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Employees, as internal stakeholders, not only play significant roles in a company’s operations but are also important users of a company’s financial information. However, prior accounting research to date has not explored whether employees incorporate a firm’s ability to meet earnings benchmarks in forming and revising their perceptions of firms. This study aims to focus on whether a firm’s ability to meet relevant earnings benchmarks impacts employees’ perceptions.

The authors use employees’ perception scores from the 100 Best Companies to Work for from 1998 to 2015. The authors conduct an empirical study to examine the impact of beating earnings benchmarks on the perceptions of employees by estimating regression analyses. The dependent variable is employee perceptions of the firm. The variables of interest are the earnings growth and the analyst forecast benchmarks. The authors control for earnings performance and other determinants of employees’ perceptions.

The authors find that beating the earnings benchmarks is relevant for employees but has different impacts on the employees’ perceptions of firms. Specifically, both level and change analyses suggest that a firm’s ability to beat the earnings growth benchmark affects employees’ perceptions. However, the authors find no associations between employees’ perceptions and the analyst forecast benchmarks.

The authors recognize the amount of variation among the two groups’ perceptions from the binary variable creates an inherent limitation that the authors examine the best firms in terms of employee perceptions compared to the second-best firms. Therefore, the authors create another measure, EMPLOYEE_PERCEPTION2, which equals one if the firm’s ranking is within the top quartile and zero if the firm’s ranking is within the bottom quartile. This new variable increases the variation of employees’ perceptions in the sample to address the inherent limitation by allowing us to compare the best firms to the worst firms in the sample.

The study highlights the importance of beating earnings benchmarks for employees as a broader group of stakeholders. The study contributes to accounting benchmarks literature by exploring a different group of earnings benchmarks users. The authors also contribute to psychology studies by providing empirical evidence on the previously untested, intuitive prediction that employees’ views depend on a firm’s ability to meet relevant earnings benchmarks.

This study aims to examine decision factors for global sourcing, differentiated into transcontinental and continental sourcing to obtain insight into locational aspects of sourcing decisions and global trends. This study analyzed various country perceptions to reveal their influence on sourcing decisions. The country of origin (COO) theory explains why certain country perceptions and images influence purchasing experts in their selection of suppliers.

This study used a two-study approach. In Study 1, the authors conducted discrete choice card experiments with 71 purchasing experts located in Europe and the USA to examine the importance of essential decision factors for global sourcing. Given the clear evidence that location is a factor in sourcing decisions, in Study 2 the authors investigated purchasers’ perceptions and images of countries, adding country ranking experiments on various perceived characteristics such as quality, price and technology.

Study 1 provides evidence that the purchasers’ personal relationship with the supplier plays a decisive role in the supplier selection process. While product quality and location impact sourcing decisions, the attraction of the buying company and cultural barriers are less significant. Interestingly, however, these factors seem as important as price to respondents. This implies that a strong relationship with suppliers and good quality products are essential aspects of a reliable and robust supply chain in the post-COVID-19 era. Examining the locational aspect in detail, Study 2 linked the choice card experiments with country ranking experiments. In this study, the authors found that purchasing experts consider that transcontinental countries such as Japan and China offer significant advantages in terms of price and technology. China has enhanced its quality, which is recognizable in the country ranking experiments. Therefore, decisions on global sourcing are not just based on such high-impact factors as price and availability; country perceptions are also influential. Additionally, the significance of the locational aspect could be linked to certain country images of transcontinental suppliers, as the COO theory describes.

The new approach divides global sourcing into transcontinental and European sourcing to evaluate special decision factors and link these factors to the locational aspect of sourcing decisions. To deepen the clear evidence for the locational aspect and investigate the possible influence of country perceptions, the authors applied the COO theory. This approach enabled authors to show the strong influence of country perception on purchasing departments, which is represented by the locational effect. Hence, the success of transcontinental countries relies not only on factors such as their availability but also on the purchasers’ positive perceptions of these countries in terms of technology and price.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and shed light on the following questions: What is an author? Is it a person who writes? Or, is it, in information, an iconic taxonomic designation (some might say a “classification”) for a group of writings that are recognized by the public in some particular way? What does it mean when a search engine, or catalog, asks a user to enter the name of an author? And how does that accord with the manner in which the data have been entered in association with the names of the entities identified with the concept of authorship?

The authors use several cases as bases of phenomenological discourse analysis, combining as best the authors can components of eidetic bracketing (a Husserlian technique for isolating noetic reduction) with Foucauldian discourse analysis. The two approaches are not sympathetic or together cogent, so the authors present them instead as alternative explanations alongside empirical evidence. In this way the authors are able to isolate components of iconic “authorship” and then subsequently engage them in discourse.

An “author” is an iconic name associated with a class of works. An “author” is a role in public discourse between a set of works and the culture that consumes them. An “author” is a role in cultural sublimation, or a power broker in deabstemiation. An “author” is last, if ever, a person responsible for the intellectual content of a published work. The library catalog’s attribution of “author” is at odds with the Foucauldian discursive comprehension of the role of an “author.”

One of the main assets of this paper is the combination of Foucauldian discourse analysis with phenomenological analysis for the study of the “author.” The authors turned to Foucauldian discourse analysis to discover the loci of power in the interactions of the public with the named authorial entities. The authors also looked to phenomenological analysis to consider the lived experience of users who encounter the same named authorial entities. The study of the “author” in this combined way facilitated the revelation of new aspects of the role of authorship in search engines and library catalogs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence of personality traits on perception and acceptance of open access (OA) mode of publishing by the author community of University of Kashmir, India. The study is an attempt to highlight the relationship between personality traits of authors and OA mode of publishing.

The study is based on the responses of 48 faculty members affiliated with different Departments of Science Discipline of University of Kashmir. Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience) were tapped through ten-item personality inventory, and information regarding OA was gauged through six self-devised statements.

Pearson correlation test confirms statistically significant relation between personality traits and different dimensions of OA mode of publishing. Personality traits are found to have an influence on author’s perception of OA mode of publishing. However, the study could not ascertain any relation between the notions of an author about the quality of OA content with any of the personality traits. Emotionally stable authors are found to explicitly submit their work in OA journals without any anxiety or negativity. Agreeable and conscientious authors also prefer to keep their work open to make it helpful to the broader audience and get maximum recognition from peers and citations to their work respectively. However, some authors (agreeable) hesitate in submitting their work in open platforms due to the fear of getting their works easily copied.

The study is first of its kind highlighting a new dimension in the field of OA and investigates the influence of personality traits on author’s attitude towards open mode of publishing.

Book piracy represents a threat to the publishing industry, while for the society, book piracy provides some benefits. The purpose of this study is to examine views of readers, authors and publishers in Lithuania on book piracy’s benefits to society.

This study uses phenomenography to examine readers’, authors’ and publishers’ reflections on book piracy’s potential social benefits. The authors collected research data via semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with 10 participants from each group (readers, authors and publishers – a total of 30 interviews).

Six qualitatively different categories of attitudes were revealed, namely, that book piracy provides easier and more convenient access to books, helps readers save money, pushes readers to read more, helps for authors to gain more popularity, provides wider access to books and provides consumers with moral satisfaction. The similarities between readers’, authors’ and publishers’ views on benefits of book piracy outweigh the differences.

Theoretical background indicates that stakeholders’ explicitly stated attitudes towards book piracy contribute to their book piracy intentions. This study hopes to help publishers in Lithuania confront the challenge of book piracy and develop effective strategies to attenuate a normative framework with four actionable recommendations to help professionals in the publishing industry to better address book piracy.

Book piracy continues to perplex publishers, in part because they lack a clear understanding of the social and psychological underpinnings of book piracy. This study aims to develop such an understanding by filling gap in the literature on book piracy: the lack of work on readers’, authors’ and publishers’ perceptions of book piracy’s individual and social benefits.

This study aims to investigate the configurational effects of five rules – artificial intelligence (AI)-based hiring decision transparency, consistency, voice, explainability and human involvement – on applicants' procedural justice perception (APJP) and applicants' interactional justice perception (AIJP). In addition, this study examines whether the identified configurations could further enhance applicants' organisational commitment (OC).

Drawing on the justice model of applicants' reactions, the authors conducted a longitudinal survey of 254 newly recruited employees from 36 Chinese companies that utilise AI in their hiring. The authors employed fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to determine which configurations could improve APJP and AIJP, and the authors used propensity score matching (PSM) to analyse the effects of these configurations on OC.

The fsQCA generates three patterns involving five configurations that could improve APJP and AIJP. For pattern 1, when AI-based recruitment with high interpersonal rule (AI human involvement) aims for applicants' justice perception (AJP) through the combination of high informational rule (AI explainability) and high procedural rule (AI voice), there must be high levels of AI consistency and AI voice to complement AI explainability, and only this pattern of configurations can further enhance OC. In pattern 2, for the combination of high informational rule (AI explainability) and low procedural rule (absent AI voice), AI recruitment with high interpersonal rule (AI human involvement) should focus on AI transparency and AI explainability rather than the implementation of AI voice. In pattern 3, a mere combination of procedural rules could sufficiently improve AIJP.

This study, which involved real applicants, is one of the few empirical studies to explore the mechanisms behind the impact of AI hiring decisions on AJP and OC, and the findings may inform researchers and managers on how to best utilise AI to make hiring decisions.

The aim of this paper is to determine the extent to which readers perceive correctly the reasons why authors cite items in scholarly texts.

The authors of ten library and information science articles provided the reasons for citing material in their articles and these reasons were compared with those suggested independently by readers of the articles.

Readers are able to perceive correctly author reasons for citation only to a very limited extent.

Limitations are a small sample of ten articles and 45 reader assessments of those articles, and the use of a single classification of reasons for citation.

The findings call into question techniques such as citation context analysis that are based on the assumption that readers understand the reasons why authors cite material.

This is the first attempt to compare author and reader reasons for citation and hence to validate the use of citation context analysis.

It is essential for the welfare and growth of a society that it is able to share risk efficiently in the economy. However, extreme events have increased enormously during the last decades, so that catastrophe risks seem to become uninsurable in a free-market economy. With insurance-linked securities (ILS) or catastrophe bonds (cat bonds), the limits of insurability can be ex-tended by using the resources of capital markets worldwide. Interestingly, to date the issuers of cat bonds must guarantee excessively high returns in order to attract investors from the financial markets. Therefore, the authors aim to discuss in this paper the hypothesis that at least parts of these excessively high returns can be explained by an individual innovation resistance to cat bonds.

In the first step, the authors examine the criteria for insurability of catastrophe risks and explore the potential reasons for lack of insurance, specifically for extreme events such as catastrophic environmental risks. The authors especially focus on the criteria which are considered to be problematic for the insurance of catastrophic events. In the next step, the authors discuss the new financial products “ILS” or “cat bonds” and analyze to what extent ILS represent an innovative opportunity to increase the insurability of catastrophe risks. Starting from the model of the consumer resistance by RAM, the authors consider different factors that can prevent the acceptance of ILS by private investors.

The authors found out that catastrophe risks do not really fulfil important actuarial criteria in order to be insurable. Thus, insurance exists only if risk can be transferred, not only to reinsurance companies but also to capital markets (through securitization or catastrophe options). In line with Ram's seminal model of consumer resistance, the authors assume that product-related, diffusion mechanism-related and psychographic factors influence individuals' resistance to cat bonds. In particular, the authors expect that perceptions of immorality influence private investors' decision-making. Within this context, Robin and Reidenbach's “Multi-dimensional ethics”-scale represents a possibility to assess perceptions of immorality.

In this paper, the authors provide a new approach to explain the excess spreads on cat bonds versus comparable corporate bonds. These abnormal high turns from cat bonds have been subject of intensive research in the last decade. To date, the insurance literature has identified “novelty premium”, “market size” and “cliff risk” as the reasons for the excess spreads. The authors assume that at least parts of these excessively high returns can be explained by an individual innovation resistance against ILS. In the authors' opinion, persuasive communication can be used to alleviate individual resistance towards ILS. The paper provides implications for management and suggestions for further research.

This paper reviews 20 years (1988‐2008) of research on the SERVQUAL scale for measuring service quality.

A range of studies that have applied the SERVQUAL scale in this 20‐year period are examined in a non‐exhaustive review of the literature. These studies are selected from well‐known databases – such as “ABI/Inform”, “ScienceDirect”, and “EBSCOhost”.

The paper identifies and summarizes numerous theoretical and empirical criticisms of the SERVQUAL scale. Despite these criticisms, the paper concludes that SERVQUAL remains a useful instrument for service‐quality research.

The paper provides a useful source of information on SERVQUAL and its applications. In particular, the paper summarizes a selection of 30 applications of SERVQUAL.

This article presents an annotated bibliography of literature recently on library instruction and information literacy in academic, school, public, special, and all types of libraries. Interest in the topic remains strong, with a growing number of pieces also including the importance of assessment. Other themes discussed in the articles include research, collaboration, the use of tutorials, tours, distance learning, active learning, problem‐based learning, and the role of accreditation bodies.