Search results

Organizations increasingly manage innovation projects jointly with suppliers to use external resources to fill internal competencies. However, little is known about the practices of how companies configure internal and external resources to enhance competitiveness. Drawing on resource orchestration theory, this study aims to propose a novel approach to explain organizational performance using purchasing orchestration (PO) as an antecedent. The paper then tests an empirical model to assess the impact of PO practices on innovation and financial performance.

Cross-sectional survey data from 247 supply chain managers are used to test hypotheses relating PO to performance. SPSS PROCESS is applied to test conditional direct and indirect effects.

The positive impact of PO practices on innovation and financial performance is confirmed. Results indicate an organization’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO) can strengthen the positive relationship between PO and financial performance. Structuring, bundling and leveraging external resources are introduced as new organizational capabilities.

This research is based on cross-sectional data, and unidimensional constructs are used.

This research guides managers on the innovation process in light of the growing importance of external resources. The manuscript highlights the role of strategic purchasing in establishing new resource capabilities as a competitive advantage.

This research provides new insights into the relationship between purchasing practices and organizational performance and helps better understand the implications of orchestrating supply chain resources. A novel construct, PO, is introduced as a theoretical basis for studying supply chain-enabled innovation.

This paper aims to investigate whether anthropomorphized (i.e. humanized) brands are judged less negatively for competence failures than for moral lapses and how these ethical judgments impact negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intentions of less-lonely and more-lonely consumers.

Two scenario-based experiments were conducted, involving a total of 1,375 US mechanical turk (Amazon consumer panel) participants.

Findings show that brand humanization has an impact on ethical judgments only for less-lonely consumers. More specifically, for less-lonely consumers, a humanizing strategy backfires when the failure is moral but helps the brand when the failure is competence-related. On the other hand, more-lonely consumers judge the situation less negatively overall, and this effect is not impacted by the anthropomorphization strategy. Process tests indicate that these judgments indirectly affect consumers’ intention to spread NWOM following negative events.

Future research could examine the specific process for lonely consumers (i.e. the role of empathy) and manipulate the size of the negative events (i.e. consumer perceptions of moderate vs extreme failures).

Brand managers need to consider their specific situations, as anthropomorphization can have both positive and negative effects depending on the consumers and the failure type (moral vs competence).

Extant research indicates that a humanizing strategy backfires when the market has negative information about the brand. This research introduces types of negative information, as well as consumers’ loneliness as moderators and contributes to the literature in branding, business ethics and word-of-mouth.

The paper aims to investigate the role of uncertainty avoidance (UA) as a moderator of Prospect Theory’s reflection effect (i.e. the simultaneous choice of a sure gain and a risky loss). We expect that higher-UA consumers, seeking certainty, will shun risk across both gains and losses such that their choices will be inconsistent with the reflection effect.

We report three studies in which participants choose between risk and certainty. We use the stimuli from the original Prospect Theory paper, measure UA using an individual-level scale and conduct controlled experimental (laboratory) studies.

We show that, compared to lower-UA consumers, higher-UA consumers demonstrate the reflection effect less frequently in a variety of settings (small/large stakes and within/between subjects comparisons). Mediation tests reveal that higher-UA consumers anchor on the sure loss and stay with their choice because they prefer the certainty of the sure (smaller) loss to the possibility of a possible (larger) loss (a dual-mediation mechanism).

The results have important implications for marketing practice. They show that quantifying uncertainty into a probability number is not enough to eliminate the uncertainty of the situation, and that UA is likely serve as a boundary condition to many of the traditional heuristics of judgment and decision-making.

This is the first paper to demonstrate that UA can moderate the reflection effect (using the stimuli in the original Prospect Theory paper). Therefore, it sets an agenda for future researchers who may want to use these findings to calibrate price/uncertainty tradeoffs within higher-UA segments.

This paper aims to explore the effect of employees’ state mindfulness, a short period of mindful presence, on the quality of the service they provide in a service encounter.

Three studies are conducted. A pilot study explores the relationship between state mindfulness and service encounter quality. Experiment 1 examines whether a 15-min mindfulness exercise results in an increase in service employees’ state mindfulness. Experiment 2 tests whether induced state mindfulness produces higher service quality and whether a reminding technique can prolong state mindfulness between service encounters.

The results demonstrate the following. First, that more mindful employees provide better service quality. Second, that a short, easily implemented, mindfulness exercise can reliably increase employees’ state mindfulness. Third, induced mindfulness has an impact on subsequent service quality in terms of reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness. These effects persist regardless of the service encounter structure (high vs low structure) or the degree of emotional labor involved (high vs low emotionally charged). Finally, the reminding technique developed as part of this research suggests that state mindfulness can be maintained between service encounters.

As simulated (programmed) customers are used, independent evaluators to assess service quality are used. Service providers in this study are college students; future field studies should consider a wider range of service providers. The research focuses on state mindfulness; exploration of trait mindfulness offers future research opportunities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to empirically examine the link between mindfulness and service quality. It shows that mindfulness can be induced, and through a reminding technique be maintained, and improve service quality across service interactions. This is a powerful finding for marketing managers, for it offers a new method to enhance service provision. Moreover, this research implies that the increase in service quality is likely to be accompanied by reduced job burnout: a double win for employees, employers and customers.

Wear greatly influences the machine lifetime, performance and reliability and its quantification is very important. This paper aims to propose a modified bearing area curve method by combining the theory of the bearing area curve, and the relocation technique to calculate wear accurately and efficiently.

H13 steel was chosen as the material of wear pair, and the wear experiments were carried out at 50 N, 60 r/min for 20 min. The surface was measured before and after wear experiments. The relocation was made by comparing the mean lines (planes) of the unworn and worn surface profiles. The calculated results using the proposed method were compared with that of the surface profile method for a two-dimensional surface to validate its accuracy. The method was then applied for a three-dimensional (3D) wear analysis.

The worn surface shows clearly displacement compared to the unworn surface and implies the importance of including relocation in the bearing area curve method. The results from the proposed method are 98 per cent close to that from the surface profile method, indicating that the method is accurate for wear evaluation.

As no feature point or relocation mark is needed to calculate the relocation value using the proposed method, the method can be applied to mild to severe wear. Also, as the deviation of different scans does not affect the relocation calculation, and no matching and stitching is required, this method can be easily applied to a wide wear area and 3D surface wear analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the mechanical and tribological properties of Si₃N₄ ceramics and to make the application of Si₃N₄ ceramics as tribological materials more extensive.

Si₃N₄-based composite ceramics (SN-2L) containing nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots (N-GQDs) were prepared by hot press sintering process through adding 2 Wt.% nanolignin as precursor to the Si₃N₄ matrix, and the dry friction and wear behaviors of Si₃N₄-based composite against TC4 disc were performed at the different loads by using pin-on-disc tester.

The friction coefficients and wear rates of SN-2L composite against TC4 were significantly lower than those of the single-phase Si₃N₄ against TC4 at the load range from 15 to 45 N. At higher load of 45 N, SN-2L/TC4 pair presented the lowest friction coefficient of 0.25, and the wear rates of the pins and discs were as low as 1.76 × 10⁻⁶ and 2.59 × 10⁻⁴mm³/N·m. The low friction and wear behavior could be attributed to the detachment of N-GQDs from the ceramic matrix to the worn surface at the load of 30 N or higher, and then an effective lubricating film containing N-GQDs, SiO₂, TiO₂ and Al₂SiO₅ formed in the worn surface. While, at the same test condition, the friction coefficient of the single-phase Si₃N₄ against TC4 was at a range from 0.45 to 0.58. The spalling and cracking morphology formed on the worn surface of single-phase Si3N4, and the wear mechanism was mainly dominated by adhesive and abrasive wear.

Overall, a high-performance green ceramic composite was prepared, and the composite had a good potential for application in engineering tribology fields (such as aerospace bearings).

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2024-0161/

The purpose of this paper is to examine product failures in the consumer technology products industry to explain why some firms experience more aesthetic-related failures than others.

The study uses a unique data set of failed high technology consumer products identified by expert product reviewers of 75 online magazines during 2000-2010. The variables are constructed using two coders as well as using an automated content analysis process based on the information provided in the online product reviews. The study tests a hypothesis using multilevel logistic regression techniques on a sample of 606 product reviews of 323 products associated with 171 firms.

The study demonstrates that older firms are much more susceptible than younger firms to suffer from aesthetic-related product failures when they pursue product innovations that are new for them. Likewise, older firms suffer fewer aesthetics-related product failures than younger firms when they exploit products that well known to them.

The study is highly novel in its research setting and empirical approach, and brings valuable insights for researchers and managers regarding challenges associated with aesthetic innovations for young and old firms.

This chapter estimates the average wage and land price for each area through regression analyses to control for heterogeneity of workers and land across areas. Based on these quality-adjusted averages of wage and land price, we calculate each area’s business (Q _B) and residential environment index (Q _H) following Gabriel and Rosenthal (2004) and list the top 20 and bottom 20 locations in terms of Q _B and Q _H values, respectively. The findings of this chapter can be summarized as follows. First, metropolitan areas are perceived overall as relatively better locations both for firms and for workers. However, the quality of business environment and the quality of life do not necessarily match across locations. Second, while the college-educated and the young are more likely to live in the locations with better quality of business and residential environment, the old tend to live disproportionately in the locations with inferior local amenities possibly due to financial constraints. Firms newly established, belonging to headquarters, or in business service industries locate more heavily in the locations with better quality of business environment, but not necessarily in the locations with greater quality of life. However, manufacturers seem to locate their plants more in the places with lower quality of business environment. Consequently, the degree to which local amenities vary across areas seems to be remarkable in Korea. Since compensating differentials are prone to be self-reinforcing, the policy efforts by the local or central government are important for future balanced growth.

In this paper, we provide a simple conceptual framework with empirical analysis to investigate the effect of product attributes and e-vendor characteristics that are potentially included in the online shopper’s information search on their online shopping behavior in China.

This paper examines consumers’ online shopping frequency for food/grocery using an ordered logit model and for fresh food (a subcategory of food/grocery) using a two-part model, considering product attributes, e-vendor characteristics, and consumer perceptions and characteristics.

The results show that product origin is an influencing factor in shopping for fresh food online, reflecting consumers’ growing interests in imported food or specialty food from other areas. Consumers are more likely to shop online for fresh food if they perceive online shopping as having a price advantage. But consumers who view price as a top factor are less likely to buy fresh food online frequently. Thus competitive prices might be a motive for online fresh food shopping, but consumers concerned about price do not necessarily shop frequently. Negative perceptions of product freshness reduce consumers’ likelihood and frequency of shopping for fresh food online. Concerns on food quality and e-vendors’ credibility prevent consumers from frequently shopping for fresh food online. Social and demographic characteristics also influence consumers’ decisions.

This paper provides a better understanding of consumer’s online grocery shopping preferences and sheds light on policy and regulation design and implementation in the e-commerce industry, which will ultimately protect and benefit consumers.