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Business consortiums for temporary projects have limited time and less attention from individual organisations concerning leadership alignment. Recognising the need to study relationships in alliances, this study aims to identify the fundamental organisational beliefs perceived by the leaders in a construction business consortium and relate them to the companies’ belief system as conceptualised by Simons.

The research adopts a positivist qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews, literature review and document analysis through a case study in a temporary business consortium formed by three large construction companies.

It was possible to verify alignment between the beliefs of the consortium and its leadership and infer that the flow of beliefs can be affected by the duration of the project. The research underlines the importance of the belief system within an organisation and how differences can cause internal conflicts, whilst alignment can improve competitiveness. The authors concluded that conflicts emerge due to a lack of alignment regarding the business’ core beliefs and the presence of different cultures and the duration of the project. Also, it was possible to create two different propositions for future studies regarding the project timeframe and improve competitiveness with the alignment of beliefs.

Whilst there is academic literature that identifies challenges in successful project execution attributed to the misalignment of teams at a cultural level, organisations today still largely neglect the importance of team alignment. A better understanding of beliefs across organisations could have significant impact on social aspects resulting in improvements concerning projects timescales and quality of deliverables.

The main contribution is to explain how beliefs flow from individual parties to a temporary business consortium. This research addresses the lack of empirical studies relating to the alignment of temporary projects whilst providing recommendations to inform future research.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the potential of data analytics to enhance project delivery. Yet many argue that its application in projects is still lagging behind other disciplines. This paper aims to provide a review of the current use of data analytics in project delivery encompassing both academic research and practice to accelerate current understanding and use this to formulate questions and goals for future research.

We propose to achieve the research aim through the creation of a systematic review of the status of data analytics in project delivery. Fusing the methodology of integrative literature review with a recently established practice to include both white and grey literature amounts to an approach tailored to the state of the domain. It serves to delineate a research agenda informed by current developments in both academic research and industrial practice.

The literature review reveals a dearth of work in both academic research and practice relating to data analytics in project delivery and characterises this situation as having “more gap than knowledge.” Some work does exist in the application of machine learning to predicting project delivery though this is restricted to disparate, single context studies that do not reach extendible findings on algorithm selection or key predictive characteristics. Grey literature addresses the potential benefits of data analytics in project delivery but in a manner reliant on “thought-experiments” and devoid of empirical examples.

Based on the review we articulate a research agenda to create knowledge fundamental to the effective use of data analytics in project delivery. This is structured around the functional framework devised by this investigation and highlights both organisational and data analytic challenges. Specifically, we express this structure in the form of an “onion-skin” model for conceptual structuring of data analytics in projects. We conclude with a discussion about if and how today’s project studies research community can respond to the totality of these challenges. This paper provides a blueprint for a bridge connecting data analytics and project management.

Online games are popular applications of Internet technology, with over 2.8 billion users worldwide. Many players engage in team gameplay, indicating that online games are suitable media through which players connect with their friends. However, past studies have not examined the ability of games to assist players in connecting with their friends, indicating a gap. To fill this gap, the authors propose a new concept, the friend-connecting affordance, which is the ability of an online game to enable players to contact friends within the game.

The authors built a model to explain how games' friend-connecting affordances influence game loyalty. The authors gathered responses from 1,347 online players and used structural equation modeling to test the model.

The authors found that friend-connecting affordances and team participation influence game loyalty. Gaming intensity and gaming history can moderate the impact of friend-connecting affordances.

This new affordance can be realized through various game elements, offering unique and actionable insights to game makers. The authors also compared the friend-connecting affordances among a number of popular online games, providing insights specific to each game and increasing the practical value of the findings.

In a society that encourages consumption, attributes such as exclusivity and social recognition are important in what is intended to be restricted to a certain exclusive segment. Luxury is something that is more desirable than necessary. This study develops and tests a model that analyses the brand loyalty–risk relationship in the luxury watch market.

To test the proposed research model, a sample of 306 international consumers and enthusiasts of luxury brand watches was collected. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results show that perceived quality has a negative indirect influence on brand risk and brand trust has a strong direct negative effect on brand risk. However, the findings also show that in the luxury market, the greater the affection for the brand, the greater the risk perceived by consumers.

The study was conducted in a single market, luxury watches and the sample includes both enthusiasts and consumers of the luxury brands.

Managers should be aware of the double-edged role of brand affect on brand risk. The quality of a brand and the trust in its promise decrease the risk to the consumer.

This pioneering study is one of the first to approach an underexplored topic as is the case of the risk associated with a brand in the context of the luxury goods market. Moreover, it relies on an international sample composed of consumers from several countries.

The purpose of this study is to discover the components of virtual leadership in universities and higher education institutions during Covid-19 pandemic.

This research uses the qualitative research design, and semi-structured interviews with senior leaders were conducted with non-random purposeful and snowball sampling methods. Also, grounded theory was used for analyzing, coding and classifying the data.

After analyzing data, five main components influencing virtual leadership including leader's personality traits, followers' characteristics, technological, environmental and organizational components were identified.

As leadership, particularly virtual leadership, highly depends on context such as the level of technology in that certain region, the results cannot be generalized to other sectors or countries.

The research advances leadership development theory by highlighting the main components of virtual leadership in educational sector as a comprehensive perspective and complement the other aspects of virtual leadership such as consequences and challenges investigated by other studies.

Pricing studies have largely focused on sellers' pricing strategies and price determinants. To expand earlier work on sellers' pricing decisions, this study considers time as a major factor driving sellers' ticket prices in the secondary market. Specifically, because most secondary market transactions occur in the last moments before a game, this study considers how resellers adjust ticket prices within a few days prior to a game day including an actual game day.

To examine the impact of time on secondary market ticket prices for Major League Baseball (MLB), ticket prices were collected from StubHub (one of the largest secondary ticket markets) four times per game: from 3 days to 1 day prior to a game day and on the actual game day. Additionally, 10 control variables were obtained from previous research on price determinants (N = 19,155). A multiple regression model was created based on the extant literature regarding secondary market ticket prices.

Results indicate the number of days before a game negatively influenced ticket prices: resellers decreased ticket prices consistently during the last few days prior to a game's first inning. Specifically, secondary market ticket prices decreased relatively dramatically on an actual game day. Time had no significant effects on ticket prices 2 days prior to a game day. In addition to the role of time, league affiliation and the number of all-star players were identified as key price determinants in the secondary market. Moreover, changes in weather forecasts and the home team starting pitcher's ERA played significant roles in price changes.

Despite containing a relatively high number of data observations compared with prior pricing studies, this study's findings were limited to certain teams. Additionally, as only MLB secondary market ticket pricing was considered, different outcomes and implications may apply in other major sport ticket markets (e.g. NBA, NFL, NHL and MLS) featuring distinct league structures, policies and demand.

This study offers practical guidance for sellers' pricing decisions. Most secondary ticket market sellers lowered their ticket prices relatively dramatically on an actual game day. Reducing ticket prices prior to a game day can lead to greater chances to avoid unsold tickets that compromise revenue management. This study's results also afford professional sport organizations and secondary ticket market consumers a clearer understanding of the factors resellers consider when setting ticket prices.

Although previous studies have uncovered essential elements influencing ticket prices and consumer demand in the secondary ticket market, little work has examined how time affects sellers' pricing decisions within a few days prior to a game day. Little is known about the elements that significantly influence sellers’ decisions to adjust (i.e. increase or decrease) ticket prices in the secondary market as well. This topic deserves ongoing attention, as new outcomes can supplement previous studies' findings due to changing market environments.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the role of product positioning in the launch of food and drink products using a large dataset of new product development by food companies in Australia (AU) and New Zealand (NZ). As such, positioning through credence attribute claims can be associated with product launch strategies, including brand-new products, expansion of product ranges, new packaging and relaunch, as a response to market demand.

Text analysis was used to investigate the descriptions of food claims using Structured Query Language, providing a word list of food claims and further filtered and categorised into groups of claims. Multinomial regression models were then employed to analyse the association between product launch strategies and food claims adopted by firms.

The results of this paper provide evidence that positioning via food claims play an important role in product launch strategies in both AU and NZ. Types of food claims matter differently to firms' product launch decisions in the two markets. The “green” and “ethical” attributes are found to be associated with new launches in NZ but not in AU. Claims that are seen as most important for consumers are more likely to be engendered for the more costly launch approach.

This study is amongst the first studies that addresses the role of positioning in product launch strategies of food companies. The results and findings provide insights into the different prevailing credence attributes from the firm side and help policymakers to regulate the delivery of information about credence attributes to consumers.

Research on solar energy adoption offers a multidimensional scope and warrants exploration from multiple perspectives, including political, economic, management, behavioral, policy and innovation aspects. The aim of this paper is to comprehensively consolidate major research findings on the premise of solar energy adoption and to disclose gaps in the existing literature.

A bibliometric analysis of the vast literature is conducted on 1,009 meticulously shortlisted articles following the semi-systematic literature review methodology. A text analytics tool named BibExcel is used for synthesizing the literature, and the results are visualized using Gephi, Pajek and a spreadsheet application.

This paper reports the evolution of research in the selected domain. It is noted that research in this domain was primarily concentrated on four broad themes, namely, peer effects and spatial patterns, public perceptions, policies and economics and technological evolution. The analysis further reveals the merging of two of these themes as a result of transdisciplinary research and also projects future research trends emphasizing political interventions in technological evolution and diffusion.

Research trends and future research scope are identified and discussed in detail. The information revealed from the analysis, along with the research implications, will assist policymakers in noting the flaws in the current doctrines and practices, entrepreneurs in understanding potential enablers and barriers influencing solar energy adoption and budding scholars in comprehending the current research status and framing promising research objectives to close the existing research gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the key technical challenges that derive from the recently proposed European Artificial Intelligence Act and specifically, to investigate the applicability of the requirements that the AI Act mandates to high-risk AI systems from the perspective of AI security.

This paper presents the main points of the proposed AI Act, with emphasis on the compliance requirements of high-risk systems. It matches known AI security threats with the relevant technical requirements, it demonstrates the impact that these security threats can have to the AI Act technical requirements and evaluates the applicability of these requirements based on the effectiveness of the existing security protection measures. Finally, the paper highlights the necessity for an integrated framework for AI system evaluation.

The findings of the EU AI Act technical assessment highlight the gap between the proposed requirements and the available AI security countermeasures as well as the necessity for an AI security evaluation framework.

AI Act, high-risk AI systems, security threats, security countermeasures.