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Competitive success in business‐to‐business markets often depends upon the ability of the firm to adapt specifically to the needs of a single customer organization. Research into buyer‐seller relationships in industrial markets has shown that both buying and selling firms implement specific adaptations for a single partner. Adaptation can take place at the level of the product or more broadly in terms of management processes, information exchange, and even organizational restructuring. The paper develops an improved taxonomy for dyadic adaptation in business‐to‐business markets, and explores the driving forces behind relationship‐specific adaptation. Adaptation by supplier firms is found to be more frequent than adaptation by buyers. Supplier adaptation is driven by relative power, buyer support, and by the managerial preferences of the two firms for a more or less relational form of exchange. Several managerial implications and avenues for further research are discussed.

The adaptation hypothesis suggests that gambling participation would gradually decline after an initial exposure to this activity. While this hypothesis was tested in pathological gambling among residents in Western countries, the present inquiry explores the hypothesis in a tourism context.

This research is focused on the Mainland Chinese gamblers. Convenience sampling was used. Data were collected outside participating casinos and at major attractions. A total of 498 valid responses were collected.

By assessing changes of the Mainland Chinese gambling perceptions (e.g. excitement and fallacy) and behaviors, results point to visitor gamblers' decrease in gambling excitement and fallacy as well as budget to income ratio.

By assessing changes of the Mainland Chinese gambling perceptions and behaviors, this research aims to contribute to the literature by demonstrating whether the Chinese gamblers have adapted and hence, are more rational about this recreational activity.

The aim of this paper is to model the dynamic path of adjustment towards pre‐unemployment levels of wellbeing for a group of full‐time workers who experienced job loss.

Based on data from the German Socio‐economic Panel, a large‐scale panel survey, the paper captures the non‐linear nature of the adaptation process by using an Exponential Smooth Transition Autoregressive (ESTAR) model.

The study finds that adaptation takes place in a non‐linear fashion, with the speed of adjustment being higher for high earners, those with high pre‐unemployment levels of life satisfaction and those who were most satisfied with their jobs before becoming unemployed. It also finds that most of the adaptation takes place during the first year of unemployment, with adaptation speeds decreasing with unemployment duration, suggestive of possible habituation effects being present.

This is the first study to model the dynamic path of adjustment towards pre‐unemployment wellbeing levels as a non‐linear process. Despite the challenge posed by adaptation theory and the recent interest in the wellbeing effects of job loss, there is only sparse empirical evidence on the dynamics of the adaptation to unemployment process.

The purpose of this paper is to use exchange rate theory to compare how white-collar offenders and property offenders rank the severity of various correctional sanctions.

The authors use survey data from 160 inmates incarcerated for white-collar and property crimes in a Midwestern state to compare how white-collar inmates differed from property inmates in ranking the goals of prison and the punitiveness of prison as compared to other alternatives.

White-collar offenders were no different than property offenders in terms of their assessment of the punitiveness of prison compared to the punitiveness of the four sanctions under consideration here. White-collar offenders were significantly more likely than property offenders to believe that the goal of prison is to rehabilitate rather than deter individuals from further crime.

Because the authors defined white-collar offenders by their crime of incarceration, they may have captured offenders who are not truly white-collar offenders. Focusing on offenders who were in prison did not allow them to fully examine whether similarities between white-collar and property offenders can be attributed to adjustment to prison or some other variable.

Alternative sanctions may be useful in punishing white-collar offenders in a less expensive manner than prison. Results suggest white-collar offenders may be more amenable to rehabilitation than property offenders and may not experience prison much differently than other types of offenders.

This research is important because it is the first of its kind to compare white-collar offenders’ views about the punitiveness of prison and the goals of incarceration with those of property offenders.

The purpose of this study is to explore how three experiential factors – perceived social support from host-country nationals (HCNs), adaptation difficulties, and attitude towards assimilating into the host culture and society – influence the generation of worthwhile feelings and the intention to pursue expatriate career opportunities in the host country among short-term studying abroad (STSA) students.

This study used data from a survey of 297 Thai students who studied in Chinese universities between 2015 and 2019. A bivariate probit model was applied due to its ability to account for the potential correlation of errors between the two binary outcome variables: worthwhileness and aspiration for expatriate careers.

Adaptation difficulties reported by students negatively impacted their willingness to work in the host country, but did not diminish their perception of the sojourn as worthwhile. Satisfaction with social support from HCNs was found to not only enhance the worthwhileness of the sojourn but also inspire students' expatriate career intentions in the host country. The study also found that while willingness to assimilate into the host culture and society primarily enhanced the worthwhileness of the trip, its effect on students' willingness to consider working in the host country was relatively weak, compared with the effect of social support from HCNs.

The generalizability of the findings from this study may be limited to country pairs that are geographically and culturally similar.

Although it is commonly believed that STSA programs help inspire students to develop aspirations for international careers or lifestyles, the specific roles of various factors in their experiences abroad have not been sufficiently studied. This study aims to clarify the different effects between social support received, adaptation difficulties experienced, and inner acculturation attitudes on both the evaluation of the trip itself and the long-term life goals of students participating in STSA programs.

Variation, replication and selection processes are acknowledged as key constructs in studies on how industries evolve, but no theoretical and empirical contributions have applied these key constructs to analyzing industries in specific stages of their history. This paper aims to fill this gap, taking for reference the firm and its strategic action in particular.

After delineating and discussing the three processes of interest – variation, replication and selection – this paper analyzes three very different evolutionary contexts: “red” industries, that reached maturity maintaining a polypolistic structure, and that continue to evolve in this phase; the oligopolistic transformation undergone by certain industries; and the emergence of new market spaces around new products developed by firms.

Variations are mainly reactions to the competitive environment in the evolution of red industries or environment-modifying in the case of industries evolving toward an oligopoly, and in the creation of new market spaces. Horizontal replication through employee mobility prevails in red industries, while in the other two contexts firms driving the evolution raise barriers to replication, inhibiting both horizontal and vertical replication. While selection does not come about in a new market space as long as the barriers erected by the first comer remain in place, it occurs in the form of subset selection in the other two settings.

This paper takes an entirely novel approach and proposes a pluralist framing of how industries evolve, interpreting the different evolutionary situations on the strength of the key variables of variation, replication and selection.

The study examined cultural adaptive behavior in international joint ventures, its key relationship contexts (e.g. relationship commitment and relative dependence), and influence of national culture. The hypotheses are tested with Chinese and US joint venture managers. Survey results show that cultural adaptation is driven by relationship commitment and relative dependence among both Chinese and US joint venture partners. However, the association between relative dependence and cultural adaptation is stronger among the Chinese than among the US managers. The findings have important implications for relationship management in international business.

This research provides a new perspective in explaining cardholders' willingness to use debit cards instead of cash by applying the transaction costs economic theory. This study also expands the adaptation of transaction cost economics theory in explaining consumer behaviour by investigating the moderating effects of income and education level on the relationship between perceived transaction costs and willingness to use debit cards.

The conceptual framework was developed primarily from the transaction cost economics theory. An in-depth interview method was employed to further support hypothesis development and the development of measurement scales. A structural equation model linking asset specificity, behavioural uncertainty, environmental uncertainty, frequency of payment, perceived monitoring costs, perceived adaptation costs and willingness to use debit cards was tested using data from a sample of 384 Vietnamese debit card holders.

This study's results support the transaction cost economics theory that asset specificity, uncertainty and frequency of payment all positively contribute to the perceived transaction costs associated with debit card usage. However, only environmental uncertainty and perceived adaptation costs have significant negative impact on willingness to use debit cards, with the relationship between environmental uncertainty and willingness to use debit cards being totally mediated by perceived adaptation costs. Moreover, the relationship between perceived adaptation costs and willingness to use debit cards becomes less negative among richer and better-educated cardholders.

The research provides insights into the hidden obstacles for developing cashless economies, thereby supporting policy makers in designing more effective and comprehensive strategies to make debit cards more widely used as a true substitute for cash.

This study provides a new lens in explaining customer willingness to use debit cards, while expanding the transaction costs economics theory by incorporating demographic factors as moderators in the relationship between transaction costs and the card-or-cash choice.

Building on contingency theory, this paper aims to investigate the extent to which the “4Ps international adaptation strategy” and internationalization intensity shape the servitization–profitability relationship.

The authors use primary (survey) and secondary (archival) data to perform multiple regression analysis.

The results indicate a positive relationship between servitization and profitability, and international intensity strengthens this association. The effects, however, are not consistent across the 4Ps – the price international adaptation strategy strengthens the positive relationship between servitization and profitability, while product and place international adaptation strategies weaken that relationship.

The findings have implications for the role of international intensity and the 4Ps in the marketing servitization context.

The study provides guidance for small firms in realizing higher performance by leveraging the 4Ps in the servitization context. Counter to expectations, placement and product lead to lower performance with increasing servitization, whereas price strengthens this relationship. The study adds to the international industrial management and marketing literature, providing evidence that contingency factors such as international marketing mix adaptation/standardization strategies moderate the servitization–profitability relationship.

Investigates how export market characteristics such as local government regulation, infrastructure differences, export market lag, cultural differences, end‐user differences in tastes and preferences, and competitive intensity affect ideal and actual product adaptation. Explores how these effects varied by consumer versus industrial products. A mail survey of medium‐sized export firms provided the data for hypothesis testing. The results suggested the major market factors driving adaptation were government regulation, infrastructure differences and market lag. Evaluates the effects of adaptation on several dimensions of firm performance. Sales growth was the only dimension significantly affected by adaptation.