer and fractional numbers.

In Ghana, the adoption and application of green building concepts and technologies have not been fully explored. The study aimed to look into the key barriers and how they affect this.

Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select a total of 292 construction industry stakeholders in Ghana who provided information via a questionnaire survey used for the data collection. Exploratory factor analysis and Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) were used for computing the data analyses.

According to the study findings, the top five most critical barriers to the uptake of green building concepts and technologies (GBCs and Ts) in Ghana are: lack of government incentives/supports for implementing green building technologies (GBTs), lack of knowledge and awareness of GBTs and their benefits, lack of GBTs databases and information, Lack of green building (GB) expertise/skilled labour and Higher costs of GBTs. Principal Component Factor Analysis was used to further analyse the data, which allowed for the reduction of the 27 (27) factors to just four (4) underlying critical barriers: (1) government and knowledge-associated barriers, (2) technical barriers, (3) cost and finance barriers and (4) stakeholders’ attitude barriers. PLS-SEM techniques were used to analyse this collection of barriers, and the results showed that stakeholders’ attitude-associated barriers and cost and finance-related barriers have a significant negative influence on the uptake of GBCs and Ts in Ghana. This study’s findings have provided empirical evidence of the critical barriers to the uptake of GBCs and Ts from all stakeholders. Stakeholders desirous of implementing GBCs and Ts would work against the negative influences on the uptake of GBCs and TS.

Although there has been an abundance of research to examine the critical barriers to GB, however, the uniqueness of this study is nested in modelling the influence of the barriers on the adoption of GBCs and Ts using the PLS-SEM path modelling.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a framework which identifies the relationships between supply chain management (SCM) practices, operational performance and innovation performance of Malaysian manufacturing and service firms.

Data for the study were collected from a sample of 163 Malaysian manufacturing and service firms. The research model was tested using structural equation modeling.

The results show that SCM practices in both the upstream and downstream supply chain have a direct and significant impact on organizational and innovation performance of Malaysian firms. Innovation improvement caused by SCM also results in better organizational performance. The findings also reveal that manufacturing and service firms in Malaysia do not have a significant difference in their SCM practices.

The time sequence of the association between the variables could not be concluded given that cross‐sectional data were used. This study also focuse only on Malaysian firms.

This paper shows the importance of SCM practices and how they directly influence organizational and innovation performance. This result will be encouraging to firms in other developing countries. This paper has developed and validated a multi‐dimensional construct of SCM practices, and this tool can assist decision makers of Malaysian firms to evaluate the efficiency of their current SCM practices.

The paper presents one of the few studies which empirically validates the relationships between SCM practices and organizational and innovation performances. The study also focuses on a developing country which is in transition from being manufacturing focused to service focused.

Independence is the cornerstone of the auditing profession. Even so, it is often assumed that acquiescing to the audit client when a disagreement occurs is more beneficial to the auditor-client relationship than asserting one’s independence (e.g., see Wang & Tuttle, 2009). We look more closely at the issue in the context of auditor-client management disagreements as recalled by experienced auditors.

We find that for most disagreements in which the auditor did not make any concession at all, the auditor-client relationship was either unaffected or strengthened. We find that a client’s use of pressure tactics did not appear to influence whether or not the auditor made a concession, but that a client’s use of pressure tactics, was associated with damage to the auditor-client relationship. The importance of the issue causing a disagreement was positively associated with the likelihood of the auditor staying with his/her initial position.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The emergence of consumerism has led to regulatory measures being integrated into business practices, but the influence of consumers in developing countries remains limited, resulting in businesses being less responsive. The digital retail landscape is undergoing a transformative revolution, driven by Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI), wearables, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and blockchain technology. This development focuses on convenience, personalisation, and emotional connections. Companies are adapting to modern consumer behaviour through various strategies, including online shopping, mobile commerce, data analytics, technology integration, user reviews, and contactless payments. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this seismic shift in the retail industry, and online retail is expected to continue to grow post-pandemic, driven by these technologies. AI enhances the customer experience, wearables provide interactive engagement, VR offers immersive shopping, AR merges online and physical shopping, and blockchain ensures secure transactions in the emerging metaverse. As retail converges with the metaverse, the potential for borderless and personalised shopping experiences is enormous. Advances in VR technology could lead to interconnected virtual spaces that seamlessly connect physical and digital retail, providing immersive and personalised shopping experiences. However, challenges such as cost, learning curves, digital security, legal ambiguity, data privacy, financial risk, and ethical considerations need to be addressed through vigilant and informed consumer engagement in this evolving digital landscape.

Extant literature on business-to-business (B2B) has largely ignored studying multi-homing through a psychological lens. This paper aims to outline the results of three constituent studies, which were designed to reveal potential differences in multi-homers’ versus single-homers’ loyalty behaviors in a B2B and supply chain management (SCM) setting; identify factors that differentiate single-homers and multi-homers in these settings; and examine the relevance and effect of perceived risk on multi-homing behaviors.

In Studies 1 and 2, the authors used a questionnaire-based survey to capture the perceptions of 503 and 458 SCM experts, respectively. They then deployed AMOS v.21 to perform structural equation modeling. In Study 3, the authors used a mixed-methods approach to interview 18 SCM experts and then applied these insights to a survey with 242 SCM experts.

Study 1 reveals that multi-homers’ loyalty toward their preferred SP has a weaker effect on willingness to pay premium prices and share-of-wallet than single-homers’ loyalty. Study 2 establishes that several attitudinal factors distinguish multi-homers from single-homers in a loyalty framework. Study 3 concludes that perceived risk dimensions promote multi-homing intention, which in turn promotes multi-homing behavior.

Through empirical investigation, the present research succeeds in establishing that multi-homing is a concern for SPs, deciphering the attitudinal factors that distinguish multi-homers and single-homers in a loyalty framework, and confirming the influence of perceived risk dimensions on multi-homing. Thus, the study has several theoretical and practical implications for B2B services in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impacts of time segment modeling approach for berth allocation and quay crane (QC) assignment on container terminal operations efficiency.

The authors model the small time segment modeling approach, based on minutes, which can be a minute, 15 min, etc. Moreover, the authors divided the problem into three sub-problems and proposed a novel three-level genetic algorithm (3LGA) with QC shifting heuristics to deal with the problem. The objective function here is to minimize the total service time by using different time segments for comparison and analysis.

First, the study shows that by reducing the time segment, the complexity of the problem increases dramatically. Traditional meta-heuristic, such as genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, etc., becomes not very promising. Second, the proposed 3LGA with QC shifting heuristics outperforms the traditional ones. In addition, by using a smaller time segment, the idling time of berth and QC can be reduced significantly. This greatly benefits the container terminal operations efficiency, and customer service level.

Nowadays, transshipment becomes the main business to many container terminals, especially in Southeast Asia (e.g. Hong Kong and Singapore). In these terminals, vessel arrivals are usually very frequent with small handling volume and very short staying time, e.g. 1.5 h. Therefore, a traditional hourly based modeling approach may cause significant berth and QC idling, and consequently cannot meet their practical needs. In this connection, a small time segment modeling approach is requested by industrial practitioners.

In the existing literature, berth allocation and QC assignment are usually in an hourly based approach. However, such modeling induces much idling time and consequently causes low utilization and poor service quality level. Therefore, a novel small time segment modeling approach is proposed with a novel optimization algorithm.