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The purpose of this paper is to investigate which dimension of salespersons' service quality is of most importance for customer loyalty in a fashion chain stores setting. It also aims to assess the effects of two retail environmental factors (price level and customers' demographic variables) on the customer loyalty of salespersons service quality.

The study uses the SERVQUAL service quality instrument with modification in measuring the salespersons' service quality in the Hong Kong fashion retail environment. In order to measure customer loyalty in fashion chain stores, multi‐item measures were used to collect data on repatronage intentions, word‐of‐mouth intentions, and satisfaction. A total of 232 surveys were administrated to shoppers who were leaving a fashion chain store in Hong Kong.

The results showed that the empathy dimension of salesperson service quality is the most important for customer loyalty in Hong Kong's fashion chain stores but the empathy dimension of salespersons' service quality in fashion retail stores could not be affected by these two retail environmental factors. Furthermore, the salespersons' service quality in the reliability dimension is significantly impacted by the customers' demographic characteristics, but not by price level set by fashion chain stores.

The study was carried out in four popular retail districts of Hong Kong and the results obtained may not be generalized to the country as a whole. The findings that are relevant in a fashion retail setting may not applicable in other retail environments.

The findings can direct fashion retailers to improve the specific service dimensions and work to provide customers with more value through services which will consequently improve internal and external standards of quality and performances in fashion retail settings, thus bringing about repeat customers and increased profitability.

The e-freight program launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has gradually become a standard specification for international air freight operations. This study examined critical factors affecting air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the IATA e-freight using a technology-organization-environment model with air freight forwarders in Taiwan as the base. Our findings show that ‘information technology (IT) competence’, ‘trading partner pressure’, ‘government policy’ and ‘competitive pressure’ all have significant positive effects on air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the e-freight and the top three factors among these are ‘government funding’, ‘government’s active promotion’ and ‘government’s requirement of electronic air waybill (e-AWB)’. Finally, this study proposes strategies that can encourage air freight forwarders to decide on e-freight adoption for the information of relevant oK regyawniozradtison International Air Transport Association (IATA); IATA e-freight; Technology organization environment model; Air freight forwarder

This study examines the differential market reaction to unexpected dividends between large firms and small firms by employing the Cumulative Sum Technique of Hillmer and Yu (1979). The technique allows the incorporation of both the magnitude of the security price adjustment and the speed of the price adjustment into the analysis. We provide additional information by adjusting for the firm size effect. Contrary to the results from previous studies, the empirical evidence presented here suggests an insignificant difference in market reaction between different firm‐size portfolios.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the following research gaps. First, few studies have examined isomorphic behavior of multinational corporations (MNCs) with respect to foreign subsidiary staffing. Second, the adoption by an MNC of its internally preferable practices, which is referred to as internal mimetic behavior, has been less extensively investigated when compared with the imitation of practices adopted by a large number of peer firms. Lastly, factors that facilitate internal mimetic behavior have not been extensively explored.

This study hypothesizes that internal mimetic behavior is affected by both formal and informal institutional distance. The hypotheses are tested using the panel data set that consists of 3,981 foreign subsidiaries of Japanese MNCs.

This study finds that as the formal institutional distance between the host country and the home country increases, MNCs are more likely to adopt internal mimetic behavior. Furthermore, it demonstrates that as the informal institutional distance increases, the likelihood that MNCs adopt internal mimetic behavior decreases.

This study suggests that MNCs need to consider the consequences of internal mimetic behavior when they adopt it without having economic rationale. It also suggests that when uncertainty can be mitigated, MNCs should avoid internal mimetic behavior.

This study fills the aforementioned research gaps by examining what factors facilitate internal mimetic behavior. It suggests that both economic rationale and isomorphic behavior need to be considered to advance an understanding of foreign subsidiary staffing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the contact models for contact and vibration features of cylindrical roller bearings (CRBs). CRBs are important parts of rotating machinery. The contact deformation between the roller and the raceway is an essential research topic for the CRBs. The contact deformation between the roller and the raceway can greatly affect vibration characteristics and fatigue life of the CRBs. In this investigation, six different methods are adopted to calculate the contact deformation, contact area width and contact stress between the roller and raceways of a CRB.

In this paper, the contact deformations and the contact stiffnesses between the roller and the raceway of a CRB obtained by various well-known empirical methods (Lundberg’s, Palmgren’s, Houpert’s, Cheng’s and Hertzian methods) are directly compared with those by the finite element (FE) method. A two degree-of-freedom (2 DOF) dynamic model of the CRB is applied to investigate the effects of the contact stiffness obtained by different line contact deformation calculation methods on the vibration characteristics, such as the root mean square (RMS), the peak to peak (PTP), the crest factor and the kurtosis of the displacement, velocity and acceleration of the inner raceway.

The computational results show that different calculation methods for the contact deformations between rollers and raceways have significant effects on the vibrations of the CRB. It is found that that the differences of computational results obtained by Palmgren’s and Lundberg’s models with respect to the FE method are smaller than those by the other three methods, i.e. Houpert’s, Cheng’s and Hertzain models. The amplitude and peak frequency of the frequency response functions from Palmgren’s method are much more similar to those from the finite element method. The above results indicate that Palmgren’s method is a better calculation method for predicting the contact deformations and dynamics of the CRBs.

This work adopts six different methods to calculate the contact deformation, contact area width and contact stress between the roller and raceways of a CRB. Moreover, a vibration model of a CRB is used to investigate the effect of contact stiffness obtained by the above methods on the vibrations of the CRB. The works can give some guidance for the accurate analytical method for calculating the contact deformations between rollers and raceways and the vibrations of the CRB.

Knowledge transfer is a crucial ingredient of employee innovation, yet affective work events may disrupt knowledge flow among employees. This study aims to investigate a previously overlooked, yet frequently occurring affective work experience, namely, that of being envied, and examine how perceptions of being envied may drive contrastive knowledge behaviors of sharing and hiding, which subsequently impact employee innovation. The study further examines how the zero-sum game beliefs of the envied individual may moderate these mechanisms.

This study builds on territorial and belongingness theories to delineate the contrastive motivations for knowledge hiding and knowledge sharing. This study tests a moderated mediation model through a multisource survey design involving 225 employees.

The results support the notion that perceptions of being envied are linked to both knowledge hiding and knowledge sharing; however, the indirect effect of being envied on innovation is observed only through knowledge sharing. The indirect positive link between perceptions of being envied and innovation via knowledge sharing is weakened when the envied employee holds high zero-sum game beliefs.

This study advances knowledge scholarship by identifying and testing the organizationally relevant but largely overlooked antecedent of being envied at work. The results provide useful insights to practitioners on how sharing or hiding knowledge serves as a strategic asset in response to being envied at work and how this may in turn impact employee innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to apply social network analysis (SNA) to study faculty research productivity, to identify key leaders, to study publication keywords and research areas and to visualize international collaboration patterns and analyze collaboration research fields from all Management Information System (MIS) departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015.

The authors first retrieved results encompassing about 1,766 MIS professors and their publication records between 1982 and 2015 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST) website. Next, the authors merged these publication records with the records obtained from the Web of Science, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Airiti Library and Springer Link databases. The authors further applied six network centrality equations, leadership index, exponential weighted moving average (EWMA), contribution value and k-means clustering algorithms to analyze the collaboration patterns, research productivity and publication patterns. Finally, the authors applied D3.js to visualize the faculty members' international collaborations from all MIS departments in Taiwan.

The authors have first identified important scholars or leaders in the network. The authors also see that most MIS scholars in Taiwan tend to publish their papers in the journals such as Decision Support Systems and Information and Management. The authors have further figured out the significant scholars who have actively collaborated with academics in other countries. Furthermore, the authors have recognized the universities that have frequent collaboration with other international universities. The United States, China, Canada and the United Kingdom are the countries that have the highest numbers of collaborations with Taiwanese academics. Lastly, the keywords model, system and algorithm were the most common terms used in recent years.

This study applied SNA to visualize international research collaboration patterns and has revealed some salient characteristics of international cooperation trends and patterns, leadership networks and influences and research productivity for faculty in Information Management departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015. In addition, the authors have discovered the most common keywords used in recent years.

Gender difference exists in the perception of the patient safety culture in healthcare organizations. A case from a medical center in Taiwan is presented to examine how different genders perceive the patient safety culture in practice from 2014 to 2017.

A longitudinal study using the data from 2014 to 2017 is conducted quantitatively. Mann–Whitney U test and one-way analysis of variance are employed for analyses.

The results showed that female nurses had significantly higher emotional exhaustion than male nurses in 2015 and 2016 indicating male nurses had better fatigue recovery than their female counterparts. In addition, male nurses felt a higher degree of fatigue in 2016 and 2017 than those in 2015 statistically. In contrast, female nurses felt more stressful in 2016 and 2017 than those in 2014 statistically. Female nurses had higher emotional exhaustion in 2016 and 2017 than those in 2014 and 2015 statistically.

To sum up, female nurses were more stressful than before, and their recovery was also relatively poor particularly in 2016 and 2017. There is a need to reduce the degree of fatigue for female nurses in this medical center through employee assistance programs, mindfulness-based stress reduction programs, building up female nurses' positive currency and setting up their appreciative inquiry. In contrast to female nurses, male nurses recovered better from fatigue. This might encourage hospital management to deploy male nurses more effectively in this medical center.

The results enable the hospital management to know there is a gender difference in this case hospital. More attention on female nurses is required.

The purpose of this paper is to combine task-technology fit, theory of planned behaviour and individual technology optimism, and propose a better hybrid technology behavioural intention model to explain Taiwanese students’ usage behaviour for weblog learning.

A 31-item questionnaire with eight constructs was administered to undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in three universities in Taiwan. A total of 380 voluntary, usable responses were received, and a research model estimated using Smart PLS was used to interpret the structural relation results.

The results of the research model were analysed using a structural equation modelling approach to test six hypotheses and three moderating hypotheses; significant support were found for seven of them. Accordingly, this study considered the level of technology optimism as a moderator to explore whether it impacts perceived behavioural control, attitudes and social influences on behavioural intention related to weblog learning.

This research provides a better understanding of individual and system characteristics, as well as social factors regarding weblog learning system acceptance and intention.

With the trend toward implementing flexible strategies to channel management, the network sources of flexibility have received increased attention. This study aims to reveal the dynamic mechanisms underlying the relationship between a distribution network and two types of flexibility: adaptive and proactive.

The authors apply agent-based modeling to simulate a three-level distribution network. First, a program of 14 segmentations across 4 stages is developed using NetLogo software. Using data on Company X’s distribution network, the authors simulate a distribution network when either adaptive or proactive flexibility is implemented and compare the performance outcomes of the distribution network. Finally, by using the database generated from an experiment designed with BehaviorSpace, the authors conduct a general linear regression analysis to analyze the effect of network structure on the performance of the distribution network.

The authors find that the implementation of adaptive flexibility is connected with a higher level of trust and a lower level of inventory, whereas the implementation of proactive flexibility is associated with a higher level of satisfaction but a higher level of inventory. Also, this study’s analyses show that adaptive flexibility emphasizes short-term efficiency, whereas proactive flexibility put more emphasis on long-term effectiveness. In addition, the authors find that network structure has a significant effect on the distribution network by influencing inventory, satisfaction and trust.

Theoretically, this study’s results further develop the research on channel management by revealing the interaction between distribution networks and two types of flexibility from a dynamic (rather than static) perspective. Also, the findings help in explaining how network structure can affect the performance of a distribution network. In practice, the results also guide the focal firm in distribution channels to make strategic decisions between adaptive and proactive flexibility to improve channel performance.