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An AI concierge is a technologically advanced, intelligent and personalized assistant that is designated to an individual customer, proactively taking care of that customer’s needs throughout the service journey. This article envisions the idea of AI concierges and discusses how to leverage AI concierges in the customer journey.

This article takes a conceptual approach and draws insights from literature in service management, marketing, psychology, human-computer interaction and ethics.

This article delineates the fundamental forms of AI concierges: dialog interface (no embodiment), virtual avatar (embodiment in the virtual world), holographic projection (projection in the physical world) and tangible service robot (embodiment in the physical world). Key attributes of AI concierges are the ability to exhibit semantic understanding of auditory and visual inputs, maintain an emotional connection with the customer, demonstrate proactivity in refining the customer’s experience and ensure omnipresence through continuous availability in various forms to attend to service throughout the customer journey. Furthermore, the article explores the multifaceted roles that AI concierges can play across the pre-encounter, encounter and post-encounter stages of the customer journey and explores the opportunities and challenges associated with AI concierges.

This paper provides insights for professionals in hospitality, retail, travel, and healthcare on leveraging AI concierges to enhance the customer experience. By broadening AI concierge services, organizations can deliver personalized assistance and refined services across the entire customer journey.

This article is the first to introduce the concept of the AI concierge. It offers a novel perspective by defining AI concierges’ fundamental forms, key attributes and exploring their diverse roles in the customer journey. Additionally, it lays out a research agenda aimed at further advancing this domain.

Although humanoid robots are increasingly adopted in many business settings, the dynamic effects of anthropomorphism and the functional perceptions of service robots on consumers’ responses remain unclear. This paper aims to examine the impacts of robot anthropomorphism on consumers’ trust, receptivity and the downstream effect on satisfaction. Furthermore, it examines the mediating effects of perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) in the relationship between anthropomorphism and consumer responses.

After conducting two separate pilot studies to help design the research materials, this research involves three sequential studies. In studies 1A and 1B, the authors used two distinct humanoid robots (i.e. Connie and Pepper) to test the direct effects of anthropomorphism on trust and receptivity and the mediated effects via PEOU and PU. Study 2 conducted a 2 (robot appearance: machine-like vs. human-like) × 2 (task complexity: low vs. high) between-subjects experimental design to further explore the boundary effects of task complexity on trust and customer satisfaction.

This research theorizes and empirically examines the mediating effects of PEOU and PU in the relationship between anthropomorphism and consumers’ responses (i.e. trust and receptivity) to service robots. Results also demonstrate a moderating role of task complexity, whereby only when the task was complex did anthropomorphism affect consumer responses and customer satisfaction. The parallel mediations of PEOU and PU were also confirmed. However, when task complexity was low, the authors observed no differences between human- and machine-like robots.

First, this research used a scenario-based method by exposing participants to different pictures or videos of service robots and measuring individuals’ responses. Consumers may respond differently upon interacting with robots in actual service contexts. Second, future research could investigate the effects of other aspects of anthropomorphism, such as robots’ voice characteristics (gender, high/low pitch), verbal communication styles and emotional expression. Finally, future research could explore other service contexts to test the generalizability of the findings.

Findings of this study also provide useful insight for companies interested in adopting service robots. First, the authors unearthed several positive outcomes of using human-like versus machine-like robots in service settings. Despite concerns about the perceived creepiness and discomfort associated with human-like robots, managers should not worry about these service agents’ potential negative effects. Second, it shows that human-like robots’ competitive advantage over machine-like robots stands out when task complexity is high. Managers should therefore carefully consider relevant service characteristics and task requirements when deciding whether to adopt robots.

This study provides original and valuable contributions to the growing literature on service robots by addressing scholarly incongruencies regarding the impact of anthropomorphism and disentangling its positive influence on consumers’ perceptions and acceptance of service robots. This study also contributes to research on technology acceptance and service robot receptivity by empirically demonstrating the mediating role of PEOU and PU. Furthermore, this research enriches the body of knowledge on task-technology fit by providing evidence that task complexity is a crucial factor to consider in service robot design.

It is suggested that, to be successful, innovation teams should be small and consist of people with key expertise who want to participate and develop new solutions within their organisations. When it comes to conducting innovation work, I suggest shared leadership may be a factor influencing success. In this chapter, a theoretical framework is presented on the shared leadership of innovation teams. The key to establishing shared leadership in innovation teams is to plan for it as the team is created, not after the team has already been formed, as this may result in various problems in the intended innovation project. The proposed framework details key aspects to consider; some of which are related to external factors such as management and resources, and some to internal factors such as the team’s size, competencies, and their ability to develop norms and ways of working together. The proposed framework is applicable for managers, innovation leaders, and team members, and contributes to previous research on shared leadership and innovation leadership. Further research on the proposed framework is suggested.

With the development of science and technology, more creators are trying to use new crafts to represent the cultural trends of the social media era, which makes cultural heritage innovative and new genres emerge. This compels the academic community to examine craft from a new perspective. It is very helpful to understand the hidden representational structure of craft more deeply and improve the craft innovation system of cultural and creative products that we deconstruct the craft based on Complex Network and discover its intrinsic connections.

The research crawled and cleaned the craft information of the top 20% products on the Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products online and then performed Complex Network modeling, constructed three craft representation networks among function, material and technique, quantified and analyzed the inner connections and network structure of the craft elements, and then analyzed the cultural inheritance and innovation embedded in the craft representation networks.

The three dichotomous craft representation networks constructed by combining function, material and technique: (1) the network density is low and none of them has small-world characteristics, indicating that the innovative heritage of the craft elements in the Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products is at the stage of continuous exploration and development, and multiple coupling innovation is still insufficient; (2) all have scale-free characteristics and there is still a certain degree of community structure within each network, indicating that the coupling innovation of craft elements of the Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products is seriously uneven, with some specific “grammatical combinations” and an Island Effect in the network structure; (3) the craft elements with high network centrality emphasize the characteristics of decorative culture and design for the masses, as well as the pursuit of production efficiency and economic benefits, which represent the aesthetic purport of contemporary Chinese society and the ideological trend of production and life.

The Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products should continue to develop and enrich the multi-coupling innovation of craft elements, clarify and continue their own brand unique craft genes, and make full use of the network important nodes role.

Cost overrun is a significant issue in construction, an undesirable feature the industry has long been associated with. Poor procurement practices are often blamed for subsequent cost overruns in construction, especially with conventional procurement methods leading to outrageous cost overruns. The purpose of this study is to review the features of the new models of construction procurement (NMCP) and assess their potential to reduce cost overruns in construction projects.

A literature review was conducted to identify the issues of procurement leading to cost escalations. Primary data were obtained through exploratory, semi-structured interviews using a case study approach.

Clients’ lack of knowledge was highlighted as a key issue in procurement that interlinks with many factors causing cost escalation. The findings suggest that the features contained within the NMCP, such as early contractor involvement and collaboration throughout the project team, have the potential to make a positive contribution to addressing cost escalation in construction.

The primary research was undertaken as an exploratory study and presents the contractor's perspective. Further research is therefore suggested, with multiple organisations representing all key stakeholders in a construction project, including clients, consultants, sub-contractors and suppliers.

The study recommends awareness of the NMCP be raised throughout the industry, and simplified information must be made available to help widen uptake of these contemporary procurement methods.

Addressing the dearth of research concerning the use of NMCP within the industry, this study makes a niche contribution to the body of knowledge on construction cost management by illustrating the potential offered by these new procurement methods for addressing cost escalation. For an industry where collaboration is accepted with reservations, this case study demonstrates how novel collaborative strategies such as open book costing, project bank accounts and shared pain and gain mechanisms can be implemented as part of the procurement strategy and how such strategies can contribute towards minimising the cost escalation inherent in construction projects.

Pina Bausch is considered one of the most influential choreographers in contemporary dance. She created a new dance language based on a groundbreaking form of joint artistic inquiry. As a leader, Pina Bausch transformed her company into a chosen family of diverse personalities whom she supported in the development of their individual artistic expressiveness. She encouraged her dancers to contribute to her signature style with inventiveness and authenticity. Her ability to integrate the dancers’ contributions into her pieces and bring them to the fore onstage makes Pina Bausch a prime example of creative leadership. While leveraging her company’s collective genius and international fame through boundless curiosity and artistic integrity, Pina Bausch balanced paradoxes of leading innovation. The essence of her leadership style points to the importance of curiosity, humanity, and embodiment in leader-follower relationships.

As perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become one of the long-term sustainable development strategies for many companies, this paper investigates the interrelationships between sustainable values (SVs), perceived CSR and customer behaviour in the restaurant industry.

To gather data needed to meet the study aims, we conducted an online survey of restaurant patrons in China, and used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse the proposed models and test the hypotheses.

The obtained findings confirm that the three studied SV dimensions (equality, respect for nature and shared responsibility) have positive effects on perceived CSR, which in turn significantly affects word of mouth (WOM). Moreover, perceived CSR mediates the relationship between the three SVs and WOM but has no impact on the relationship between SVs and revisit intention.

The results of this study have practical implications for managers in the restaurant industry. Restaurant managers can prioritize their CSR efforts based on the relative importance of SV dimensions, which is useful in generating positive WOM.

Even though the importance of CSR is widely recognised, it is insufficiently studied from the perspective of restaurant customers. This research not only addresses this gap, but also expands the current understanding of SVs and their impact on CSR.

Creativity is a strongly context related, collective and collaborative task across multiple boundaries that are of immaterial and material nature. Numerous factors play a role in the emergence of creativity. Leadership styles and diversity have undoubtedly an impact on team creativity. Creative teams face many processes inherent paradoxes which leaders and members need to balance and overcome together. According to the observations and research findings discussed in this chapter, effective management of diversity for creativity requires a ‘humble leadership’ style as well as different communication competencies and strategies. This book chapter provides theoretical and practical insights for those responsible for diversity management in creative teams, based on two empirical studies conducted between 2019 and 2022. Competencies and strategies are presented that may help leaders and teams navigate through highly dynamic, paradoxical interaction processes and, thus, turn their diversity into a creativity asset. In addition, a glimpse of the Team Creativity Navigator (TCN) is offered, which is a new assessment and development tool that supports leaders’ and team members’ learning processes for inclusive, creativity enhancing collaboration. As such, our chapter is an empirically based conceptual contribution with the objective of providing practitioners (and researchers) with insights into appropriate strategies to boost creativity in diverse teams.

The main objective of this research is to investigate the factors that influence consumer purchase decisions for halal products before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) theory.

The research was conducted as a survey. The influencing factors were determined based on the grey relational analysis (GRA) approach.

The findings indicate before the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers mainly purchased halal products based on four key factors: purchasing experience, certification label, Internet searches and past consumption experience. However, during the pandemic, the ranking and factors have changed to six indicators, which are past consumption experience, purchasing experience, certification labels, standardized specifications, Internet searches and halal certification labels.

The study was limited by the sample size and geographical area. Nevertheless, the findings could be further explored by expanding related theories toward understand human decisions based on spiritual beliefs.

The findings of this study have important implications for research, practice and society. Understanding the factors influencing halal purchase decisions before and during the pandemic can help businesses, policymakers and halal certification bodies to better cater to consumers' needs and preferences and ensure the continued growth and development of the halal industry.

This study evaluates halal purchasing decisions between periods of certainty and uncertainty by using the GRA. Changes in halal consumption and purchase decisions in response to COVID-19 pandemic have become an emerging topic of discovery. The study addresses the gap in the literature regarding changes in consumer decision pattern.

This study aims to explore how the absorptive capacity of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) facilitates increased acquirer performance in industry exploration and technology exploration cross-border acquisitions (CBAs).

The research context for this study is Brazilian EMNEs and their CBAs. The final database contains 101 CBAs.

The authors find that industry exploration strategies negatively affect financial performance, but technology exploration strategies have a positive effect. The acquirer’s absorptive capacity can exacerbate the negative effects, except in instances of technology exploration strategies, where there is a demonstrable benefit from the acquirer’s absorptive capacity.

The study contributes first by providing a more nuanced understanding of the effects of absorptive capacity on postacquisition performance, depending on the type of knowledge explored. Second, by drawing on EMNE learning perspectives, the authors demonstrate the versatility of absorptive capacity in emerging markets.