Search results

Digital service innovation (DSI) is a type of technological innovation that is recognized in practice in the innovation structure of companies. Given the breadth of digital technologies that enable digital services and the variety of these services, analysis is needed to discern the nature of these services, as well as the process that culminates in co-innovation. The literature on DSI is fragmented and spread across multiple research areas. This fragmentation impedes conceptualization of the elements that constitute DSI. This paper describes the nature of DSI through the process and elements of initiation, adoption and routinization of DSI in the context of digital service platforms (DSPs).

This paper presents a single exploratory case study of a provider of a leading digital solution in customer relations. The data analysis is based on abductive reasoning.

The paper conceptualizes the nature of DSI and describes the process and elements of DSI (phases, actors, functions and interactions). It contributes to building a common language for DSI research in service management. The analysis shows that DSI in DSPs is synonymous with co-innovation. This paper offers insight into how co-innovation occurs, using hybrid agile methodologies with the coordination of multiple actors and multilateral interactions.

The originality and value of the study reside in its conceptualization and analysis of what is meant by DSI. The components of the service and the technological requirements for not only provision but also ideation and development appear to be inseparable. The study unveils the mechanisms that turn a digital service solution into a co-innovative proposal. This knowledge can facilitate scalability in digital services.

This paper aims to explore the optimization process involved in the aircraft maintenance allocation and packing problem. The aircraft industry misses a part of the optimization potential while developing maintenance plans. This research provides the modeling foundation for the missing part considering the failure behavior of components, costs involved with all maintenance tasks and opportunity costs.

The study models the cost-effectiveness of support against the availability to come up with an optimization problem. The mathematical problem was solved with an exact algorithm. Experiments were performed with real field and synthetically generated data, to validate the correctness of the model and its potential to provide more accurate and better engineered maintenance plans.

The solution procedure provided excellent results by enhancing the overall arrangement of the tasks, resulting in higher availability rates and a substantial decrease in total maintenance costs. In terms of situational awareness, it provides the user with the flexibility to better manage resource constraints while still achieving optimal results.

This is an innovative research providing a state-of-the-art mathematical model and an algorithm for efficiently solving a task allocation and packing problem by incorporating components’ due flight time, failure probability, task relationships, smart allocation of common preparation tasks, operational profile and resource limitations.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between employee training and bank risk to verify whether and to what extent an increase in employee training, as a soft component of total quality management (TQM), affects bank risk.

The research adopts a panel regression, based on a unique dataset of a sample of Italian banks over the period 2011–2018, to test whether employee training affects bank risk, measured alternatively in terms of Z-score, a proxy of bank stability and non-performing loans (NPLs)/gross loans ratio as a proxy of credit risk.

Research findings reveal that increasing employee training leads to growing bank stability. In contrast, credit risk is not affected by employee training. However, by investigating training heterogeneity, this study found that the increase in the number of managerial training hours, as a proxy for soft skills training, negatively impacts credit risk. Therefore, an increase in soft skills leads to a reduction in bank credit risk.

This study provides empirical evidence in support of the relationship between employee training and bank risk, which seems novel in the literature. From a managerial point of view, this study highlights the need for banks to pay attention to the skills, particularly soft skills, that banks' employees must possess to effectively manage bank risk and, more specifically, the core bank risk.

Empirical evidence on the relationship between employee training, soft/hard skills and bank risk appears limited if not absent. Therefore, the findings provide insights for a more nuanced interpretation of variables that affect bank risk.

As women’s position in the economy and society is often explained by cultural factors, this study aims to verify whether the observed changes in female empowerment in the region of Central and East European (CEE) countries of the European Union (EU) are associated with masculinity as a cultural trait.

The authors apply the k-means clustering method to group CEE countries into clusters with similar levels of female empowerment in two time points – 2013 and 2019. Next, the authors examine the clusters and cross-reference them with the national culture’s masculinity to explore the interrelations between female empowerment and cultural traits in the CEE countries and their development in time.

The analyses reveal that female empowerment is not uniform or stable across the CEE countries. The masculinity level is not strongly related to women’s position in these countries, and changes in female empowerment are not closely linked to masculinity.

Despite the tumultuous history of women’s empowerment in the CEE countries, the issues related to gender equality and cultural traits pertaining to the region are relatively understudied in the literature. By focusing on the CEE region, the authors fill the gap in examining the independencies between female empowerment and cultural masculinity.

Tourism in Coimbra today is influenced by the fact that the Univer(s)city was distinguished as a World Heritage Site in 2013. The number of visits has grown very significantly in recent years, but the diversification of the tourist offer is still weak and unable to take advantage of existing resources. This paper aims to present genealogy tourism as an alternative urban cultural tourism in Coimbra.

Methodology involved mapping the Jewish culture elements in the city of Coimbra, and a route was outlined and proposed.

Genealogy tourism resources are identified in the historic centre of the city. These alternative spaces need urban rehabilitation and (re)functionalisation, which allowed the authors to rethink tourism in Coimbra. They are the motivation to visit for all urban cultural tourists, especially Israelis/Jews, and provide contact with places where the experiences of ancestors combine with the history and memory of places, with recent discoveries and the elements of Jewish culture in the city.

It is concluded that the quantity, diversity, authenticity and singularity of the heritage resources that bear witness to the Jewish presence in Coimbra are sufficient assets to create a route, to enrich the tourist experience in the city and to include the destination in the Sephardic routes.

This paper aims to find out if there is a relationship between access to climate change information and student activism.

Exploratory study focused on the survey of 400 [n = 400] students from 10 universities in Spain from April to May 2022. A questionnaire with 19 questions was divided into blocks of knowledge, awareness, and action and bivariate analysis with a margin of error of ±5% and a confidence level of 95%.

The greater the degree of information received, the greater the activism of university students, who tend to use digital media and social networks to get informed. However, they perceive that the university generates little information and a low number of activities related to climate change. Students demand that universities implement informal, formal, and service-learning environmental education strategies on sustainable consumption.

Given the results of previous studies showing the variable “type of degree” does not show differences at the beginning and end of studies, it has not been considered in this research. Nevertheless, it would be convenient to introduce it in future investigations to confirm if this may have an impact on informational habits.

This paper urges universities to act as sources of environmental education, given the relationship between the information received and the pro-environmental attitudes of students.

The universities are powerful social actors that can shape public and political discourses for eco-social transition.

This research adds the variable access to information in studies on pro-environmental attitudes. Furthermore, this research provides data about student perceptions of the university, government, industry, and NGO climate actions.

This paper examines why individuals start their hospitality careers by becoming temporary lifeguards while aspiring to later promotion. It reports data from young people working in one major upmarket hotel chain that operates in the Gulf but has a global reach. This study aims to address issues regarding this often-overlooked career path for young staff.

A qualitative questionnaire was distributed to lifeguards working in a luxury hotel chain in a Gulf country to explore their reasons for working as a lifeguard and their experiences in this role. Data were analysed using QDA Miner and WordStat to generate coherence and similarity indices.

It is found that the attractions include good training with a well-established company operating in an upmarket location, but other important factors include career prospects, skill enhancement, self-development, monetary savings and experience working in one of the world’s most exciting tourist locations.

The results offer implications for management looking to recruit expatriate labour without considering long-term employment or residence. Nonetheless, while this offers opportunities to assess many potential long-term employees, there are costs to the practice.

Little research has been conducted on lifeguards and how employment in such roles can develop careers in hospitality. The study contributes to understanding motives and career development and conceptually suggests that liminal status complements those drawn to protean career development. The results shed light on how new employees, including management trainees, undertake liminal, protean careers, to care for family, develop their careers and enter markets that may otherwise be difficult to enter.

Food waste, a global conundrum with adverse socioeconomic and environmental implications, occurs when more money is spent on food during occasions akin to Ramadan. This study examines the moderating role of antecedents (festive experience, nostalgic food memory, perceived scarcity, and religiosity) to understand the impacts of excessive food buying on Ramadan food waste.

A cross-sectional survey was performed with a self-administered questionnaire using Google Forms to gather data on social media. Notably, 349 valid responses were analysed via Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4 for model development and hypothesis testing.

Festive experience, nostalgic memory, and perceived food scarcity could explain excessive buying behaviour. In this vein, excessive food buying contributed to Ramadan food waste. Meanwhile, religiosity was found to moderate excessive food-buying behaviour.

The empirical findings offered useful insights for practitioners and policymakers to implement optimal marketing strategies and interventions that improve responsible consumption and minimise food waste.

This study provided a sound understanding of consumer buying behaviour during Ramadan regarding food waste and overconsumption. The current work delineated the role of descriptive, injunctive norms and cognitive dissonance in shaping buying behaviour during Ramadan.

This study aimed to analyze the strategies and challenges related to technology transfer (TT) in technology transfer offices (TTOs), specifically regarding actions to offer technologies in their portfolios.

The qualitative research used a multiple case study based on interviews with TTO managers from seven Brazilian public Science and Technology Institutions (STIs): University of São Paulo (USP), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Paulista State University (UNESP), Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR) and Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ).

STIs that invest more resources in their portfolio’s active offering and marketing are more successful in TT than STIs with a passive strategy. Although this active strategy has grown in importance, there is a disparity among Brazilian TTOs as some are still passive in commercializing their intellectual property. This research also highlights the need for clear policies to overcome obstacles related to legal uncertainty for researchers who wish to undertake projects as entrepreneurs using the intellectual property of STIs.

The results of this study cannot be generalized since its conclusions are limited to the studied institutions. However, the outcomes indicate some interesting matters for managers of STIs, public policymakers and TT researchers.

Literature on marketing and innovation related to TT between research institutions and companies in developing countries is still limited. Thus, this research contributes to generating knowledge in the field and improving TTOs.

This study attempts to ascertain how behavioral intention and word-of-mouth communication is affected by belonging, attitude toward behavior and subjective norm found in the theory of reasoned action. The research universe consists of customers visiting local restaurants operating in Afyonkarahisar.

The survey technique was used to collect data from customers visiting local restaurants between 05 September and 05 November 2022, using the convenience sampling method. The acquired data (n = 385) were analyzed using the structural equation model and the SmartPLS statistical tool.

The study findings indicate that behavioral intention is positively and significantly influenced by behavioral attitude, subjective norm and behavioral norm, but not by belonging. However, behavioral intention significantly and favorably influences word-of-mouth. When the indirect effect of study findings was analyzed, it was showcased that behavioral intention and attitude indirectly influence subjective norm and word-of-mouth communication, but belonging has no such effect.

The results suggest that businesses should focus on using local products as customers have a positive attitude toward them and provide customers with a sense of belonging to increase word-of-mouth communication. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of subjective norms in shaping customers' intentions and behavior toward local products.

The contribution of this article is valuable in terms of meeting this quest of visitors who have the motivation to introduce and experience the local culture, especially the Reasoned Action Theory of Word-of-Mouth communication approach of the customers, who play an essential role in the promotion and marketing of local restaurants selling local products, and to make a difference in their travels. Findings indicate that businesses should use local products, and customers need a sense of belonging. However, there is a subjective norm and attitude toward local products, and they should provide the necessary tendencies to gain a sense of belonging.