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The primary goal of this study is to examine the relationships among Taiwan’s overseas subsidiaries based on their strategic roles, organizational configurations and business performance. However, their relationships also depend on the subsidiaries’ cultural differences between parent company and its subsidiary. Using regression analysis, we show that different types of industries, stages of internationalization, degrees of integration, degrees of localization, and degrees of resource dependence are the most important factors on the subsidiaries’ perceived activity satisfaction. The results indicate that the sample of Taiwanese MNC affiliates falls into three subgroups depending on their global strategies. Active Subsidiaries are highly integrated and have high local responsiveness, Autonomous Subsidiaries have high local responsiveness but low integration,while Respective Subsidiaries have low local responsiveness, but are highly integrated.

In an age of rapid knowledge expansion, external knowledge sources are available in abundance. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the way in which firms can effectively internalize explicit knowledge and direct it into the tacit knowledge of employees, thereby enhancing the organization's competitiveness (knowledge internalization).

An exploratory research is adapted to discuss the issue of knowledge internalization based on learning cycle theory. A theoretical framework is developed which provides an analytical perspective on the knowledge internalization.

The results of this study reveal that an “incomplete learning cycle” is one of the reasons why explicit knowledge could not be successfully converted into tacit knowledge. Hence, when a more complete learning cycle is followed, explicit knowledge is more easily converted into tacit knowledge.

This study's results can be considered as a stepping‐stone for future rigorous theoretical and empirical investigations.

This paper seeks to develop a framework of knowledge internalization based on learning cycle theory that will serve as reference for both the academic and business communities.

Online reviews are increasingly available for a wide range of products and services in e-commerce. Most consumers rely heavily on online reviews when making purchase decisions, so an important topic is that of understanding what makes some online reviews helpful in the eyes of consumers. Researchers have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, however, few studies have investigated how images in review content and the facial expressions of reviewers’ avatars influence the judgment of online review helpfulness. This study draws on self-construal theory, attribution theory and affect-as-information theory to empirically test a model of the interaction effects of images in review content and the facial expressions of reviewers’ avatars on online review helpfulness. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to identify an underlying mechanism of causal attribution toward store performance on the above effects.

This study conducted two online experiments. Study 1 is a 2 (images in review content: one person with a product vs a group of people with a product) ×2 (facial expression of the reviewer’s avatar: happy vs angry) between-subjects design. Study 2 is a 3 (image: product alone vs one person with a product vs a group of people with a product) ×2 (facial expression of the reviewer’s avatar: happy vs angry) ×3 (valence of the review: positive vs negative vs neutral) between-subjects design.

The results indicate that when consumers were exposed to a happy-looking avatar, they were likely to express higher perceptions of online review helpfulness in response to an image showing a group of people in a restaurant than they would for an image of one person in the same situation. In contrast, when consumers were exposed to an angry-looking avatar, their perceptions of online review helpfulness did not differ in response to images of either a group of people or of one person. Furthermore, cause attribution toward store performance mediated the interaction between images in content of reviews and the facial expression of a reviewer’s avatar on the perceptions of online review helpfulness.

The authors provide insights into how to develop guidelines on how online reviews should be written so that readers perceive them to be helpful, and how to design effective reward mechanisms for customer feedback.

Compared with previous studies, this study provides further contributions in three ways. First, it contributes to the literature on review content by showing which images in reviews are deemed to be helpful. Second, it extends previous findings from the literature relating to online peer reviews by demonstrating the importance of facial expressions in reviewers’ avatars (i.e. happy vs angry) when explaining helpfulness, rather than the strength of purchase intent. Third, this study contributes by further highlighting a novel mechanism which shows that a causal attribution toward store performance motivates the perceptions of online review helpfulness.

The issue of capacity constraint resources (CCR) or bottlenecks wandering in product mix decision by applying Theory of Constraints (TOC) management philosophy has been mentioned and demonstrated in several papers. In this study, the effect for prolonging the planning period (PPP) so as to stabilize the CCR is investigated. The results show that the effect for PPP alternative will be positive or negative which is depending on the environment condition. However, a majority cases which have positive effect for PPP alternative can be recognized prior knowing the marketing demand, which is significant in the real application.

University and college students are fully immersed in a participatory, interactive, digital culture that permeates every aspect of their lives. Today’s educators must find ways to integrate educational technology into their curriculum to fully engage their students in the learning process. The difficulty for educators is vetting educational technologies for pedagogical effectiveness and devoting time to work with them prior to classroom integration. Those responsible for creating faculty professional development training opportunities will find self-directed online learning modules coupled with a virtual learning community an effective training tool. Structured inquiry-based learning, which relies on self-direction, curiosity, and knowledge creation, serves as the framework for such professional development efforts. Faculty and staff from 10, public institutions in New York State created an inquiry-based, self-directed, learning community called Tools of Engagement Project (TOEP). The goal was to help faculty and staff identify and master Web 2.0 tools relevant to their teaching needs for integration into their skill set. Approximately 300 faculty and staff from across these 10 institutions met in a virtual environment during a four-month period to actively engage in a collegial, online community where they were encouraged by mentors and fellow participants to learn about Web 2.0 tools. Results of pre- and post-surveys and participants’ comments have shown this self-directed format to be an effective professional development training tool. The pace of TOEP and the differential teaching and learning aspect of the modules have helped faculty and staff who struggle to find the time to integrate these pervasive technologies into their teaching practice.

The purpose of this paper is to present various knowledge‐acquisition methods and to show how existing empirical research can be used for mapping between marketing problem domains and knowledge acquisition techniques. The key to doing this is to create a taxonomy of marketing problem domains.

This paper combines a thorough literature review with prima facie conceptualization to map a generic problem domain, and thereby provide guidance in the choice of knowledge‐acquisition technique for developers of expert systems in the field of marketing.

Recent empirical research in the field of expert systems shows that certain knowledge‐acquisition techniques are significantly more efficient than others for the extraction of certain types of knowledge within specific problem domains. It is found that protocol analysis, while fairly commonly used, is relatively inefficient for analytic problems. In the synthetic problem domain, interviewing proves to perform better for simple problems and worse for more difficult‐to‐model synthetic domains.

The findings suggest that it may be worth exploring some of the non‐traditional knowledge‐acquisition techniques when working on some types of applications. Further research could offer guidance in choosing the appropriate technique, with the aim of improving the quality, efficiency and development of the resulting system.

Designers of expert systems for marketing should consider interviewing and card sorting as the main means of knowledge acquisition for analytic problem domains, rather than protocol analysis as the main knowledge‐acquisition technique for analytic problem domains.

This paper is the first to suggest mapping between knowledge‐acquisition research and marketing problem domains.