Search results

The research is aimed at investigating how relational mechanisms and formal contracts affect alliance success under constructive and destructive conflict.

While relational mechanisms and formal contracts are widely used in strategic alliances to manage a variety of issues among partners, recent research has indicated that effects of these governance mechanisms may change in distinct contexts. Adopting the lens of new institutional economics, this study provides insights on the comparative and interactive effects of relational mechanisms and formal contracts on alliance success, and the differential contingency effects of two types of inter-partner conflict, i.e. constructive and destructive conflict, on the above relationships. The authors use hierarchical multivariate regression analyses through a survey dataset of 392 alliance firms in China with the approach of two key informants.

The empirical results confirm that relational mechanisms have a stronger positive effect on alliance success than formal contracts and these two governance mechanisms complement each other in driving alliance success. When facing a high level of constructive conflict, partner firms rely to a greater extent on relational mechanisms than on formal contracts to achieve alliance success. When a high level of destructive conflict exists, partner firms depend more heavily on formal contracts than on relational mechanisms to achieve alliance success. Moreover, the complementary effect of the two governance mechanisms is much stronger when partner firms face high constructive conflict than when they face high destructive conflict.

This study discloses the comparative and interactive effects of relational mechanisms and formal contracts on alliance success in distinct contexts by identifying the moderating roles of constructive and destructive conflict.

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world, although the current situation is more under control. Because the development of the pandemic took place in the context of a digital society, where digital information and communication technologies (ICT) were already widely used, households certainly had to make greater use of this powerful communication tool, partly for work, and partly for distance learning purposes. It is likely that the increased use of ICT in the home, due to the lockdown, created an environment in which families were more united but also isolated and in conflict and this trend may still be present today.

This chapter is based on a study of ICT in the daily lives of Portuguese and Italian women, who lived in nuclear families, during and after the COVID pandemic. Through the testimonies of these women, therefore, we will discuss the results of the study to describe and understand how families used ICT during and after the pandemic. In particular, we are interested in answering the following questions: Did domestic spaces become more and more like work spaces due to the increased use of ICT due to the pandemic lockdown? Did distance learning, due to the lockdown, lead to an increase in ICT use by children/adolescents that is still perpetuated today?

This paper aims to investigate empirically whether creative industries are boosting the economic performance of the ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei Darussalam) during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

This paper applied a random effect and fixed effect estimation approach to investigate the impact of creative industries’ development (government expenditure on education, export of creative industries, trade openness, innovation index, sukuk issuances) on the economic performance spanning from 2010 to 2020.

The economic performance was proxied by two dependent variables, namely, the gross domestic product and the Misery Index. On top of containment and vaccination measures, the findings demonstrated that creative industries are enhancing economic growth in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, supported by the significant role of the sukuk market as a vital contributor to economic growth.

This study is unique because it provides novel and empirical results of the creative industries’ development on economic performance in the ASEAN countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to investigate the reliability issues of microvoid cracks in solder joint packages exposed to thermal cycling fatigue.

The specimens are subjected to JEDEC preconditioning level 1 (85 °C/85%RH/168 h) with five times reflow at 270°C. This is followed by thermal cycling from 0°C to 100°C, per IPC-7351B standards. The specimens' cross-sections are inspected for crack growth and propagation under backscattered scanning electronic microscopy. The decoupled thermomechanical simulation technique is applied to investigate the thermal fatigue behavior. The impacts of crack length on the stress and fatigue behavior of the package are investigated.

Cracks are initiated from the ball grid array corner of the solder joint, propagating through the transverse section of the solder ball. The crack growth increases continuously up to 0.25-mm crack length, then slows down afterward. The J-integral and stress intensity factor (SIF) values at the crack tip decrease with increased crack length. Before 0.15-mm crack length, J-integral and SIF reduce slightly with crack length and are comparatively higher, resulting in a rapid increase in crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD). Beyond 0.25-mm crack length, the values significantly decline, that there is not much possibility of crack growth, resulting in a negligible change in CMOD value. This explains the crack growth arrest obtained after 0.25-mm crack length.

This work's contribution is expected to reduce the additional manufacturing cost and lead time incurred in investigating reliability issues in solder joints.

The work investigates crack propagation mechanisms of microvoid cracks in solder joints exposed to moisture and thermal fatigue, which is still limited in the literature. The parametric variation of the crack length on stress and fatigue characteristics of solder joints, which has never been conducted, is also studied.

This study aims to identify the factor that could be able to motivate the food industry to take part in the standardization process and analyse which motive is the most influential one. This study also examines the relationship between the motive and the implementation itself.

As one of Malaysian Standard, MS1500 is focused on halal food matters. This standard was established by the Malaysian Government to realize their dream of becoming the leader in the global halal market. However, there are still many food and beverage small and medium-sized entterprises owned by Indigenous Muslims in Malaysia who still take it for granted by claiming that their products are halal without ever signing up for the halal certificate or implementing MS1500.

The findings of this study can be used as an input for the Malaysian Government, so they will be able to plan any suitable programme that can promote the implementation of this standard.

The halal food industry has grown significantly around the world. By category of spending, the halal food and beverages industry holds the biggest share, with a value of about US$1,303bn in 2017 and is expected to reach US$1,863bn by 2023. These big opportunities have been captured by several countries in the world, including Malaysia. As a Moslem country, Malaysia aspires to be the halal hub and has aggressively worked towards becoming the key player in delivering halal food products. By understanding the motives behind the implementation of the halal standard by the food industry, we can develop strategies to expand the growth of the halal industry itself.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind that has been conducted to explore the motives behind the implementation of halal food standards by the food industry, especially in Malaysia. From the review of the current literature, it is found that studies on halal food certification and halal logo mainly focused on the consumer side instead of the industry side. On top of that, it is also found that previous studies mostly adopted two notable theories, namely, theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour. To elaborate on and use plenty of other theories in performing a halal standard research, the three isomorphism pressure from institutional theory of DiMaggio and Powell has been chosen as a pertinent theory in this study. As a result, the theoretical gap and the uneven scope of halal food standard and certification research, with particular attention on the industry or manufacturer side, are expected to be bridged. This theory is also used to identify the most dominant motive. Moreover, this study examined the relationship between the motive behind standardization and the standardization itself.

This paper aims to study the interfacial delamination found in the boundary of the copper/copper-epoxy layers of a multi-layer ceramic capacitor.

The thermal reflow process of the capacitor assembly and the crack propagation from the initial micro voids presented in the boundary, and later manifested into delamination, were numerically simulated. Besides, the cross section of the capacitor assembly was inspected for delamination cracks and voids using a scanning electronic microscope.

Interfacial delamination in the boundary of copper/copper-epoxy layers was caused by the thermal mismatch and growth of micro voids during the thermal reflow process. The maximum deformation on the capacitor during reflow was 2.370 µm. It was found that a larger void would induce higher vicinity stress, mode I stress intensity factor, and crack elongation rate. Moreover, the crack extension increased with the exerted deformation until 0.3 µm, before saturating at the peak crack extension of around 0.078 µm.

The root cause of interfacial delamination issues in capacitors due to thermal reflow has been identified, and viable solutions proposed. These can eliminate the additional manufacturing cost and lead time incurred in identifying and tackling the issues; as well as benefit end-users, by promoting the electronic device reliability and performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the mechanism of delamination occurrence in a capacitor during has not been reported to date. The parametric variation analysis of the void size and deformation on the crack growth has never been conducted.

The ongoing anthropological transformation urges the rethinking of education, underlining the inadequacy of our schools and universities in dealing with hypercomplexity, that is, with the global extension of all political, social, and cultural processes and with their indeterminacy, interdependence, and interconnection. The idea that educational processes are questions of a purely technical/technological nature, solely a problem of skills and know-how, is the “great mistake” of the hypertechnological society, based on the illusion of being able to measure and quantify everything, to eliminate error and unpredictability, and to achieve total control and rationality. It is necessary to rethink education radically because the extraordinary scientific discoveries and the dynamics of the new technologies have completely overturned the complex interaction between biological and cultural evolution, doing away with the borders between the natural and the artificial. Emergence and emergency themselves are structural features of complex systems (living, social, and human systems), rendered hypercomplex through today’s acceleration and virality, regarding not only education and socialization but also the representations and perceptions of all systemic processes. The merging of fields of knowledge and an epistemology of error become essential for the analysis and interpretation of this hypercomplexity and the unpredictability that distinguishes it.

The Chinese data setting allows researchers to explore the influence of local versus national (central) government ownership on companies. This study aims to examine the influence of government ownership (local versus national) and auditor choice (choosing larger or smaller firms) on audit pricing in China.

This study executed three panel data regressions to examine the two hypotheses using 19,626 observations from 2009 to 2017 in the Chinese data setting. This study also uses the Sobel test to investigate the moderating effect of auditor choice.

This study first examines whether choosing a large audit firm positively influences audit pricing and whether listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs) charge less audit fees to audit firms after controlling for various variables. However, the interaction influence of government ownership and audit firm size on audit pricing is positive, suggesting that a large audit firm charges a client company more, even if the client is an SOE. More importantly, when we divide SOEs into national- and local-SOEs, the results of the influence of auditor choice, government ownership and the interaction of government ownership on audit pricing are consistent (plus, minus, plus), and audit firms charge local-SOEs less than national-SOEs. Furthermore, from the additional analysis, this study finds that the strong auditor type has a moderate effect on the case of local-SOEs on audit pricing and local-SOEs choose smaller auditors.

Research on the differences between local and national government ownership is limited. This study adds empirical results from this perspective. In particular, the findings suggest a further audit pricing research direction to consider the influence of client companies’ ownership types and auditor choice, especially in countries with planned economies.

This study aims to examine the effect of accreditation on higher education performance, directly and indirectly, through the quality culture as a mediator in the context of higher education, based on the perceptions of administrative and quality managers.

This is a quantitative study using stratified random sampling techniques to collect data through a nationwide survey of universities in Pakistan. Of the 150 questionnaires distributed, 105 are found to be valid, while the data are analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results provide interesting insights, including significant effects of accreditation on quality culture and higher education performance, significant effects of quality culture on higher education performance and the mediating role of quality culture in relation to accreditation and higher education performance.

Limitations of the study include a relatively smaller sample size and the selection of administrative managers as the sole respondents. This study extends the theoretical understanding by introducing several linkages, including the link between accreditation and higher education performance, accreditation and quality culture, and by introducing quality culture as a mediator. Furthermore, the study also provides empirical evidence for all proposed links in the university setting. This study has implications for administrative and quality managers, in terms of effectively implementing accreditation standards by cultivating a quality culture at their respective universities, resulting in improved university performance.

This study is the first to introduce quality culture as a mediator between accreditation and higher education performance and examines the effect of accreditation and quality culture on higher education performance in the university context. Also, the interdisciplinary nature of the study makes it relevant and interesting to administrative and quality managers in the fields of higher education and quality management.

This study aims to explain the value of using critical realist case research in supply chain management (SCM). While positivist case research focuses on generalizable law-like rules, and interpretivist research explores social meaning, critical realist case research seeks to make objective explanations that are bound by the case context. This study demonstrates how a critical realist synthesis of causal reasoning and contextual complexity allows for stronger theorizing in SCM.

This study highlights the possibilities of conducting critical realist case research in SCM by investigating philosophical perspectives in existing literature.

Based on existing literature, this study identifies which parts of contemporary SCM research will benefit from the critical realist perspective. This study also contends that supply chain scholars can use critical realist case research to develop new types of contextualized middle-range theories.

This study proposes to complement the qualitative SCM toolbox with critical realist case research to further refine the development of novel theories. This will benefit not only researchers but also managers, as it opens the doors to new and inspiring research.

This study takes an important step toward establishing critical realist case studies as a key methodology in SCM. While other scholars have introduced critical realism as a paradigmatic approach in SCM, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first article that develops a qualitative critical realist case research approach.