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The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the obstacles and drivers of financial investors while deciding upon investment opportunities in emerging markets.

Relevant factors for financial investors in emerging markets were identified through a literature review and a series of expert interviews. Identified factors were broadly grouped into three categories, namely, microeconomic aspects, macroeconomic aspects, and aspects of the functionality of the local banking system. Finally, an expert panel (Delphi) technique is used to validate the findings in cocoa industry in Ivory Coast.

A decision-making framework that enables the evaluation of the attractiveness of an industry in emerging market from a financial investor perspective is developed and its application is demonstrated on the cocoa industry in Ivory Coast. Probability and consensus of the projections for the individual decision elements are tabulated along with the insights into both encouraging and discouraging aspects.

Current study is a timely contribution to the call for papers in the research literature to develop frameworks that are contextualized in emerging markets. Similar to any other qualitative study, this study lacks the generalizability of results. But, the framework developed can act as a starting point toward the generalizability of the findings in future.

Decision elements identified in this study can act as a checklist for financial investors and top management to choose the elements that are relevant to the investment problem being dealt by them. Also, the study can act as a handy demonstration to practitioners for applying the framework using expert panel.

A major challenge of the investment environment in emerging market is the non-availability of quality information on the potential investment opportunities. In this study, the authors suggest a framework to overcome this information asymmetry challenge and expect it to promote financial investments in emerging economies which in turn will improve the quality of life of people in these economies.

First study to present an approach to help financial investors to conduct profound evaluation and gain more in-depth insights into the future investment opportunity attractiveness of a particular industry in an emerging market.

Proposes responding to earlier calls for further research into “fraudulent” or “feigned” customer complaints, and providing insights which explore and describe the motivations and forms of such deliberate “illegitimate” customer complaints.

Critical incident technique was utilized in analyzing 104 interviews with customers who had knowingly made an illegitimate complaint within the six months prior to the interview. Data collection stopped at the point of theoretical saturation and was subsequently analyzed according to the coding procedures advocated by Strauss and Corbin (open, axial and selective coding).

Two key insights emerged from data analysis. First, coding procedures revealed four distinct forms of customer complainants. These are labeled; “one‐off complainants”, “opportunistic complainants”, “conditioned complainants”, and “professional complainants”. Second, six main motives for articulating fraudulent complaints were uncovered during data analysis. These are termed; “freeloaders”, “fraudulent returners”, “fault transferors”, “solitary ego gains”, “peer‐induced esteem seekers”, and “disruptive gains”.

The study is constrained by its exploratory design and qualitative methods employed. Subsequently, future studies could employ survey methods to improve empirical generalizability. Future studies could adopt a more inclusive approach and incorporate insights from employees, managers, and other relevant actors within service encounters.

Practical implications highlighted by the study include a need for businesses to examine and, in many cases, reevaluate their personnel training, customer complaint and service recovery procedures. Furthermore, managers may wish to enforce mechanisms wherein customer complaints are monitored and tracked in a manner that assists in the identification and challenging of re‐offending fraudulent complainers.

The study constitutes the first systematic attempt to explore and describe illegitimate customer complaining behaviors.

Quality management practitioners have yet to cease the potential of digitalisation. Furthermore, there is a lack of tools such as frameworks guiding practitioners in the digital transformation of their organisations. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework to guide quality practitioners with the implementation of digitalisation in their existing practices.

A review of literature assessed how quality management and digitalisation have been integrated. Findings from the literature review highlighted the success of the integration of Lean manufacturing with digitalisation. A comprehensive list of Lean Six Sigma tools were then reviewed in terms of their effectiveness and relevance for the hybrid digitisation approach to process improvement (HyDAPI) framework.

The implementation of the proposed HyDAPI framework in an industrial case study led to increased efficiency, reduction of waste, standardised work, mistake proofing and the ability to root cause non-conformance products.

The activities and tools in the HyDAPI framework are not inclusive of all techniques from Lean Six Sigma.

The HyDAPI framework is a flexible guide for quality practitioners to digitalise key information from manufacturing processes. The framework allows organisations to select the appropriate tools as needed. This is required because of the varying and complex nature of organisation processes and the challenge of adapting to the continually evolving Industry 4.0.

This research proposes the HyDAPI framework as a flexible and adaptable approach for quality management practitioners to implement digitalisation. This was developed because of the gap in research regarding the lack of procedures guiding organisations in their digital transition to Industry 4.0.

SPRING is now well with us, and it is not easy to prophesy what effect the great war will have on our profession, indeed it is impossible to forecast anything whatever about it. So far as libraries are concerned, there are abundant evidences that some librarians have been able to seize the opportunities the time affords them. An interesting example of this is a duplicated list issued by the Bristol Public Libraries offering to readers the titles of the books which in his capital little volume Books and You Somerset Maugham has recommended. It is a pity that the book referred to, which is a small volume of about 80 well‐spaced pages, costs 3s. 6d. Had it been published at 1s. we should recommend that every library should purchase one copy for every five hundred of its readers; and although this would be a large number it would be a thoroughly justifiable purchase, because Maugham, following of course personal standards as every writer must, has selected books which in his own opinion—and his is an opinion of no mean value—are of first hand excellence. In bringing the titles before the public in the way Bristol Libraries has done, Mr. Ross has done a service which most librarians are trying to do in some way or other, but is particularly effective in this particular case. Other libraries are putting out lists of war books, of gardening books, of cookery books and, indeed, on all sorts of practical subjects dealing with the war effort.

OUR issue devotes special attention this month to the subject of the library for children. There is a common inclination to regard this subject as the most over‐written in all branches of library literature. It certainly is the part of our work which leads to much sentimental verbiage. These are dangers against which we are on our guard; they may be inevitable, but we do not think they are. As a matter of fact there has been a great deal of talk about this matter by people who have ideas and ideals, but who have had no real experience in applying them. The paper by Mr. Berwick Savers, written for the Library Association Conference, points out very cogently what has been wanting in library work in this country. This question of the children's librarian has not been faced anywhere in what may be called the ultimate manner; that is, as a distinct, specialist branch of library work, requiring high qualifications and deserving good payment. There will be no really successful library work of the kind in Great Britain until this is done.

The purpose of this article is to discuss a humanistic perspective on corporate community involvement (CCI), proposing the concept of humanistic corporate community involvement (HCCI). This concept is illustrated through a case study.

The understanding of humanism applied is one drawn from Catholic social teaching. The case has been developed from the personal experience of one of the authors (Mammoser), enriched with interviews and reports, along with some public information, which helps to understand the socio‐cultural context.

HCCI is defined by four characteristics: recognizing and respecting human dignity and rights, fostering integral human development, acting virtuously; this means that the social actions included in CCI have the direct motive of doing good, and organizing social actions in accordance with both the Principle of Solidarity and the Principle of Subsidiarity. The specification of these characteristics can vary from one situation to another. Here we discuss a real case in which these characteristics underlie a successful project in the USA, jointly developed by the US company Walgreens and the Midtown Educational Foundation, a Chicago‐based NGO.

The case study does not seek to suggest that this is the only way for CCI with a humanistic approach, but to shed light on and motivate other similar initiatives.

Findings provide new horizons to undertake CCI and a project, which could be included within the best practices in this field.

The paper provides a new approach to CCI based on a humanistic perspective, which enriches other approaches. In doing so, it does not consider such involvement as a means for public relations, reputation enhancement, and ultimately profits. It goes beyond a generic contribution to public good, or of a fair return to society for what a company has received from it. Integral human development of individuals and communities is its goal.

This study aims to examine the current state of literature on structural equation modeling (SEM) studies in “cloud computing” domain with respect to study domains of research studies, theories and frameworks they use and SEM models they design.

Systematic literature review (SLR) protocol is followed. In total, 96 cloud computing studies from 2009 to June 2018 that used SEM obtained from four databases are selected, and relevant data are extracted to answer the research questions.

A trend of increasing SEM usage over years in cloud studies is observed, where technology adoption studies are found to be more common than the use studies. Articles appear under four main domains, namely, business, personal use, education and health care. Technology acceptance model (TAM) is found to be the most commonly used theory. Adoption, intention to use and actual usage are the most common selections for dependent variables in SEM models, whereas security and privacy concerns, costs, ease of use, risks and usefulness are the most common selections for causal factors.

Previous cloud computing SLR studies did not focus on statistical analysis method used in primary studies. This review will display the current state of SEM studies in cloud domain for all future academics and practical professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on Lean Six Sigma (LSS) for services, construct a morphological analysis (MA) framework and identify research gaps to point to future research possibilities and priorities.

The MA framework is based on literature review of 175 papers published from 2003 to 2015, across 67 journals recognised by Scopus or ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide 2015. A three-phased methodology is used by the authors, with Phase1 featuring a five-stage systematic review protocol to identify relevant journal papers for review; Phase2 presenting a framework for classifying the reviewed papers in terms of their fundamental, methodological, chronological and sector-wise orientations; and Phase3 constructing an MA framework on the classified papers and identifying the research gaps.

The MA framework constructed based on six dimensions, namely, organizational context of applications, desired outcomes, implementation systems, LSS tools and techniques, integration with other management philosophies and evaluation methods, involving 40 focused themes, has revealed 355 distinct research gaps as opportunities for future research.

This paper confirms the existence of substantial scope and points to specific topics for further research in the area of LSS for services. The findings demonstrate the gaps in academic research on the subject. In addition, the study also helps organisational leaders and practitioners to look at LSS from a holistic perspective in the services context.

The MA framework of the existing literature on LSS for services presents a unique, systematic effort to identify research opportunities. In addition, a five-stage systematic review protocol is proposed in this paper. This could be valuable to researchers and practitioners in enabling them to systematically review the literature on research subjects of interest to them.