Search results

Cyber resilience has emerged as an approach for seaports to deal with cyberattacks; it emphasizes ports’ ability to prepare for an attack and to keep operating and recover quickly. However, little research has been undertaken on the challenges of governing cyber risks in seaports. This study aims to address this gap.

Governing cyber resilience is shaped by distributed responsibilities, uncertainties and ambiguities. The authors use this conceptualization to explore the governance of cyber risks in seaports, taking the Port of Rotterdam as a case study and analyzing semistructured interviews with stakeholders, participatory observation and policy documents and legislation.

The authors found that many strategies for governing cyber risks remain dedicated to protecting computer systems against cyberattacks. Nevertheless, port stakeholders have also developed strategies in anticipation of disruptions. However, these strategies appear informal and uncoordinated due to a lack of information exchange, insufficient knowledge regarding cyber risks and disagreement about how to make the Port of Rotterdam cyber resilient. What mainly hampers the cyber resilience of the port is the lack of a comprehensive regulatory framework and economic incentives. The authors conclude that resilience is merely an ideal at the Port of Rotterdam, meaning related governance strategies remain incremental and await institutionalization.

This paper offers insights into the cyber resilience of critical socio-technical systems, which have been underexposed in cyber resilience debates, but, when exploited, can manifest in large-scale disruptions.

This paper aims to examine how competitive intelligence (CI) relates to the strategy formulation process of firms.

Due to the novelty of the phenomenon and to the depth of the investigation required to grasp the mechanisms and logics of CI, a multiple case study has been performed related to four companies located in Brazil that adopted CI practices within dedicated business units to inform and support strategic decision-making.

The authors provide detailed empirical evidence on the connection and use of CI practices throughout each stage of the strategy formulation process. Moreover, the study suggests that CI practices, despite their strategic relevance and diffusion, are still extensively adopted for tactical use.

This study sheds light on how CI practices may inform, support, and be integrated in the strategy formulation process, as few studies have done before.

To be able to continuously provide affordable services to consumers, managers of critical infrastructure (CI) maintenance supply networks have to balance investments in resilience with costs. At the same time, CI providers need to consider factors that influence resilience such as the geographical spread or the location of the network. This study aims to contextualize supply chain resilience knowledge by exploring how maintenance resource configurations impact resilience and costs in CI supply networks.

An in-depth longitudinal single case study of a representative CI provider that has centralized its maintenance supply network is used. Data were collected before and after the change to evaluate the effect of the changes on the maintenance supply network.

This study shows that in this specific CI maintenance context, structural resource choices such as the quantity or location of spare parts and tools, the creation and exploitation of tacit knowledge and staff motivation impact both resilience and costs due to geographical spread, network location and other network properties.

This study extends general supply chain resilience knowledge to a new setting (i.e. CI) and shows how existing insights apply in this context. More specifically, it is shown that even in engineered supply networks there is a need to consider the effect of human agency on resilience as the creation and exploitation of tacit knowledge are of immense importance in managing the network. In addition, the relationship between normal accidents theory and high reliability theory (HRT) is revisited as findings indicate that HRT is also important after a disruption has taken place.

With the ongoing digitalization of the construction industry (CI), situational awareness (SA) is becoming increasingly important in construction management. The purpose of this article is to identify the requirements of SA system development in the CI and to provide recommendations for the future development of SA systems.

In this exploratory multi-case research study, a literature review and five Finnish cases were used to gather the evidence on how system developers have planned SA systems and what motives and objectives were behind their development efforts. An analysis of the cases, along with a review of SA models and concepts from other sectors, was used to identify requirements and deficiencies of the SA systems developed by CI actors.

This study reveals deficiencies in the recent SA systems. The systems seemed to be based on traditional project models, in which the role of the individual as the creator and interpreter of an SA system is still significant. Major requirements and future development of the systems are related to better SA levels of perception and projection and data quality.

This study contributes to an understudied area of SA in the construction context and provides new insights into how construction companies develop their SA systems. The main study limitations are its geographically limited case selection and the limited generalizability of the results.

The research (1) shows what requirements and systemic weaknesses SA developers in the CI must consider in future development work and (2) shows developers the requirements to obtain holistic SA.

The study provides insights into the content of newly developed SA models and integrates developers' requirements into the SA theory.

Inaccurate product information on retail websites lead to dissatisfied customers and profit losses. Yet, the effects of product information failures (PIFs) remain under-explored, with the mobile commerce channel commonly overlooked. This paper aims (1) to investigate the negative effects of PIFs on shoppers' attitudes and behaviours in a mobile context. The authors further (2) evaluate the impacts of the cause and duration of a PIF, changes of expectations towards the retailer after a PIF occurred and how previous mobile shopping experience in general decreases the effects of PIFs.

The authors conducted a scenario-based experiment with a one-factorial between-subjects design. The six most common PIFs of an international leading online fashion retailer are operationalized and tested against a control group. The final sample consists out of 758 mobile shoppers from the UK.

The results demonstrate that the perceived severity of PIFs based on showing customers incorrect information is higher when key information is lacking. Further, when the cause of a PIF is attributed to the retailer, it results in higher recovery expectations towards them. The results also reveal that respondents who have shopped mobile before perceive PIFs as less severe than inexperienced ones.

This research expands the online service failure literature by examining PIFs and its effects in the specific context of mobile commerce. The authors also provide recommendations for a better management of PIFs like the incorporation of PIFs information into reporting packs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and further the existing knowledge on supply chain integration (SCI). This study proposes a model and several hypotheses to better understand some SCI antecedents, dependence and resource commitment and their relationships with performance.

Based on diverse theoretical approaches, the author develops and tests an integrated model in which dependence and resource commitment are proposed to enhance external integration, leading to an increase in economic performance. This study's empirical validity is reinforced by collecting data from 142 manufacturing firms in Spain and Germany and testing the model using structural equation model (SEM).

The results support dependence and resource commitment as antecedents of SCI, both with a positive effect. Also, discrepancies in the effect of external integration on performance are found where supplier integration seems not to have any effect on performance.

This study helps to better understand SCI antecedents. It makes both theoretical and managerial contributions by empirically analyzing both antecedents. This furthers extant knowledge regarding the joined impact of resource commitment and dependence on SCI. In particular, it incorporates resource commitment by considering it as the sacrifice firms need to implement to get involved in a long-term relationship.

Critical infrastructures (CIs) for essential services such as water supply and electricity delivery are notoriously vulnerable to disruptions. While extant literature offers important insights into the resilience of CIs following large-scale disasters, our understanding of CI resilience to the more typical disruptions that affect CIs on a day-to-day basis remains limited. The present study investigates how the interorganizational (supply) network that uses and manages the CI can mitigate the adverse consequences of day-to-day disruptions.

Longitudinal archival data on 277 day-to-day disruptions within the Dutch national railway CI were collected and analyzed using generalized estimating equations.

The empirical results largely support the study’s predictions that day-to-day disruptions have greater adverse effects if they co-occur or are relatively unprecedented. The findings further show that the involved interorganizational network can enhance CI resilience to these disruptions, in particular, by increasing the overall level of cross-boundary information exchange between organizations inside the network.

This study helps managers to make well-informed choices regarding the target and intensity of their cross-boundary information-exchange efforts when dealing with day-to-day disruptions affecting their CI. The findings illustrate the importance of targeting cross-boundary information exchange at the complete interorganizational network responsible for the CI and to increase the intensity of such efforts when CI disruptions co-occur and/or are unprecedented.

This study contributes to our academic understanding of how network-level processes (i.e. cross-boundary information exchange) can be managed to ensure interorganizational (supply) networks’ resilience to day-to-day disruptions in a CI context. Subsequent research may draw from the conceptual framework advanced in the present study for examining additional supply network-level processes that can influence the effectiveness of entire supply networks. As such, the present research may assist scholars to move beyond a simple dyadic context and toward examining complete supply networks

The construction industry’s daily processes demand heavy data usage and communication between project participants to meet client requirements. Thus, the application of information technology in project implementation has been increasing in the construction sector (CS) lately. However, the same cannot be seen in public sectors responsible for implementing government projects in South Africa. This study aimed to investigate the causes and effects of the underutilisation of information communication technology (ICT) in the building section of a public sector in a municipality in South Africa.

A qualitative approach was adopted for the study, using a public sector in one of the municipalities as a case study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted among the building unit workers, using unstructured interview questions. The data collected were analysed using the ATLAS.ti software.

The findings indicate a lack of understanding of existing and newly available ICT software and hardware technology among staff within the building technology due to lack of digitalisation in construction projects implementation, inadequate system upgrades, lack of adequate ICT resources, lack of financial resources for internet and software application subscriptions and lack of ICT training leading. The issues mentioned above have led to the outsourcing of projects professionals, slow pace of electronic emails, untrained professionals, usage of different and unlicensed software, resulting in the underutilisation of ICT within the whole building section. This change also adversely affects all officials, especially the junior officials who have graduated using the most recent ICT technology during their studies.

The building department of only one public sector was used for the study; therefore, the findings may not be generalisable. The case study public sector’s name is withheld for confidentiality purposes.

Adequate change management and continuous development, combined with the allocation of proper resources, would be necessary for all staff members. Enormous investments had to be made in the ICT equipment by providing a sufficient budget in the building section of the public sectors. The building section within public sectors should provide change management to all aged skills staff by attending seminars to learn new ICT technology applied within its work environment.

The study established the causes of the underutilisation of ICT in the CS, especially in the public work departments and municipalities, and how this contributes to service delivery.

Data represents a critical resource that enables construction companies’ success; thus, its management is very important. The purpose of this study is to assess the benefits of construction data risks management (DRM) in the construction industry (CI).

This study adopted a quantitative method and collected data from various South African construction professionals with the aid of an e-questionnaire. These professionals involve electrical engineers, quantity surveyors, architects and mechanical, as well as civil engineers involved under a firm, or organisation within the province of Gauteng, South Africa. Standard deviation, mean item score, non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis H test and exploratory factor analysis were used to analyse the retrieved data.

The findings revealed that DRM enhances project and company data availability, promotes confidentiality and enhances integrity, which are the primary benefits of DRM that enable the success of project delivery.

The research was carried out only in the province of Gauteng due to COVID-19 travel limitations.

The construction companies will have their data permanently in their possession and no interruption will be seen due to data unavailability, which, in turn, will allow long-term and overall pleasant project outcomes.

This study seeks to address the benefits of DRM in the CI to give additional knowledge on risk management within the built environment to promote success in every project.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of connective action characterised by interconnection and personal communication on social media (SM) for participating in collective action in the physical world of social movements.

A research model is developed integrating different modes of connective action into the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) to investigate pathways to participating in offline collective action (CA) from an individual perspective. Following a survey design approach, data collected from 194 respondents in the background of Egypt's social movements are examined using partial least squares (PLS) path modelling and mediation analyses.

The authors' main results reveal that interactive socialisation (IS) on SM provides an important momentum for the user to internalise (consume) and externalise (share) content online from a social learning perspective. In terms of translating these activities to participating in offline CA, the authors find support for two independent causal chains: An “instrumental” chain building on content externalisation (CE) and efficacy considerations and an “obligatory” chain based on content internalisation (CI) and collective identity.

The authors' results highlight the individual-level origins of offline mobilisation in social movements, which are not only grounded in social-psychology, but also develop out of interrelated connective actions supporting social learning. Prior work has mainly conceptualised the value of SM in social movements for online political communication. The authors' conceptualisation is novel in terms of integrating online and offline behaviours with social-psychological perspectives and the application with primary data in a protest movement context that heavily relied on connective actions for offline mobilisation.