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Boosting productivity in the service sector is a key priority for promoting long-term growth. To have customers perform certain tasks normally undertaken by employees is an important means to improving productivity. Technological innovation has influenced business practices for several decades and many service firms, including sports service firms, are now utilising technology extensively to reduce the use of labour. This study investigates how the user's perception of technology-based self-service (TBSS)affects customer productivity and how the customer productivity evaluated by TBSS influences the customer's intentions to reuse in relation to a virtual golf simulator - a successful and seriously played game in Korea.

The challenge of global product design and manufacturing in the networked enterprise is to have an information hub supported by an information infrastructure that is difficult to imitate by competitors. The global company can use this global network to share information among its members and provide fast response to customers. The purpose of this paper is use to the dispersed production network to show where knowledge management can be deployed in operations for gaining competitive advantage.

The case study method was selected as the research method. The case of Hasbro Far East Ltd is presented to depict the components of the information hub and why knowledge management can be effectively deployed in the management of the collaborative product development process.

The findings of the case study support the argument that the streamlined collaborative process can be institutionalised in the form of information hub to facilitate the use of a new business model for global product design and outsourced manufacturing. The new business model guides an incremental approach in transforming the operations of a global enterprise which serves a show case in business process management for benchmarking.

This paper offers a business model of knowledge management in networked enterprise for global product design and manufacturing. The success of using the model depends on the sponsor in the creation of the knowledge‐based system and the ability in resolving conflicts through information sharing among members of networked enterprise. Future research should concentrate on developing enterprise performance tools to facilitate the alignment of views from different participants of the network so that they can become sponsors earlier in committing to the development of an information hub for knowledge management and achieve the new dispersed production network business model.

Findings may pose interesting implications for global entrepreneurs, policymaker, suppliers and supporting institutions, for the way they work together to gain the most benefits and competitive advantage from the new business model.

In the paper, the authors study the simultaneous influence of incentive compatibility and individual rationality (IR) on a multi-echelon supply chain (SC) under uncertainty. The authors study the impact of contract sequence on coordination strategies of a serial three-echelon SC consisting of a supplier, a manufacturer and a retailer in an uncertain environment.

The authors develop a game-theoretic framework of a serial decentralized three-echelon SC. Under a decentralized setting, the supplier and the manufacturer can choose from two contract types namely, wholesale price (WP) and linear two-part tariff (LTT) and it leads to four different cases of contract sequence.

The study show that SC coordination is possible when both the supplier and the manufacturer choose LTT contract. This study not only identifies the influence of contract sequence on profit distribution among SC agents, but also establishes cut-off policies for all SC agents for each contract sequence. This study also examine the influence of chosen contract sequence on optimal profit distribution among SC agents.

Three-echelon SC coordination under uncertain environment depends upon the contract sequence chosen by SC agents.

This study results will be helpful to managers of various SCs to take operational decisions under uncertain situations.

The main contribution of this study is that it explores the possibility of coordination by supply contracts for three-echelon SC in a fuzzy environment.

The spot market has been gradually recognized as an important alternative purchasing source. To maintain a flexible replenishment strategy, call, put and bidirectional option contracts, as a risk hedging, are in combined usage with the spot market, respectively. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a finite-horizon replenishment problem with option contracts in the context of a spot market.

Based on stochastic dynamic programming, the firm’s optimal replenishment policy with either call, put or bidirectional option contracts is always shown to be order-up-to type, characterized by an upper threshold and a lower one. The corresponding policy parameters in different cases are calculated through an approximate algorithm. This research highlights the effectiveness of option contracts on the firm’s operational strategies and overall profitability.

This study reveals that the firm is better off with option contracts than without them. When the price parameters are the same for different option contracts, bidirectional option contracts are the best choice among these flexible contracts; otherwise, unilateral option contracts might be either better or worse than bidirectional ones. In addition, if low inventory costs and high spot price volatility are confronted, the firm prefers to call option contracts rather than put ones; otherwise, there exists an opposite conclusion.

In addition to highlight the advantage of option contracts over wholesale price contracts, this paper provides interesting observations with respect to the effect of different option contracts on the firm. Many significant insights derived from this research do not only contribute to the provider’s feasible design of the supply contracts, but also contribute to the user’s rational operational strategies for higher profitability.

We examine the determinants of multinational firms’ propensity to conduct R&D activities in host countries, with specific attention to the influence of host countries’ university research. We consider heterogeneous locational drivers related to the type of R&D activity: basic research, applied research, development for local markets, and development for global markets. Drawing on official survey data on R&D activities by 498 Japanese multinational firms in 24 host countries and estimating two-stage models, we find that the likelihood that firms conduct R&D in a host country is generally increasing in the strength of university research. Conditional on a firm’s R&D presence, university research strength is associated with a greater propensity to conduct (basic) research activities rather than (local) development, while the intensity of host country university–industry collaboration is most strongly associated with applied research. Host country experience and the depth of the firm’s manufacturing presence are also associated higher propensities to engage in research.

This paper aims to present an impedance control method with mixed H₂/H_∞ synthesis and relaxed passivity for a cable-driven series elastic actuator to be applied for physical human–robot interaction.

To shape the system’s impedance to match a desired dynamic model, the impedance control problem was reformulated into an impedance matching structure. The desired competing performance requirements as well as constraints from the physical system can be characterized with weighting functions for respective signals. Considering the frequency properties of human movements, the passivity constraint for stable human–robot interaction, which is required on the entire frequency spectrum and may bring conservative solutions, has been relaxed in such a way that it only restrains the low frequency band. Thus, impedance control became a mixed H₂/H_∞ synthesis problem, and a dynamic output feedback controller can be obtained.

The proposed impedance control strategy has been tested for various desired impedance with both simulation and experiments on the cable-driven series elastic actuator platform. The actual interaction torque tracked well the desired torque within the desired norm bounds, and the control input was regulated below the motor velocity limit. The closed loop system can guarantee relaxed passivity at low frequency. Both simulation and experimental results have validated the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed method.

This impedance control strategy with mixed H₂/H_∞ synthesis and relaxed passivity provides a novel, effective and less conservative method for physical human–robot interaction control.

To investigate the impact of knowledge-intensive FDI in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, this study analyzes the activity of foreign MNEs operating in this context by exploring their innovative background, the organizational arrangements they use for local knowledge creation and the performance of their local innovative processes. Based on the analysis of the universe of USPTO pharmaceutical patents applied for between 1975 and 2010 and granted to foreign assignees utilizing the work of Chinese inventors, our results show that, while the presence of foreign MNEs in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry entails a strong potential for positive externalities that could enhance the performance of the local innovation system, such externalities do not completely materialize yet, likely because of local actors’ limited absorptive capacity.

Activity Based Costing (ABC) has been researched extensively in developed countries. Research on these issues in South Africa is limited. This article creates a better understanding of the design of ABC systems in South Africa, comparing ABC implementation in South Africa to that in several developed/developing countries. A quantitative methodology was adopted to evaluate the extent of ABC implementation. A survey‐case study methodology was used to identify reasons for implementation/ non‐implementation, problems and critical success factors relating to implementation. The results show that the extent of ABC implementation in South Africa is lower than that found in developed countries, but the evidence is inconclusive. Nevertheless, the results suggest that the issues facing ABC implementers in South Africa are similar to those faced in many other countries. This study provides South African companies with a comparative framework of important variables to be considered in implementing ABC.

Integrating uses and gratifications theory with social exchange theory, this study examines the antecedents of online brand community commitment and engagement and their impact on offline purchase intention.

Purposive sampling was used to administer an online survey to 205 members of a Facebook brand community of a global retailer.

The results verified the significant influence of online self-congruity on commitment and engagement and confirmed the full mediating role of engagement between commitment and offline purchase intention.

The study focused on a global chain retailer's peer-initiated online brand community as the focal data collection site.

The findings provide several managerial implications that can help retailers understand consumer behaviors in peer-initiated online brand communities.

The study offers insights into the dynamics between individual and group characteristics in online brand communities.