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Seeking to build an objective scientific approach to psychiatry, American psychiatrists, physiologists, and psychologists began to turn to the conditional reflex method of Ivan Pavlov from the late 1920s. The generation of “neurotic” animals in the laboratory was critical to the emergence of a new experimental psychiatry in the United States. To understand the development of this field of research, the chapter will draw first on Mary Morgan’s identification of the mediatory and intermediary role of models and their ability to surprise and generate new questions, and second, upon her recent work on narratives in science. It will argue that it was through discursive and descriptive techniques that traced over time the tangled and interconnected lives of experimental subjects, that such elements of unpredictability in the animal laboratory were transformed into tools of research and put to disciplinary uses, promoting the clinical relevance of this new objective approach to psychiatric medicine.

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

The concept of leadership is an oft-discussed issue among practitioners and scholars alike without regard to culture, background, or organizational affiliation. Based on our international experiences, leadership is an art that is traditionally taught as a science which is impacted via various psychological concepts. It is both a natural phenomenon and a learned attribute that is planted, nurtured, developed, and tested over time. Certain leadership approaches are formal, only succeeding in formal settings and environments while others are dependent upon conditioning of the leader. Regardless of one’s leadership style and characteristics, it is critical that both leaders and followers define and understand the variances between failure and success within an organization. This chapter addresses international leadership styles and the psychological theories that support differing approaches assisting the reader to more clearly understand and identify the subtle differences in the development of a successful leader and organization from global perspectives.

Strategic management is traditionally seen as an exclusive managerial task rather than inclusive where accountability is reserved for top managers. However, contemporary strategy management practices increasingly pay attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) by engaging with broader internal and external stakeholders via more open business models such as ecosystems. Hence, central to our examination is the concept of openness disposition, which in the context of strategic management refers to the tendency of individuals, collectives, and managers to make strategy transparent, participatory, and/or inclusive, or look for closure. While openness in strategy is regarded as a positive means of contemporary management, fostering diversity, creativity, innovation, and empowerment, there are some researched downsides too. The purpose of this chapter is to address the openness puzzle in strategy and gain a deeper understanding of the dilemmas of bottom-up strategy initiatives, and investigate the associated dilemmas, if any in the context of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We contribute to addressing the performative effects of the dynamic expansion and contraction in openness within the SME strategy process while using the concept of openness dilemmas, tensions, and disposition. Using the Management Control Theory, this chapter will combine theory with SME practitioners’ experiences of bottom-up strategy initiatives to increase EDI in their organisations. Based on findings that emerged from a four-year longitudinal multiple case study research with 10 European SMEs, we found that bottom-up strategy exercises are more interactive. They consider a greater number of views, increase legitimacy, and EDI at the workplace, and yield more process benefits, but are time-consuming and difficult to organise that require special attention to the capability, reciprocity, and credibility dimensions.

New information and communication technologies have transformed the ways businesses communicate and maintain relationships with their customers. In this chapter, we review the main topics in academic research pertaining to digital marketing and relationship perspectives. The discussion involves email and website marketing, search engine marketing, user-generated content, co-creation marketing, social media marketing, prosumption marketing in the sharing economy, immersive marketing and AI-based marketing. On this basis, the chapter proposes some future research directions including influencer marketing, live streaming, social service enhancement and the dark side of social media marketing, consumer-to-consumer interactions on two-sided platforms, psychological mechanisms related to the use of mixed realities, and the experience of AI-enabled service automation and relevant ethical issues. Furthermore, emerging technologies such as the Internet of things (IoT) and blockchain are expected to be the next breakthrough in marketing, which warrant further research to examine their impact on the customer-firm relationship. It is suggested the researchers could focus on the adoption and application of blockchain technology, participative marketing via IoT, as well as the privacy and data protection issues related to these technologies. This chapter provides a comprehensive picture of the connection between digital marketing and relationship marketing in academic research.

In this paper, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of customer feedback literature, highlighting the burgeoning role of artificial intelligence (AI). Customer feedback has long been a valuable source of customer insights for businesses and market researchers. While previously survey focused, customer feedback in the digital age has evolved to be rich, interactive, multimodal, and virtually real time. Such explosion in feedback content has also been accompanied by a rapid development of AI and machine learning technologies that enable firms to understand and take advantage of these high-velocity data sources. Yet, some of the challenges with traditional surveys remain, such as self-selection concerns of who chooses to participate and what attributes they give feedback on. In addition, these new feedback channels face other unique challenges like review manipulation and herding effects due to their public and democratic nature. Thus, while the AI toolkit has revolutionized the area of customer feedback, extracting meaningful insights requires complementing it with the appropriate social science toolkit. We begin by touching upon conventional customer feedback research and chart its evolution through the years as the nature of available data and analysis tools develop. We conclude by providing recommendations for future questions that remain to be explored in this field.