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Drawing on an organizational learning perspective, this paper examines the effect of levels of foreign market involvement (intensity and geographic spread) on internationalization outcomes recognizing that the moderating influence of entry-mode learning potential is not well documented in the literature on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The sample includes 180 SMEs evenly selected from three industries: biotechnology, software and clothing (60 firms in each industry). The sampled firms employ less than 250 employees and are equally distributed between three developed economies and three emerging economies. All were engaged in foreign business.

The authors find that there is a direct relationship between levels of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes. Entry-mode learning potential moderates the relationship between intensity of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes but not the relationship between geographic spread and internationalization outcomes.

This study reveals several new insights that help explain the pathway through which foreign market involvement activities are translated into internationalization outcomes.

The authors conclude that the positive relationship between intensity of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes is strengthened when SMEs also use an entry mode with a higher learning potential than exporting only.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent hedge funds are subject to irrationality in their investment decisions. The authors advance the hypothesis that irrational behavior affects hedge fund returns despite their sophistication and active management style.

The irrational component may follow a pattern consistent with the observed hedge fund returns yet far distant from market fundamentals. The authors include factors beyond the original version of capital asset pricing model such as Fama and French and Carhart models, as well as less stringent models, such as APT and Fung and Hsieh, to test whether these models are able to capture the irrational nature of the residuals.

After finding that institutional irrational sentiments play a role in hedge fund returns, we note that the returns are not completely shielded against irrational trading; however, hedge fund returns appear to be affected only by the irrational component derived from institutional trading rather than that emanated from individuals.

Different sources of irrationality may have asymmetric effects on hedge fund returns. Using a different set of sophisticated investors along with different market sentiment proxies may yield different results.

The authors argue that investors can use irrational beta to gauge the extent of institutional irrational sentiments prevailing in markets for the purpose of re-adjusting their portfolios and therefore use the betas as an early warning sign. It can also guide investors in avoiding funds and strategies that display greater irrational behavior.

The study advance the idea that the unexpected, hereafter irrational, component may follow a pattern consistent with the observed hedge fund returns, yet different from market fundamentals.

This paper aims to critically review the most cited literature published from 2000 to 2020 in 24 top-ranked marketing journals on the three most studied branding concepts of the 21st century – brand equity, brand loyalty and brand image – to explore how in these papers they have been defined, measured and examined, and propose how they should move forward in an era where brands are expected to be “socially and socio-politically conscious.”

For each concept a systematic literature review is conducted. In doing so, the definitions, antecedents, outcomes and measures for each concept were accessed and synthesized.

The systematic literature reviews provide a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of each concept and collectively demonstrate there is no consensus on the independence and interdependence of these dynamic multidimensional concepts. Based on the recommended process in the measurement literature, an evolved definition of each concept is proposed. In addition to the corresponding research directions presented in the moving forward sections of each systematic literature review, common research avenues emerged.

This paper acknowledges these three branding concepts as dynamic (i.e. evolving over time), systemically reviews and synthesizes the extant literature, and provides a path forward to defining, measuring and exploring brand equity, brand loyalty and brand image in the present era where brands are expected to be socially and socio-politically conscious with responsibilities to the planet, people and profit.

EEVL, the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, is a gateway to engineering information on the Internet. After a brief outline of the need for such a gateway and the background to the EEVL project, this article looks at certain similarities and differences in the development of EEVL and various other subject based information gateways (SBIGs) such as ADAM, SOSIG, and OMNI, and similar services such as BUBL. EEVL’s present situation and future prospects are outlined.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

In an effort to address health care disparities, U.S. laws mandate that health care organizations provide free language interpreting and translation anytime a patient and health care provider cannot communicate in the same language. The heretofore absence of legislative and professional oversight in health care interpreting allows for anyone to interpret. A qualitative study was conducted to understand the conditions and practices of bilingual staff who interpret as a secondary part of their job in community health clinics.

Four focus groups were conducted as part of a study on shared decision-making during interpreted medical visits in a busy, urban clinic serving a large number of limited English proficient (LEP) patients. The focus groups were designed to understand the process of interpreting and how interpreters influence medical decisions between LEP patients and their health care providers. To understand the interpreting process from multiple perspectives, one focus group was conducted with users of interpreters – monolingual health care providers (N=6), two with Spanish speaking men (N=10) who were experienced with interpreted health visits, and one with bilingual staff (N=5) who interpret as an ad hoc feature of their job, also known as dual-role medical interpreters.

Dual-role interpreters use different styles while interpreting what is communicated between health care providers and patients. In some cases, they provide near word-for-word interpretation of what is said. In other cases, they summarize and or paraphrase multiple sentences, seek clarity through questions, and deconstruct culturally laden and technical terms. In still other cases, dual-role interpreters combine interpretation styles within a single interactional exchange. Each of the three major styles of interpreting has advantages in medical settings. Specific style is influenced by health care provider preference, interpreter–health care provider trust and familiarity, and interpreter medical knowledge. Interpreters are challenged by the patients’ dialects, educational level, provider personalities, gender issues, and out of clinic relationships with the patients. Contextual conditions and contingencies of reinforcement contributed to varying methods of interpretation. These conditions included organizational policies, language and bilingual communication, and social relations with both the health care providers and the patients.

These findings demonstrate the complexity of medical interpretation and the critical involvement of health care providers and bilingual staff in facilitating interpreted encounters. Findings suggest the need for training both health care providers and interpreters and possible change in reimbursement for services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of ethical leadership on employee performance, with the employee engagement and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as mediating variables.

The design of this study was to ascertain the predictive generalizations truth of the theory. The population in this study was all employees of non-star hotels in Sarbagita area of Bali.

First, ethical leadership does not have a significant effect on employee performance, where the increase in leadership value is not able to provide a significant improvement in the performance of non-star hotel employees in the Sarbagita area of Bali. Second, employee engagement is able to mediate ethical leadership in improving employee performance. Third, the OCB will be able to play a role in mediating the influence of ethical leadership on employee performance if it passes the mediating role of employee engagement first.

The inconsistencies of the previous study results provide evidence and opportunities for this study to review by including mediating variables on ethical leadership and employee performance relationship. The studied variable as a mediating variable is employee engagement. In addition to employee engagement, this study also included the OCB variable as a mediating variable. Several previous studies have identified the influence of ethical leadership, employee engagement and OCB in improving employee performance in separate research models, so there is still a gap for further research.

There is continual evidence of ineffective e-Learning programmes that are set amid emerging information and communication technology (ICT) tools by higher education (HE) providers. While many of the existing accounts outline the potential of integrating such educational technology into their teaching and learning practice, other studies point out the adoption challenges of such programmes. This chapter tackles this dilemma in two respects. Firstly, through an examination of the limitations surrounding the instructional systems design (ISD) models while urging the need for empirical evidence and ratification processes to substantiate these models as they relate to online instructional environments. Secondly, through the investigation of the effectiveness offered by ICT tools under different instructional environments in order to facilitate the effective application of e-Learning. Field evaluation in the form of a series of 2×3 factorial quasi-experiments was conducted at four higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia. The empirical results confirm the validity of the ISD model and reliably captured its effects in improving learners’ performance under three instructional delivery modes. The empirical evidence reveals the extent of effectiveness of the proposed prescriptive ISD model enabling an improved design of ICT-based HE instructional strategies. On a managerial level, the findings facilitate the delivery mode decision making by HE providers in terms of the congruence of technology integration under each of the three learning experiences. The calibrated assessment measures provide a discussion to extend the practical implication of the current e-Pedagogical practice in the e-Learning industry.

Though the videogame literature is thriving, little remains known regarding the effectiveness of pop-up ads that appear in videogames. Addressing this gap, this study, therefore, aims to explore pop-up ads as an important tool to prompt gamer-perceived advertisement value and their subsequent intent to install the advertised videogame.

To frame the analyses, the authors adopt and extend Ducoffe’s advertising value model by incorporating the visual/audio aesthetic videogame components that are largely overlooked in prior research. Using a self-administered survey, data were collected from 321 online gamers. The authors tested the model by using partial-least-squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that pop-up ad-related incentives, entertainment, credibility, personalization, audio aesthetics and irritation significantly affect user-perceived ad value. In turn, perceived ad value was found to affect players’ intent to install the advertised videogame.

Though the findings corroborate the importance of pop-up ads being perceived as informative and/or entertaining, they also emphasize the value of personalized ads, ad-related incentives and audio aesthetic, which impact gamers’ intent to install the advertised videogame.

This study advances managerial understanding of videogame-based services, which is expected to be particularly useful for freemium-based videogame marketers and developers.

By extending Ducoffe’s model of advertising value, the authors apply the proposed framework in the online videogaming-based pop-up ad context, and explore the effect of user-perceived pop-up ad value on their intent to install the advertised videogame.

This study intends to analyze the trend of walkability research over two years (2021–2022) in several aspects, including the research problem, gap and aim underlying walkability issues, research setting, the scale of analysis, the type of data, the data collection tool, the analysis method and contribution.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) is employed to conduct a systematic literature review from three leading databases including Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Sage.

From the review, it can be concluded that the research focuses on two aspects, namely, the built environment and people. The studies in this field are conducted at different scales of the built environment, from macroscale to microscale, including region, city, neighborhood and street-level studies that are conducted around the world including Asia, Europe and America which receive high attention from researchers. Meanwhile, the study of walkability in Australia and Africa gains less attention. It is revealed that there are four factors of walkability including land use and accessibility for macroscale which cover region, city and neighborhood, while street network and pedestrian infrastructure and facility are mainly analyzed for street-level. Most of the studies widely utilize a quantitative approach for analyzing physical walkability factors in a measurement-based approach by using certain tools/software, and a perception-based approach by using questionnaires.

The findings can assist to keep up with the rapid pace of scientific publications and help accelerate the understanding of particular ideas in the field of walkability for the planning and design practice and policy that can be used by researchers/academia, urban designers, urban planners, architects, engineers and policymakers. Also, this study hopefully could assist further research direction for the future and could add value to a more advanced way of understanding the research on walkability.

This research provides a robust framework for walkability trend analysis and a comprehensive understanding of the main ideas from the existing research on walkability worldwide.