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While forward logistics handles and manages the flow of goods downstream in the supply chain from suppliers to customers, reverse logistics (RL) manages the flow of returned goods upstream. A firm can combine RL with forward logistics, keep the flows separated, or choose a position between the two extremes. The purpose of this paper is to identify the contextual factors that determine the most advantageous position, which the paper refers to as the most advantageous degree of combination.

The paper first develops a scale ranging from 0 percent combination to 100 percent combination (i.e. full separation). Second, using the contingency theory the paper identifies the contextual factors described in RL-literature that determine the most advantageous degree of combination. The set of factors is subsequently tested using a case study, which applies a triangulation approach that combines a qualitative and a quantitative method.

The results show six distinct contextual factors that determine the most advantageous degree of combination. Examples of factors are technical product complexity, product portfolio variation, and the loss of product value over time.

For practitioners the scale of possible positions and set of contextual factors constitute a decision-making framework. Using the framework practitioners can determine the most advantageous position of the scale for their firm.

Much RL-research addresses intra-RL issues while the relationship between forward and RL is under-researched. This paper contributes to RL theory by identifying the contextual factors that determine the most advantageous relationship between forward and RL, and proposes a novel decision-making framework for practitioners.

To provide a perspective on the nature of service infusion in manufacturing companies based on a case analysis in the context of a maintenance management solution for industrial production equipment.

The paper first discusses how manufacturers becoming service providers is treated in the literature. Next, a qualitative single‐case study is reported, in which a troublesome business concept was surveyed through 35 thematic focus group interviews. The analysis revealed a set of challenges that were compared to arrive at a conclusion, the paradox.

The findings suggest that many challenges stemmed from the manufacturing‐oriented way of doing business. This further indicates that the common implicit view, that manufacturers can shift to service provision steadily, by adding service offerings to their total offering one by one, may actually be hazardous.

The limitations are based on the methodology. First, the case study focuses on only one manufacturing company, and therefore the aim of the paper is not to generalize the findings. On the other hand, the data collected for the case are rich and in‐depth in nature, and the brief reporting can only cover the tip of the iceberg. Yet, even one divergent case yields for questioning the existing beliefs, which is the aim of this study.

The paper provides an original perspective to this topical, but under‐studied, phenomenon of manufacturers increasingly providing service offerings, and brings into daylight the implicit tone of the existing research.

Marketing literature views word-of-mouth (WOM) as unidirectional communication in which consumers transmit either positive or negative messages based on their consumption experiences. Becoming visible in online forums, however, are consumers who engage in WOM as part of interactions with other consumers. This article aims to investigate a phenomenon frequently occurring in these interactions: consumers who defend companies and brands against others' negative WOM.

The authors investigated the online defense phenomenon in its natural setting using an online ethnography, known as a netnography.

This study provides empirical evidence for the existence of six different defense styles, as well as details of the identified factors underlying consumers' choices of defense styles. Moreover, the authors' analysis highlights the different outcomes of various company- and brand-defending behaviors and illustrates that this consumer phenomenon can be effective in preventing the spread of negative WOM or in mitigating its impact.

Future research could benefit from further testing the effectiveness of the various defense styles as well as investigating how to stimulate this important buffer against negative WOM.

Companies are increasingly allocating resources to the monitoring of online conversations so as to be able to respond to criticisms in social media. The authors' findings indicate that other consumers frequently respond to these complaints before the companies do. These company and brand defenders could replace some of the resources companies currently devote to social media.

The present study identifies company and brand defending as a new WOM activity, thus extending the concept of WOM beyond praising and complaining. In addition, this study suggests that consumers who counter negative messages are not necessarily loyal, as previously assumed, but rather motivated by a sense of justice or a need for self-enhancement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate coproduction behavior in networking alumni communities via the progress from platform belongingness, knowledge sharing and citizenship behavior. Alumni networking communities have emerged as valuable assets for conserving institutional resources, supporting members and contributing new resources for alumni-institutional professional development. However, the previous literature has not yet captured the explicit processes by which these contributions are made.

Data from 711 respondents selected from an alumni collaboration network were subjected to structural equation modeling analysis.

The study explored resource conservation (belongingness) as the primary relational mechanism for alumni to share their instrumental resources (knowledge sharing), supporting resources (citizenship behavior) and competent resources (coproduction behavior). Knowledge sharing and citizenship behavior act as intermediate agents to trigger coproduction behavior. The authors show how subjective norm, group norm and trust is regarded as a tool to reduce bonding intrusiveness (i.e. the intrusive side-effects of a bond) and moderate the indirect effect of belongingness on coproduction and the direct effect of citizenship on coproduction.

By applying attachment theory, conservation of resources theory and digital platform networking perspectives, this study describes major implications for designing inspiring and compatible community platforms.

Guidance is provided for improving sustainable alumni communities through citizenship-sharing and coproduction behavior.

Online alumni communities are regarded as resource conservators, which can result in valuable coproduction, via the sharing of knowledge, expertise and skillsets to create profit for a range of institutions and industries.

Alumni networking platforms encourage alumni cohesiveness, stimulate knowledge exchange and improve professionalism.

When manufacturing an arc-shaped tube product using push bending process, the transition zone and outfeed zone will inevitably occur. Transition zone and outfeed zone are caused by the kinematical motion of mobile tools. The existence of transition zone and outfeed zone will lead to a big deviation between the forming product and desired shape. To improve the forming quality of arc-shaped products in push bending, the transition zone and outfeed zone are investigated in this paper.

A piecewise function is used to describe the bending characteristics along bending line, in which a series of vibration parameters are extracted and considered as control values.

The new strategy is helpful for finding the relationship between tools motion and curvature distribution and improving the bending lines design procedure in flexible push bending.

The new strategy is helpful for finding the relationship between tools motion and curvature distribution and improving the bending lines design procedure in flexible push bending.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of scientific data in order to assess the reliability of data to support data curation, to establish trust between researchers to support reuse of digital data and encourage researchers to share more data.

The authors compared the correlations between usage counts of associated data in Dryad and citation counts of articles in Web of Science in different subject areas in order to assess the possibility of using altmetric indicators to evaluate scientific data.

There are high positive correlations between usage counts of data and citation counts of associated articles. The citation counts of article’s shared data are higher than the average citation counts in most of the subject areas examined by the authors.

The paper suggests that usage counts of data could be potentially used to evaluate scholarly impact of scientific data, especially for those subject areas without special data repositories.

The study examines the possibility to use usage counts to evaluate the impact of scientific data in a generic repository Dryad by different subject categories.

The study aims to shed light on the current state of “Dataset repositories” indexed in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).

From each repository/record information, the Open-Access Policies, Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), year of creation and the number of data sets archived in the repositories were manually searched, documented and analyzed.

Developed countries like the United Kingdom and the USA are primarily involved in the development of institutional open-access repositories comprising significant components of OpenDOAR. The most extensively used software is DSpace. Most data set archives are OAI-PMH compliant but do not follow open-access rules. The study also highlights the sites’ embrace of Web 2.0 capabilities and discovers really simple syndication feeds and Atom integration. The use of social media has made its presence known. Furthermore, the study concludes that the number of data sets kept in repositories is insufficient, although the expansion of such repositories has been consistent over the years.

The work has the potential to benefit both researchers in general and policymakers in particular. Scholars interested in research data, data sharing and data reuse can learn about the present state of repositories that preserve data sets in OpenDOAR. At the same time, policymakers can develop recommendations and policies to assist in the construction and maintenance of repositories for data sets.

According to the literature, there have been numerous studies on open-access repositories and OpenDOAR internationally, but no research has focused on repositories preserving content-type data sets. As a result, the study attempts to uncover various characteristics of OpenDOAR Data set repositories.