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This paper aims to discuss a 2015-2016 University of Washington Libraries project focused on understanding the needs and challenges of transfer students on the Seattle campus and developing innovative ways to support transfer student success.

The study uses design thinking methods, including interviews and rapid iterative prototyping and feedback, to understand and emphasize the user experience.

Transfer students at the Seattle campus identify themselves as a unique group separate from other undergraduates because of their prior experience, shortened timeline at the university and their need to balance academic, work and family commitments. Because transfer students often have little time to learn about and effectively use campus resources, the authors found that working with campus partners to enrich transfer-specific student orientations and events with educational and practical content was the most effective means of supporting new students.

This pilot study was conducted over an 11-month period with a small number of participants, but the iterative nature of design thinking allowed the authors to gather new feedback from a variety of students and staff at each phase.

This study showcases how design thinking methods can increase understanding of transfer student and other user needs. The design thinking approach can also enable the rapid development of library and campus services, as well as outreach efforts, to meet user needs.

In this research we test the generalizability of an existing model for classifying information‐intensive services that can be globally disaggregated to Internet services. This categorization allows us to judge which types of Internet Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) are likely to have superior performance. Specifically, we hypothesize that Internet firms with higher information intensity, lower physical presence and lower customer contact needs will have a greater probability of generating larger risk‐adjusted returns. We test these hypotheses on 340 Internet IPOs and find partial support for the model. In particular, Internet firms with high information intensity and low customer contact need yield superior performance. However, firms with low physical presence underperform in our sample.

Considering the popularity and addictive attributes of microblogging, the purpose of this paper is to explore the key drivers of the microblogging addiction tendency, and to investigate the causal relationship between microblogging usage and addiction tendency through the lens of the uses and gratifications (U&G) theory.

By extending the U&G theory to accommodate the negative consequences of gratification, a research model that explains the relationships among microblogging use, gratification and addiction tendency was developed and empirically examined based on the data collected from 520 microblogging users in China.

The results showed that different types of microblogging use lead to different categories of gratification to different extents, while different categories of gratification play different roles in determining the level of addiction tendency. Specifically, the effect of content gratification on addiction is marginal, while social gratification has significant effects on all dimensions of addiction tendency.

The present study has both theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, unlike many previous studies applied the U&G theory to explore the positive outcomes of media uses, this paper extends the U&G by including addiction tendency as a negative psychological outcome of U&G., resulting a research framework (use-gratification-addiction framework). Meanwhile, this paper contributes to the extending literature by examining the constructs of U&G at a granular level and investigated the causal relationship between “uses” and “gratifications.”

The intention of this article is to show possible contributions of the concept of autonomous cooperation to enable complex adaptive logistics systems (CALS) to cope with increasing complexity and dynamics and therefore to increase the systems' information-processing capacity by implementing autopoietic characteristics. In order to reach this target, the concepts of CALS and autopoietic systems will be introduced and connected. The underlying aim is to use the concept of self-organization as one of their essential similarities to lead over to the concept of autonomous cooperation as the most narrow view on self-organizing systems, which is discussed as a possible approach to enable systems to handle an increasing quantity of information. This will be analyzed from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view.

The purpose of this article is to analyze problems involved in using a four‐tiered, indirect sales‐and‐distribution (S&D) model and describe how a manufacturing small and medium‐sized enterprise's (SME's) controller can master them.

The approach taken is an in‐depth case study of an Asian SME selling its homeopathic remedies through European wholesalers and retailers to geographically dispersed consumers.

The case study provides four main conclusions. First, entering into an indirect S&D relationship with wholesalers and retailers is just one more step along the road to outsourcing an enterprise's non‐core functions in a global economy. Second, as long as an SME is on this road, its controller must make the best of the situation and master the resulting complexity in the areas of sales and distribution. Third, above all, integrating business partners' wholesale and retail trade data into the SME's own management information system represents a major technical challenge. Fourth, presenting a clear, complete, and multidimensional overview of sales figures and inventory levels is a task likely to demand more time and attention in the future.

The research methodology employed here is descriptive, not explanatory. Because the study observes just one firm, it may not be representative of the general SME population. Moreover, much of the information collected is retrospective data and recollections of past events, which may be subject to problems inherent with memory or inadequate recordkeeping. Nevertheless, the findings form a foundation for better understanding the use of a four‐tiered, indirect S&D model.

While much of the literature explicitly or implicitly assumes use of direct S&D models, this article specifically addresses problems arising from an SME's employment of an indirect model and its loss of direct contact with consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how supply chain management (SCM) practices and knowledge management (KM) capabilities affect firm performance. This study was conducted in the Asia Pacific region, which had not been examined before.

A three‐phase statistical analysis which comprised phase one (convergent validity, reliability, and discriminant validity), phase two (mediated regression analysis) and phase three (path analysis) was used to analyze the data.

The results from this paper have shown that the implementation of SCM practices will interact with KM capabilities to influence firm performance.

The proposed model does not consider firm performance from multiple perspectives. In addition, the use of longitudinal data would be more useful to examine how changes in certain variables affect performance.

These findings provide important insights for managers to understand the disposition of the firm to better leverage internal capability (knowledge), by exploiting relationships with supply chain partners.

This paper has extended knowledge in the mainstream management and provides valuable clues on how to improve organizational effectiveness, which is the crux of management.

The paper is among the first empirical works that specifically investigate the relationships between KM and SCM; thus this paper fills an important gap in the supply chain literature.

Service robots are now an integral part of people's living and working environment, making service robots one of the hot topics for service researchers today. Against that background, the paper reviews the recent service robot literature following a Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) approach to capture the state of art of the field. In addition, building on qualitative input from researchers who are active in this field, the authors highlight where opportunities for further development and growth lie.

The paper identifies and analyzes 88 manuscripts (featuring 173 individual studies) published in academic journals featured on the SERVSIG literature alert. In addition, qualitative input gathered from 79 researchers who are active in the service field and doing research on service robots is infused throughout the manuscript.

The key research foci of the service robot literature to date include comparing service robots with humans, the role of service robots' look and feel, consumer attitudes toward service robots and the role of service robot conversational skills and behaviors. From a TCCM view, the authors discern dominant theories (anthropomorphism theory), contexts (retail/healthcare, USA samples, Business-to-Consumer (B2C) settings and customer focused), study characteristics (robot types: chatbots, not embodied and text/voice-based; outcome focus: customer intentions) and methodologies (experimental, picture-based scenarios).

The current paper is the first to analyze the service robot literature from a TCCM perspective. Doing so, the study gives (1) a comprehensive picture of the field to date and (2) highlights key pathways to inspire future work.

This article describes and analyses observations from a longitudinal case study to advance an understanding of operations strategy formation as a continuous process. The managerial practices of the case company are analysed in relation to four general desired outcomes of a strategy process, and a process design is constructed as an example of good practice. Regarding strategy formation as a continuous part of the normal management process, the process design is proposed as a relevant alternative to the traditional discontinuous practice of strategy formation. The interplay between modes of strategy formation in different phases of the process is discussed, indicating the varying roles of managers.

A growing body of literature has begun in the direction of supply chain performance measurement. However, selecting the appropriate set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring supply chain performance have always remained a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to identify the KPIs and categorize them specifically for measuring retail supply chain performance.

A qualitative approach, based on literature has been adopted. Published literature from refereed journals on supply chain performance measurement has been considered and various approaches for developing KPIs have been studied to develop a theoretical framework for performance measurement in retail supply chain.

The paper identifies key indicators for performance measurement and classifies them into four major categories: transport optimization, information technology optimization, inventory optimization and resource optimization. These key indicators are arranged precisely for retail industry. A theoretical framework is proposed to link the performance of these constructs on financial performance of the firm.

Future research can be carried out to validate the relevance and applicability of identified indicators. The study can be further conducted to measure the interrelationships between the KPIs and their impact on financial performance of the firm.

This study proposes a list of indicators for retail industry, which are presented in appropriate categories so that it can be used by the focussed teams for further improvement.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, no other study has categorized the KPIs into groups, specifically for measuring retail supply chain performance. The researcher also intends to carry out further empirical study to test the proposed theoretical framework.