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As many businesses faced economic disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic and sought financial relief, existing bank relationships became critical to getting a loan. This study examines factors associated with the development of personal relationships of rural small businesses with community bank representatives.

We applied a mixed-method approach. We employed descriptive statistics, principal factor analysis and logistic regression for data analysis. We distributed an online survey to rural small businesses in five states in the United States. Key informant interviews with community bank representatives supplemented the survey results.

A business owner’s trust in a banker was positively associated with the establishment of a business–bank relationship. However, an analysis of individual trust’s components revealed that the nature of trust is complex, and a failure of one or more components may lead to decreased trustworthiness in a banker. Small businesses that preferred personal communication with a bank were more inclined to relationship banking.

Due to the relatively small sample size and cross-sectional data, our results may not be conclusive but should be viewed as preliminary and as suggestions for future research. Bankers should be aware of the importance of trust for small business owners and of the actions that lead to increased trustworthiness.

The study extends the existing knowledge on the business–bank relationship by focusing mainly on social (instead of economic) factors associated with the establishment of the business–bank relationship in times of crisis and high uncertainty.

Positive experiences with working from home (WFH) during the Corona pandemic (COVID-19) have motivated many employees to continue WFH after the pandemic. However, factors influencing employees' WFH intentions against the backdrop of experiences during pandemic-induced enforced working from home (EWFH) are heterogeneous. This study investigates factors linked to information technology (IT) professionals' WFH intentions.

This mixed-methods study with 92 IT professionals examines the effects of seven predictors for IT professionals' WFH intentions. The predictors are categorized according to the trichotomy of (1) characteristics of the worker, (2) characteristics of the workspace and (3) the work context. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the quantitative survey data. In addition, IT professionals' responses to six open questions in which they reflect on past experiences and envision future work are examined.

Quantitative results suggest that characteristics of the worker, such as segmentation preference, are influencing WFH intentions stronger than characteristics of the workspace or the work context. Furthermore, perceived productivity during EWFH and gender significantly predict WFH intentions. Contextualizing these quantitative insights, the qualitative data provides a rich yet heterogeneous list of factors why IT professionals prefer (not) to work from home.

Reasons influencing WFH intentions vary due to individual preferences and constraints. Therefore, a differentiated organizational approach is recommended for designing future work arrangements. In addition, the findings suggest that team contracts to formalize working patterns, e.g. to agree on the needed number of physical meetings, can be helpful levers to reduce the complexity of future work that is most likely a mix of WFH and office arrangements.

This study extends literature reflecting on COVID-19-induced changes, specifically the emerging debate about why employees want to continue WFH. It is crucial for researchers and practitioners to understand which factors influence IT professionals' WFH intentions and how they impact the design and implementation of future hybrid work arrangements.

This article examines challenges and strategies related to police relationships and engagement with rural communities in England and Wales, Australia and France. It aims to bridge a gap in knowledge around how police balance public demands with organisational and contextual constraints, exploring the role of communication technology in overcoming geographical and cultural barriers in rural policing.

The research draws upon 121 semi-structured interviews conducted across three distinct jurisdictions. In the United Kingdom and Australia, interviews were conducted via Microsoft Teams, while face-to-face interviews were conducted in France. Participants were recruited through the purposive sampling of police working in rural areas. The data were thematically analysed using NVivo Software.

Rural communities have low expectations of policing services, a consequence of geography, organisational structures and limited resource allocation. Building relationships can be challenging owing to isolation and terrain, the need for officers to have local and cultural knowledge, and difficulties in recruiting officers in rural posts. Technology-mediated communication has played a part in the solutions (e.g. social media). However, this may not always be suitable owing to limited connectivity, citizen and police preferences for communication and engagement, and the institutional and cultural nuances surrounding the application of technology.

This article provides empirical insights into the attitudes and experiences of rural police officers, highlighting the distinctive policing context and engagement needs of rural communities. The research underscores the necessity for contextually aware engagement. It suggests that while technology-mediated communication offers some solutions to spatial challenges, its effectiveness may be limited by access, generational preferences and the adaptability of police institutions and cultures.

During COVID-19 restrictions, people spent more time in cyberspace and consuming health-related information. An increase was also observed in mediated caring messages or health-relevant information sent to one another. This study aims to explore how the information and interactions around COVID-19 can provide a good learning opportunity for public health, specifically related to eHealth literacy and eHealth promotion.

While mainstream literature has concentrated on experimental designs and a priming effect, this study inspects psychological distance related to a health threat under real-life circumstances. The article adopted a survey approach and utilized PLS-SEM techniques to examine the proposed hypotheses.

Results indicated that whereas closer social support correlates with closer psychological distance and less usage of the social media approach, more substantial COVID-19 impacts were associated with closer psychological distance but greater use of social media. Since both closer psychological distance and social media approach contribute to eHealth literacy, social support from closer and virtual social networks should be embraced but utilized through different routes and for different purposes. The timing of messages but not psychological distance affects people's social media approach, indicating that morning messages should be employed. Moreover, eHealth literacy mediates timing preferences and leads to a preference for eHealth communication earlier in the day. Overall, morning messages create a virtuous circle during a health crisis.

This paper establishes a mechanism of virtuous cycles for eHealth communication during a health threat. Additionally, it bridges existing research gaps by expanding chronopsychology and CLT in the health domain using an empirical approach, a real-life case and an extension of performance regarding information-seeking and utilization.

This study aims to explore the impact of remote work (RW) on millennials’ organizational commitment (OC) by addressing four research gaps identified in existing studies. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), the authors also investigate if millennials are well-suited for RW environment and how shared leadership (SL) and followership moderate the relationship between RW and millennials’ OC.

A survey was conducted involving 154 millennial employees. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression analysis were performed to investigate the moderating effect of SL and followership on the relationship between RW and millennials’ OC.

The results reveal that millennials’ OC increases with the degree of RW. Moreover, both SL and followership exhibited a moderating effect on the RW-millennials’ OC relationship, emphasizing their importance in shaping millennials’ OC.

While the effect of RW on individual-level outcomes remains controversial, this study sheds light on the positive impact based on millennials' characteristics and suggests strategies to strengthen their OC in remote working environments. However, due to the cross-sectional nature of our research, a longitudinal study would be valuable to provide deeper insights.

This study contributes to the field of organizational behavior (OB) by connecting millennials’ traits with SL and followership, offering valuable insights into strengthening their OC within the context of RW through the lens of SET. By addressing and filling the four identified research gaps, our research advances knowledge in the improvement of millennials’ OC within the RW environment.

This study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge management and career development in an era characterized by high levels of youth unemployment and a demand for specialized skills. Despite the increasing transition to a knowledge-based economy, there is a significant gap between young people’s skills and career readiness, necessitating an in-depth analysis of the role of knowledge management at the individual, organizational and national levels.

The authors conducted a qualitative study using the theory-context-characteristics-methodology approach based on a systematic literature review. The authors created an ecological framework for reflecting on knowledge management and career development, arguing for a multidisciplinary approach that invites collaboration across sectors to generate innovative and reliable solutions.

This study presents a comprehensive review of the existing literature and trends, noting the need for more focus on the interplay between knowledge management and career development. It emphasizes the need for businesses to promote the acquisition, storage, diffusion and application of knowledge and its circulation and exchange to create international business human capital.

The findings may help multinational corporations develop managerial training programs and recruitment strategies, given the demand for advanced knowledge-based skills in the modern workspace. The study also discusses the influences of education, experience and job skills on business managers’ performance, guiding the future recruitment of talents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is among the first to assess the triadic relationship between knowledge management, career development and the global unemployment crisis. The proposed multidisciplinary approach seeks to break down existing silos, thus fostering a more comprehensive understanding of how to address these ongoing global concerns.

This study investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots persuade customers to accept their recommendations in the online shopping context.

Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, this study establishes a research model to reveal the antecedents and internal mechanisms of customers' adoption of AI chatbot recommendations. The authors tested the model with survey data from 530 AI chatbot users.

The results show that in the AI chatbot recommendation adoption process, central and peripheral cues significantly affected a customer's intention to adopt an AI chatbot's recommendation, and a customer's cognitive and emotional trust in the AI chatbot mediated the relationships. Moreover, a customer's mind perception of the AI chatbot, including perceived agency and perceived experience, moderated the central and peripheral paths, respectively.

This study has theoretical and practical implications for AI chatbot designers and provides management insights for practitioners to enhance a customer's intention to adopt an AI chatbot's recommendation.

1. The study investigates customers' adoption of AI chatbots' recommendation.

2. The authors develop research model based on ELM theory to reveal central and peripheral cues and paths.

3. The central and peripheral cues are generalized according to cooperative principle theory.

4. Central cues include recommendation reliability and accuracy, and peripheral cues include human-like empathy and recommendation choice.

5. Central and peripheral cues affect customers' adoption to recommendation through trust in AI.

6. Customers' mind perception positively moderates the central and peripheral paths.

The study investigates customers' adoption of AI chatbots' recommendation.

The authors develop research model based on ELM theory to reveal central and peripheral cues and paths.

The central and peripheral cues are generalized according to cooperative principle theory.

Central cues include recommendation reliability and accuracy, and peripheral cues include human-like empathy and recommendation choice.

Central and peripheral cues affect customers' adoption to recommendation through trust in AI.

Customers' mind perception positively moderates the central and peripheral paths.

This paper proposes a Web-based patient portal based on the electronic medical record. Such a portal can allow patients to manage their own health care, reduce health-care visits and significantly improve the quality of their health care.

A patient portal prototype and an accompanying online survey were distributed to assess the adoption readiness among a group of people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The results from 470 survey participants demonstrated an enhanced awareness of this technology, and support the study hypotheses indicating that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors are important when considering the implementation of a patient portal in the UAE.

This study adds value to the few research studies undertaken in the Middle East discussing online health information technology and its adoption and usage among the population at large. The extended technology acceptance model, which contains two additional constructs, had not been previously validated in terms of a patient portal in the UAE, according to the author’s knowledge, adding more value. The UAE’s health-care system must use the benefits from the available IT infrastructure to provide a user-friendly online portal to encourage patients to manage their health care and health information.

With the increasing computation and communication speed of mobile devices, their use and roles have been repositioned to act more than a communication tool. Around 0.4 million foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) form an integral part of Hong Kong society and have the highest concentrations of FDHs worldwide, but scant studies focus on their mobile technology usage. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

This research investigated mobile technology usage by 145 FDHs in Hong Kong with a quantitative survey, covering their actual mobile technology usage, perceptions, influences and adoption barriers.

Besides communication and connection with friends and family, participants used mobile technology for information seeking, productivity, utility and entertainment. Perception of usefulness was the greatest influence, and they would use any mobile technology once its basic function supports their daily needs. They considered no “very serious barrier,” though data tariff was their biggest concern. Overall, there were some significant differences between genders in the usage of mobile technologies.

Scant studies focus on the mobile technology usage of FDHs. The results reveal the usefulness of mobile technologies to FDHs for government policy-making and for employers and employment agencies to better support the FHDs' daily lives.

This study aims to understand the utility of personas and illustrate, through a case study, how a persona-building exercise in a Community Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) training of community leaders elicited important insights that complemented findings from ongoing formative research on vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic/Latino population in the USA during COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory concurrent parallel qualitative study design compared three personas created by community-based organization members (n = 37) to transcripts from five formative research focus groups (n = 30) from the same project. All participants in this study were recruited by the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network as part of their capacity-building and formative research activities. Grounded theory guided the content analysis.

This study found personas and focus groups to be complementary. A high degree of co-occurrence was observed when investigating the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine under the categories of barriers, culture and communication. Between the two methods, the authors found strong associations between fear, disruption to the value system, work-related barriers, inaccessibility to health care and information sources and misinformation. Areas of divergence were negligible.

While personas provided background information about the population and sharing “how” to reach the priority population, focus groups provided the “why” behind the behavior, followed by “how”.

A community-driven persona-building process built on cultural community knowledge and existing data can build community capacity, provide rich information to assist in the creation of tailored messages, strategies and overall interventions during a public health crisis and provide user-centered, evidence-based information about a priority population while researchers and practitioners wait on the results from formative research.

This case study provided a unique opportunity to analyze the complementary effectiveness of two methods acting in tandem to understand the priority population: stakeholder-informed persona-building and participant-informed focus group interviews. Understanding their complementary nature addresses a time gap that often exists between researchers and practitioners during times of crises and builds on recommendations associated with bringing rigor into practice, promoting academic contribution to real-world issues and building collaborative partnerships. Finally, it supports the utility of a nimble tool that improves social marketers’ ability to know more about their audience for intervention design when time is of the essence and formative research is ongoing.