Search results

Recent studies have indicated that digital transformation can benefit an organization’s strategic renewal. However, there is little knowledge on how business executives engage in digital transformation for this purpose, especially in the service sectors of emerging markets. Therefore, this study aims to examine how business managers accomplish strategic renewal through digital transformation in emerging markets.

The authors conducted a longitudinal single case study of a leading business firm in China’s real estate industry, China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd. (COLI). Results of the analysis of semistructured interviews and rich secondary data allowed us to better understand how business managers react to changing customer demands by building and implementing divergent digital tools to fulfill strategic renewal.

The results showed that business executives of COLI developed the Whole Life Cycle Management System, to achieve strategic renewal. The system benefits resource allocation and potential adjustments to strategic goals. This study also helps update the organizational structure of the marketing and consumer services departments, helping better satisfy consumers’ demands and waste fewer resources. Thus, COLI accomplished structural, contextual and leadership-based ambidexterity.

This study provides a fresh understanding of the link between digitalization and strategic renewal by providing a fine-grained analysis of leading service providers in emerging markets. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to investigate the role of digital transformation in strategic renewal from an ambidexterity perspective.

Organizations working in high-hazard environments contribute significantly to modern society and the economy, not only for the valuable resources they hold but also for the indispensable products and services they provide, such as power generation, transportation and defense weapons. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to develop a framework that outlines future research on systems safety and provides a better understanding of how organizations can effectively manage hazard events.

In this research, we developed the high hazard theory (HHT) and a theoretical framework based on the grounded theory method (GTM) and the integration of three established theoretical perspectives: normal accident theory (NAT), high reliability theory (HRT) and resilience engineering (RE) theory.

We focused on the temporal aspect of accidents to create a timeline showing the progression of hazard events and the factors contributing to safety and hazards in organizations. Given the limitations of the previous theories in providing a coherent explanation of hazard event escalation in high-hazard organizations (HHOs), we argue that the highlighted theories can be more complementary than contradictory regarding their standpoints on disasters and accident prevention.

A proper appreciation of the hazard nature of organizations can help reduce their susceptibility to failure, prevent outages and breakdowns of systems, identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance performance.

By developing HHT, we contribute to systems safety research by developing a new, refined theory and enrich the theoretical debate. We also expand the understanding of scholars and practitioners about the characteristics of organizations working in high-hazard environments.

High-reliability performance and high-hazard are intertwined in High-Reliability Organizations (HROs) operations; these organizations are highly safe, highly hazardous and highly significant for the modern society, not only for the valuable resources they have, but also the indispensable services they provide. This research intend to understand how HROs could produce high quality performance despite their challenging and demanding contexts. The research followed an emic approach to develop an organizational framework that reflects the contribution of the seeming traits of the organizations to the operations safety based on the workers point of views about the safety of workstations.

This research adopted mixed methods of in-depth interviews and literature review to identify the structural characteristics of high-reliability organizations (HROs) embedded in the organizations studies and developed a theoretical based structural framework for HROs. Furthermore, a systemic literature review was adopted to find the evidence from the organizations literature for the identified characteristics from the interviews from the first stage. The setting for this study is six Chinese power stations, four stations in Hubei province central China and two stations in the southern China Guangdong province.

The organizational framework is a key determinant to achieve high-reliability performance; however, solely it cannot explain how HROs manage the risks of hazard events and operate safely in high-hazard environments. High-reliability performance is attributed to the interaction between two sets of determinants of safety and hazard. The findings of this research indicate that HROs systems would be described as reliable or hazardous depending on the tightly coupled setting, complexity, bureaucracy involvement and dynamicity within the systems from one hand, and safety orientation, failure intolerance, systemwide processing, the institutional setting and the employment of redundant systems on other hand.

The authors developed an organizational framework of organizing the safety work in HROs. The applied method of interviewing and literature review was not adopted in any other researches.

The main purpose of this paper is to develop the theoretical links and empirically examine the association between IT and R&D performance, and their study is to answer management's questions: how should IT resources be organized and managed to enhance the process performance?

The approach is consistent with the process perspective to the question of IT business value, but this approach is extend. A basic premise of this paper is that the knowledge management (KM) capability could be a critical mediator between IT capability and process performance.

The results indicate that an organization's KM capability is dependent on IT capabilities, and variation in business process performance is explained by KM capability.

On the one hand, control variables were not included in this study. In fact, firm size might influence process performance. On another hand, the empirical analysis was conducted in the context of one specific process in the manufacturing industry; thus, the generalizability of the results may be limited.

The results indicated that IT managers have to clearly understand the strategic thrust of the organization and institute mechanisms to ensure that IT capabilities are channeled toward the areas important to the organization.

This study contributes to the IT literature by introducing KM capability as a critical mediator between IT capabilities and business process performance, this study improves our understanding of the true business value of IT.

The purpose of this paper is to explore e‐commerce development strategy from the consumer loyalty perspective in a Chinese context and to examine the impact of some key factors that affect e‐commerce development in China. The policy implications are also presented.

Data were collected by the wide surveying of trained MBAs with different professional backgrounds. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis were then used to explore whether the “7C” model of consumer loyalty in electronic commerce is acceptable.

The results show that security and reputation have the most positive impact on consumer loyalty, and playfulness is not significantly related to the potential variable it belongs to. To those enterprises planning to implement e‐business in China, some advice is given; such as increasing the security and reputation of web sites and enhancing communications between buyers and sellers.

The paper gives directions to the e‐commerce enterprises in developing countries about how to improve consumer loyalty and enhance business competence. Online enterprises can build consumer loyalty by improving their web sites and learning about consumers' behaviors to provide customized products and services. The specific policy measures in China are suggested.

While it is known that consumer loyalty is critical to online enterprises' success, little is known about how to build and improve e‐loyalty in the emerging markets. This paper tries to bridge this gap by examining what affects e‐loyalty, to help better understand consumer loyalty in the emerging markets like China.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the double-edged sword of customer involvement (perceived relationship quality and coordination cost) in new service development in the hotel industry, and to explore when customers should be involved from the service provider’s view.

A total of 252 valid questionnaires were collected from hotel managers, and ordinary least squares regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Results not only show that customer involvement causes higher coordination cost but also show no direct positive effect on perceived relationship quality. Furthermore, this study finds that service climate reduces the negative effect of customer involvement and enhances its positive effect. By contrast, customer complexity intensifies the negative effect of customer involvement.

This study empirically examines the double-edged sword of customer involvement and tests the boundary conditions associated with hotel back and front office factors (service climate versus customer complexity).

Given the scarcity of studies regarding religious food as a destination attraction and limited research on tourist halal food experience, this study aims to explore and compare halal food experience perceived by Muslim and non-Muslim tourists in a non-Islamic destination.

This study was carried out in a halal food street in Yuanjia Village, China. It used a qualitative approach and interviewed 16 Muslim tourists and 20 non-Muslim tourists.

Six themes and 18 attributes of halal food experience were identified. The findings revealed that Muslim tourists saw the reassuring options and religious value of halal food as important experiences. By contrast, the experiences of abundant choices, value for money, sensory pleasure and unique charm were frequently mentioned by non-Muslim tourists. The nature of halal food, the context of China (i.e. Chinese halal food culture) and the feature of research site (i.e. food operation of Yuanjia Village) work together to create such experiences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to explore and compare halal food experiences of Muslim and non-Muslim tourists in a non-Islamic country (China). This study suggests that halal food could be an appealing destination attraction, even in non-Islamic destinations. Thus, this study contributes to a better understanding of the halal food experiences and assists destination marketers in promoting halal food.

Following are the learning outcomes: to understand how the tools and frameworks of strategic analysis can be applied to understand the evolution of value creation and capture in the FMCG industry; to analyze the core competencies of a company and understand their relevance in this fast-changing industry; to understand how to evaluate the pros and cons of a certain strategy and business model; and to develop strategic recommendations.

The case series traces the developments in China’s FMCG industry from the early 2010s to 2017, in general, and the efforts of Beijing WinChannel Software Technology Co., Ltd. (WinChannel) and its affiliated company, Huixiadan, in their attempt to apply new digital technologies to transform the traditional trade channel, in particular. The decision point of Case A, in early 2015, is how WinChannel can help improve the reach and efficiency of the traditional trade channel and wonders if the emerging online/mobile B2B FMCG platforms are the right solution for the increasingly digitized FMCG retail industry in China. The decision point of Case B, at the end of 2017, is how could Huixiadan’s business model be sustainable and what it should do to withstand the competitive threats even as it tries to exploit opportunities in the traditional FMCG industry in China.

It can be used with MBAs, EMBAs and senior executives.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS: 11: Strategy.

This paper aims to prepare third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) organic materials with large nonlinear optimization value, high damage threshold and ultrafast response time.

A series of novel symmetric and asymmetric compounds possessing third-order NLO properties were synthesized using 1,3,5-tribromobenzene as the basis. The photophysical and electrochemical properties, as well as the click reactions, were characterized by means of UV–VIS–NIR absorption spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry.

The donor–acceptor chromophores were inserted into compound, making the molecule to have a broader absorption in the near-infrared regions and a narrower optical and electrochemical band gap. It also formed an electron-delocalized organic system, which has larger effects on achieving a third-order NLO response. The third-order NLO phenomenon of benzene ring complexes was experimentally studied at 532 nm using Z-scan technology, and some compounds showed the expected NLO properties.

The click products exhibit more NLO phenomena by performing different click combinations to the side groups, opening new perspectives on using the system in a variety of photoelectric applications.