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The present study is concerned with the determinants of RFID adoption among a group of early standards adopters. Despite the extensive discussion of the technological characteristics and expected benefits of RFID in the literature, only little is known about the drivers and barriers of RFID implementations in practice. This holds particularly for the later stages of the adoption process after an initial decision in favor of the technology was made. This paper aims to fill this gap by an analysis of a set of factors on the adoption of RFID, which have been shown to be relevant for the adoption of other forms of IT, such as ERP systems and EDI.

Based on a review of prior works, this paper constructs and empirically tests a structural model including factors related to the technology, the organization, and its environment.

The results suggest that top management support, perceived technology costs, and forces within the supply chain exert a significant influence on the adoption process. The study also finds that benefit perceptions have a significant but negative influence, which might be explained by the different modes of adopting RFID. The influence of a number of other factors known from the literature could not be supported by the study.

Prior works considered factors influencing the initial adoption decision among non‐adopters. In contrast with these, the focus is set on research on early adopters that have already made a decision in favor of RFID standards. The data underlying this study were collected from EPCglobal, an international association of RFID adopters covering the whole supply chain.

Stress and the military go hand-in-hand, particularly in combat environments. While some personality traits or types weaken relationships between stress and performance, others, such as psychopathy, may strengthen them. In the present chapter, we consider the ramifications of individuals with high levels of psychopathy or psychopathic tendencies in the military with regard to both their own stress and performance and that of those around them. We discuss different reactions to psychological and physical stress, as well as the implications of psychopathic tendencies as they relate to current military issues, including gender, leadership, teamwork, turnover, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. By juxtaposing relevant research findings on stress and psychopathy, we conclude that psychopathic tendencies should have neither uniformly negative nor positive effects on stress and performance in the military. Rather, effects on such individuals and the peripheral others with whom they interact will likely vary greatly depending on numerous factors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the application of key performance indicators (KPIs) on shop floor level in German small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The paper focuses on the examination of perception differences between shop floor employees and managers with regard to collection, calculation and consolidation of KPIs as well as visualization and motivational aspects.

To examine the hypothesis on differing perceptions regarding KPIs, 27 qualitative interviews with shop floor employees and production managers within 6 SMEs from the German machinery and equipment industry were conducted on basis of a semi-structured guideline.

The findings show that shop floor employees self-assess a lack of relevant knowledge when it comes to understanding KPIs. Moreover, the results show that shop floor employees perceive the visualization of shop floor KPIs as insufficient and non-motivational. This goes along with the finding that managers are aware of the lacking benefit of KPIs resulting from the rather negative perception of shop floor employees. The interviewed managers recognize a strong potential for improvement of their KPI systems.

The interview results confirm the need to design a performance management system on the shop floor that considers and aligns both management and operations, is directed to the shop floor level, considers explicitly the perspective of employees and integrates motivational elements.

The purpose of this paper is to present research about identifying critical management behaviour regarding quality orientation in organisations.

In order to describe how quality orientation is manifested in management behaviour, the critical incident technique was chosen. First, quality orientation was defined based on an extensive literature review. Then, critical incidents that represent a behavioural manifestation of each dimension were derived through a deductive approach. Lastly, an expert group consisting of scientists and practitioners were asked to categorise the critical incidents and evaluate their practical relevance and completeness.

The results show that the construct quality orientation is related to the five variables internal customer focus, external customer focus, continuous improvement orientation, systems-thinking perspective, and data-driven. For each variable four critical incidents were developed and evaluated by the expert group. Analyses of the data show fair agreement between the raters with an overall agreement index of 0.38.

The results of the present study can be used to support managers in understanding and practising behaviour critical to organisation-wide quality and thereby improving working conditions as well as business results.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of craftsmanship content and social distance embedded in the craftsmanship content on luxury brand experiences, perceived luxury and brand purchase intentions using a social media video.

The authors conducted a single factor (close social distance vs great social distance vs control group) using a between-subjects experimental design. The social distance was manipulated by the presence (i.e. a close social distance) or absence (i.e. a great social distance) of a consumer scene in a craftsmanship video shown on social media. The control group watched a video with non-craftsmanship content. Then, brand experience, perceived luxury and purchase intentions were measured.

The results showed that the control group perceived less luxury and had lower brand experiences and purchase intentions than the group that watched the video without a consumer scene. In addition, participants who watched the craftsmanship video that included a consumer scene (i.e. a close social distance) had stronger brand experiences than those who watched the video without the scene (i.e. a great social distance). The brand experience increased perceived luxury and purchase intentions.

By manipulating social distance and providing better brand experiences in social media, experiential marketing allows luxury brands to reconcile two apparently incompatible goals: maintaining an exclusive image while increasing purchase intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive model that combines brand knowledge and brand relationship perspectives on brands and shows how knowledge and relationships affect current and future purchases.

The paper uses structural equation modeling to test the significance of the overall model and the specified paths.

It is found that current purchases are affected by brand image mostly directly and by brand awareness mostly indirectly. In contrast, future purchases are not affected by either dimension of brand knowledge directly; rather, brand knowledge affects future purchases via a brand relationship path that includes brand satisfaction, brand trust, and attachment to the brand. Thus, brand knowledge alone is not sufficient for building strong brands in the long term; brand relationship factors must be considered as well.

The present study did not examine feedback effects and included consumer categories only and no individual‐differences variables. It is recommended that future research examine feedback effects and include additional consumer categories, B2B categories and individual‐differences variables such as variety seeking and innovativeness.

Brand managers spend considerable resources on measuring brand awareness and brand image. It is recommended that practitioners also use brand relationship measures and develop strategic and tactical initiatives that ensure that consumers are satisfied with the brand, trust it and feel attached to it.

The paper is a cross‐paradigm paper: it is the first that combines the two separate broad‐based perspectives on brands into a simple comprehensive model for researchers and brand managers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the benefit of pre-emptive disruption management measures for assembly systems towards the target dimension adherence to delivery times.

The research was conducted by creating simulation models for typical assembly systems and measuring its varying throughput times due to changes in their disruption profiles. Due to the variability of assembly systems, key influence factors were investigated and used as a foundation for the simulation setup. Additionally, a disruption profile for each simulated process was developed, using the established disruption categories material, information and capacity. The categories are described by statistical distributions, defining the interval between the disruptions and the disruption duration. By a statistical experiment plan, the effect of a reduced disruption potential onto the throughput time was investigated.

Pre-emptive disruption management is beneficial, but its benefit depends on the operated assembly system and its organisation form, such as line or group assembly. Measures have on average a higher beneficial impact on group assemblies than on line assemblies. Furthermore, it was proven that the benefit, in form of better adherence to delivery times, per reduced disruption potential has a declining character and approximates a distinct maximum.

Characterising the benefit of pre-emptive disruption management measures enables managers to use this concept in their daily production to minimise overall costs. Despite the hardly predictable influence of pre-emptive disruption measures, these research results can be implemented into a heuristic for efficiently choosing these measures.

The purpose of this paper is to further examine the mediation mechanism to account for the influence of brand experience on brand loyalty by integrating the experiential view of consumption and the appraisal theory of emotion.

An onsite interview survey was conducted in 21 stores of four service brands: Burger King, Cold Stone Creamery, McDonald’s and Starbucks Coffee. Confirmatory factor analysis is used for assessing validity and reliability. Structural equation modeling is used for examining construct relationships.

Brand awareness/associations, perceived quality and hedonic emotions mediate the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty. Hedonic emotions play a powerful mediation role. Moreover, it is the experiential view of consumption rather than the appraisal theory of emotion that plays a dominant role in accounting for the influence of brand experience on brand loyalty.

This research extends previous studies on the relationship between brand experience and brand loyalty by adding hedonic emotions as a powerful affective mediator. Our research also contributes to practitioners by providing strategies for experiential marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to test the attenuated-anger and heightened-anger hypotheses of psychopathy by assessing the physiological, behavioral, and subjective measures of anger in individuals with and without psychopathic traits.

In all, 62 male college students were assigned to one of three groups based on evidence of elevated affective-interpersonal (Factor 1) and antisocial lifestyle (Factor 2) traits associated with psychopathy (the IF1+F2 group), evidence of only Factor 2 traits (the F2 only group), or based on the absence of psychopathic traits (the control group), using Gough’s (1957) Socialization scale and a modified, interview only form of Hare’s (1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. To induce anger, participants received unjust criticism about their performance on a computer-based affective lexical decision task and were denied a performance bonus they had reason to expect.

Following provocation, the three groups displayed similar increases in blood pressure, pulse, and self-reported anger. The control and IF1+F2 groups also displayed similar retaliation toward the confederate. However, the IF1+F2 group displayed smaller increases on two of three measures of facial muscle activity associated with anger.

This study is one of the first to assess anger responsiveness in individuals with psychopathic traits using a powerful anger induction and using physiological, behavioral, and subjective indices of anger. It is also the first to assess both the attenuated-anger and the heightened-anger hypotheses of psychopathy. The findings appear largely inconsistent with both perspectives.