Search results

The objective of this paper is to further explore relationships among social influence, blog platform qualities and usage intention for improving the understanding of the effect that social influence exerts on bloggers' usage intention.

Based on the IS success model, the authors propose a conceptual framework incorporating information quality, system quality, blog function quality and social influence as key determinants of bloggers' usage intention. Empirical data from 613 participants were collected via a web survey.

The results show that information quality, system quality and blog function quality, i.e. the technical factors, positively influence bloggers' usage intention. Among these qualities, system quality is the most prominent. For social factors, social influence significantly affects bloggers' usage intention directly and indirectly through blog platform qualities. A multi‐group analysis revealed the differences between blog readers and writers in the perceptions of blog platform qualities and the intensity of path coefficients among factors in the conceptual model.

Results from this study can be used as guidance for blogging service providers to enhance and develop blog platform functions. Moreover, the differences between blog readers and writers revealed in the findings can help service providers to develop campaigns to strengthen their usage intention accordingly.

This paper advances the understanding of the effects of social influence on users' perception of information system qualities as well as usage intention. Social influence exhibits strong effects on users' perception of blog platform qualities. Specifically social influence not only directly affects bloggers' usage intention but also has an indirect effect on intention through the mediation of blog platform qualities.

The paper's aim is to explore the factors that affect the online game addiction and the role that online game addiction plays in the relationship between online satisfaction and loyalty.

A web survey of online game players was conducted, with 1,186 valid responses collected. Structure equation modeling – specifically partial least squares – was used to assess the relationships in the proposed research framework.

The results indicate that perceived playfulness and descriptive norms influence online game addiction. Furthermore, descriptive norms indirectly affect online game addiction through perceived playfulness. Addiction also directly contributes to loyalty and attenuates the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. This finding partially explains why people remain loyal to an online game despite being dissatisfied.

Online gaming vendors should strive to create amusing game content and to maintain their online game communities in order to enhance players' perceptions of playfulness and the effects of social influences. Also, because satisfaction is the most significant indicator of loyalty, vendors can enhance loyalty by providing better services, such as fraud prevention and the detection of cheating behaviors.

The value of this study is that it reveals the moderating influences of addiction on the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship and factors that contribute to the online game addiction. Moreover, while many past studies focused on addiction's negative effects and on groups considered particularly vulnerable to Internet addiction, this paper extends previous work by investigating the relationship of addiction to other marketing variables and by using a more general population, mostly young adults, as research subjects.

Purpose – This chapter examines the roles of the Unification Church (UC) in reconstructing the discourse of the gendered desire of Filipina marriage migrants and their Korean husbands, serving as an intermediary agency in the process of international marriage migration, and reinforcing heterosexual practices as part of a regime of normalization.

Methodology – The chapter is based on 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork that included a review of secondary sources, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with Filipinas and Korean men.

Findings – The chapter shows the ways in which the UC reinforces the dominant discourse of gendered desire that portrays marriage migrants as women who wish to migrate mainly to marry a man who can provide economic stability. Filipina migrants, however, infuse the cultural discourse of romantic love into their decisions about husbands and marriage migration. Lastly, as the UC delineates normative heterosexual practices based on its religious doctrines, the church becomes a “regime of normalization” for traditional patriarchal heteronormativity.

Social implications – The chapter contributes to the idea that gender and sexuality are socially constructed and constitutive of migration.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter examines not only the matchmaking role of an intermediary agency that facilitates cross-border marriages but also the agency's role in re/constructing gendered desire. Further, the chapter contributes to an understudied area: the social process of reconstructing heteronormativity in a transnational context.

The purpose of this paper is to find the key innovative principles for evaluating the long-term care (LTC) cloud system by exploring contradictory and complex points in its development.

The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) approaches are integrated to resolve complex contradictions in the system. The heuristic reasoning of TRIZ is applied to obtain innovation principles for an LTC cloud mining system. However, the importance and feasibility of these innovative principles require further assessment. In this study, DEMATEL is employed to clarify the complex relationships among the principles and evaluate their key influences.

This paper identifies six primary contradictions and derives 25 innovative principles for the resolution of these conflicts. Further analysis confirms three key innovative principles. First, the government should consider the overall planning of the cloud system platform, followed by the participation of other medical and LTC institutions. Second, the information capability of LTC institutions should be unified by recording the pathology data of care recipients to create an information exchange system. Third, LTC institutions should act in cooperation with medical institutions to provide professional medical capabilities.

The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, this study provides an integrated methodology integrating the TRIZ and DEMATEL approaches to resolve LTC problems. Second, this research identifies the key innovative principles for developing an LTC cloud system in Taiwan.

This study extends the understanding of the context of IHRM headquarters as one of the top management groups (TMGs) through the application of both upper echelons theory and contextual theory.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior Israeli HR managers from international advanced-technology companies.

This study expands on theory by explaining how contexts act as constraints or opportunities for IHRM headquarter professionals as TMGs. The organizational context in which the IHRM headquarters take part is based on two themes: organizational structure and shared values. This is followed by the context of IHRM headquarters that includes two foundations for integration: strategic IHRM and trust. Finally, integration is derived from two themes: collaborative behaviors and electronic HRM.

This research has yielded a theoretical framework, which makes progress toward developing an integrative paradigm between IHRM headquarters' behavioral integration and organizational features. The paper presents a valuable “toolkit” for facilitating internal integration in IHRM headquarters.

The purpose of this paper is to review the operation and maintenance practices within wind power applications and to clarify practical needs as gaps between researchers and practitioners.

The paper collects, categorizes, and analyzes the published literature of both researchers and practitioners systematically.

The paper defines significant issues in operation and maintenance of wind energy related to: site and seasonal asset disturbances; stakeholders’ requirements trade‐off; dependability and asset deterioration challenges; diagnostic, prognostic and information and communication technologies (ICTs) applications; and maintenance optimization models. Within each category, the gaps and further research needs have been extracted with respect to both an academic and industrial perspective.

The use of wind energy is growing rapidly and the associated practices related to maintenance and asset management are still lacking. Therefore, the literature review of operation and maintenance is a necessity to uncover the holistic issues and interrelationships of what has so far been published as detailed and fragmented topics to specific issues. Wind energy assets represent modern renewable energy assets which are affected by environmental disturbances, rapid technological development, rapid scaling‐up processes, the stochastic and dynamic nature of operations and degradation, the integrity and interoperability of system‐to‐support.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of research contributions and industrial development efforts. That will be useful to the life cycle stakeholders in both academia and industry in understanding the maintenance problem and solution space within the wind energy context.

A number of interventions aimed at increasing breakfast consumption have been designed and implemented in recent years. This paper seeks to review the current research in this area with the aim of identifying common features of successful interventions and strengths and weaknesses in the current research methodology.

A systematic review of interventions aimed at increasing breakfast‐eating frequency in a non‐clinical sample was conducted.

A total of 11 interventions were identified and reviewed; of these, only three resulted in an increase in breakfast consumption at follow‐up. The three studies that were successful in changing breakfast consumption all included a psychosocial component that was successful in increasing positive attitudes towards nutrition in the intervention protocol. Many of the breakfast‐eating interventions included in this review have methodological weaknesses, including difficulties in implementing interventions, small sample sizes, and selection biases, which future researchers should consider when designing and evaluating their own interventions.

These findings highlight the importance of including psychosocial components in interventions designed to increase breakfast consumption, while also signalling issues that should be addressed when designing and reporting future interventions.

This review was the first to investigate the efficacy of interventions aimed at increasing breakfast consumption. The identification of weaknesses in the current body of research, and of successful and unsuccessful intervention practices is an important step in developing successful interventions in the future.