Weiguo Yang, Qi Hao and Hongfeng Song
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived supervisor support (PSS) affects employees' innovation implementation behavior (IIB), the psychological mechanisms of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived supervisor support (PSS) affects employees' innovation implementation behavior (IIB), the psychological mechanisms of this relationship, and the role of perceived coworker support (PCS).
Design/methodology/approach
Using a three-phase survey, data were collected from 307 employees of a state-owned coal company located in the central region of China. The study tests the hypotheses by using hierarchical regression analyses. The mediating effects and the moderated mediating effects are further examined by using bias-corrected bootstrapping methods.
Findings
Affective commitment (AC) fully mediates the positive relationship between PSS and IIB, and this mediating effect can be moderated by PCS.
Practical implications
Companies should foster supportive supervisors and colleagues by investing in appropriate training programs. In addition, managers should emphasize the psychological changes of employees and provide more supportive feelings for them.
Originality/value
The study explicitly tests the entire causal chain implied by organizational support theory in predicting IIB. It specifies the different role of two similar support constructs (i.e. supervisor support and coworker support) in affecting employees' attitudes and behaviors.
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Keywords
Gang Ma, Rui Yang, Aarren Minneyfield, Xieting Gu, Yinghui Gan, Lin Li, Sixia Liu, Wenjun Jiang, Weiguo Lai and Yihua Wu
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature of blended learning by practically implementing best practices in employee training.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature of blended learning by practically implementing best practices in employee training.
Design/methodology/approach
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, an organization had modified its training procedures over the course of three years to improve employee and organizational outcomes. Employee candidates who were onboarded into sales positions during the years 2019–2021 were given the opportunity to learn the content in an online format and subsequently evaluated prior to their in-person training and final evaluation to provide them with a self-paced blended learning experience. Both evaluation scores, along with the length it took to complete the trainings, were used to determine the trainings effectiveness and efficiency respectively.
Findings
The findings for the study showed that the organization was successfully able to improve upon the efficiency of the training by reducing training length and the effectiveness by improving employee outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
The study’s design was limited to the probation process, which resulted in issues drawing conclusions for employee outcomes that were relevant to their long-term organizational success. This emphasizes the importance of comprehensive investigations for future practical studies.
Practical implications
The findings allow for the improvement of blended learning models within real-world organizational contexts that provide organizations with the opportunity to improve employee outcomes while reducing time costs.
Originality/value
This study provides data from applied blended learning procedures that were validated using empirical findings, which contributes to the practicality of blended learning in workplace training.
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Ruiqian Yang, Shizhong Ai, Na Li, Rong Du and Weiguo Fan
Social question and answer (Q&A) systems have been rapidly developed on many e-commerce websites. The purpose of this paper is to explore how social Q&A systems influence…
Abstract
Purpose
Social question and answer (Q&A) systems have been rapidly developed on many e-commerce websites. The purpose of this paper is to explore how social Q&A systems influence consumers' information processing and purchase intention.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors design this research based on the information adoption model (IAM). First, the auhors consider the impacts of the central route (information factor) and peripheral route (social factor) on consumers' perception of information usefulness in Q&A systems. Then, the authors verify the influence of information and social aspects on purchase intention and empirically test the model with structural equation modelling (SEM) using 428 effective data samples.
Findings
On the whole, the authors prove that purchase intention is influenced by information and social aspects, which are two paths in Q&A systems. Specifically, both answer quality and social presence positively influence information usefulness. Interestingly, respondent credibility and answer consistency do not significantly impact information usefulness. Moreover, information usefulness positively affects information adoption, which positively affects consumer purchase intention.
Practical implications
This paper provides insights on social Q&A system mechanism design.
Originality/value
First, this paper is a useful complement to the research on social Q&A systems on e-commerce websites. Second, the authors provide a new theoretical lens through which the impacts of social Q&A systems on e-commerce websites are understood by extending the IAM. Third, the authors add answer consistency into original information process routes, which obtains a finding that is different from those of prior research.
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Chen Yang, Desheng Wu and Weiguo Fang
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major factors influencing retailer’s optimal ordering strategy in a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one retailer, where…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major factors influencing retailer’s optimal ordering strategy in a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one retailer, where the retailer is newsvendor-like and capital-constrained, and further explore the issue of supply chain coordination.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on bi-objective programming which is modeled under the mean-variance framework, the retailer’s optimal ordering strategy is derived. Furthermore, through comparative analysis between decentralized system and centralized system along with a numerical simulation, this study examines the theoretical conclusions about supply chain coordination.
Findings
This study shows that a poor retailer with a high Expected Terminal Wealth Target Threshold (ETWTT) would ignore bankruptcy risk and order more, whereas a rich retailer is relatively conservative. It also reveals that in some cases, the optimal order quantity and performance of decentralized system could be both improved. However, the centralized system can always get more profit than the decentralized one.
Originality/value
This study uses a bankruptcy threshold to describe retailer’s bankruptcy risk, and considers retailer’s wealth status to formulate the model as an innovative bi-objective programming. The type of retailer as rich or poor in terms of his wealth status and asset structure is distinguished. Moreover, the impacts of retailer’s type and ETWTT on ordering strategy are examined.
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Hui Qi, Xiaotao Yao and Weiguo Fan
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of a competitive action and its impact on the response of rivals in the digital market. Specifically, this paper introduces the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of a competitive action and its impact on the response of rivals in the digital market. Specifically, this paper introduces the concept of action complexity and action variation to delineate the configuration characteristics of each digital competitive action and empirically investigates how these action characteristics further affect rivals’ response speed.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses structural content analysis methods to code competitive actions based on the news of Chinese online travel agencies (OTAs) from 2010 to 2015. The cox proportional hazards regression models are employed to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results indicate that action complexity of the focal firm is negatively associated with rivals’ response speed as it constrains their interpretation (awareness), motivation and capability to respond, while action variation of the focal firm is positively associated with rivals’ response speed as it enhances their attention (awareness) and motivation to respond. Furthermore, the negative relationship between action complexity and response speed is weaker when action variation is high.
Originality/value
Further to advancing competitive dynamics theory, this paper proposes an action-configuration perspective to explore the particular content and quality of each digital competitive action. The discussion of competitive rivalry between OTAs also enriches the application of competitive dynamics in the digital market. Meanwhile, this paper further clarifies the decision-making process of rivalry drawing on the awareness–motivation–capability (AMC) framework.
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Chencheng Shi, Ping Hu, Weiguo Fan and Liangfei Qiu
Users' knowledge contribution behaviors are critical for online Q&A communities to thrive. Well-organized question threads in online Q&A communities enable users to clearly read…
Abstract
Purpose
Users' knowledge contribution behaviors are critical for online Q&A communities to thrive. Well-organized question threads in online Q&A communities enable users to clearly read existing answers and their evaluations before contributing. Based on the social comparison and peer influence literature, the authors examine peer influence on the informativeness of knowledge contributions in competitive settings. The authors also consider three levels of moderating factors concerning individuals' perception of competitiveness: question level, thread level and contributor level.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data from one of the largest online Q&A communities in China. The hypotheses were validated using hierarchical linear models with cross-classified random effects. The generalized propensity score weighting method was employed for the robustness check.
Findings
The authors demonstrate the peer influence due to social comparison concerns among knowledge contribution behaviors in the same question thread. If more prior knowledge contributors choose to contribute long answers in the question thread, the subsequent contributions are more informative. This peer influence is stronger for factual questions and questions with higher popularity of answering but weaker in recommendation-type and well-answered questions and for contributors with higher social status.
Originality/value
This research provides a new cue of peer influence on online UGC contributions in competitive settings initiated by social comparison concerns. Additionally, the authors identify three levels of moderating factors (question level, thread level and contributor level) that are specific to online Q&A settings and are related to a contributor's perception of competitiveness, which affect the direct effect of peer influence on knowledge contributions. Rather than focus on motivation and quality evaluation, the authors concentrate on the specific content of online knowledge contributions. Peer influence here is not based on an actual acquaintance or a following relationship but on answering the same question. The authors also illustrate the competitive peer influence in subjective and personalized behaviors in online UGC communities.
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Xiangbin Yan, Yumei Li and Weiguo Fan
Getting high-quality data by removing the noisy data from the user-generated content (UGC) is the first step toward data mining and effective decision-making based on ubiquitous…
Abstract
Purpose
Getting high-quality data by removing the noisy data from the user-generated content (UGC) is the first step toward data mining and effective decision-making based on ubiquitous and unstructured social media data. This paper aims to design a framework for revoking noisy data from UGC.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors consider a classification-based framework to remove the noise from the unstructured UGC in social media community. They treat the noise as the concerned topic non-relevant messages and apply a text classification-based approach to remove the noise. They introduce a domain lexicon to help identify the concerned topic from noise and compare the performance of several classification algorithms combined with different feature selection methods.
Findings
Experimental results based on a Chinese stock forum show that 84.9 per cent of all the noise data from the UGC could be removed with little valuable information loss. The support vector machines classifier combined with information gain feature extraction model is the best choice for this system. With longer messages getting better classification performance, it has been found that the length of messages affects the system performance.
Originality/value
The proposed method could be used for preprocessing in text mining and new knowledge discovery from the big data.
Details
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Tianyun Li, Weiguo Fang, Desheng Dash Wu and Baofeng Zhang
The paper aims to explore the optimal strategies of inventory financing when the risk-averse retailer has different objectives, in the presence of multi-risk, i.e. demand risk…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explore the optimal strategies of inventory financing when the risk-averse retailer has different objectives, in the presence of multi-risk, i.e. demand risk, non-operational risk and retailer's strategic default risk.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops an inventory financing model consisting of a bank and a risk-averse retailer with strategic default. This paper considers two scenarios, i.e. the capital-constrained retailer cares about its profit or firm value. In the first scenario, the bank acts as a Stackelberg leader determining its interest rate, and the retailer acts as a follower determining its pledged quantity. In the second one, the bank capital market is perfectly competitive. Lagrange multiplier method is adopted to solve the optimization.
Findings
The optimal strategies in inventory financing scheme in two scenarios are derived. Only when the initial stock is relatively high, the retailer pledges part of the initial stock. Retailer's risk aversion reduces its pledged quantity and performance. The strategic default reduces its profit. When it is relatively high, the bank refuses to offer the loan.
Practical implications
Analytical inventory and financing strategies are specified to help retailers and banks to better understand the interaction of finance and operations management and to better respond to multi-risk.
Originality/value
New results and managerial insights are derived by incorporating partially endogenous strategic default and risk aversion into inventory financing, which enriches the interfaces of operations management and finance.
Details
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Hong Hong, Di Xu, Dapeng Xu, G. Alan Wang and Weiguo Fan
This study aims to analyze the impact of the source of online word-of-mouth (WOM) on retail sales. Specifically, the authors focus on the relative impact of external and internal…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the impact of the source of online word-of-mouth (WOM) on retail sales. Specifically, the authors focus on the relative impact of external and internal WOMs on book sales.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical analysis is conducted with a panel data of sales and WOM for 87 books from Dangdang and Douban over a 14-day period based on two generalized least square regression models.
Findings
Results suggest that both internal WOM and external WOM have significant impact on product sales, and the impact of external WOM is relatively more significant.
Social implications
WOM, especially the external WOM, plays an important role in consumers’ online purchase decisions.
Originality/value
This study is helpful for retailers to better understand the factors influencing the sales and thereby forecast the future sales more precisely. Besides, the research conclusion could also enlighten related decision makers to constantly improve technical platforms.
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Lucy Sojung Lee and Weiguo Zhong
This paper aims to investigate the importance and prevalence of Guanxi in business interactions in network-based societies such as China, few studies have the phenomenon from a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the importance and prevalence of Guanxi in business interactions in network-based societies such as China, few studies have the phenomenon from a dyadic view. In a business dyad, one partner may not value Guanxi and take it as a template for actions as the other does.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose that such collective and asymmetric Guanxi orientation influence both the creation and distribution of relational rent in a Guanxi dyad. Furthermore, relationship-specific investments (RSIs) moderate the relationship between dyadic Guanxi orientation and relational rent creation and distribution.
Findings
Based on a matched sample of supplier-buyer dyads in China, the authors find that joint Guanxi orientation is positively related to joint pie creation, whereas Guanxi orientation imbalance has a positive effect on the pie distribution imbalance.
Originality/value
These results contribute to the literature by revealing how dyadic Guanxi dynamics and practices affect dyadic performance and providing managers with meaningful implications for dyadic Guanxi management.