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The paper aims to present a three‐step approach that enables companies to define and quantify what customers value, systematically deploy their resources to deliver greater value than the competition, and capture a greater share of the value delivered to customers.

Each of the three the three steps in the value creation cycle is examined, and the tools and approaches that leading companies use to maximize shareholder wealth are outlined.

A customer‐value based approach to management can help companies instill a fact‐based decision‐making process in the enterprise. This promotes faster growth through differentiated customer investment. It ensures that the highest return initiatives are prioritized. Enterprises using this disciplined three‐step approach will be well positioned to better understand value potential, creating value, delivering value, and managing their market position to maximize the value they capture.

Mastering the value cycle enables enterprises to win in both the customer markets and the financial markets. In short, it leads them to long‐term profitable growth.

Virtual reality (VR) technologies have expanded their application domains towards education with pedagogical benefits including fully immersive learning environment and in-depth user engagement through scenario-based virtual simulations. Motion sickness (MS), however, has become one of the long-standing key challenges of the VR utilisation, even in gaming industries. Thus, this paper aims to present a preliminary study on understanding the VR MS, referred as cybersickness, in the teaching and learning (T&L) context at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

A VR-based virtual classroom content was developed and tested for 60 undergraduate students having equal access to the same VR equipment. A two-step data collection, comprising qualitative and quantitative measures, was conducted for the participants. The aspects of how gender influences the cybersickness severity and how academic background affects the learning experience were investigated and analysed using analysis of variance F-test statistical approach.

The results demonstrated approximately 47% of the participants had experienced cybersickness, where 64% of them were females. With confidence level of 95% (a = 5%), the obtained p-value and F-statistical value for the respective gender and study discipline categories against the cybersickness symptoms confirmed the significance level between the two compared variables. Moreover, it is worth highlighting that the virtual movement speed, perspective angle and visual properties of the virtual environment were selected as the top three factors that caused the cybersickness.

The study is hoped to provide valuable pointers to current and future VR developers in minimising the cybersickness symptoms that would enable an effective T&L environment in higher education.

As people age they tend to do more local journeys, shown by a lower mean trip length, from around 50 years onward. One reason for this is increased difficulty with mobility as people age; around one-third of those aged over 70 have mobility difficulties. Physiological changes in later life that have consequences for travel include deterioration of hearing and seeing, decreased skeletal muscles and reduced mobility of joints. Another reason for the decrease seen in many western countries is retirement from work, with many fewer trips made for commuting purposes. However, there are increases in shopping, personal business and leisure trips when commuting is reduced. That said, older people would still like to make more discretionary journeys in later life, especially to visit family and friends more often. A review of literature suggests how important mobility is for wellbeing through social interaction and being involved in activities outside the home.

Library and Information Services within the Organisation It is quite possible for some managers to be unaware of the extent or even the existence of a library or information service within their organisation. This has become evident more than once at the beginning of both MBA and management development programmes where participants from the same organisation have been discussing access to information with the tutor. Manager “A” might know about the company library, being an occasional or frequent user; Manager “B” knows that there is a library but knows nothing of its services or its collection; Manager “C” is surprised to hear that there is a library. Arguably, managers within certain functions, notably marketing, are more likely than others to seek out and use information services within the organisation as they need more information concerning the “external environment”. Nonetheless during these discussions managers from all functions have expressed an interest in the available information services when they are told of their existence. At the end of the sessions, when they have been introduced to the management literature, there is often a determination not only to use the organisation's own library but to take an active part in selecting and requesting information sources.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in mobile apps is growing rapidly, with features such as image recognition, personalized notifications and prescriptive analytics becoming more common. One such app is the Equalizer AI-powered mobile app, which uses AI to process water invoices, advise customers on fair prices and consumption and allow for online payment and data submission. This study aims to develop a technology adoption model for AI-powered mobile apps in the water sector by extending the value-based adoption model (VAM) to include customer trust.

Primary data was collected from 385 smartphone-using water customers. A stratified sampling approach ensured a representative sample of Palestinian water customers in the West Bank region. The study used a validated tool to measure perceived customer value, trust and adoption intention. It also used structural equation modeling to develop a causal diagram using the AMOS software.

The results confirmed a positive relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived innovation and perceived value and a negative relationship between perceived technical difficulty and perceived value. Contrary to VAM theory, the study showed a positive relationship between perceived fees and perceived value, indicating that users view premium fees as a cue of quality, accuracy, innovation and trustworthiness.

The high adoption intention of these apps holds significant implications for both the government and the water sector. This is because it results in the accumulation of substantial data, which can be used by government authorities and water providers to monitor and sustain the sector effectively.

This research extends existing technology adoption models by integrating customer trust and applying them to the water sector in a developing country. It offers new insights into public service innovations, addressing the unique cultural and sectoral challenges in this context.

Extreme natural hazard events in the Caribbean continue to result in major adverse consequences. Studies of disaster experiences have identified operational deficiencies that limited the effectiveness of disaster management policies in live emergencies. This paper reports on a study of the implementation characteristics of specific public disaster risk reduction and response measures in two Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada, which may impact the success of these measures. The purpose of this paper is to examine these characteristics and their potential impacts.

The authors collected data on specific aspects of disaster risk management (DRM) policy implementation from policy documents and interviews with public DRM agencies. A sample of business entities also provided data on their interactions with public risk management measures. The data focussed on operational aspects of implementation to identify likely impacts on hazard event outcomes.

The study identifies implementation deficiencies that may hamper achievement of risk reduction objectives and limit the effectiveness of emergency response.

The findings may be instructive for other Caribbean SIDS which share similar economic and social characteristics, natural hazard exposures and potential catastrophic outcomes.

The findings suggest tactical areas of focus to enhance the operationalisation of policy.

Improved operational effectiveness will support the efforts of Caribbean SIDS to reduce the scale of adverse outcomes on people and property.

The findings of this study broaden the scope of Caribbean disaster studies to provide an insight into operational weaknesses that may be recognised and addressed prior to hazard events.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a resource-based framework to explain the relationship between high-performance work system (HPWS) and organizational performance (OP) and the moderating role of performance measures.

The paper takes a meta-analysis approach, and tests hypotheses against data of 47,741 firms and establishments in 192 studies published by June 2016.

The paper finds that HPWS has a greater positive effect on operational than financial performance. Moreover, HPWS influences operational performance more strongly in developing than advanced countries and at the firm level than the establishment level, but such variations are not evident in the effect of HPWS on financial performance.

The paper suggests that managers should treat human resource management (HRM) practices as a system, and develop HPWS for operational gains which in turn lead to financial gains. Managers need to take different approaches to develop HPWS for high performance depending on the country of origin and the level of organization.

Based on studies of individual HRM practices, previous meta-analytical studies suggested that the HPWS-OP relationship is invariant across performance measures. Taking HRM practices as integral components of HPWS, this paper extends the resource-based theory to demonstrate that performance measures interact with country of origin and level of analysis to moderate the HPWS-OP relationship.