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The authors make the case that insourcing engineering is a strategic investment in developing a company’s core competence and innovative capacity needed to continually push the frontiers of its markets, which is essential to creating fresh marginal value under all scenarios.

The authors layout the risks of outsourcing engineering and explain why the benefits of insourcing engineering are great and likely to grow more critical in the near future.

As the Internet of Things opens vast new possibilities for differentiating nearly everything such companies might build, innovative engineering to achieve superior connectivity, functionality and invulnerability becomes critical to competitive advantage.

Insourcing engineering not only resurrects the innovation and IP that distinguish sustainably successful market leaders, it also increases the ability to keep ideas secret until the production stage, thus allowing for full commercialization.

A leading practitioner at General Electric describes his firm’s experience with outsourcing engineering and why it reversed course and began insourcing engineering again.

This study aims to examine the impact of social media (SM) on the interactivity among teachers, among students and between students and teachers for sustainable academic performance and for achieving sustainable development (SD) in higher educational institutes. This study also investigates the moderating impact of knowledge creators (KNC) and knowledge seekers (KNS) on the collaborative learning environment using SM.

With the help of Vroom’s expectancy motivation theory (1964), collaborative learning theory and other theories, a theoretical model has been developed. This theoretical model has been tested using the structural equation modeling technique with 375 participants taken from different educational institutes. The respondent-–participants were both teachers and students.

The study found that SM plays a significant role in achieving SD al goals and enhances collaborative learning activities among teachers and students to improve academic performance to achieve SD in higher educational institutes. Also, the study highlighted that both “knowledge creators” and “knowledge seekers” have effective moderating impact on the linkage between “intention to use SM for knowledge sharing” and “collaborative learning using social media” to achieve SD al goals.

With the inputs from expectancy-instrumentality-valance theory and collaborative learning theory and existing literature, a theoretical model has been developed conceptually. Later, the model was successfully validated with an overall high explanatory power (72%) of this model. As the sample of the study do not represent a global representation of the population, thus the findings cannot be generalizable.

This study has provided valuable inputs to the SD practitioners and educational policymakers to formulate appropriate policies that enable SD al activities in higher educational institutes. This study also provides food for thought to the policymakers about the role of KNC and KNS toward the collaborative learning environment in achieving SD al goals in higher educational institutes.

The theoretical model developed in this study is unique. This study shows how both “knowledge creator” and “knowledge seeker” play a significant role toward collaborative learning and helps to achieve SD in higher learning institutes and improves their performance. The overall predictive power of the model is 72%, which also shows the effectiveness and uniqueness of the proposed model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test the antecedent, mediating and moderating role of switching costs on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.

Competing models are proposed based on previous studies investigating the influence of switching costs on satisfaction and loyalty. A survey was conducted with 7,461 customers of a large Brazilian bank. The four competing models were tested using structural equation modeling technique.

The analysis revealed that: switching cost is a significant antecedent of both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty; the mediating effect of switching cost is stronger in the relationship between satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty; and the moderating effect of switching cost is stronger in the relationship between satisfaction and behavioral loyalty.

This study emphasizes the relevance of the switching cost construct in the banking industry. Customers with different switching costs levels will manifest distinct relationship between satisfaction and behavioral loyalty. Thus, investment on marketing strategies and campaigns should be oriented to better convert switching perceptions into effective loyalty considering its mediating or moderating effects.

Even though there are several different approaches (i.e. direct, mediator and moderator) concerning the effects of switching costs on the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship, there is a lack of integration between these approaches. The paper tests and compares the different roles of switching costs. Another contribution is the inclusion of both attitudinal and behavioral aspects of loyalty, given that the current literature is incipient concerning the role of switching cost when considering the distinct loyalty components.

Physicians can significantly impact both the quality and the cost of health care. Thus, it is not surprising that there is great interest in modifying physician behavior. There have been three main methods used to alter physician behavior: education, motivation, and facilitation. This article reviews the success of these methods.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on conditional cooperation and investigate whether the difference in contributions between Partners and Strangers designs in linear public goods experiments can be explained by differences in beliefs.

The author conducted linear public goods experiments by using Partners and Strangers designs with belief eliciting their group member’s contributions.

The author shows that the difference in the magnitude of the responsiveness of contribution to belief (i.e. the marginal contribution to belief) creates different contribution levels in Partners and Strangers designs.

The presented results imply that having a strategic motive increases contributions by increasing the magnitude of the responsiveness of contribution to belief rather than by raising belief level.

The main claim of this paper is that “marginal contribution to belief” rather than “belief level” causes the difference in contribution levels between Partners and Strangers. This is the first proven evidence of a difference in belief between Partners and Strangers.