Search results

Business models are increasingly recognized as a concept to support innovation in organizations. The implementation and operation of a new or altered business model involves the (re-)design of an organization's business processes and their successful execution. This study reviews and synthesizes the existing body of literature to guide organizations in systematically moving from a business model design to the implementation and operation of the business model through their underlying business processes.

A systematic literature review of the methods that bridge business models and business processes is performed. The selected 34 studies are classified according to the method's characteristics and the support in the design, implementation and operation of business models.

The results of the systematic review provide an overview of existing methods that organizations can adopt when moving from business model design into the implementation and operation of their business model using processes.

This work provides a comprehensive overview and detailed insight into the existing methods that align business models and business processes. It increases the understanding on how these two concepts can be synthesized to support more effective digital innovation in organizations. Based on the review results, knowledge gaps are identified and an agenda for future research bridging the fields of business models and business processes is proposed.

Identification of the direction of the sound source is very important for human–machine interfacing in the applications such as target detection on military applications and wildlife conservation. Considering its vast applications, this study aims to design, simulate, fabricate and test a bidirectional acoustic sensor having two cantilever structures coated with piezoresistive material for sensing has been designed, simulated, fabricated and tested.

The structure is a piezoresistive acoustic pressure sensor, which consists of two Kapton diaphragms with four piezoresistors arranged in Wheatstone bridge arrangement. The applied acoustic pressure causes diaphragm deflection and stress in diaphragm hinge, which is sensed by the piezoresistors positioned on the diaphragm. The piezoresistive material such as carbon or graphene is deposited at maximum stress area. Furthermore, the Wheatstone bridge arrangement has been formed to sense the change in resistance resulting into imbalanced bridge and two cantilever structures add directional properties to the acoustic sensor. The structure is designed, fabricated and tested and the dimensions of the structure are chosen to enable ease of fabrication without clean room facilities. This structure is tested with static and dynamic calibration for variation in resistance leading to bridge output voltage variation and directional properties.

This paper provides the experimental results that indicate sensor output variation in terms of a Wheatstone bridge output voltage from 0.45 V to 1.618 V for a variation in pressure from 0.59 mbar to 100 mbar. The device is also tested for directionality using vibration source and was found to respond as per the design.

The fabricated devices could not be tested for practical acoustic sources due to lack of facilities. They have been tested for a vibration source in place of acoustic source.

The piezoresistive bidirectional sensor can be used for detection of direction of the sound source.

In defense applications, it is important to detect the direction of the acoustic signal. This sensor is suited for such applications.

The present paper discusses a novel yet simple design of a cantilever beam-based bidirectional acoustic pressure sensor. This sensor fabrication does not require sophisticated cleanroom for fabrication and characterization facility for testing. The fabricated device has good repeatability and is able to detect the direction of the acoustic source in external environment.

While the main emotional labor strategies are well-documented, the manner in which professionals navigate emotional rules within the workplace and effectively perform emotional labor is less understood. With this contribution, I aim to unveil “the good, the bad and the ugly” of emotional labor as a dynamic theatrical performance.

Focusing on three geriatric long-term care units within a French public hospital, this qualitative study relies on two sets of data (observation and interviews). Deeply rooted within the field of study, the chosen methodological approach substantializes the subtle hues of the emotional experience at work and targets resonance rather than generalization.

Using the theatrical metaphor, this research underlines the role of space in the practice of emotional labor in a unique way. It identifies the main emotionalized zones or emotional regions (front, back, transitional, mixed) and details their characteristics, before unearthing the nonlinearity and polyphonic quality of emotional labor performance and the versatility needed to that effect. Indeed, this research shows how health-care professionals juggle with the specificities of each region, as well as how space generates both constraints and resources. By combining static and dynamic prisms, diverse instantiations of hybridity and spatial in-betweens, anchored in liminality and trajectories, are revealed.

This research adds to the current body of literature on the concept of emotional labor by shedding light on its highly dynamic and interactional nature, revealing different levels of porosity between emotional regions and how the characteristics of each type of area can taint others and increase/decrease the occupational health costs of emotional labor. The study also raises questions about the interplay of emotional labor performance with the level of humanization/dehumanization of elderly people. Given the global demographics about an aging population, this gives food for thought at a social level.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

The authors examine the longitudinal relationship between work satisfaction and life satisfaction, and the moderating role of work ethic.

The authors use a nationally representative sample of Dutch working adults (N = 1020; three waves over five years) and take a model comparison approach to identify the longitudinal relationship between work satisfaction and life satisfaction. To test the moderating effects of work ethic, the authors use conditional process analyses.

The authors find more evidence as to how work satisfaction and life satisfaction are positively and reciprocally linked over time using longitudinal data. More importantly, work ethic strengthens the positive effect of work satisfaction on life satisfaction, but no such moderating role is observed as to the effect from life satisfaction to work satisfaction.

The findings raise awareness that employees' overall happiness in life matters to workplace satisfaction. More importantly, one effective strategy to promote work satisfaction is to design work that nurtures strong work ethic – measures that help employees see more value in their work.

The findings regarding the role of work ethic show that the conservation of resources theory can be an informative lens to understand the work–life satisfaction relationship. For individuals with strong work ethic, work satisfaction constitutes a more salient form of psychological resources benefiting their overall life satisfaction.

This study aims to investigate the negative interpersonal antecedents, emotional mediators and boundary conditions of knowledge sabotage behavior.

The authors collected data from 275 Chinese employees using convenience sampling and snowball sampling across three stages. Subsequently, the authors used both hierarchical regression and bootstrap methods to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results confirmed that workplace ostracism has positive effects on employee knowledge sabotage behavior both directly and via employee anger. In addition, the authors found that employee bottom-line mentality (BLM) moderates not only the direct effect of workplace ostracism on employee anger but also the indirect effect of employee anger in this context. Employee conscientiousness moderates only the direct effect of workplace ostracism on employee anger and does not moderate the indirect effect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study not only explores the influence of workplace ostracism on employee knowledge sabotage behavior for the first time but also elucidates the underlying emotional mechanisms (anger) and boundary conditions (employee BLM and conscientiousness) by which workplace ostracism influences employee knowledge sabotage behavior, thus deepening the understanding of how knowledge sabotage emerges in organizations.

Drawing on legitimacy and upper-echelon theory, this paper aims to investigate the moderating role of corporate governance in the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and board gender diversity (BGD).

Using Morgan Stanley Capital International measures of social and governance performance, the authors use 2,950 firm-year observations from US companies for the years 2016–2020 to show that good performance on social issues drives BGD.

The panel data model indicates that the relationship between CSP and BGD is strengthened when firms display robust corporate governance.

This study contributes to the extant literature through empirical consideration of CSP as a predictor of BGD, a relationship that has rarely been examined. It further highlights the significant role of corporate governance in ensuring that women have access to corporate boards. Discussion and findings highlight that social performance and governance may significantly contribute to the diversity of socially cognizant boards.

This study aims to explore how university language students evaluate different sustainability themes and examine the overall relevance of ecological, social, cultural and economic sustainability dimensions in language education.

A questionnaire was designed to study Finnish university language students’ (n = 55) order of priority for sustainability dimensions and their sub-themes and the justifications for the priority orders using a mixed methods design. Qualitative content analysis was conducted using NVivo software, and weighted rankings were used to analyse the quantitative data.

The findings of the study showed that language students evaluated the social and cultural dimensions as the most relevant in language teaching. In all dimensions, students approached sustainability mainly by prioritising larger issues and advancing towards smaller ones. Most non-directional responses appeared in the economic dimension. In addition, individual prioritising and justification approaches varied between different sustainability dimensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have examined language students’ evaluations of and justifications for all four sustainability dimensions. The results highlight the need to use multiple, holistic approaches and systems thinking to incorporate education for sustainable development.

Past research has established a relationship between the perceptions of fairness in the division of household labor and relationship satisfaction. Varying according to gender and time, this relationship has been found with differing outcomes, including relationship satisfaction, relationship happiness, divorce, and sexual frequency. Although this relationship has been well studied, little research has focused on how this relationship is moderated by relationship status. According to the Second Demographic Transition Theory (SDT), as societies become more “modern,” cohabitation will become more prevalent, eventually becoming socially and culturally equivalent to marriage. As such, it is vital to ask how cohabitation and marriage differ, or if they differ at all. Therefore, this gap is explored by asking, “How do perceptions of the division of household labor affect married and cohabitating heterosexual couples’ relationship happiness and chance of separation?” In order to answer this question, the National Survey of Families and Households (Wave III) is analyzed, with outcomes focusing on relationship happiness and chance of separation. Results indicate that when married and cohabitating individuals experience similar levels of happiness with their partner’s housework, they also experience similar levels of relationship happiness and chance of separation, with relationship status not affecting the impact happiness with partner’s housework has on these relationship outcomes. This suggests that cohabitation and marriage may continue to become more similar overall.

Many brands claim they were born by coincidence, yet the effects and contingencies of this communication strategy are little understood by extant marketing research on unexpected events. This study aims to investigate how consumers react to brand communications portraying a coincidental vs planned origin.

This research presents five experimental studies embedding coincidental brand origins into different types of marketing communications (i.e. crowdfunding campaigns, visual ads and brand biographies).

This research finds that coincidental brand origins increase persuasion (measured as money pledged to a crowdfunding campaign, overall brand equity and purchase intention) but only for consumers high in need for cognition (NFC). This effect is mediated by processing enjoyment, as the intrinsic need for thinking that characterizes high NFC consumers is satisfied by the opportunity to process the coincidence. Further to process, the authors show that explicitly providing an explanation for the coincidence makes the effect disappear, as this deprives high-NFC consumers of the opportunity to autonomously engage in and enjoy the cognitive process.

Brand managers able to leverage coincidences in their storytelling efforts should target high-NFC consumers and should not provide an explanation for the coincidences.

This research advances the limited literature on how consumers react to coincidences in a marketing context, the understanding of how brand communication strategies persuade consumers through information processing and the NFC literature.