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This study aims to examine what types of interfirm linkages a firm enters in relation to its manufacturing strategy. The authors further aim to determine whether heterogeneous resources have different moderating effects on the relationship between a firm’s manufacturing strategy and interfirm linkages.

The sample consists of survey and archival data on 80 publicly listed electronics firms from the semiconductor and optoelectronics industries in Taiwan. Because the dependent variable, interfirm linkage, is a binary term, the authors apply logistic regression in our study.

This paper provides empirical insight into how a firm’s manufacturing strategy affects its probability to engage in specific types of interfirm linkages. The authors find that when a firm pursues an efficiency (flexibility) strategy, it will tend to engage in marketing (technical) interfirm linkages. In addition, absorbed slack strengthens the fit between manufacturing strategy and interfirm linkage type more than unabsorbed slack does.

Because the sample is drawn from the Taiwanese semiconductor and optoelectronic industries, the authors encourage scholars to examine the generalizability of the findings. Future studies can furthermore adopt in-depth interviews to facilitate a better understanding of decision-makers’ considerations when entering interfirm linkages.

This study extends resource dependence theory across a firm’s boundary and applies the resource-based view to resource heterogeneity. The findings advance the understanding of the relationships between strategic orientation, slack resources and interfirm linkage choices. The authors show that it is important that firms consider strategic fit when they create linkages outside their existing boundaries.

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence on the impact of network flexibility and its ambidextrous influence on a firm's exploratory and exploitative partnership selection.

The authors develop our hypotheses based on the literature of network flexibility and draw on a sample of publicly listed firms in Taiwan semiconductor and optoelectronics industries. The authors collect our data from survey questionnaires and archival sources and examine our hypotheses by using the generalized linear model (GLM) approach.

The authors’ empirical findings show that configuration flexibility has a greater influence on exploratory partnerships, while manufacturing flexibility has a greater impact on exploitative partnerships. In addition, when firms are ambidextrous (i.e. have both types of flexibility), they are able to simultaneously obtain both exploratory and exploitative partnerships. The authors’ findings indicate that balancing network flexibility is critical when firms execute ambidextrous alliance strategies.

The authors’ use of survey data to measure network flexibility may limit our observations related to network evolution. In addition, the authors’ use of public annual reports to capture firm partnerships may cause us to ignore informal relationships between partners.

The authors’ empirical findings suggest that the types of partnerships firms develop depend on which types of flexibility they possess. The results further suggest that decision makers have to find a way to develop a balanced strategy between network configuration and manufacturing flexibility when they would like to develop an ambidextrous alliance strategy.

The authors’ study advances the understanding in the literature on supply chain flexibility and its ambidexterity by connecting network flexibility and ambidextrous alliance strategy. The authors offer a guide to supply chain managers in the area of network design.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the effects of existing capabilities, by exploration and exploitation, on the choice between internal corporate venturing and external corporate venturing.

Data from 259 Taiwanese firms in the information technology (IT) sector are collected. The study period is four years: 2003 to 2006. Information on corporate financial data and new ventures from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) database are collected, as well as patent information from the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO). Poisson regression is used to test the hypotheses.

There exists a positive relationship between a firm's existing capabilities and corporate venturing activities. The findings indicate that exploration is a better predictor of internal corporate venturing, while exploitation is better at predicting external corporate venturing.

Empirical results are derived from a sampling of information technology firms in Taiwan thus raising issues about their generalizability to other empirical contexts.

That internal and external corporate venturing could be complementary is clarified; meaning that each could contribute to a particular type of strategic renewal. For firms that engaged much more in exploration, internal corporate venturing is a better for growth than external corporate venturing; it can leverage existing technologies and keep valuable breakthrough technologies in‐house. In contrast, for firms that focus much more on exploitation, learning externally is a better renewal strategy than venturing internally; it can access and integrate resources trans‐organizationally to create novelty that may serve as avenues for further growth.

This is the first study that compares the effects of exploration and exploitation with regard to the decision to engage in internal or external corporate venturing.

The purpose of this paper is to build up an evaluation framework for selecting creative industries into the new cultural creativity centre in Tainan city, Taiwan.

This study applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to evaluate the creative industries for the introduction and development in the new cultural creativity centre in Taiwan. Then, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to determine the critical factors that affected the priority of the alternatives.

In the seven evaluation criteria, “market potential” has the highest weight, followed by “regional development” and “culture improvement”. In the six industries, creative lifestyle, crafts, and creative design are the three most favourable industries chosen for the introduction and development in the new centre.

One possible limitation is the selection of experts in the research design. Although the participants selected in our study are experienced in the development of the cultural creativity centre and are across several disciplines, the representative of group members is still a critical issue.

The application of the model provides an avenue for government policy makers and researchers to deal effectively with the industry selection issue.

The model developed in this paper is a useful decision‐making tool for solving the selection problem of creative industries.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

According to an oft cited old adage, two heads are better than one. Similar sentiments are expressed by another claiming that many hands make light work. To countless inhabitants of the business world, such beliefs will seem highly appropriate. With competition growing ever fiercer, organizations must possess the means to innovate constantly in order to remain ahead of the pack. Innovation demands a workforce containing a sufficient number of talented and creative employees that possess critical knowledge and an ability to generate breakthrough ideas and transform them into positive outcomes. The more of these key workers, the better is a cry likely to reverberate around most boardrooms.

Firms should develop value systems that encourage collaboration and information transfer. Effective repositories for storing information also need to be in place. Creation of appropriate systems can help facilitate connection and information exchange with other organizations in the region and beyond.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that can have a broader social impact.

This briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This research aims to investigate how backstage visibility affects intangibility and perceived risk at the pre-purchase stage and how service credence moderates the effect of backstage visibility on intangibility and perceived risk. It also focuses on the effect of backstage visibility on perceived service quality and value at the post-purchase stage and the moderating role of the service contact level.

This research tests the causal relationships between backstage visibility and customers’ service evaluations through two experimental studies.

Study 1 shows that customers who are exposed to backstage cues perceive less pre-purchase risk in the service than those who are not exposed. Pictures plus text information are more effective than text illustrations alone for risk reduction. This risk reduction effect is stronger for high-credence than for low-credence services and is partially mediated by the perceived intangibility of the service. Study 2 reveals that customers with access to backstage cues perceive higher service quality and higher overall value from service experiences. The value increase is more significant for high-contact than for low-contact services.

Future research could apply different methods to different data sources to provide further insight about backstage visibility.

The findings of this research suggest that allowing customers to view some backstage activities before purchase helps tangibilize the service, achieve more effective communication with customers and create more positive service experiences.

As a smart service, location-based advertising (LBA) integrates advanced technologies to deliver personalized messages based on a user’s real-time geographic location and needs. However, research has shown that privacy concerns threaten the diffusion of LBA. This research investigates how privacy-related factors (i.e. LBA type, privacy self-efficacy (PSE) and consumer generation) impact consumers’ value-in-use and their intention to use LBA.

This study developed and examined an LBA value-in-use framework that integrates the role of LBA type, consumers’ PSE and consumer generation into the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data were collected through two experiments in the field with a total of 374 consumers. The proposed relationships were tested using PROCESS modeling.

The results reveal that pull (vs push) LBA causes higher value-in-use in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, leading to greater usage intention. Further, the differences in the mediated relationship between pull- and push-LBA are larger among consumers of low PSE (vs high PSE) and Generation Z (vs other generations). The findings suggest that the consumer value-in-use brought about by LBA diminishes when using push-LBA for low PSE and Generation Z consumers.

This research is the first to integrate the privacy-related interactions of LBA type and consumer characteristics into TAM to develop a TAM-based LBA value-in-use framework. This study contributes to the literature on service value-in-use, smart services and LBA by clarifying the boundary conditions that determine the effectiveness of LBA in enhancing consumers’ value-in-use.

The purpose of this paper is to explore healthcare waiting time and the negative and positive effects (i.e. the dual effects) it has on outpatient satisfaction.

Self-administered surveys with 334 outpatients and follow-up interviews with 20 outpatients in three large hospitals in Taiwan were conducted to collect data.

Quantitative surveys demonstrated that perceived waiting time correlated with satisfaction negatively first but then positively. Satisfaction also correlated with doctor reputation and patient sociability. Follow-up qualitative interviews further revealed that, for some patients, waiting contributed positively to patient evaluations through signaling better healthcare quality and facilitating social interaction.

This research demonstrated the possibility that waiting might have positive effects on healthcare satisfaction. It also identified variables that could produce greater positive perceptions during hospital waiting and underlying mechanisms that could explain how the positive effects work. This research may potentially help hospitals with a better understanding of how they can improve patients’ waiting experiences and increase satisfaction.

This study aims to extend the understanding of the role of authentic leadership in encouraging subordinates to become internal whistleblowers. The current study aims to seek whether authentic leadership can encourage internal whistleblowing (IW) through employee controlled motivation for IW and moral courage.

The samples of this study were 221 employees working at 26 government organizations in one of the provinces located on Sumatera Island, Indonesia. Based on the cross-sectional survey method, this study used partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis with SmartPLS 3 software to test the hypotheses.

The result revealed that employee controlled motivation for whistleblowing and moral courage significantly mediates the effect of authentic leadership toward IW. This result also indicates that the two mediating variables in this study fully mediate the effect of authentic leadership toward IW.

This study highlights the critical role played by leaders in encouraging subordinates to IW in the workplace. The role of an authentic leader will have positively affected enhancing IW by employees, which has significant implications for the organization that particularly in manage organization wrongdoing in terms of eliminating or preventing unethical practice.

Theoretically, the current study extends the understanding of the mechanism underlying the relationship between authentic leadership and IW. This study proposes employee controlled motivation for IW and moral courage as the new mediator variables to explain how and why authentic leadership may encourage IW. Empirically, the current study chooses the Indonesian Government as a context that rarely conducts in the prior study.

The purpose of this paper is to provide managers with a critical insight into the relationship between the benefits of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems implementation and the impacts on firm performance of supply chain management (SCM).

This study proposes a structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the relationship between ERP benefits and SCM performance. Hypotheses derived from the key benefits of adopting ERP system and related SCM practices presented by previous authors. An empirical survey is conducted to collect data from Taiwanese IT companies listed in the Taiwan Stock Exchanges on several aspects of firm competences and supply chain performance that adopted ERP systems and/or SCM systems.

The results confirm the operational, tactical, and strategic benefits of ERP for the firm performance of SCM in the internal and external business processes, customer service, and cost management, except for the strategic benefits of ERP are not significant predictors of SCM performance in the external business process. Furthermore, responses show that ERP implementations in these Taiwanese companies have a significant impact on other companies, both small and medium‐size enterprise (SME), within the global supply chain.

This study extends research efforts concerning the relationship between ERP benefits and SCM performance, which the unequivocally positive results are not surprising, yet differ from most of other studies. This fundamental framework is expected not only to aid managers to make better decisions on how they cultivate specific SCM competences but also to conclude that future research can extend the focus to the impact on SCM competences of the aid of external tools such as supplier/customer relationship management, and internet‐based collaborative commerce systems.