Jason M. Riley and Richard Klein
The purpose of this study is to understand consumers’ use of online retail channels. This study examines how tracking capabilities, delivery speed, trust, logistics carriers’…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand consumers’ use of online retail channels. This study examines how tracking capabilities, delivery speed, trust, logistics carriers’ reputation, people important to the consumer and online reviews influence Millennials’ online purchasing attitudes and intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was administered to 321 Millennials. Subsequently, it was used to test both direct and indirect hypotheses using structural equation modeling techniques.
Findings
The study determined that tracking capabilities, trust, people important to the consumer and online reviews directly influence online purchase attitude and by extension intention formation. The results also revealed that logistics carrier reputation moderates the trust to online purchase attitude linkage.
Research limitations/implications
This work improves the explanatory power of the theory of reasoned action by linking logistics factors to online shopping behavior. Further, it provides insight into the moderating influence of logistics carriers’ reputation.
Practical implications
For retailers, the results provide information on how to better develop ecommerce service offerings. By providing information about logistics services and capabilities during the ecommerce transaction, retailers can improve the chance that consumers will complete online purchases.
Originality/value
This research fills a gap in the literature regarding how to influence millennial consumers. Moreover, findings strengthen the understanding of online-purchasing attitudes and intentions formation, important to retailers developing new online shopping platforms and technologies.
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Jason M. Riley, Richard Klein, Janis Miller and V. Sridharan
The purpose of this paper is to understand if organizations can leverage recovery/continuous improvement (RCI) capabilities and two competencies to mitigate manifest supply chain…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand if organizations can leverage recovery/continuous improvement (RCI) capabilities and two competencies to mitigate manifest supply chain (SC) disruptions. Specifically, the authors examine how learning from previous experience and SC disruption-orientation affects organizations’ capability to recover/continuously improve once a SC disruption has manifested. In addition, knowing that organizational inertia likely exists during disruptions, the authors examine the mediating effects of routine rigidity on proposed relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
To determine how these antecedents impact an organization’s RCI capabilities, the authors collected survey data from 219 procurement managers and analyzed these records using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The results indicate that by fostering SC disruption-orientation and developing competencies to learn from previous experience, firms can enhance their RCI capabilities, which in turn improves operational performance. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how routine rigidity mediates the positive effects these antecedents have on the RCI capabilities construct.
Originality/value
By developing these risk management (RM) tactics and managing routine rigidity, organizations broaden their continuous improvement capability, which enables practitioners to respond to and recover from manifest disruptions. When used in conjunction with other RM tactics, such as inventory and/or redundant capacity, organizations can address an array of disruption scenarios.
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Jason M. Riley, Richard Klein, Janis Miller and V. Sridharan
The purpose of this paper is to determine if internal integration, information sharing, and training constitute direct antecedents to organizations’ warning and recovery…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine if internal integration, information sharing, and training constitute direct antecedents to organizations’ warning and recovery capabilities. Assuming that organizations periodically face various supply chain risks, the authors intend to show that managers can develop these antecedent competencies in ways that bolster their supply chain risk management (SCRM) capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
To understand the relationships between the antecedents and SCRM capabilities, the authors used Q-sorts and confirmatory factor analysis to develop new warning and recovery measures. The authors then collected survey data from 231 hospital supply managers and analyzed these records using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The results indicate that internal integration and training positively affect organizations’ warning and recovery capabilities, in both a direct and indirect manner. The authors also illustrate how managers can leverage their SCRM capabilities to affect operational performance.
Research limitations/implications
These results suggest that by developing antecedent competencies like internal integration and training, firms may bolster their warning and recovery capabilities, and ultimately operational performance of the organization.
Originality/value
The findings provide hospital supply organizations and other inventory management teams with a novel approach to managing an evolving array of supply chain risks. Rather than investing in costly risk management techniques, like inventory stocks, organizations can use internal integration and training to improve their SCRM capabilities.
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Tim Brady, Andrew Davies and Paul Nightingale
The purpose of this paper is to review the content and contributions of the article by Klein and Meckling entitled “Application of operations research to development decisions”…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the content and contributions of the article by Klein and Meckling entitled “Application of operations research to development decisions” which was published in the journal Operations Research in May‐June 1958. The paper explores the major concepts and contributions in the article and suggests that these are relevant to today's complex and uncertain development projects.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper outlines the context in which the research on which the article is based took place and presents the main ideas in the article which relate to decision making in the procurement and development of complex systems.
Findings
The paper demonstrates the utility of the concepts in the original article, shows how they have been used in academic research on project management and innovation and that they are still relevant for both practical project management and project‐based research.
Practical implications
The primary implication is to demonstrate the value of revisiting a classic contribution in project management, in this case, one which remained hidden for a long period, but has recently come to the fore again.
Originality/value
The issues raised by the original article – related to decision making under conditions of uncertainty – remain high on the agenda today and revisiting the article may help provide a better appreciation of how to deal with those issues.
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Michael Szenberg and Eric Y. Lee
Discussion of scientific progress in science philosophy textssuggests that aggressiveness and selfishness on the part of scientistsis associated with high productivity. It is…
Abstract
Discussion of scientific progress in science philosophy texts suggests that aggressiveness and selfishness on the part of scientists is associated with high productivity. It is argued that the behaviour that appears to be the most improper actually facilitates the manifest goals of science. This article shows that the making of the 1930s generation of a sample of eminent economists was shaped by a high sense of co‐operation; continuing collaborative contact in the form of dual authorships of books and articles, joint teaching assignments, and review and support of each other′s writings, but very little of the intensive, relentless competition one finds among natural scientists. The difference stems not so much from the fact that economics is a soft science, but rather from the degree of maturity of the discipline. The 1930s generation of economists was fortunate to enter the field at a time when it was ready for its take off.
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Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak and Thiago Oliveira
Our chapter discusses the myriad ways in which Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (RUP) has been incorporated by different streams of scholarship dedicated to…
Abstract
Our chapter discusses the myriad ways in which Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (RUP) has been incorporated by different streams of scholarship dedicated to institutional analysis since 1990, when bibliometric evidence indicates a revival of interest in his classic work. Using citation analysis, the authors identify clusters of scholarship that build on Knight’s contributions, assessing which of his insights were absorbed by different subfields and how these have been connected to recent topics and concerns. The authors then qualitatively explore these results to throw new light on the recent history of institutional economics, using Knight’s RUP as a window into the evolution of (and inter-relations between) different research traditions that currently populate the field, including new economic sociology, comparative politics, evolutionary economics, entrepreneurial studies, environmental social sciences, international political economy, and the anthropology of finance. The authors conclude that Knight’s legacy remains unsettled, with different groups selectively absorbing a subset of his ideas and developing them in relative isolation from research conducted elsewhere. Nevertheless, boundary work connecting these separate areas reveals possible spaces for collaboration among scholars who study institutions building explicitly on Knightian insights.
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Sarah Wolf, Jochen Hinkel, Mareen Hallier, Alexander Bisaro, Daniel Lincke, Cezar Ionescu and Richard J.T. Klein
The purpose of this paper is to present a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change, to address the conceptual confusion around vulnerability and related concepts.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change, to address the conceptual confusion around vulnerability and related concepts.
Design/methodology/approach
The framework was developed using the method of formalisation – making structure explicit. While mathematics as a precise and general language revealed common structures in a large number of vulnerability definitions and assessments, the framework is here presented by diagrams for a non‐mathematical audience.
Findings
Vulnerability, in ordinary language, is a measure of possible future harm. Scientific vulnerability definitions from the fields of climate change, poverty, and natural hazards share and refine this structure. While theoretical definitions remain vague, operational definitions, that is, methodologies for assessing vulnerability, occur in three distinct types: evaluate harm for projected future evolutions, evaluate the current capacity to reduce harm, or combine the two. The framework identifies a lack of systematic relationship between theoretical and operational definitions.
Originality/value
While much conceptual literature tries to clarify vulnerability, formalisation is a new method in this interdisciplinary field. The resulting framework is an analytical tool which supports clear communication: it helps when making assumptions explicit. The mismatch between theoretical and operational definitions is not made explicit in previous work.
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This article examines the relationship between tobacco control and tobacco harm reduction, illuminating the differences and similarities between them.
Abstract
Purpose
This article examines the relationship between tobacco control and tobacco harm reduction, illuminating the differences and similarities between them.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on published sources, the author conducts a critical analysis of the prevailing discourses on tobacco control and tobacco harm reduction.
Findings
Although tobacco control and tobacco harm reduction differ in their views on the resolutions to the tobacco “problem”, they manifest similar underlying assumptions about the nature of “the smoker” and are equally silent on the topic of pleasure.
Originality/value
This article emphasises the need for tobacco harm reduction to take pleasure seriously and highlights the limitations of approaches focused exclusively on risk and harm reduction.
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Jill Gabrielle Klein, Richard Ettenson and Balaji C. Krishnan
This research has the purpose of exploring whether the construct of consumer ethnocentrism extends to contexts in which foreign products are preferred to domestic products.
Abstract
Purpose
This research has the purpose of exploring whether the construct of consumer ethnocentrism extends to contexts in which foreign products are preferred to domestic products.
Design/methodology/approach
The study evaluates the psychometric properties of the consumer ethnocentrism scale (CETSCALE) in the transition economies of China and Russia using both student and non‐student samples. A valid and reliable six‐item version of the CETSCALE is developed based on these samples. The refined six‐item scale is then validated through a re‐analysis of Netemeyer et al.'s data collected in four developed countries.
Findings
Findings show that the scale can be used effectively in these transitional economies. A consistent pattern of support is found for the six‐item CETSCALE across eight samples from six countries.
Originality/value
The research provides practicing marketers as well as international researchers with a parsimonious six‐item CETSCALE that can be used in both developed and transition economies.
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This paper studies how Chinese consumers respond to foreign goods in the post‐WTO era. Specifically, it examines brand sensitivity as a mediator and product cues as moderator of…
Abstract
This paper studies how Chinese consumers respond to foreign goods in the post‐WTO era. Specifically, it examines brand sensitivity as a mediator and product cues as moderator of purchase intention. Additionally, it examines consumer preferences for different products and consumption plans for the subsequent five years. The survey sample is drawn from a population of foreign product users from 34 cities in 18 provinces in China. Results provide evidence that brand sensitivity mediates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention; product cues moderate the effect of ethnocentrism on purchase intention. As the first study to link consumer ethnocentrism directly to brand sensitivity and purchase intention, this research provides some managerial implications. Global marketers can offset the negative effect of ethnocentrism by emphasizing brand image of its products, taking advantage of specific product cues, or by providing more comprehensive after‐sale service to reduce the perceived risk of purchasing imports. Also, price is still a hurdle that prevents Chinese consumers from mass consumption of foreign products. Global firms should not overestimate the purchasing power of Chinese consumers. This study represents a “snapshot” of Chinese consumers’ decision making at a time when their economic system is undergoing rapid change.