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Purchase conversion prediction aims to improve user experience and convert visitors into real buyers to drive sales of firms; however, the total conversion rate is low, especially for e-retailers. To date, little is known about how e-retailers can scientifically detect users' intents within a purchase conversion funnel during their ongoing sessions and strategically optimize real-time marketing tactics corresponding to dynamic intent states. This study mainly aims to detect a real-time state of the conversion funnel based on graph theory, which refers to a five-class classification problem in the overt real-time choice decisions (RTCDs)—click, tag-to-wishlist, add-to-cart, remove-from-cart and purchase—during an ongoing session.

The authors propose a novel graph-theoretic framework to detect different states of the conversion funnel by identifying a user's unobserved mindset revealed from their navigation process graph, namely clickstream graph. First, the raw clickstream data are identified into individual sessions based on a 30-min time-out heuristic approach. Then, the authors convert each session into a sequence of temporal item-level clickstream graphs and conduct a temporal graph feature engineering according to the basic, single-, dyadic- and triadic-node and global characteristics. Furthermore, the synthetic minority oversampling technique is adopted to address with the problem of classifying imbalanced data. Finally, the authors train and test the proposed approach with several popular artificial intelligence algorithms.

The graph-theoretic approach validates that users' latent intent states within the conversion funnel can be interpreted as time-varying natures of their online graph footprints. In particular, the experimental results indicate that the graph-theoretic feature-oriented models achieve a substantial improvement of over 27% in line with the macro-average and micro-average area under the precision-recall curve, as compared to the conventional ones. In addition, the top five informative graph features for RTCDs are found to be Transitivity, Edge, Node, Degree and Reciprocity. In view of interpretability, the basic, single-, dyadic- and triadic-node and global characteristics of clickstream graphs have their specific advantages.

The findings suggest that the temporal graph-theoretic approach can form an efficient and powerful AI-based real-time intent detecting decision-support system. Different levels of graph features have their specific interpretability on RTCDs from the perspectives of consumer behavior and psychology, which provides a theoretical basis for the design of computer information systems and the optimization of the ongoing session intervention or recommendation in e-commerce.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to apply clickstream graphs and real-time decision choices in conversion prediction and detection. Most studies have only meditated on a binary classification problem, while this study applies a graph-theoretic approach in a five-class classification problem. In addition, this study constructs temporal item-level graphs to represent the original structure of clickstream session data based on graph theory. The time-varying characteristics of the proposed approach enhance the performance of purchase conversion detection during an ongoing session.

This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the industry practice to guide the formation of support tools with a rigorous theoretical backing. Cross-functional teams are an essential component in new product development (NPD) of complex products to promote comprehensive coverage of product design, marketing, sales, support as well as many other activities of business. Efficient use of teams can allow for greater technical competency coverage, increased creativity, reduced development times and greater consideration of ideas from a variety of stakeholders. While academics continually aspire to propose methods for improved team composition, there exists a gap between research directions and applications found within industry practice.

Through interviewing product development managers working across a variety of industries, this paper investigates the common practices of team utilization in an organizational setting. Following these interviews, this paper proposes a conceptual two-dimensional management support model aggregating the primary drivers of team success and providing direction to systematically address features of team management and composition.

Based on this work, product managers are recommended to continually address the positioning of members throughout the entire NPD process. In the early stages, individuals are to be placed to work on project components with explicit consideration toward the perceived complexity of tasks and individual competency. Throughout the development process, individuals’ positions vary based on new information while continued emphasis is placed on maintaining a shared understanding.

Bridging the gap between theory and application within product development teams is a necessary step toward improved product develop. Industrial settings require practical solutions that can be applied economically and efficiently within their organization. Theoretical reflections postulated by academia support improved team design; however, to achieve true success, they must be applicable when considering product development.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of gender diversity in the composition of engagement auditors on the disclosure of key audit matters (KAMs) in a dual-signature environment.

The authors used the unique institutional setup of Taiwan, where the law requires that audit reports be signed by two audit partners. The authors examined the effect of gender diversity composition among engagement auditors on KAM disclosure, considering behavioral differences between female and male auditors.

The empirical results indicate that gender diversity composition in the dual-signature environment is associated with the number of disclosed KAM items (KAMIT) and the length of the explanations for each KAMIT. Furthermore, the authors found that gender diversity composition, particularly when led by female audit partners, has a more pronounced impact on the explanation of each KAMIT rather than on the disclosure of KAMIT. The authors also noted that the moderating effect of audit firm specialization does not influence the gender diversity composition of audit partners in disclosing KAMs.

This study’s empirical findings demonstrate that the interaction between different gender compositions in a dual-signature environment influences KAM disclosure.

The study discusses the professionalization of academic leadership in Israel by analyzing and comparing two different training programs: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s (HUJI) program and the CHE-Rothschild program. The HUJI program began in 2016 to train the professoriate to take charge of leadership positions alongside a separate program for administrative staff, while the CHE-Rothschild program was launched in 2019 to train academic leaders, both professors and administrators from universities and colleges nationwide. The analysis reveals two “ideal types” of collegiality: While Model A (exemplified by the HUJI program) bifurcates between the professoriate and administrative staff, Model B (exemplified by the CHE-Rothschild program) binds administrative and academic staff members through course composition, pedagogy, and content. The study suggests a pattern of redefinition of collegiality in academia: we find that while academic hierarchies are maintained (between academic faculty and administrative staff and between universities and colleges), collegiality in academia is being redefined as extending beyond the boundaries of the professoriate and emphasizing a partnership approach to collegial ties.

The relationship between variation in time perspectives and collaborative performance is scarcely explored, and even less is known about the respective mechanisms that lead to varying task performance. Thus, we aim to further the literature on time perspectives and collaborative performance, shedding light on the underlying behavioral patterns.

We report a quasi-experiment analyzing the impact of past, present and future orientation variation in dyads (N = 76) on their quantitative and qualitative performance when confronted with a simple incentivized creative task with constraints. Subsequently, we offer a qualitative analysis of comments given by the participants after the task on the collaboration.

Results indicate that a dyad's elevation of past orientation and diversity in future orientation negatively affect collaborative performance. At the same time, there is a positive effect of elevation of future orientation. The positive effect is driven by clear communication and agreement during the task, while the negative effect arises from work sharing and complementation.

This study provides insights for organizations on composing individuals regarding their temporal focus for collaborative tasks that should be executed rapidly and require creative solutions.

Our study distinguishes by considering the composition of past, present and future time perspectives in dyads and focuses on a creative task setting. Moreover, we explore the mechanisms in the dyads with a substantial elevation of/diversity in future orientation, leading to their stronger/weaker performance.

Despite the well-recognized importance of recycled water, the study of industry-peer pressure on recycled water is relatively new. This study investigates how organizations experience and react to industry-peer pressure to set recycled water targets. Additionally, this study investigates the role of board chairs involved in sustainability committees in contributing to responses to industry-peer pressure.

Using Eviews 12, this study employed a pooled logistic regression model to analyze data from 1,346 firms on Taiwan and Taipei exchanges (2017–2020).

The findings revealed that frequency-based imitation drives recycled water target-setting diffusion. However, there is no direct relationship between outcome-based imitation and recycled water target-setting. Notably, outcome-based imitation drives the adoption of recycled water target-setting of firms with board-chair membership in sustainability committees.

This study faces certain data limitations. First, this study primarily focuses on water recycling. Future research could explore other ways to reduce water usage, such as using water-efficient equipment. Second, this study gathered information solely on the presence or absence of a board chairperson on the sustainability committee. Future researchers could explore the impact of the composition of sustainability committee on recycled water target-setting. Lastly, the sample used in this study is restricted to Taiwan's corporations that existed during 2017–2020. Future researchers may consider adopting a longitudinal design in other economies to address this limitation.

The findings of this study offer several guidelines and implications for recycled water target-setting and the composition of sustainability committees. It responds to an urgent call for solutions to water shortages when pressure from governments and nongovernmental organizations is relatively absent. The number of industry peers that have already set recycled water targets is indispensable for motivating firms to set their own recycled water targets. In terms of insufficient water-related regulatory pressure and normative pressure, this study found evidence suggesting that the direct motivation for setting recycled water targets stems from mimetic pressures via frequency-based imitation. The evidence in this study suggests that policymakers should require companies to disclose their peers’ recycled water target information, as doing so serves as an alternative means to achieving SDG 6.3.

Recycled water target-setting might be challenging. Water recycling practices may face strong resistance and require substantial additional resources (Zhang and Tang, 2019; Gao et al., 2019; Gu et al., 2023). Therefore, this study suggests that firms should ensure the mindfulness of board members in promoting the welfare of the natural environment when making recycled water target-setting decisions. To reap the second-mover advantage, firms must consider the conditions in which board members can more effectively play their role. Corporations may help their chairpersons in setting recycled water targets by recruiting them as members of sustainability committees. Meanwhile, chairpersons tend to activate accurate mental models when the water conservation performance of pioneering industry peers is strong enough to indicate the potential benefits of adopting recycled water target-setting. Investors’ and stakeholders’ understanding of how the composition of sustainability committees is related to recycled water target-setting may help to identify the potential drivers of firms’ water responsibility. Investors and stakeholders should distinguish firms in terms of the board chair’s membership of their sustainability committee and focus on water-use reduction outcomes in the industry. This study provides insights into circumstances whereby chairpersons help to restore the water ecosystem.

This study explains how frequency-based and outcome-based imitation are two prominent mechanisms underlying the industry-peer pressure concerning recycled water target-setting. Moreover, this study fills literature gaps related to the moderating roles of board-chair membership in sustainability committees concerning industry-peer pressure on recycled water target-setting.

Engaging with heritage to support mental health and wellbeing has become a focus of research and policy, more recently moving towards social prescription of heritage interventions. While there are benefits to active participation, there are potential risks to those taking part and to the non-renewable historic remains and landscape that form the core of these projects. The purpose of the current research paper was to develop best practice guidelines for organisations offering heritage projects as interventions for people who live with mental health issues to protect both participants and heritage.

There were two research phases; a Sandpit with World Café discussions to produce a set of research priorities, and a Delphi Consultation, using three questionnaires distributed over six months, to develop best practice guidelines. The panel in both phases comprised experts through lived experience, policy, practice and research.

The Authentic and Meaningful Participation in Heritage or Related Activities (AMPHORA) guidelines cover three stages: project development, project delivery and project follow-up, with a set of action points for each stage. Of particular importance was authentic participation and expertise to ensure appropriate management of heritage/ historic environment assets and support for participants.

The AMPHORA guidelines can assist all organisations in the delivery of safe projects that support the mental health of those involved, as well as enhancing and protecting the historic environment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, these are the first research-led guidelines that help heritage organisations support those living with mental health issues.

By introducing the mass customization service mode into the cloud logistics environment, this paper studies the joint optimization of service provider selection and customer order decoupling point (CODP) positioning based on the mass customization service mode to provide customers with more diversified and personalized service content with lower total logistics service cost.

This paper addresses the general process of service composition optimization based on the mass customization mode in a cloud logistics service environment and constructs a joint decision model for service provider selection and CODP positioning. In the model, the two objective functions of minimum service cost and most satisfactory delivery time are considered, and the Pareto optimal solution of the model is obtained via the NSGA-II algorithm. Then, a numerical case is used to verify the superiority of the service composition scheme based on the mass customization mode over the general scheme and to verify the significant impact of the scale effect coefficient on the optimal CODP location.

(1) Under the cloud logistics mode, the implementation of the logistics service mode based on mass customization can not only reduce the total cost of logistics services by means of the scale effect of massive orders on the cloud platform but also make more efficient use of a large number of logistics service providers gathered on the cloud platform to provide customers with more customized and diversified service content. (2) The scale effect coefficient directly affects the total cost of logistics services and significantly affects the location of the CODP. Therefore, before implementing the mass customization logistics service mode, the most reasonable clustering of orders on the cloud logistics platform is very important for the follow-up service combination.

The originality of this paper includes two aspects. One is to introduce the mass customization mode in the cloud logistics service environment for the first time and summarize the operation process of implementing the mass customization mode in the cloud logistics environment. Second, in order to solve the joint decision optimization model of provider selection and CODP positioning, this paper designs a method for solving a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model using a multi-layer coding genetic algorithm.

The authors' work aims to identify the employer-specific drivers of the college (or university) wage gap, which has been identified as one of the major determinants of the dynamics of overall wage and income inequality in the past decades. The authors focus on three employer-level features that can be associated with asymmetries in the employment relation orientation adopted for college and non-college-educated employees: (1) size, (2) the share of standard employment and (3) the pervasiveness of incentive pay schemes.

The authors' establishment-level analysis (data from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS), 2005–2018) focusses on Japan, an economy characterised by many unique economic and institutional features relevant to the aims of the authors' analysis. The authors use an adjusted measure of firm-specific college wage premium, which is not biased by confounding individual and establishment-level factors and reflects unobservable characteristics of employees that determine the payment of a premium. The authors' empirical methods account for the complexity of the relationships they investigate, and the authors test their baseline outcomes with econometric approaches (propensity score methods) able to address crucial identification issues related to endogeneity and reverse causality.

The authors' findings indicate that larger establishment size, a larger share of regular workers and more pervasive implementation of IPSs for college workers tend to increase the college wage gap once all observable workers, job and establishment characteristics are controlled for. This evidence corroborates the authors' hypotheses that a larger establishment size, a higher share of regular workers and a more developed set-up of performance pay schemes for college workers are associated with a better capacity of employers to attract and keep highly educated employees with unobservable characteristics that justify a wage premium above average market levels. The authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

The authors' contribution to the existing knowledge is threefold. First, the authors combine the economics and management/organisation literature to develop new insights that underpin the authors' testable empirical hypotheses. This enables the authors to shed light on employer-level drivers of wage differentials (size, workforce composition, implementation of performance-pay schemes) related to many structural, institutional and strategic dimensions. The second contribution lies in the authors' measure of the “adjusted” college wage gap, which is calculated on the component of individual wages that differs between observationally identical workers in the same establishment. As such, the metric captures unobservable workers' characteristics that can generate a wage premium/penalty. Third, the authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly important and influential in reading and writing. The influx of social media digital spaces, like TikTok, has also shifted the ways multimodal composition takes place alongside AI. This study aims to argue that within spaces like TikTok, human composers must attend to the ways they write for, with and against the AI-powered algorithm.

Data collection was drawn from a larger study on #BookTok (the TikTok subcommunity for readers) that included semi-structured interviews including watching and reflecting on a TikTok they created. The authors grounded this study in critical posthumanist literacies to analyze and open code five #BookTok content creators’ interview transcripts. Using axial coding, authors collaboratively determined three overarching and entangled themes: writing for, with and against.

Findings highlight the nuanced ways #BookTokers consider the AI algorithm in their compositional choices, namely, in the ways how they want to disseminate their videos to a larger audience or more niche-focused community. Throughout the interviews, participants revealed how the AI algorithm was situated differently as both audience member, co-author and censor.

This study is grounded in critical posthumanist literacies and explores composition as a joint accomplishment between humans and machines. The authors argued that it is necessary to expand our human-centered notions of what it means to write for an audience, to co-author and to resist censorship or gatekeeping.