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This research delves into the dynamic realm of app design by examining the impact of app icon familiarity and authority on image fit, influencing users' app usage intention. Focusing on the distinctive circumstances of Chinese and Korean customers, the study aims to provide insightful information about how application user behavior changes.

Utilizing structural equation modeling, the study employs data from 293 Korean and Chinese consumers. The research design incorporates a thoughtful approach, including parallel translation methods, focus group interviews, and pre-experimental testing to ensure survey accuracy and validity. The study strategically selects stimuli from the Apple App Store rankings, emphasizing icon features and type considerations.

The results provide important new information about the connections between usage intention, image fit, authority, and familiarity with app icons. Notably, app icon familiarity and authority positively influence image fit. Furthermore, app icon image fit emerges as a positive predictor of usage intention, mediating the complex interplay between familiarity, authority, and intention. The study also identifies moderating effects, shedding light on the nuanced role of app icon features and types.

Originating from a comprehensive exploration of icons, this study significantly contributes to the field by exploring icon differences and uncovering the intricate mechanisms guiding users' decisions. The findings offer valuable insights for app designers, marketers, and researchers seeking a deeper understanding of user behavior in diverse cultural contexts, thereby enhancing the theoretical and practical foundations in app usability and consumer behavior.

Defining authority is a topic of current interest in quality management. The problem of insuffient definitions of authority appears in different forms: overlap in authority, a hiatus in the division of authority, insufficient balance between responsibility and authority, etc. Defines the concepts of structure, hierarchy, responsibility and authority. Describes managerial method to define authority: the TRA‐session (TRA = task, responsibility and authority). The TRA‐session is a method where, at a team meeting, the authority divisions for over 200 responsibility areas are discussed. For each responsibility area it is indicated who is/are authorized to take decisions and who is/are authorized to give advice. In the TRA‐session management is encouraged to delegate authority. Gives an illustration to show what the authority division concerning product development could look like.

Considers the role of marketing in an increasingly profit‐oriented local authority. Discusses the problems involved when a public service espouses marketing principles, but concludes that only marketing can make most effective use of the scarce resources available to local authorities.

Describes and contrasts the perceptions of formal and informal authority of hospital directors of two different kinds of organizations: hospitals that are part of public multi‐hospital organizations (PMOs) and independent hospitals. Indicates that all the directors perceive their informal authority to be greater than their formal authority. However, there is a gap in the perception of formal and informal authority by directors of the two types of hospital. Directors of independent hospitals perceive themselves to have more formal and informal authority than do their colleagues at hospitals that are part of PMOs. Both structural and personal explanations for these findings are given. In addition, discusses the implications for policy making of the source of authority, informal, and formal authority in the transition to autonomous semi‐independent hospitals in a changing environment.

Chester Barnard's insistence that authority rests on the consent of the subordinate is difficult to reconcile with the opposing reality that superiors do have the last word. Resolution of this dilemma is unlikely to bo found by prolonging discussions of the legitimation of authority, which may have reached a point of diminishing returns. Co‐existence of coercion and consent may be more satisfactorily explained in terms of Simon's concept of the subordinate's zone of acceptance of authority and the resulting distinction between two different sets of decisional premises, one at the boundary of this zone and the other inside the zone. An addition to Simon's theory of the concept and analysis of compliance proposed by Etzioni gives further insight into the interdependency of superior and subordinate in the authority situation.

Using survey data from the 1993 Wilson Task Force on Gender and Equality in the Legal Profession and qualitative data from in-depth interviews with female law professors, we examine the social basis of professional authority in Canadian law school classrooms. Our quantitative and qualitative findings are consistent with classic sociological work and contemporary anecdotal accounts that suggest women experience greater difficulties achieving professional authority. In the law school classroom, however, we find that stratification within the profession and stratification within the knowledge base further undermine the professional authority of female law professors.

In this article, we analyse how variations in organisational conditions for research affect researchers’ opportunities for changing individual-level or group-level research programmes. We contrast three innovations that were developed in universities and public research institutes in Germany and the Netherlands, which enables comparisons both between organisational settings and between properties of innovations. Comparing the development of three innovations in the two types of organisations enables the identification of links between patterns of authority sharing at these organisations and the opportunities to develop innovations. On this basis, the distribution of opportunities to change research practices among researchers in the two countries can be established.

To demonstrate how the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a formal project management framework commonly used in corporate settings, can be used to manage library projects, even in situations where the librarian does not have authority over project resources, like personnel, scope, and budget.

This chapter uses a conceptual review of the library, project management, and library project management literature to construct recommendations and best practices.

Many of the PMBOK tools are effective for project managers working without formal authority. These tools include the Stakeholder Register, which allows a project manager to track stakeholders based upon their interest and influence; the Responsibility Assignment Matrix, which allows a project manager and team members to quickly and easily see work and personnel relationships; and Integrated Change Control, which provides project managers with a process for understanding and documenting the impact of project changes. These tools, as well as the PMBOK’s strategies on managing project communication and monitoring and controlling project work, which help orient stakeholders to the work and expectations of the project, while also making sure there are no surprises, provide effective project management tools for librarians working without formal authority.

While the PMBOK is occasionally discussed in the library literature, this chapter extensively uses the framework to connect the framework to library project management. This chapter also shows how the PMBOK, which relies on formal authority, can also be used in situations where the project manager lacks it.

Purpose – This chapter aims to identify stakeholder perceptions on the service performance accountability of Malaysian local authorities.

Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey provides the primary source of information, and both descriptive and analytical methods are employed to support the analysis of the empirical findings.

Findings – The chapter shows that despite a strong interest amongst stakeholders for greater accountability of Malaysian local authorities, a standard definition and scope of accountability has not emerged. However, the findings do indicate a new bond of accountability emerging between local authorities and its broader public than previously existed.

Research limitations – The findings and discussion are limited to the propositions put forward in the questionnaire. Alternative research methods would complement the findings.

Originality/value – The findings contribute to our understanding of accountability as interpreted by key stakeholders of local authorities located within the context of a developing country. This could potentially assist Malaysian public sector administrators whereby, and arguably, enhancing the public accountability of local authorities may contribute to an improvement in the performance management of Malaysian local authorities.

We examine how authorities' use of fair decision-making procedures and power benevolently shape workers' impressions of them as competent and warm, which serve as a mechanism whereby authorities' behaviors shape workers' emotional responses. We investigate how the role of these impressions differs depending on authority gender and consider whether emotional responses differ for male and female subordinates.

We conducted a between-subjects experimental vignette study in which we manipulate an authority's behaviors and gender. We use multigroup mediation analysis to test our predictions.

Authorities who employ procedural justice and benevolent power elicit reports of heightened positive emotion experiences and intended displays and reports of reduced negative emotion experiences and intended displays. These behaviors also enhance views of authorities as competent and warm. The mediating role of impressions differs by authority gender. Authority behaviors prompt reports of positive emotions through conveying impressions that align with authorities' gender stereotypes (competence for men, warmth for women). In contrast, warmth impressions mediate effects of behaviors on reported negative emotions when authorities are men, whereas when authorities are women, benevolent power use directly reduces reported negative experience, and procedural justice reduces negative display. Female respondents are more likely to report positive emotion experience and display toward male authorities and negative display toward female authorities.

By examining competence and warmth impressions as mechanisms, we gain insight into how the process by which authority behaviors affect worker emotions is gendered and shed light on micro-level dynamics contributing to gender inequality at work.