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1 – 10 of 784Cai Yang, Zhi Yang, Shengmei Wu and Yu Zheng
Training activities organized by maker-spaces have become the most important channel through which makers acquire new external knowledge related to problem solving and thus…
Abstract
Purpose
Training activities organized by maker-spaces have become the most important channel through which makers acquire new external knowledge related to problem solving and thus contribute significantly to makers' innovation performance. Is it true that the more training activities in which makers participate, the better their innovation performance? Following the logic of process analyses, this paper empirically verifies the effects of the scope and frequency of makers' participation in training activities on their innovation performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a survey of 134 makers in China, this paper employed the procedure recommended by Preacher and Hayes (2008) to empirically test the total effects, direct effects and indirect effects of the scope and frequency of participation in training activities on makers' innovation performance via their ability to exploit new knowledge.
Findings
The research findings show that the scope (frequency) of participation in training activities has a positive (negative) effect on makers' innovation performance via the mediating effect of the makers' ability to exploit new knowledge. Time pressure acts as a negative moderator.
Originality/value
This paper sheds light on a considerably overlooked research area by investigating the effects of the scope and frequency of makers' participation in training activities on their innovation performance. The authors further identify and empirically test the theoretical mechanism by considering the mediating effect of makers' ability to exploit new knowledge. The research findings also provide a managerial training activity arrangement strategy for makerspaces and government.
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Zhi Yang, Jinglan Yang and Xiao Liang
How an entrepreneurial organisation sets the problem space determines the future venturing mode. However, the factors that contribute to differences in problem space are still not…
Abstract
Purpose
How an entrepreneurial organisation sets the problem space determines the future venturing mode. However, the factors that contribute to differences in problem space are still not well-developed. Based on sensemaking theory, this study explores the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of organisational sensemaking on effectual problem setting.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on survey data from 162 entrepreneurial organisations in China. Hierarchical regression is used for analysing the data and testing the hypotheses.
Findings
Organisational sensemaking has a negative effect on effectual problem setting and a positive impact on outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability; outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability has a negative effect on effectual problem setting; outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between organisational sensemaking and effectual problem setting. Organisational size negatively moderates the relationship between organisational sensemaking and outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability. It also negatively moderates the indirect effect of organisational sensemaking on effectual problem setting through outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability.
Originality/value
First, this study contributes to the research on effectual problem setting by introducing organisational sensemaking as an antecedent. Second, this study extends the literature on organisational sensemaking by showing how organisational sensemaking affects entrepreneurial uncertainty, instead of treating uncertainty as an exogenous shock. Third, this study introduced the outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability to reveal the mediating mechanism between organisational sensemaking and effectual problem setting.
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Abstract
Purpose
Research on makers and innovation has been equivocal regarding whether maker innovation is driven by internal motivation or external incentives. The motivation view favors the intrinsic motives of makers, whereas the incentive view supports external economic incentives. The authors combine both views to explore how innovation tournaments promote the product innovation outcomes of different creative and entrepreneurial makers, using economic incentives (money) or social incentives (love).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors interviewed 42 makers and collected a panel dataset of 29,823 makers from the largest digital maker community in China using a Python crawling program. The authors analyzed the data using multiple methods, including cluster analysis, discriminant analysis, factor analysis and negative binomial regression.
Findings
Compared with entrepreneurial makers, the product productivity of creative makers is inferior, but their product popularity is greater. The social incentive of innovation tournaments promotes the product productivity and popularity of creative makers compared with that of entrepreneurial makers, but the economic incentive is contradictory. In addition, social and economic incentives interact to generate inconsistent influences.
Originality/value
The study identifies creative and entrepreneurial makers and contributes to user innovation and innovation tournaments by integrating motivation and incentive views.
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Yangjun Tu, Wei Liu and Zhi Yang
This research empirically investigates how service employees' ratings of technology readiness (TRI), negative attitudes towards robots (NARS), Big Five personality traits (BFI…
Abstract
Purpose
This research empirically investigates how service employees' ratings of technology readiness (TRI), negative attitudes towards robots (NARS), Big Five personality traits (BFI) and emotional demands (ED) affect their willingness to work with service robots (WTW).
Design/methodology/approach
One set of data is collected from 410 service employees expected to work with service robots in Study 1. Another set of field data is collected from 102 employees working with service robots in Study 2. Hierarchical regression is used to test hypotheses about the impact of technology readiness, negative attitudes towards robots and Big Five personality traits on WTW. Additionally, the interactions of emotional demands in the workplace are analysed.
Findings
TRI-optimism and TRI-insecurity significantly affect WTW in Study 2 but are nonsignificant in Study 1. The impacts of NARS-emotions in interaction with robots and NARS-interaction with robots situations on WTW are significant in Study 1 but nonsignificant in Study 2. Moreover, BFI-neuroticism negatively affected WTW in Study 1, while these effects were nonsignificant in Study 2. Finally, emotional demands significantly interact with three of eleven dimensions of IVs in Study 1, but all interactions are nonsignificant in Study 2.
Practical implications
This research provides a guiding framework for service companies to screen employees expected to cowork with service robots, to enhance newly hired employees' WTW and to improve existing employees' WTW.
Originality/value
Integrating the characteristics of service employees, service robots and jobs into a theoretical framework, this research is the first to empirically examine the effects of service employees' several critical characteristics (technology readiness, negative attitudes towards robots and Big Five personality) on WTW and the moderation of job characteristics (emotional demands).
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Xia Cao, Zhi Yang, Feng Wang, Chongyu Lu and Yueyan Wu
This study investigates the effect of keyword portfolio characteristics on sales in paid search advertising. The authors propose two keyword portfolio characteristics (variety and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the effect of keyword portfolio characteristics on sales in paid search advertising. The authors propose two keyword portfolio characteristics (variety and disparity) and examine the effects of portfolio variety and portfolio disparity on direct and indirect sales in both PC and mobile environment.
Design/methodology/approach
By conducting a field study at a large e-commerce platform, the authors use a negative binomial model to develop empirical findings that provide insights into paid search advertising strategies.
Findings
For main effect, (1) portfolio variety has a negative effect on direct sales. However, (2) portfolio disparity has positive effects on both direct and indirect sales. Advertising channels influence the contribution of keyword portfolio to sales. (3) On mobile devices, portfolio variety positively affects both direct and indirect sales. However, portfolio disparity negatively affects both direct and indirect sales. (4) On PCs, portfolio variety negatively affects both direct and indirect sales. However, portfolio disparity positively affects both direct and indirect sales on PC.
Practical implications
The findings provide advertisers with insights into how to manage keyword portfolio between mobile devices and PCs.
Originality/value
The current study shifts the attention from keyword to keywords (keyword portfolio), which extends the paid search literature. Moreover, it also contributes to the literature by comparing the relative effectiveness of mobile and PC search advertising.
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Chih-Ching Teng, Allan Cheng Chieh Lu, Zhi-Yang Huang and Chien-Hua Fang
This paper aims to propose and test a moderated mediation model examining the relationships among ethical work climate, organizational identification, leader-member-exchange (LMX…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose and test a moderated mediation model examining the relationships among ethical work climate, organizational identification, leader-member-exchange (LMX) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).
Design/methodology/approach
Numerous regression analyses were performed using PROCESS (version 2.13), a macro for SPSS developed by Hayes (2017) to test this moderated mediation model.
Findings
The analytical results showed that organizational identification mediates the positive relationship between an ethical work climate and OCB. The analytical results also showed that LMX moderates the direct effect of ethical work climate on organizational identification and that LMX also moderates the indirect effect of ethical work climate on OCB via organizational identification.
Practical implications
This study provides numerous valuable implications for hotels to develop effective strategies to promote employees’ OCB and improve their organizational identification.
Originality/value
This study was the first attempt to propose and test a moderated mediation model that explores the relationships among ethical work climate, organizational identification, leader-member-exchange (LMX) and OCB.
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Yuanxing Zhang, Zhuqi Li, Kaigui Bian, Yichong Bai, Zhi Yang and Xiaoming Li
Projecting the population distribution in geographical regions is important for many applications such as launching marketing campaigns or enhancing the public safety in certain…
Abstract
Purpose
Projecting the population distribution in geographical regions is important for many applications such as launching marketing campaigns or enhancing the public safety in certain densely populated areas. Conventional studies require the collection of people’s trajectory data through offline means, which is limited in terms of cost and data availability. The wide use of online social network (OSN) apps over smartphones has provided the opportunities of devising a lightweight approach of conducting the study using the online data of smartphone apps. This paper aims to reveal the relationship between the online social networks and the offline communities, as well as to project the population distribution by modeling geo-homophily in the online social networks.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors propose the concept of geo-homophily in OSNs to determine how much the data of an OSN can help project the population distribution in a given division of geographical regions. Specifically, the authors establish a three-layered theoretic framework that first maps the online message diffusion among friends in the OSN to the offline population distribution over a given division of regions via a Dirichlet process and then projects the floating population across the regions.
Findings
By experiments over large-scale OSN data sets, the authors show that the proposed prediction models have a high prediction accuracy in characterizing the process of how the population distribution forms and how the floating population changes over time.
Originality/value
This paper tries to project population distribution by modeling geo-homophily in OSNs.
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Ting Xiao, Zhi Yang, Yanhui Jiang, Shitong Huang and Chongyu Lu
Research generally believes that both corporate venture capital (CVC) and independent venture capital (IVC) promote the innovation value of entrepreneurial ventures, but their…
Abstract
Purpose
Research generally believes that both corporate venture capital (CVC) and independent venture capital (IVC) promote the innovation value of entrepreneurial ventures, but their roles in innovation risk remain unclear. To reveal the bright and dark sides of CVC and IVC, we compare their influence on innovation performance and performance variability of entrepreneurial ventures as well as their interaction effects with innovation assets through physical and intellectual assets.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a panel dataset consisting of 630 high-tech ventures and the Heckman selection model to test the hypotheses and correct the endogenous problems.
Findings
We find that CVC improves the innovation performance of entrepreneurial ventures but at the cost of increasing their performance variability, whereas IVC is the opposite. We also find the combination effect of external and internal capital of entrepreneurial ventures. CVC and IVC complement intellectual assets to enhance innovation performance and dance with physical assets to reduce variability.
Originality/value
We use a value-risk dyadic perspective to reveal the bright side and dark side of CVC and IVC. We unveil the interplay mechanism between internal and external capital of entrepreneurial ventures and develop some kinds of capital configuration strategies to balance innovation value and risk.
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Shian Li, Zhi Yang, Yihui Liu, Qiuwan Shen, Guogang Yang and Bengt Ake Sunden
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the heat and mass transport characteristics in microchannel reactors with non-uniform catalyst distributions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the heat and mass transport characteristics in microchannel reactors with non-uniform catalyst distributions.
Design/methodology/approach
A two-dimensional model is developed to study the heat and mass transport characteristics in microchannel reactors. The heat and mass transport processes in the microchannel reactors with non-uniform catalyst distribution in the catalytic combustion channel are also studied.
Findings
The simulated results are compared in terms of the distributions of species mole fraction, temperature and reaction rate for the conventional and new designed reactors. It is found that the chemical reaction, heat and mass transport processes are significantly affected and the maximum temperature in the reactor is also greatly reduced when a non-uniform catalyst distribution is applied in the combustion catalyst layer.
Practical implications
This study can improve the understanding of the transportation characteristics in microchannel reactors with non-uniform catalyst distributions and provide guidance for the design of microchannel reactors.
Originality/value
The design of microchannel reactors with non-uniform catalyst distributions can be used in methane steam reforming to reduce the maximum temperature inside the reactor.
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