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This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

The Bed and Breakfast (B&B) enterprises generally lack sufficient human resources and time to conduct research on important social media marketing factors for visitors’ satisfaction and visitors’ intentions. Therefore, this study aims to provide crucial social media marketing and factors and service quality elements for improving customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in B&B sectors. This study also provides some recommendations for attracting more visitors and increasing customer satisfaction and customer loyalty through social media.

First, social media marketing factors and service quality elements were identified through the systematic literature review. Then these identified factors and elements were used to design a survey questionnaire for collecting data. The research data included responses of 64 B&B enterprises and 625 customers. The collected data was analyzed by feature selection approaches including Decision Tree algorithm and Information Gain to identify the key factors for improving customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

The findings of this study determined that featured choice is an important social media marketing factor, and assurance is the common service quality element for both B&B enterprises and their customers in terms of satisfaction and loyalty.

This study adds a value to the growing literature on customer satisfaction and loyalty in B&B sectors by exploring key social media marketing factors and service quality elements. The study reveals several implications for theories and practices. The findings hopefully help B&B enterprises better social media marketing with less workforce and budget.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The purpose of this study is to develop BSC model of social enterprise. Performance analysis tool of BSC have been brought over from the business world, designed and created from the perspectives of profit‐based businesses. The BSC is a strategic performance measurement and management tool designed for the private sector acting as a communication/information and learning system, to measure “where we are now” and “where to aim for next”. It prescribes a plan for translating “vision” and “strategy” into concrete action across four perspectives at different stages, depending on the business. These perspectives are “financial”, “customer”, “internal processes” and “learning and growth”, each of which is connected by cause‐and‐effect relationships that reflect the firm’s strategy. Social aims of social enterprise are to accomplish desired outcomes which are to employ vulnerable people and to provide social services. The measurement factors of financial perspective are stable funding, efficiency of budgeting, stakeholders’ financial supports, and trade profit. The measurement factors of customer perspective are government, social service users, employees, local communities, supplier, social activity company, and partnership with external organizations. The measurement factors of internal process perspective are organizational culture, organizational structure/management, internal/external communication, quality of products and services, information sharing. The measurement factors of learning and growth perspective are training and development, management participation, knowledge sharing, leadership of CEO and manager, and learning culture.

In this research, collaboration attributes related to the firm's intrinsic and extrinsic facets at pertinent levels (i.e. enterprise, strategic, operational, and tactical levels) for construction equipment OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) operating in India have been quantified and modeled.

For modeling the intra-firm collaboration at respective organizational levels, relevant attributes have been populated employing literature review followed by subsequent validation from pertinent focus groups. The focus groups comprising professionals working in the construction and mining equipment industry in India aided us in estimating the extent of interdependencies and influences within/amongst collaboration attributes. The collaboration attributes and respective interdependencies/influences are modeled employing the concept of graph theory wherein the individual attributes are represented using vertices and influences/interdependencies are represented using edges. The collaboration indices resulting from the variable permanent matrix have been derived as well.

Scenario and subsequent sensitivity analysis are performed. This research discusses the significance and aspects related to various collaborative attributes and the interrelations amongst them. Further, the research also evolves quantitative measures of collaboration indices at enterprise, strategic, tactical and operational levels by employing a graph-theoretic approach (GTA). The authors have also extricated and discussed a number of meaningful implications from both the perspectives of interorganizational relationships (IORs) and the normative theory of organizations using a cross-case analysis of five firms having operations in India.

The research would aid organizations (particularly those belonging to the construction equipment sector) measure the efficacy of collaboration in respective value-chains at strategic, tactical and operational levels. From the theoretical perspective, the integration of the IORs and normative theory of organizations enables looking at the intra-firm collaboration problem from a multi-dimensional standpoint involving activities, performance measures, action initiation, communication, shades of top management, level of activity, etc.

The high‐tech industry is the economic lifeline for Taiwan. Its characteristics are short product life cycle, rapid changes in the market, and a high obsolescence rate for new products. Under globalization, the high‐tech industry has adopted Information Technology (IT) to shorten the manufacturing process, reduce costs and conduct product research and development (R&D) to increase the core competence of enterprises and achieve the goal of sustainable operations. Enterprises should actively strengthen their integration with internal and external resources and lead in R&D management to increase industrial operating performance. Effectively managing operations and R&D management evaluation in Taiwan’s High‐tech Industry has become a critical subject. This study adopted 4 major Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspectives to establish the Total Performance Evaluation Indicators for the R&D management department in Taiwan’s High‐tech Industry. The Analytic Network Process (ANP) was applied to evaluate the overall performance of the R&D management department. The research framework is divided into 2 phases. The first phase is combined with the 4 major perspectives, Financial, Customer, Internal Business Process and Learning and Growth, as the related indicators for each measurement perspective. The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) were selected using Factor Analysis to identify the key factor from the complicated indicators. The relationship between the characteristics of each BSC’s evaluation perspective is dependence and feedback. This study applied ANP to conduct the calculation and adjustment of correlation between each KPI, and determine on their relative weights for the objective KPI. The “Financial Perspective” for R&D management department in Taiwan’s High‐tech Industry focused on the budget achievement rate of R&D management. The weight indicator value is (0.05863). The “Customer Perspective” focused on problem‐solving satisfaction. The weight value of this indicator is (0.17549). The “Internal Business Process Perspective” focused on the quantity and quality of R&D. The weight value of this indicator is (0.13506). The “Learning and Growth Perspective” focused on improving competence in the research ersonnel’s professional techniques. The weight value of this indicator is (0.02789). From the total weighting indicators, the order of the Performance Indicators for the R&D management department in Taiwan’s High‐tech Industry is: (1) Customer Perspective; (2) Internal Business Process Perspective; (3) Financial Perspective; and (4) Learning and Growth Perspective.