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Gazelle companies are characterized by rapid growth in a short time. Identifying the determinants of this exponential expansion is important as these firms have a significant impact on the economy. They generate increased employment and investment by investors interested in new opportunities. Previous studies have failed to reach a consensus about what fosters high growth in gazelle companies as each firm’s geographical, political and economic context is different. The present research uses cognitive mapping and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) to overcome the limitations of prior investigations and identify factors that can potentially accelerate growth in gazelle companies.

Two sessions were held with an expert panel with knowledge about and experience with these firms. In the first session, data were collected to create a group cognitive map, while the second meeting comprised ISM-based analyses of the high-growth determinants identified and the causal relationships between them. A final consolidation session was held to discuss the results with two members of the Committee for Central Region Coordination and Development (i.e. Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional do Centro – a public entity that grants gazelle awards in Portugal).

The analysis system created was tested, and the results demonstrate that the dual methodology used can increase our understanding of the dynamics of high-growth determinants and lead to more informed and potentially better evaluations of gazelle companies. Indeed, once high-growth determinants in gazelle companies are understood, this information can help other firms implement the same business model to achieve similarly rapid growth. The strengths and shortcomings of this new structured analysis model are also analyzed.

The authors know of no prior work reporting the integrated use of cognitive mapping and ISM in this study context.

The purpose of this paper is to enrich the knowledge about blockchain (BC) technology implementation in the agri-food industry by providing an interpretive framework of the key marketing opportunities and challenges, related to the adoption of BC for Geographical Indication (GI) products.

The study adopts an explorative qualitative research design through the cognitive mapping technique applied to the cognition of different market players involved in agri-food BC projects: farmers, distributors, companies and consultancies.

This study presents a comprehensive examination of the marketing impacts of BC across various marketing objectives, including product enhancement, brand positioning, consumer relationships, market access and supply chain relationships. It highlights the capability of BC to facilitate data-enabled ecosystems within the agri-food sector, involving supply chain actors and control agencies. Additionally, the study sheds light on the challenges (technological, collaborative, political, financial and organizational) associated with the implementation of BC in the marketing of agri-food products.

This work provides a comprehensive examination of the relevance of BC in the marketing activities of firms, particularly in the context of quality food products. It highlights the main areas of impact and effects and emphasizes the complexity of the phenomenon, which extends beyond its technical issues. Furthermore, it offers a systematic exploration of the challenges associated with the adoption of BC in marketing activities, thus contributing to a broader understanding of the implications of BC adoption in companies' marketing strategies.

The practical implications for this work addresses both GI companies and policy makers. Implications for companies relate to the market benefits associated with the implementation of BC, which allow further strengthening of market positioning, relationships of trust within the supply chain and integration between physical and digital market channels. The study also systematizes the challenges underlying the implementation of BC projects. The implications for policy makers regard the role they have to play in BC projects at regulatory, financial and policy levels.

Studies focusing on BC applications in marketing are still limited and characterized by a very narrow perspective (especially in the food industry). This study contributes to the conceptual design of the marketing applications of BC in the agri-food sector. The value of the study also lies in having framed the marketing impacts of BC in a holistic perspective, along with the technological and non-technological challenges that are related to the integration of BC in marketing strategy and operations.

A separate study of the different behavioral biases does not allow for a full understanding of the complexity and stability of the heterogeneity of beliefs. Therefore, through a more global view of these anomalies, the authors wish to show that they can converge on a single concept, which is the heterogeneity of beliefs.

It is therefore essential to stress that the importance of this study is mainly reflected in the methodological approach used in the construction and analysis of the map and not only in the results achieved. This contribution states that structural analysis, as a means of building the cognitive map, can facilitate the task of investors and other decision-makers, in the identification and analysis of the heterogeneity of beliefs that can therefore guide investors' strategy in decision-making.

The authors have studied the behavior of the investor and its way of interpreting the information and the authors have emphasized the value of studying the concept of heterogeneity of beliefs in its complexity. So that part of the work seems to be relevant and crucial to filling, if you will, that void. In this sense, the authors have shown that behavioral abnormalities are multidimensional concepts: “self-deception”, “cognitive bias”, “emotional bias” and “social bias”.

In particular, this article will aim to achieve the objective of proposing a model for measuring the heterogeneity of beliefs. Thus, the authors want to show that the heterogeneity of beliefs can be measured directly through the different behavioral anomalies.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between individual-level psychological resources and team resilience in the context of expatriate project management teams. It seeks to understand how personal psychological resources contribute to team resilience and explore the dynamic evolution mechanism of team resilience. The goal is to enhance team resilience among expatriates in a BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible) world, where organizations face volatile and uncertain conditions.

An online survey was applied for data collection, and 315 valid samples from Chinese expatriates in international construction projects were utilized for data analysis. A structural equation model (SEM) examines the relationships between personal psychological resources and team resilience. The study identifies five psychological factors influencing team resilience: Employee Resilience, Cross-cultural Adjustment, Self-efficacy, Social Support, and Team Climate. The hypothesized relationships are validated through the SEM analysis. Additionally, a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) is constructed to explore the dynamic mechanism of team resilience formation based on the results of the SEM.

The SEM analysis confirms that employee resilience, cross-cultural adjustment, and team climate positively impact team resilience. Social support and self-efficacy also have positive effects on team climate. Moreover, team climate is found to fully mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and team resilience, as well as between social support and team resilience. The FCM model provides further insights into the dynamic evolution of team resilience, highlighting the varying impact effects of antecedents during the team resilience development process and the effectiveness of different combinations of intervention strategies.

This study contributes to understanding team resilience by identifying the psychological factors influencing team resilience in expatriate project management teams. The findings emphasize the importance of social support and team climate in promoting team resilience. Interventions targeting team climate are found to facilitate the rapid development of team resilience. In contrast, interventions for social support are necessary for sustainable, long-term high levels of team resilience. Based on the dynamic simulation results, strategies for cultivating team resilience through external intervention and internal adjustment are proposed, focusing on social support and team climate. Implementing these strategies can enhance project management team resilience and improve the core competitiveness of contractors in the BANI era.

This introduction provides the methodological framework for the book, approaching the business of football through the lens of its most reliable consumers – the fanbase. Fan cultures necessarily inform the normative understanding of a football club, due to the popularly held belief that it is the fan’s – or some reified idea of the fan – that is the permanent feature of a football club and that provides its identity. Players and owners come and go, but the relationship between the club and the fan is, theoretically, never-ending. In truth, this is never a real fan who could exist, but a constructed image of the fan built out of other narratives and that, at some level, football fans associate themselves. This fan is no one in particular, but is drawn from a close reading of football culture and identifying the directives of the traditional fan. Utilising a combination of critical theory and the existing literature on football club ownership, our goal is to reveal the distinction between how people talk about the social dimension of football clubs, and how they actually relate to their fans and the wider world in the era of late capitalism. A club is not simply the romanticised notions held by those within the games, but, as with all businesses, it is also the product of it conducts itself in a series of other networks of exchange. Often irreconcilable with the aforementioned romantic notions, these networks often get hidden by the prevailing discourse.

This study aims to realize efficient, fast and safe robot search task, the belief criteria decision-making approach is proposed to solve the object search task with an uncertain location.

The study formulates the robot search task as a partially observable Markov decision process, uses the semantic information to evaluate the belief state and designs the belief criteria decision-making approach. A cost function considering a trade-off among belief state, path length and movement effort is modelled to select the next best location in path planning.

The semantic information is successfully modelled and propagated, which can represent the belief of finding object. The belief criteria decision-making (BCDM) approach is evaluated in both Gazebo simulation platform and physical experiments. Compared to greedy, uniform and random methods, the performance index of path length and execution time is superior by BCDM approach.

The prior knowledge of robot working environment, especially semantic information, can be used for path planning to achieve efficient task execution in path length and execution time. The modelling and updating of environment information can lead a promising research topic to realize a more intelligent decision-making method for object search task.

Our study aims to explore the interplay between dysfunctional cognitive schemas and rationality for decision comprehensiveness in organizational strategic decisions.

We used a cross-sectional design in which we evaluated individual decision rationality using an objective decision competence test and dysfunctional cognitive schemas in a sample of 270 managers (145 women with an average age of 41 years old). In addition, we asked managers to rate the decision comprehensiveness of their organization’s strategic decision processes.

Our findings support the detrimental impact of dysfunctional cognition in strategic decision-making in such a way that the association between individual managerial rationality and the comprehensiveness of organizational strategic decisions was positive only when managers reported low dysfunctional cognition, while when managers reported high levels of dysfunctional cognitive schemas, the association between rationality and comprehensiveness was negative.

Our study provides initial empirical evidence for the interplay between dysfunctional cognition and managerial rationality in strategic decision processes, and it opens venues for future research to explore the detrimental role of dysfunctional cognitive schemas in strategy processes.

A shared cognitive schema is the fundamental source of tacit understanding within a team. This study aims to address how such a shared cognitive schema emerges and evolves in an interdisciplinary research team.

This study uses an exploratory single case study to analyze the emergence and evolution of a shared cognitive schema in an interdisciplinary research team systematically. The authors spent more than two years collecting data from the IAM team via semistructured interviews, archival data and observation. Subsequently, a framework for the resulting mechanism model was developed by analyzing the data using a three-step process.

This study shows that as the interdisciplinary research team develops, the shared cognitive schema passes through three stages: overlapping cognitive schema, complementary cognitive schema and synergetic cognitive schema. The mechanisms of overlap, complement and synergy play important roles. The convergent roles of partner-based recruiting, knowledge categorization and following the existing institution facilitate the overlapping of knowledge structures. Complementary cognitive schema sharing is facilitated by interdisciplinary member selection, knowledge stock expansion and the effects of accomplished mentors. The synergetic behaviors of group voice, interactive cognition and adaptive learning facilitate synergetic cognitive schema sharing.

This study is the first to discuss the emergence and evolution of a shared cognitive schema at the microlevel of knowledge structure and belief structure. It offers a new theoretical perspective on the development rules of scientific research teams and provides practical enlightenment regarding the establishment and operation of interdisciplinary research teams.

This study aims to investigate how companies’ understanding of the business network influences the creation of value in business-to-business relationships. The authors do this by analysing dimensions in actors’ “network pictures” and illustrating how value perception and network understanding influence actors’ mutual effort to create value. Approaching relationship value from the point of actors’ cognitive understanding of their business network has so far been largely overlooked in relationship value research.

This study applies a qualitative case study methodology whereby dyadic data from a well-established business-to-business relationship is collected from 18 company representatives through personal interviews and group interviews supplemented by participant observations and company data.

The findings contribute with new insight into how companies’ understanding of their surrounding network influence (facilitates or limits) relationship value creation. The authors find that companies continuously reflect on changes in their networks and the related changes in partners’ value perceptions. Through value articulations, companies seek to explicitly express their value perception. Value reflections and value articulations create a dynamic process formed not only by the individual actor but also through their relationship and engagement in their network environment. This requires companies to develop their networking capabilities.

This paper presents findings, insights and contributions limited to a case study of a particular business relationship within an industrial setting. Although the findings and contributions are valid and in line with the criteria for rigorous qualitative research, the authors advocate and call for additional studies that investigate relationships value creation and address the interplay between actors’ network understanding and their actions and behaviour. One way to approach this would be to test the four propositions derived and presented as part of the present study.

The findings imply that management needs to be aware not only of the value created and delivered to a specific partner but also of how the partner’s understanding of the wider network will influence the value delivering and capturing process.

This study contributes to the growing literature on relationship value creation by outlining a dynamic process where relationship partners reflect upon and articulate value. Such activities are influenced by the partners’ network understanding and form the basis of the mutual relationship value creation effort. The findings also contribute to the network pictures literature by emphasizing insights into the formation of value perceptions through actors’ understanding of their surrounding networks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hard and soft measures of service quality and visitors' satisfaction, which ultimately contribute to visitor loyalty to the destination, specifically in the context of the Borneo Cultural Festival (BCF) in Sibu, Sarawak (Malaysia).

The study uses a quantitative research approach with 427 valid responses from domestic and international tourists of BCF and employs the cognitive-affective-conative theory to examine how the festival impacts visitor loyalty.

The findings indicate that both hard and soft measures significantly contribute to the service quality and visitor satisfaction at the BCF. Additionally, service quality and visitor satisfaction were found to positively influence destination loyalty, while the relationship between legibility and visitor satisfaction was not significant.

The findings encourage the ministry and event organisers to adopt a destination event strategy that positions Sibu as an attractive event destination capable of attracting domestic and international tourists.

The findings of this study contribute to the existing body of knowledge on event tourism and destination loyalty by applying the cognitive-affective-conative theory. This study marks the first of its kind, analysing both the tangible (hard) and intangible (soft) measures of service quality and their impact on visitor satisfaction, ultimately influencing visitor loyalty to the destination, particularly in the context of the BCF in Sibu, Sarawak.