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This paper aims to address the nature of docility in organizations, its practical role in attention scarcity and knowledge diffusion in complex organizations and the management implications for organizational learning and innovation to improve knowledge management.

This paper examines knowledge organizations from the perspective of human resource strategies, their role in information abundance and attention scarcity and techniques to enhance docility mechanisms at different levels of the organization to increase innovation and performance.

This paper, in reviewing the organization literature on attention scarcity, addresses the shortage of studies linking the need for docility – the desire to learn from workers and the desire to teach – in personnel practices of knowledge firms, where intense social interaction, social feedback and social learning are the norms.

Knowledge management – scanning, creation, coordination, interpreting, transfer and integration – may well be the basis of competitive advantage, based on human resource strategies to mobilize explicit and tacit knowledge via docility mechanisms, including mentoring, teamwork, coaching and deep collaboration.

Decades ago, Herbert A. Simon introduced this new concept, docility, which is now central to knowledge organizations that face information abundance and attention scarcity. Knowledge organizations require tools of docility to align human resource strategies to both strategic management and operational functions to enhance teaching and learning in design structures that are time-constrained.

Much of the current U.S. academic literature on participatory budgeting is preoccupied with direct citizen involvement in budget formulation, reflecting a particular normative theory of democracy. In this essay we suggest that U.S. academics can learn from a contemporary international community of practice concerned with “civil-society budget work”-a quasi-grassroots, quasi-pluralist movement with member organizations throughout the developing world-as well as from the budget exhibits mounted by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research at the turn of the last century. The budget-work movement employs third-party intermediation and advocacy, through all phases of the budget cycle. U.S. academics and budget-work practitioners can learn from each other, and this represents an unexploited opportunity for all concerned. We propose a program of locally based action research and trans-local evaluative synthesis.

By “political economy” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to human economising behaviour. The body of knowledge includes both theory — theorems, laws, empirical generalisations, etc., and “facts” — history, description of institution, statistical data, etc. By “Christian theology” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to the human religious understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. “Religious” here implies awareness of, or belief in, God. The body of knowledge may include pre‐Christian religion (such as that reported in the Old Testament), and the results of independent inquiry (such as natural theology) in so far as these are interpreted by, or “refracted” through what theologians call the “Christ event”.

Consumers are spending more on leisure, and retailers and shopping centre developers are seeking ways to make shopping more of a leisure pursuit. This paper deals with the questions: what is leisure shopping, who are leisure shoppers, what is leisure retailing, and how are shopping centres providing for them?

Brief reviews of key research domains establish various meanings for leisure shopping and give some indications of who leisure shoppers are. Recent developments in shopping centres are considered. The last section discusses conceptual models, building on earlier empirical work on the functioning of shopping centres which incorporate leisure activities.

Leisure shopping is not best conceptualized as part of a continuum from purposive to leisure oriented. Rather, it may exist in a variety of circumstances, dependent on individual characteristics, trip motivations, the social setting of the trip and the nature of the destination. Leisure centres are not a separate category of centre, but the classification of shopping centres should be modified to incorporate consideration of leisure. Catering may be the most important provision.

Shopping centre managers and owners should note the complexity of leisure shopping. The best unit of analysis may be the trip, rather than other forms of customer segmentation. Synergistic benefits for retailers from some forms of adjoining leisure activity may be small.

The paper provides two models which may be used to analyse both shopping activity and shopping centres from the leisure point of view.

This study aims to understand consumers' reactions to hospitality corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns under different resource scarcity reminders, an important but overlooked contextual factor, and examine how such scarcity reminders interact with message framing, a widely used technique in CSR communication.

Three experimental studies were conducted. Studies 1 and 2 examined the main effect of resource scarcity reminders (environmental vs personal) on consumer engagement via self-other orientation. Study 3 further investigated the interactive effect between resource scarcity reminders (environmental vs personal) and message framing (gain vs loss) with hope as a key mediator.

Studies 1 and 2 show that environmental (vs personal) scarcity activates a more salient other orientation, subsequently increasing consumers' donation and word-of-mouth intentions. Study 3 reveals that environmental (vs personal) scarcity makes people more hopeful with gain-framed messages. Moreover, the elevated hope enhances perceived efficacy (attitude toward the company), leading to higher donation (word-of-mouth) intention.

Hospitality marketers could remind consumers of the harsh environment to elicit other orientation and encourage CSR participation. Using gain-framed messages or other hope-inducing appeals would be particularly advantageous in engaging consumers in CSR campaigns during heightened environmental scarcity.

Focusing on consumer responses to CSR campaigns, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to reveal reminders of resource scarcity as a novel antecedent factor and further uncover how such reminders interact with message framing to affect CSR engagement.

As a frequently observed business phenomenon, the use of product scarcity to improve a product’s market performance has received increasing attention from both academics and practitioners. The resulting literature has covered a wide variety of issues based on various theories, using different research methods, in a diverse range of settings. However, this diversity also makes it difficult to grasp the core themes and findings, and to see the outstanding knowledge gaps. This paper aims to review previous studies on the use of product scarcity in marketing and identifies new directions for future research.

A systematic review was conducted to identify and analyse 66 research papers published in business and management journals between 1970 and 2017.

The authors examined the underlying theories of scarcity-based marketing, and developed a conceptual framework that describes the key factors of product scarcity and how they influence both consumers and the market. They also highlighted some key achievements in modelling the processes involved in using product scarcity in marketing.

This analysis of the identified papers suggests that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of this field, which opens up new paths for future research. For future research, the authors identified three directions aimed at: addressing the practical needs of firms in understanding product scarcity; guiding the implementation of scarcity-based strategies; and measuring, monitoring and predicting the level of product scarcity and its impacts during implementation.

Disruptive shocks significantly compromise service contexts, challenging multidimensional value (co)creation. Recent focus has been on consumers experiencing vulnerability in service contexts. However, the susceptibility of service firms, employees and other actors to the impacts of disruptive shocks has received little attention. Since resource scarcity from disruptive shocks heightens tensions around balancing different needs in the service system, this paper aims to propose a framework of balanced centricity and service system resilience for service sustainability.

Adopting a conceptual model process, the paper integrates resilience and balanced centricity (method theories) with customer/consumer vulnerability (domain theory) resulting in a definition of multiactor vulnerability and related theoretical propositions.

Depleted, unavailable, or competed over resources among multiple actors constrain resource integration. Disruptive shocks nevertheless have upside potential. The interdependencies of actors in the service system call for deeper examination of multiple parties’ susceptibility to disruptive resource scarcity. The conceptual framework integrates multiactor vulnerability (when multiactor susceptibility to resource scarcity challenges value exchange) with processes of service system resilience, developing three research propositions. Emerging research questions and strategies for balanced centricity provide a research agenda.

A multiactor, balanced centricity perspective extends understanding of value cocreation, service resilience and service sustainability. Strategies for anticipating, coping with and adapting to disruptions in service systems are suggested by using the balanced centricity perspective, offering the potential to maintain (or enhance) the six types of value.

This research defines multiactor vulnerability, extending work on experienced vulnerabilities; describes the multilevel and multiactor perspective on experienced vulnerability in service relationships; and conceptualizes how balanced centricity can decrease multiactor vulnerability and increase service system resilience when mega disruptions occur.

This research aims to provide a theoretical framework for exploring how firms can respond to the growing threat of natural resource scarcity. Specifically, the role of closed‐loop supply chain management is examined as a means for creating resource advantages that can lead to marketplace competitive advantages.

The research extends previous theoretical research, integrating natural resource scarcity and closed‐loop supply chain management for the first time. Resource‐advantage theory is employed as the theoretical lens for the research model and propositions.

The findings deepen understanding of the forces that create natural resource scarcity conditions in the supply chain, and highlight the need for higher order closed‐loop capabilities that have the ability to mitigate natural resource scarcity.

The theoretical model and six research propositions suggest relationships between natural resource scarcity, closed‐loop capabilities, and firm level performance that need to be tested empirically. Future research opportunities and methodologies are suggested.

Growing natural resource scarcity is already having a major impact on many firms and industries; therefore, this research has significant managerial implications due to supply risks and potential disruptions caused by insufficient natural resources in current and future supply chains.

This paper seeks to increase discussion about natural resource scarcity and bring it into focus as a relevant supply chain topic related to closed‐loop supply chain capabilities and the internal firm level resources needed to ensure performance in a changing world.

Current research has theorized that developing dynamic capability can be viewed as a problem-finding and problem-solving process in terms of a firm’s resource reconfiguration. However, there continues to be a scarcity of empirical research on how firms and managers solve innovation problems to develop capabilities. Building on the theoretical lens of problem-solving perspective (PSP) and dynamic capability literature, the purpose of this paper is to address this gap by examining how a large automobile company developed different types of capabilities (combining capability, replacing capability and evolving capability) and their underlying problem-solving processes.

An inductive multi-case design was used to investigate the problem-solving process in different types of capability development in the context of NPD. This methodology has a number of benefits, including accommodation of the rich data used to compare the inferences among cases, thus enabling researchers to extend the emergent theory.

The findings of a multi-case study show that managers tend to direct their attentions to searching for solutions among external resources when the problem is framed as a combination of existing capabilities. Conversely, managers direct their attention to facilitating organizational learning when the problem is framed as an extension of an existing capability. However, managers need to direct more attention to gaining legitimacy when the problem is framed as a replacement of existing capabilities. The findings thus respond to increasing calls for more investigations into the microfoundations underlying firms’ capabilities, by revealing different instances of PSP, and their connections with different actions that take to capability development.

By comparatively examining the unique problem-solving process underlying an established firm’s innovative challenges in developing capabilities, the findings identify different instances of PSP, and their connections with different actions that take to capability development. Thus, the findings respond to increasing calls for more investigation into the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities for organizational outcomes. The findings also add to the new product development literature by examining how a product innovation can be framed differently depending on the attributes of an innovation problem. As PSP is particularly useful in offering guidance to firms’ innovative search, it is important for managers to pay attention to the attribute of each product and its domain of solution in considering the effectiveness of value creation.

Different from general goods, games are intangible. Games of limited-amount version are much more expensive. However, the value of games cannot be actually validated, while buyers purchase the intangible goods. This study, therefore, aims to empirically clarify the impact of product scarcity and uniqueness in buyers' purchase of games of limited-amount version.

Based on literature review, the survey method was conducted. Data of 204 respondents who recently bought games of limited-amount version were gathered and analyzed with partial least square.

The results showed that perceived quality and perceived uniqueness, significantly increased by product scarcity, was shown of significant positive impact on perceived value which significantly enhanced purchase intention.

The results indicated the importance of high quality and the reflection of uniqueness in buyers' purchase of games of limited-amount version. The results also validated the effect of scarcity on intangible goods. Practically, the results facilitated strategic operation and marketing of game producers and suppliers in designing and marketing game software. The results also facilitated further theoretical development of goods scarcity.

Nowadays, product scarcity has been an important operation and marketing strategy to enterprises. Games are an industry of growing importance. However, the impact of scarcity in buyers' purchase of games of limited-amount version was still limited. The results validated the importance of scarcity and perceived uniqueness in intangible game goods purchase behavior. The validation of this study can provide references for strategic operation and marketing of the game industry.