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The purpose of this paper is to improve the appreciation of the moderating role of competitive intensity on the relationship between low-cost strategy and firm performance of restaurants.

The study uses empirical data collected from 118 restaurants operators, Ghana. The effects of relationships and the interaction of low-cost strategy and competitive intensity were tested using regression analysis.

The findings indicate the existence of a significant positive relationship between low-cost strategy and firm performance. The effect of competitive strategy on firm performance was found to be partially significant. The findings revealed that competitive intensity does moderate the relationship between low-cost strategy and firm performance of restaurants.

Implications of the findings for restaurant operators suggest that effective application of low-cost strategy and monitoring and managing competitive intensity results in high performance.

This study contributes to the existing literature on low-cost strategy, competitive intensity and firm performance. More specifically, the interaction terms of low-cost strategy and competitive intensity have been explored in this study and can be used for further investigations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate expatriates social networks and their role in delivering social support resources. Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) and assigned expatriates (AEs) are compared in order to investigate similarities and differences between both groups.

Methodologically a mixed-methods study is conducted, using qualitative interviews and social network analysis (SNA) to investigate the structure of the respondent’s social support ego networks; and to gain an understanding of the use of those networks as well as the network embeddedness of the individuals.

The findings show that there are differences in structural terms as well as in the composition of the networks. While the networks of self-initiated individuals tend to be bigger in size, AEs networks tend to be denser. In terms of the composition traditional expatriates do have more ties with colleagues that are in the same company while the self-initiated group is more closely embedded within their occupation, with ties to colleagues worldwide.

This is one of the first studies to address social network embeddedness and social support systems of globally mobile employees by using SNA. As a mixed-methods design as well as psychological and sociological theories are applied, a contribution to linking disciplines as well as methodologies is undertaken.

This study adopts the popular culture lens to investigate the collective understanding behind the human resources (HR) occupations.

The empirical study analyzes 129 characters from 87 movies, television (TV) series, books and comics. The measurement model was tested using structural equation modeling and cluster analysis identified five HR representations in the popular culture.

Popular culture reflects five HR representations: The Executor, the Hero, the Buddy, the Bore, and the Good-time person. Results suggest that public opinion pays scarce attention to the so-called HR “strategic position” while underlining the need for a more socially responsible HR approach.

The authors' study serves as a means for integrating past research on HR role and reputation, occupational image, self-identity and popular media. While most scholars have addressed popular culture as a single case and paid almost no attention to the HR domain, this article complements the literature by offering a fruitful way to distil HR summative popular culture representations, thus advocating for both a theoretical and a methodological contribution.

Organizations constantly evaluate their activities to ensure that they are attaining their management goals. Maturity assessment enables organizations to examine their capabilities, support innovation and evaluate development. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the maturity statuses of a selection of Nigerian university libraries in a study to investigate their quality management (QM) approaches. The study provides recommendations for means to attain the required statuses in academic library development.

The study involved a multisite case study in which interviews were conducted with 15 university librarians (or their representatives) and ten focus groups were conducted with non-management library staff. The resulting qualitative data were analyzed using an aspect of framework analysis – charting, while a maturity model from the field of project management (Prince 2 Maturity Model, P2MM) was used to assess maturity in QM of the libraries.

The results of the maturity assessment indicate a basic knowledge of the concept of QM implementation among the libraries. The scores obtained on the P2MM capability scale placed the libraries studied mainly on Level 1 (awareness level) of the model.

This paper demonstrates that the culture of QM in academic libraries in Nigeria is at a low level with considerable potential for development. It is suggested that future adoption of quality maturity models to assess performance and organizational effectiveness would aid improvements for value-added services.

This is the first study to attempt the assessment of quality maturity levels in Nigerian academic libraries for identification of the organization’s positioning in QM and strategy.

This study conceptualizes commercial hospitality in the form of a conceptual framework, which it operationalizes by means of a questionnaire. A survey using this questionnaire was conducted in Switzerland and Thailand in order to investigate tourists’ levels of satisfaction with commercial hospitality in Switzerland and Thailand and to assess the conceptual framework. The questionnaire was filled in by 1001 tourists in both countries, 601 in Switzerland and 400 in Thailand. The results suggest that tourists in Switzerland are more satisfied with the hospitality in the context of tourism service than tourists in Thailand. The results also serve as an indication that the questionnaire used in this study is able to uncover cultural differences in hospitality in a tourism service context. It is assumed that domestic tourists are accustomed to local practices and are therefore more critical in assessing tourism employees’ hospitality skills and behavior.

The applications of multi-agent systems (MASs) are considered to be among the most promising paradigms for detailed investigations and reliable problem-solving methods, and MAS applications make it possible for researchers and practitioners to better understand complex systems. Although a number of prior studies have been conducted to address complex issues that arise from construction projects, few studies have summarised the applications and discussed the capacity of MASs from the perspective of construction management. To fill the gap, this paper provides a comprehensive literature review of MAS applications from the perspective of construction management.

Web of Science and Scopus are the most commonly used international databases in conducting the literature reviews. A total of 86 relevant papers published in SCI-Expanded, SSCI and Ei Compendex journals related to the application of MASs from the perspective of construction management are selected to be analysed and discussed in this paper.

Based on the 86 collected publications, the utilisations of MASs to support the management of the supply chain and the improvement of project performance are identified from the perspective of construction management, the characteristics and barriers of current MAS applications are analysed, a framework for developing agent-based models to address complex problems is proposed, and future research directions of MAS applications are discussed.

This review can serve as a useful reference for scholars to enhance their understanding of the current research and guide future research on MASs. The proposed framework can help build agent-based models to address complex problems in construction management.

The art started to pause in our city due to ‘Corona’. While it is already dying for economic, cultural, and political reasons, it has been thoroughly covered by the COVID-19 outbreak. In our city, which we consider young and modern, Mersin University Faculty of Fine Arts and Toros University Faculty of Fine Arts provide art education and hundreds of students graduate each year. In this epidemic process, there is no movement towards art in the city when the young population returns to their homes or to cities with their families. No wonder people started to rely on machines rather than nature after the epidemic. It almost halved the human lineage on our planet. Scientists, physicians, economists, and explorers have devoted themselves to destroying or weakening natural forces that would hinder the development of humanity for 300 years. The human race fought nature and upper organisms with railways, dams, engines, antibiotics, and atomic bombs. The painters documented the epidemic by producing pictures on the subject of the epidemic. Now we have to face the threats such as the warming of the world and environmental pollution, the epidemic every day. In this entire confrontation process, the lessons conducted online in our city have been tried to be shown as virtual exhibitions under the name of online. The contributions of this process in the context of ‘art’ and ‘the city’ have been examined and the results will be evaluated.