Search results

Although microblogs have become an important information source, the credibility of their postings is still a critical concern due to the open and unregulated nature. To understand the antecedents of microblog information credibility, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the dual-role of cognitive heuristics (i.e. the additivity and bias roles) and the effect of gender differences.

This study collected data via an online field survey of active microblog users, and a total of 204 valid responses was received.

This study demonstrates the dual-role of source credibility and vividness, the additivity role of microblog platform credibility, and the bias role of social endorsement. Furthermore, this study also found out gender difference that the additivity role of cognitive heuristics was stronger for men while bias role was stronger for women.

This research enriches the microblog literature by examining the cognitive heuristic determinants as key predictors of microblog information credibility, and contributes to the information credibility literature by identifying and analyzing the dual-role effect of cognitive heuristics and corresponding gender differences.

This study can help organizations better manage their reputation, especially during the reputation crises, and also serves as a reminder to microblog platform operators of the importance of their microblog platform credibility.

This study can help organizations better manage their reputation, especially during the reputation crises, and serves as a reminder to the microblog platform operators of the importance of their microblog platform credibility.

This study investigates the dual-role effect of cognitive heuristics (i.e. the additivity role and bias role) and corresponding gender differences that are less touched on before, and thus provides a more nuanced understanding of the more complex effects of cognitive heuristics.

The proliferation and advance of web‐based technologies create expanded opportunities for retailers to gain a better understanding of their customers. However, the success of these web‐based discussion boards depends solely on whether customers are willing to share their knowledge and experience with other customers in these discussion boards. Thus, this study aims at identifying the factors that drive knowledge sharing among customers in web‐based discussion boards.

An exploratory study with 104 respondents was conducted to identify and categorize the key factors of customer knowledge sharing in web‐based discussion boards.

The results indicate that the enjoyment of helping others is the most frequently cited reason for customer knowledge sharing in web‐based discussion boards. On the other hand, the lack of knowledge self‐efficacy is the mostly cited reason explaining why customers do not want to share knowledge with others.

The exploratory analysis suggests that the underlying reasons that motivate and inhibit customers to share are very different. There is a need to integrate multiple theoretical perspectives from across the social and technical domains if this phenomenon is to be better understood.

Building upon the findings of this study, some generic guidelines for retailers and web designers for promoting customer sharing in web‐based discussion boards are outlined.

This research is one of the first studies to use the socio‐technical perspective to investigate customer knowledge sharing phenomena in web‐based discussion boards.

In the competitive e-marketplace today, sellers are using an increasing number of signals to entice customers to make online purchases. However, how differential these signals are in terms of their capacity to improve sales performance has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing on signaling theory and grounded in the context of China’s largest e-marketplace, Taobao, this study investigated the different effects of five commonly used signals on the sales performance of e-marketplace sellers.

The authors find that warranty has the highest effect on sales performance, followed by overall rating, mean detailed seller rating, percent of positives, and web site quality.

First, this study builds on signaling theory and contributes to the e-marketplace literature by providing new insights into how specific signals differentially affect sales performance in the e-marketplace (with evidence from a large-scale empirical analysis). Second, the study extends the applicability of signaling theory to the e-marketplace domain by incorporating distinctive features of the e-marketplace into the original signaling theory. Finally, the findings lend practical support to e-marketplace sellers’ investment decisions on signals and provide guidelines for deployment of such signals.

The aim of this study is to analyze differences in the overall perceived value of a service purchased online, and the consequences for international consumer behavior, taking consumers' uncertainty avoidance as a moderating variable.

A questionnaire was administered to 300 international consumers (150 British and 150 Spanish) who had purchased a service via the internet. SEM was chosen to analyze the effect of uncertainty avoidance on the formation of overall perceived value.

The results reveal that in the formation of overall perceived value – which embraces both the online purchase and also enjoyment of the service – uncertainty avoidance has a moderating effect.

In this study just two cultures were to analyze the moderating effect of uncertainty avoidance on an overall perceived value model.

The paper helps in understanding the role played by uncertainty avoidance in interactions with web‐based businesses.

This paper represents an advance in the study of overall perceived value. It explores how overall perceived value is formed when the entire purchasing process is taken into account, and the variations that occur in this process depending on whether it relates to Spanish or British consumers.

Rapid prototyping (RP) processes produce parts layer by layer directly from 3D CAD models. Different kinds of rapid prototyping machine (RPM) have been developed with different mechanisms or materials. In this paper, a novel and economic way to build the RP by means of injection nozzles with ultra violet (UV) resins is proposed. The in‐house made RPM is constructed with two nozzles. The acrylic series is for body material and the PU series is for the supporting material. There are obvious boundaries since material properties are different. Therefore, supports can be easily removed from the main body after formation. The different diameter of nozzles can be chosen in the system, and the nozzles are also disposable. Besides, an interface system generating the direct slicing from 3D CAD models and nozzle paths for all layers is developed through PowerSOLUTION (Delcam International, Birmingham, UK) macro commands.

This study aims to investigate how information technology and knowledge management capabilities (ITCs and KMCs) impact organizational innovation (OI) through organizational agility (OA) (in terms of adaptive and entrepreneurial agilities; AA and EA).

Data are collected from IT and bank managers working in Indian banking sector through a matched-pair field survey. The analysis is performed using AMOS-25, a covariance-based structural equation modeling approach.

The findings are twofold. First, ITC and KMC are essential to realizing augmented OA (in terms of AA and EA). However, AA (fostering incremental innovation) contributes more than EA (fostering radical innovation) to attain OI. Second, although KMC is not directly impacting OI, its indirect effect via AA is obtained. It indicates that in Indian banking firms, KMC is still in the infancy level and not fully entrenched in corporate strategies; hence, may not necessarily enhance OI.

Although extant literature focuses on the impact of ITC and KMC (studied in separate research) on agility and performance, it pays very scant attention to the ITC–KMC–OA–OI linkages. There is a lack of research regarding the joint effects of ITC and KMC on OA and OI, specifically, there exists no research highlighting the indirect effect of OA on the ITC–KMC–OI relationships. The two pivotal concepts “the necessity of KM practices fully ingrained in the organizational innovative culture” and “critical focus on incremental innovation more than radical innovation practices,” substantiate the novelty of this research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to measure business sustainability in food service operations. The main objectives are to understand the concepts of business sustainability and, after constructing a framework based on a literature review, to assess the relation between the proposed framework and the empirical case study in a fast food retailer chain.

In order to examine the applicability of the proposed framework, focus group interview and face-to-face interviews were conducted. Additionally, some other secondary data such as official websites or company reports were also used to support the interview results.

Finding of the research result has shown most of the factors of business sustainability employed to measure sustainability food service operations are supported.

This study contributes to the literature by showing that environmental and social sustainability are significantly recognized in the corporation. More importantly, through the data analysis, a new factor of social sustainability, namely, community contribution has been found. The contribution of this paper is certainly applicable to other food service operations who wish to achieve a good degree of business sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between adaptive behaviour and innovative behaviour of individuals according to Kirton adaptation-innovation (KAI) model and determine how these differences impact entrepreneurial potential dimensions. Research sample consisted of student population from three countries: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (EU candidate countries) and Belgium (EU country). Research results will be valuable for the development of entrepreneurship in EU candidate countries. Data were collected from a sample of 1,008 university students from these three countries. KAI inventory, questionnaire on entrepreneurial traits (QET) and the scale of entrepreneurial potential (SEP) were used to obtain data. The canonical discriminant analysis determined differences and structure of differences between the adaptive and innovative persons, described by KAI model and their scores on the dimensions of the entrepreneurial traits model, as well as on entrepreneurial potential model.

In this study, the first research question concentrates on the existence of differences among students from Bosnia, Serbia and Belgium with regard to the dominant style of problem-solving according to KAI model to determine whether students from EU countries and non-EU countries differ in regard to problem-solving style. Second research question is the existence of differences in the development of entrepreneurial potential by EQT and SEP among student adaptors and student innovators according to KAI model to investigate to what extent the dominant style of solving problem contributes to differences in the development of entrepreneurial potential among students.

The research has confirmed the existence of significant differences between the adaptors and innovators described by the KAI model in terms of developed characteristics of entrepreneurial potential in the student population. Results of the research prove that young innovators possess to a greater extent developed key characteristics important for entrepreneurship, as well as intellectual and organizational skills, motivational factors and social capacity, self-confidence and constitutional factors. This research also revealed key differences among students with regard to the country of origin.

The practical implications of the research are reflected in the creation of the initial guidelines and structural support for the promotion of entrepreneurial potential in young people, where it can be concluded that it is particularly important to encourage innovation and creative approach to problem-solving, but also awareness of young individuals and development of their knowledge of entrepreneurship.

The main objective of this research was the examination of differences between students who belong to the category of adaptors and students innovators according to the KAI model (Kirton, 1976, 1998, 2003), with regard to the researched dimensions of entrepreneurial potential, to explicitly as possible identify differences in personal characteristics of young people who are predisposed for entrepreneurship and those who are not. Young innovators and adaptors significantly differ according to the researched dimensions of the EQT and SEP models of entrepreneurial potential and young innovators possess more developed entrepreneurial potential than adaptors.

This chapter offers a case study of the distinctive political activism in Taiwanese metal by analysing the intertextuality of Just Not Meant to Be (還君明珠) (2015) by Crescent Lament (恆月三途). From the perspective of a cultural insider, the author examine the socio-cultural dynamics underlying this activism and explain how Taiwanese metal attempts to tackle the troubled past of Taiwan. The author brings attention to Just Not Meant to Be's commentary about the activism it takes part in, and reflect on problematics inherent to political activism in Taiwanese metal. Finally, the author explicates the problematics in the context of metal subculture in general. Pivotal throughout this chapter are the questions: Why does Taiwanese metal replicate forms of domination it seeks to counter? What can metal subculture in general learn from Taiwanese metal and its political activism?

This research examines the relationships between the components of supply chain integration (SCI) (i.e. internal integration (INI), customer integration (CI) and supplier integration (SI)), supply chain risk management (SCRM) and supply chain resilience (SCRE), with disruption impact (DI) as the moderator, among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

271 useable data were collected from Chinese SMEs to test the research model with two statistical approaches of PLS-SEM and ANN analysis.

Results show that SCI (i.e. INI, CI and SI) positively affects SCRM, and subsequently affects SCRE. Moreover, SCRM has also been found to fully mediate the relationship between INI, CI and SI with SCRE. Additionally, DI was also found to moderate the relationship between SCRM and SCRE.

This study expands the supply chain management-related knowledge by empirically validating the mediating role of SCRM between the elements of SCI and SCRE, as well as empirically identifying DI as the moderator between SCRM and SCRE.

The findings offer valuable understanding that can guide SME managers, owners and stakeholders in developing strategies for integrating with customers, suppliers and internal departments, as well as implementing SCRM practices to enhance SCRE performance.

The research expands the existing literature on the elements of SCI and SCRM in maintaining SCRE from an Asian developing country's perspective.