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The evaluation of website usability is the precondition and a critical step for website design and optimization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and provide empirical evidence of the interrelationships between human physiological metrics and website usability. This study examines how eye-movement metrics and heart rate variability (HRV) evaluate website usability, and then affect users’ online surfing behavior.

A physiological measurement experiment is designed to collect participants’ physiological metrics. This paper proposes an objective measurement model for website usability, and partial least squares is used to analyze the measurement and structural models, based on data collected from 200 participants who had experienced online surfing at least four times.

The analysis supports partially or fully 28 of the 31 hypotheses formulated. The study reveals that human physiological metrics (i.e. fixation duration, fixation count, blink count, HRV) have a strong explanatory ability for website usability.

Data for this study were collected only from mainland China. Therefore, participants may have been influenced by Chinese cultures. The generalizability of this study may be enhanced by collecting data from more diverse samples and validating the model on different cultures.

This study contributes significantly to the industry by providing empirical evidence of the interrelationship between human physiological metrics and website usability. The findings also provide managers with valuable insight into better understanding of the nature of these interrelationships.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to determine the priority of processes outlined in the BS8800 Guide to Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems for the Hong Kong construction industry. Analysis of variance was used to further investigate the differences among three different kinds of construction enterprises: joint venture (JV), well‐established (W‐E) and small and medium sized (SME) enterprises. This study of 32 construction enterprises suggests that JV and W‐E enterprises are able to demonstrate stronger commitment to strategic safety issues whereas SMEs focus more on the short‐term safety issues in implementation of safety management system. The results also indicate that “Safety Training” may be a problem area in all three groups. When considering differences shown between groups, these rankings can be used as a guide for the practical implementation of the British Standard BS8800 Safety Management System in construction enterprises in Hong Kong.

On the verge of what has been hailed as the next technological revolution, the purpose of this paper is to examine scientific and popular definitions of the social robot, reflecting on how expert and lay spheres of knowledge interact. Drawing on social representations theory, this paper aims to elucidate how social robots are named and classified, and to examine the dynamics contributing to their definition.

Scientific and popular definitions of the social robot were investigated by conducting: a systematic review of relevant articles published from 2009 to 2015 in the International Journal of Social Robotics; an analysis of the definitions retrievable from the scientific literature using Google Scholar; and an assessment of the interest in the public sphere, and of the popular definitions retrievable online (by inputting “social robot” in Google Trends, and in Google).

Scientific definitions of the social robot adopt two strategies, one drawing on and merging previous definitions, the other proposing new, visionary, forward-looking definitions. Popular online definitions of social robots attribute new emotional, linguistic and social capabilities to their physical body.

The findings need to be confirmed by further research, given the limited size of the data sets considered, and the distortions in the data due to filters and the opacity of the online tools employed.

Both scientific and non-scientific definitions see social robots as being capable of interacting with and working for humans, but attribute them a different degree of (functional or full) autonomy. In future, any controversy over the connotation of social robots is likely to concern their sociality and autonomy rather than their functionality.

Total factor productivity (TFP) has become a prominent concept in agriculture economics and policy over the last three decades. The main aim of this paper is to obtain a detailed picture of the field via bibliometric analysis to identify research streams and future research agenda.

The data sample consists of 472 papers in several bibliometric exercises. Citation and collaboration structure analyses are employed to identify most important authors and journals and track the interconnections between main authors and institutions. Next, content analysis based on bibliographic coupling is conducted to identify main research streams in TFP.

Three research streams in agricultural TFP research were distinguished: TFP growth in developing countries in the context of policy reforms (1), TFP in the context of new challenges in agriculture (2) and finally, non-parametric TFP decomposition based on secondary data (3).

This research indicates agenda of future TFP research, in particular broadening the concept of TFP to the problems of policy, environment and technology in emerging countries. It provides description of the current state of the art in the agricultural TFP literature and can serve as a “guide” to the field.

Purpose – This chapter provides a roadmap for future research and evaluation on violent extremist risk analysis.

Methodology/Approach – The authors synthesize the lessons learned from process evaluations of general violence risk assessment, bias research, survey designs, linguistic analyses, and spatial analyses, and apply them to the problem of violent extremist risk assessment and management.

Findings – The next generation of violent extremist risk assessment research will necessitate a focus upon process, barriers to effective implementation and taking the human element of decision-making into account. Furthermore, the development of putative risk factors for violent extremist attitudes and behaviors necessitates a movement toward more survey-based research designs. Future risk assessment processes may additionally take language and spatial components into account for a more holistic understanding.

Originality/Value – Based on existing literature, there is a paucity of research conducting process evaluations, survey designs, linguistic analyses, and spatial analyses in this area. The authors provide several roadmaps, assessments of respective strengths and weaknesses, and highlight some initial promising results.

The purpose of this paper, building on the work of Aubé et al. (2009, 2011) who developed a four-dimension model of counterproductive behaviors in team settings, is to examine the team-level consequences of these behaviors. More specifically, the authors investigate the mediating role of collaboration, a key component of teamwork, in the counterproductive behaviors–team performance relationships.

Using a multisource approach and a team-level design, data were gathered from 101 work teams (381 members and 101 immediate supervisors). The study was conducted within a Canadian public safety organization.

Results show that the four dimensions of counterproductive behaviors are negatively related to team performance. Moreover, results indicate that each of these relationships is completely mediated by a decrease of collaboration among members. Taken together, the results of this study show that the presence of counterproductive behaviors within teams constitutes a collective phenomenon which affects not only team members, but also the functioning and effectiveness of the team as a whole.

This study differs from previous studies mainly by adopting a multidimensional conception of counterproductive behaviors and focusing on consequences of these behaviors on the team as a system. In practical terms, the results suggest that the presence of counterproductive behaviors may require team-level interventions (e.g. team building) in addition to individual interventions with individuals involved.

This paper aims to examine a core member-customer threat in co-operatives (co-ops) by drawing from ostracism research, assessing co-op ostracism’s impact on critical membership and relational exchange outcomes and discussing why relationship marketing research needs to pay more attention to the overlooked role of implicit mistreatment forms in customer harm-doing.

Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, ostracism in co-ops was explored, and a measurement scale for co-op ostracism was developed. In Study 2, the core conceptual model was empirically tested with data from members of three different co-ops. In Study 3, a coping strategy was integrated into an extended model and empirically tested with a new sample of co-op members.

Ostracism is present in co-ops and “poisons” crucial relational (and membership) outcomes, despite the presence of other relationship-building or relationship-destroying accounts. Coupling entitativity with cognitive capital attenuates ostracism’s impact.

Inspired by co-ops’ membership model and inherent relational advantage, this research is the first to adopt a co-op member-customer perspective and shed light on an implicit relationship-destroying factor.

Co-op decision makers might use the diagnostic tool developed in the paper to detect ostracism and fight it. Moreover, a novel coping strategy for how co-ops (or other firms) might fend off ostracism threats is offered in the article.

The present study illuminates a dark side of a relationally profuse customer context, painting a more complete picture of relationship marketing determinants. Little attention has been given to ostracism as a distinct and important social behaviour in marketing research and to co-ops as a research context.

The intent of this cross‐national research is to study the personal and cultural characteristics of successful professional women. High‐achieving women may share certain personal characteristics, beliefs, and experiences, regardless of the countries in which they live. However, every individual is socialized within a particular national culture, and may be expected to share certain values and expectations with other members of that culture.

Over 1,100 professionally “successful women” (including high‐level managers, entrepreneurs, academics, government personnel, and professionals) and 531 undergraduate business students in nine countries – Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the USA and the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines) completed surveys containing two sets of variables: national/cultural (collectivism/individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance) and personal (self‐efficacy, locus of control, need for achievement).

There were significant differences in the personal characteristics between successful women and the student comparison samples, with successful women consistently higher on self‐efficacy and need for achievement, and more internal on locus of control. There were some significant but smaller than expected differences in cultural characteristics between national samples.

This contrast of successful women living in the Americas provides new insights for managers of international companies seeking to be gender inclusive.

The purpose of this paper is to compare women's mentoring experience in nine countries within the Americas, and to explore linkages between personal characteristics, mentoring practices, mentoring functions, and consequences of being mentee.

A total of 1,146 successful women are questioned about their mentoring experiences as a mentee: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, and St Vincent).

Most of the women have more than one mentor. Across all countries mentoring practices are more strongly linked to career mentoring function while the age and gender of the mentor are more strongly linked to psychosocial mentoring. Mentoring from the perspective of mentee has the same directional relationship with situational and individual variables, but the significance of those relationships vary by country. A possible cultural difference is detected between Spanish and non‐Spanish speaking countries on the issue of mentoring practice.

The fact that the paper focuses only on successful women in this paper means the findings are not necessarily generalizable to other groups of women or men. The paper is also limited because mentoring functions are constrained to two: psychosocial and career. There may be more functions that mentoring could fulfill for the mentee.

Companies' interest in fostering mentoring among their members, particularly women, should be aware that different mentoring functions are influenced by different factors. For example, formal mentoring programs appear to have a greater impact on career mentoring functions than on psychosocial mentoring functions. To support women in their careers, companies should institute formal mentoring programs; this is especially important in South American countries. Moreover, mentoring programs must be designed to be adaptive since the analyses indicated that there are significant differences by country in terms of many mentoring issues.

In the literature review, the paper finds linkages between culture, mentoring practices, characteristics of mentors and mentees, and mentoring functions, but no evidence that these linkages have been studied with a group of professionally successful women from different American countries, particularly non‐English speaking American countries.