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Environmental crises and resource shortage have been matters of concern worldwide particularly, as the beginning of the twenty-first century. Remanufacturing can be one of the best approaches to promoting the development of circular economy and realizing the efficient use of resources. However, research studies indicate that the general public still remains unaware of the merits of remanufactured products. Hence, investigating main motivations of consumers to purchase remanufactured products is certainly worth exploring. The purpose of this paper is to find out consumers’ key motivations to purchase remanufactured products. A new multi-attributes decision-making method based on prospect theory (PT) is conducted.

Firstly, according to the prior literature, 12 main factors that influence consumers to purchase a remanufactured product are selected. Then, the single valued triangular neutrosophic numbers and triangular neutrosophic weighted geometric averaging operator are applied to rank them. Secondly, a multi-attribute decision-making method with PT is used to evaluate the utilities of new and remanufactured products, respectively. Based on the utilities, consumers’ preferred choice between the new and remanufactured products can be elicited.

The proposed method has been applied to a real survey. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is not only capable of recognizing the consumers’ key motivations for purchasing a remanufactured product but also able to deal with the ranking of the new and remanufactured products.

The contributions of this paper are threefold. Firstly, this paper attempts to explore the main motivations that encourage consumers to purchase a remanufactured product, instead of a new one. Secondly, the proposed method is established based on PT, taking consumers’ psychological behavior into consideration, which can obtain a relatively reasonable result. Thirdly, it can enrich the remanufacturing literature, serving as a guideline for consumers when purchasing a remanufactured product. In addition, this paper can help the remanufacturers make pricing and production decisions where necessary.

Despite burgeoning self-initiated expatriation (SIE) research, little attention has been given to the personal development that occurs as a result of the SIE. The authors address this gap, exploring how the SIE undertaken by older women contributes to their longer-term life-path goals. As personal development has barely featured in the SIE literature, the authors must draw from a range of other global mobility experiences as a base for identifying the personal development of the older women.

The paper employs narrative inquiry methodology, drawing on in-depth life story interviews with 21 women aged 50 or more, both professional and non-professional, who had taken a SIE. A five-step narrative process using a story-telling approach was the method of analysis.

The findings indicate that the existing focus on SIE and the work context in the literature needs to become more holistic to incorporate personal change experienced through the SIE. For these older women, the construct of “career” was increasingly irrelevant. Rather, participants were enacting a “coreer” – a life path of individual interest and passion that reflected their authentic selves. The SIE presented an opportunity to re-focus these women's lives and to place themselves and their values at the core of their existence.

The contributions highlight the need for a broader focus of career – one that moves outside the work sphere and encompasses life transitions and the enactment of more authentic “ways of being”. The authors identify a range of personal development factors which lead to this change, proposing the term “coreer” as one that might shift the focus and become the basis for career research in the future. Further, through the inclusion of a group of older women who were not exclusively professionals, the authors respond to calls to expand the focus of SIE studies.

Identifies a set of expectations about information technology (IT) adoption and usage in work groups, based on prior theory. Describes a longitudinal study on the adoption and usage of asynchronous technologies in small face‐to‐face groups. Compares observations with expectations. Concludes that expectations were generally supported except in one case, where file transfer was used synchronously to support face‐to‐face interaction. Observed one use of asynchronous technology to maintain social distance because of poor relationships. Discusses the implications of the findings. Offers possible areas of future research.

This paper seeks to frame and model the environmental issues and impacts associated with the management of pallets throughout the entire life cycle, from materials to manufacturing, use, transportation to end‐of‐life disposal.

A linear minimum cost multi‐commodity network flow problem is developed to make pallet‐related decisions based on both environmental and economic considerations.

This paper presents a review of the environmental impacts associated with pallets by life cycle stage. The types of materials used to fabricate pallets, the methods by which they are treated for specific applications, and various pallet management models are described with respect to embodied energies, toxicity and emissions. The need for companies to understand the cost, durability, and environmental impact tradeoffs presented by pallet choices is highlighted. The paper introduces a model to assist in choosing both how pallets are managed and the material they are constructed of that balances these tradeoffs.

There is limited research on the environmental impact of different management approaches of large‐scale pallet operations. The proposed model and approach will provide companies seeking to engage in more sustainable practices in their supply chains and distribution with insights and a decision‐making tool not previously available.

The purpose of this paper is to explore female teachers and vice principal’s leadership on girls attendance and learning, safety and security issues in rural girls’ schools experiencing Boko Haram insurgencies. The secondary purpose is to recommend innovative educational policy initiatives at the school, community and state levels, so as to ameliorate girls and teachers’ challenges, and to sustain girls in schools.

Qualitative educational research orientation and an ethnographic-narrative research design were used for the study. Purposeful sampling procedure was adopted through the selection of female teachers and a vice principal. Soft qualitative oral data (SQOD) were collected from structured interviews and focus groups and participant observation data. Data analysis engaged hand data analysis (HAD) for transcription, while the coding and theming process involved qualitative computer software data analysis (CSDA) of NVivo 8.0. The measures of validity involved the qualitative process of member checking, while ethical issues of anonymity with participants were addressed in the process of data collection, and reporting.

Major findings revealed a symbiotic relationship between female teacher’s moral leadership and the application of law of tort in the girls’ school; teachers’ adopted spiritual leadership and moral decision making process on girls’ safety, and learning motivation; and improved school community collaboration for security and safety of the girls and effective communication.

Educational policy options are prescribed. They include the training of teachers and girls on fire safety and conflict crisis; recruitment of female school counsellors; housing incentives for female teachers; support grassroot initiatives on school security; and sustaining school-community/parents involvement.

Boko Haram’s impact on teacher and school leadership in girls’ school(s) has not been studied so far. The paper is the first, thereby filling the gap of the literature on girls’ rural education and terrorism.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify how mobile app usage relates to the unique characteristics of behavioral orientations and content types, focussing on the interrelationship among content usage in the context of in-app purchase.

Using a large-scale data set of individual content usage in a particular music mobile app, the author builds a simultaneous equation panel data model to examine dynamic interdependent usage of mobile app.

The paper finds a positive temporal effect of self-oriented content usage (download) on other-oriented content usage (gift), based on behavioral orientation, and also a temporal interdependence between external (ringtone) and internal usage (mp3) based on types of content. The paper also finds that the fourth generation communications standard increases content usage in this mobile app.

These findings provide useful insights for mobile app developers, mobile network operators, content providers, and mobile device manufacturers.

This paper is one of the first to consider and empirically test the interrelationship between various kinds of content usage in music apps.

Employees play a central role in firms’ knowledge transferal, but knowledge-sharing brings significant costs for employees. Thus, this study aims to explore the components of firms’ incentive systems and how these influence employees’ knowledge-sharing, and also to test whether employees’ knowledge-sharing intentions transform into better knowledge transfer performance at the firm level.

This study collected data in China, and 219 usable questionnaires were collected. Then, this study used a structure equation model by LISREL for hypotheses testing.

This study finds that positive economic incentives, positive relational incentives and negative relational incentives all increase employees’ knowledge-sharing intentions, contributing to firms’ improved knowledge-transfer performance. Thus, both positive and negative incentives and both economic and relational incentives exert influences on employees’ knowledge-sharing activities.

Because employees have both material and emotional needs and always want to approach good things and avoid bad things, firms should take measures to make their incentive systems more comprehensive. Then, employees can be motivated to share their knowledge effectively.

Existing studies have mainly explored the effects of positive economic incentives on knowledge transferal. Because individuals have both a promotion self-regulatory focus associated with an approach motivation and a prevention self-regulatory focus associated with an avoidance motivation, and because they have both material and emotional needs, this study classifies incentives into three types and confirms their effectiveness for motivating employees to share knowledge.

Adjustment to the new locale is one of the primary factors that influence performance on an international assignment. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that depicts how online social networks may contribute to international assignees’ adjustment via their influence on well-being and knowledge transfer.

The present research uses network theory and readily available technology to develop a model of how online supportive social networks and informational social networks may increase the international assignee’s well-being and knowledge transfer (with prior/next assignees and with the organization). These increases will subsequently have a positive impact on the assignee’s adjustment and ultimately his/her job performance.

Since this paper is conceptual rather than empirical, there are no findings; however, it is argued that online social networks may have a positive impact on an expatriate’s well-being, knowledge transfer, adjustment, and job performance.

This paper is a conceptual piece, so data will need to be collected to test the model developed here. Furthermore, other factors may influence international assignee adjustment, such as spouse and/or family adjustment.

Suggestions are provided regarding how organizations can utilize in-house or external online social networks to assist international assignees.

Despite the ubiquity of online social networks, there is a paucity of research examining the potential impact of online social networks on international assignees.

Knowledge is considered as a strategic asset for the organizations, especially for knowledge-intensive firms. Research and development (R&D) is a significant unit in organizations, as it is devoted to knowledge creation and transfer. The success of any R&D project in an organization depends on its innovative value and the transfer of knowledge to the employees. This study aims to focus on factors triggering knowledge-hiding behavior among R&D employees, thus disrupting the knowledge creation in the organization.

The grounded theory approach has been used to analyze qualitative data collected from 19 in-depth interviews of R&D professionals (middle and junior level) working in Indian pharmaceutical firms.

The study identified factors that triggered knowledge-hiding behavior among employees. These factors include distrust, competitive work environment, perceived career insecurity, lack of recognition, lack of reciprocation and lack of confidence in own knowledge. In addition, four hiding strategies used by employees to hide their knowledge from their fellow members were explored and identified: playing innocent, being misleader/evasive hiding, rationalized hiding and counter-questioning.

Besides improving the understanding of knowledge-hiding behavior, particularly in the Indian context, this study has implications for both managerial practices and organizational policies.

This paper highlights the factors influencing knowledge-hiding behavior among R&D employees. Knowledge-hiding construct has not been adequately studied; however, it prevails in the organization and has potential to influence various individual- and organizational-level outcomes. In addition, ways of hiding knowledge used by employees were identified and new forms of strategies named “counter-questioning” were found.