Search results

Microfoundations have become an effective approach for capability scholars to explore the heterogeneity of organizational results. Since the early pioneering work of scholars such as Felin and Foss, the microfoundations of strategic organization had not been extensively studied until 2010. The theoretical and empirical literature associated with the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities has developed rapidly. However, the diversity and fragmentation of micro-elements lead to a lack of a relatively consistent understanding of microfoundations, the study purpose is to aggregate the associated scattered terminology into a cohesive discussion.

A systematic literature review was conducted on research papers published between 2000 and 2022 using a hybrid methodology that included bibliometric and content analysis.

The authors suggest that this line of research can be divided into three stages. The study further develop a framework delineating the main components and mechanism involved in the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities, which in turn help us distill research gaps and opportunities for future work.

The authors construct a framework that can serve as a coherent research platform for further knowledge development. In the framework, the authors highlight that the research of group constructs, culture and leadership, data-driven topics are valuable for our understanding of the microfoundations of dynamics capabilities.

Precast wall lifting during prefabricated building construction faces multiple non-lean problems, such as inaccurate lifting-time estimation, unreasonable resource allocation and improper process design. This study aims to identify the pathways for improving lifting performance to advance lean construction of prefabricated buildings.

This study developed a methodological framework that integrates the discrete event simulation method, the elimination, combination, rearrangement and simplification (ECRS) technique and intelligent optimization tool. Two schemes of precast wall lifting, namely, the enterprise's business as usual (BAU) and enterprise-leading (EL) schemes, were set to benchmark lifting performance. Furthermore, a best-practice (BP) scheme was modeled from the perspective of lifting activity ECRS and resource allocation for performance optimization.

A real project was selected to test the effect of the methodological framework. The results showed that compared with the EL scheme, the BP scheme reduced the total lifting time (TLT) by 6.3% and mitigated the TLT uncertainty (the gap between the maximum and minimum time values) by 20.6%. Under the BP scheme, increasing the resource inputs produces an insignificant effect in reducing TLT, i.e. increasing the number of component operators in the caulking subprocess from one to two only shortened the TLT by 3.6%, and no further time reduction was achieved as more component operators were added.

To solve non-lean problems associated with prefabricated building construction, this study provides a methodological framework that can separate a typical precast wall lifting process into fine-level activities. Besides, it also identifies the pathways (including the learning effect mitigation, labor and machinery resource adjustment and activities’ improvement) to reducing TLT and its uncertainty.

The development of digital technology has provided technical support to various industries. Specifically, Internet-based freight platforms can ensure the high-quality development of the logistics industry. Online freight platforms can use cargo transportation insurance to improve their service capabilities, promote their differentiated development, create products with platform characteristics and increase their core competitiveness.

This study uses a generalised linear model to fit the claim probability and claim intensity data and analyses freight insurance pricing based on the freight insurance claim data of a freight platform in China.

Considering traditional pricing risk factors, this study adds two risk factors to fit the claim probability data, that is, the purchase behaviour of freight insurance customers and road density. The two variables can significantly influence the claim probability, and the model fitting outcomes obtained with the logit connection function are excellent. In addition, this study examines the model results under various distribution types for the fitting of the claim intensity data. The fitting outcomes under a gamma distribution are superior to those under the other distribution types, as measured by the Akaike information criterion.

With actual data from an online freight platform in China, this study empirically proves that a generalised linear model is superior to traditional pricing methods for freight insurance. This study constructs a generalised linear pricing model considering the unique features of the freight industry and determines that the transportation distance, cargo weight and road density have a significant influence on the claim probability and claim intensity.

Modern subway transportation systems need to satisfy increasing safety demands to rapidly evacuate passengers under hazardous emergency circumstances, such as fires, accidents or terrorist attacks, to reduce passenger injuries or life losses. The emergency evacuation capacity (EEC) of a subway station needs to be revised timely, in case passenger demand increases or the evacuation route changes in the future. However, traditional ways of estimating EEC, e.g. fire drills are time- and resource-consuming and are difficult to revise from time to time. The purpose of this study is to establish an intuitive modelling approach to increase the EEC of subway stations in a stepwised manner.

This study develops an approach to combine agent-based evacuation modelling and building information modelling (BIM) technology to estimate the total evacuation time of a subway station.

Evacuation time can be saved (33% in the studied case) from iterative improvements including stopping escalators running against the evacuation flow and modifying the geometry around escalator exits. Such iterative improvements rely on integrating agent-based modelling and BIM.

The agent-based model can provide a more realistic simulation of intelligent individual movements under emergency circumstances and provides precise feedback on locations of evacuation bottlenecks. This study also examined the effectiveness of two rounds of stepwise improvements in terms of operation or design to increase the EEC of the station.

Currently, the issues of cross-channel integration (CCI) have become the attentive focus. However, little research based on institutional theory details the drivers of and obstacles to adopt CCI strategy. Combined with resource-based view (RBV) and institutional theory, this thesis studies the effect of institutional pressures on the manufactures' extent of CCI, through exploring the moderating effects of firm's technology competence and relationship governance capabilities on the relationship between institutional pressures and the extent of CCI.

The survey data of 249 valid research samples were obtained from Chinese manufacturing enterprises. Statistical software such as SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 18.0 was used to analyze the data and test the conceptual model and relevant research hypotheses from an empirical perspective.

The results of empirical study from 249 manufacturers indicate that the mimetic, coercive and normative pressures perceived by enterprises can significantly promote their extent of CCI; relationship governance capabilities attenuate the positive impact of mimetic pressures on the extent of CCI, but strengthen that of normative pressures on the extent of CCI; besides, technology competence can attenuate the positive effect of mimetic pressures on the extent of CCI, but enhance that of normative pressures on the extent of CCI.

Few studied the impact of the interaction of internal capabilities and external institutional pressures on CCI of enterprises. This study combines institutional theory and resource-based view to fill the theoretical gap in this regard.

Social recommendation has been recognized as a kind of e-commerce with large potential, but how social recommendations influence consumer decisions is still unclear. This paper aims to investigate how recommendations from different social ties influence consumers’ purchase intentions through both behavior and brain activity.

Utilizing behavioral (N = 70) and electroencephalogram (EEG) (N = 49) experiments, this study explored participants’ behavior and brain responses after being recommended by different social ties. The data were analyzed using statistical inference and event-related potential (ERP) analysis.

Behavioral results show that social tie strength positively impacts purchase intention, which can be fitted by a logarithmic model. Moreover, recommender-to-customer similarity and product affect mediate the effect of tie strength on purchase intention serially. EEG findings show that recommendations from weak tie strength elicit larger N100, N200 and P300 amplitudes than those from strong tie strength. These results imply that weak tie strength may motivate individuals to recruit more mental resources in social recommendation, including unconscious processing of consumer attention and conscious processing of cognitive conflict and negative emotion.

This study considers the effects of continuous social ties on purchase intention and models them mathematically, exploring the intrinsic mechanisms by which strong and weak ties influence purchase intentions through recommender-to-customer similarity and product affect, contributing to the applications of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model in the field of social recommendation. Furthermore, our study adopting EEG techniques bridges the gap of relying solely on self-report by providing an avenue to obtain relatively objective findings about the consumers’ early-occurred (unconscious) attentional responses and late-occurred (conscious) cognitive and emotional responses in purchase decisions.

In the current highly volatile and uncertain economic environment, recovery strategies that emphasise attributes and skills are essential for an enterprise to recover and adapt to disruptions. Based on the resource-based view (RBV), this study aims to understand how organisational resilience functions and its outcomes. Specifically, this study establishes links between organisational resilience and internal capabilities in information technology (IT) applications, exploitation-exploration activities and organisational leadership, which are represented by IT competencies, organisational ambidexterity and paradoxical leadership, respectively. The study also analyses the role of government digital transformation policies after the COVID-19 pandemic as an external resource.

This study provides empirical evidence of the dynamic relationships between organisational resilience, ambidexterity and performance under the interactions IT competencies, digital transformation policies and paradoxical leadership by using data collected from 336 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam and the partial least squares-structural equation modelling technique.

IT competencies and organisational ambidexterity strengthen organisational resilience, reduce missed opportunities and increase organisations’ responsiveness to market volatility. Increasing organisational ambidexterity and resilience enhances the business performance of SMEs. Paradoxical leadership favours organisational ambidexterity and resilience and their outcomes. Digital transformation policies from the government can support SMEs’ IT competencies and resilience.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study based on the RBV is the first to show how integrating external resources with dynamic capabilities such as organisational ambidexterity and resilience can help SMEs build and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in highly uncertain environments. This research emphasises the vital role of organisational resilience in improvising changes in working processes in response to unexpected events and the importance of a strategy for developing the capability to anticipate a wide variety of situations and seize opportunities quickly.