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The mental healthcare is experiencing an ever-growing surge in understanding the consumer (e.g., patient) engagement paradox, aiming to vouch for the quality of care. Despite this surge, scant attention has been given in academia to conceptualize and empirically investigate this particular aspect. Thus, drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm, the study explores how patients engage with healthcare service providers and how they perceive the quality of the healthcare services.

Data were collected from 279 respondents, and the derived conceptual model was tested by using Smart PLS 3.2.7 and PROCESS. To complement the findings of partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM), the present study also applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions to explore substitute conjunctive paths that emerge.

Findings show that patients’ perceived intimacy (PI), cohesion and privacy enhance the quality of mental healthcare service providers. The results also suggest that patients’ PI, cohesion and privacy have indirect effects on the perceived quality of care (PQC) by the service providers through consumer engagement. The fsQCA results derive that the relationship among conditions leading to patients’ perception of the quality of care in regard to mental healthcare service providers is complex and is best reflected as multiple and conjectural causation configurations.

The findings from this research contribute to the advancement of studies on patients’ experiences by empirically examining the unique dynamics of interaction between consumers (patients) and mental healthcare service providers, thereby enriching both the literature on social interactions and the understanding of the consumer–provider relationship.

The results of this study provide practical implications for mental healthcare service providers on how to combine the study variables to enhance the quality of care and satisfy more patients.

A significant research gap has ascertained the inter-relationship between PI, cohesion, privacy, engagement and PQC from the perspective of mental healthcare service providers. This research is one of the primary studies from a managerial and methodological standpoint. The study contributes by combining symmetric and asymmetric statistical tools in service marketing and healthcare research. Furthermore, the application of fsQCA helps to understand the interactions that might not be immediately obvious through traditional symmetric methods.

Recent literature on customer engagement has introduced the concept of “actor engagement,” which serves as the foundation for this study. The study aims to investigate the formation of engagement and engagement's impact on the performance of sharing economy platforms in an international context.

The study analyses unstructured data from 145,434 service providers and 1,703,266 customers on Airbnb across seven countries (USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, China and Singapore). Machine learning techniques are used to measure actor engagement, and the research model is tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings suggest that actor engagement, encompassing the reciprocal relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement, has a significant impact on platform performance. The moderator analysis highlights the role of cultural differences in the relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement and between actor engagement and platform performance. Specifically, the study reveals that actor engagement exhibits a more pronounced impact on platform performance in Western countries (such as the USA, Australia and the UK), compared to Eastern countries (such as China and Singapore).

The analysis of the conceptual model is based on the utilisation of behavioural data obtained from the Airbnb website. Due to the nature of the available data, proxies are employed as measures for variables such as platform performance.

This research is amongst the first to provide empirical evidence for actor engagement formation and the function's role in platform performance in the sharing economy. The global nature of Airbnb as a platform facilitates the investigation of country-level factors, specifically cultural values, across seven diverse countries and highlight differences from business to customer (B2C) business models.

Today's sharing economy covers a variety of business models. This research aims to (1) identify dimensions along which sharing businesses may vary and (2) investigate how these dimensions influence consumer engagement while considering consumers' sustainability orientation.

This research relies upon a systematic literature review (n = 67 articles) to identify five sharing business dimensions: (1) ownership transfer, (2) professional involvement, (3) compensation, (4) digitalization and (5) community scope. A discrete choice conjoint experiment in the fashion industry is employed to investigate how these dimensions affect consumer engagement with sharing businesses (n = 383 participants).

The results suggest that ownership of tangible resources elicits more engagement than access to tangible resources for both consumers with a low sustainability orientation and consumers with a high sustainability orientation. Community scope also affects consumer engagement as reflected in more engagement towards sharing businesses with a local rather than a global scope. The presence of professional service providers, monetary compensation and a digital platform only induces engagement among consumers with a low sustainability orientation.

This research generates a better understanding of how sharing businesses can draw on business dimensions to engage consumers with different levels of sustainability orientation and, in turn, how sharing businesses can realize their economic and/or circular potential.

The purpose of this review is to provide a conceptual framework of consumer engagement behavior in the value co-creation process of healthcare services, and further understand the current knowledge maps and advances.

Specifically, the scoping review methodology is used to synthesize the extant findings. The authors first develop the inclusion/exclusion criteria to evaluate the source material for the review; then, the authors further conduct the literature refinement to select the final data sample. As such, the authors extract and analyze the information derived from these articles.

The authors found most related studies focus on exploring patients' engagement behavior in the value co-creation process, especially those with chronic disease; the findings also reveal that consumers are most likely to engage in the value co-creation process of healthcare services by seeking or sharing health information; also, consumers engagement behavior is mainly driven by individual, interactive, and technological factors; moreover, consumer engagement in the value co-creation of healthcare services are more likely to achieve positive health and behavioral outcomes.

The role of consumers has gradually shifted from that of passive recipients to that of active participants in the healthcare value co-creation process. Consumer engagement behavior is the key premise for the realization of healthcare value co-creation, and it has received increasing attention both academically and practically. By unearthing the conceptual framework of consumer engagement behavior in the value co-creation process of healthcare services, this study provides a systematic understanding and serves as a useful resource for future research and practice.

A new way for business leaders to access targeted professional help is via fractional service providers. Fractional service providers can provide tremendous advantages, as they are much more closely associated with the company than outsourcing or consulting service providers, while being more cost effective than full-time employees. A fractional service provider that can be of particular benefit to startups and small businesses is a fractional CFO or Controller – who can provide an organization with the skills to perform all of the activities that a finance and accounting department should perform and provide a consistent leadership voice on all finance-related matters.

This paper first introduces fractional services and discusses how fractional service providers differ from outsourcing, consulting engagements and full-time employment. Then, it presents an explanation of why fractional service providers may be best suited to manage the finance and accounting functions in a small or medium-sized business. Finally, it discusses factors that business leaders should consider and best practices they should use when using fractional services.

Using a fractional CFO or Controller will provide an increased focus on the company’s financial health and allow the organization to perform (or oversee) all of the activities that a finance and accounting department should be performing. The scope of work a fractional CFO or Controller performs can be easily modified to meet the needs of the firm, Moreover, they require little direct management. As a result, a fractional CFO or Controller can often be a more cost-effective option than hiring for the finance and accounting function on a full-time basis.

In today’s world, organizations are increasingly seeking ways to maintain effectiveness while also being flexible in how human capital is used. This paper discusses one such flexibility: incorporating fractional service providers. The key premise of this paper is that fractional service providers, specifically fractional CFOs or Controllers, can be an extremely effective way for many organizations, especially small businesses and startups, to get more sophisticated help and guidance in finance and accounting-related matters – thereby acting as an excellent bridge between an ineffective finance and accounting function and creating such a function staffed by full-time employees.

Patient-centric exchanges, a major type of Health Information Exchange (HIE), empower patients to aggregate and manage their health information. This exchange model helps patients access, modify and share their medical information with multiple healthcare organizations. Although existing studies examine patient engagement, more research is required to investigate patients' attitudes and willingness to play an active role in patient-centered information exchange. The study's main objective is to develop a model based on the belief-attitude-intention paradigm to empirically examine the effects of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care on their willingness to participate in patient-centric HIE.

The authors conducted an online survey study to identify the antecedents and consequences of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care. To empirically test the research model, the authors collected data from a national sample (n = 357) of individuals in the United States. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The proposed model categorizes the antecedents to patients' attitudes toward engagement in patient-related and healthcare system factors. The results show that patient-related factors (perceived health literacy and perceived coping ability) and health system factors (perceived experience with the healthcare organization and perceived patient-provider interaction) significantly shape patient attitude toward care management engagement. The results indicate that patients' attitudes toward engaging in their healthcare significantly contribute to their willingness to participate in medical information sharing through patient-centric HIE initiatives. Moreover, the authors’ findings also demonstrate that the link between patient engagement and willingness to participate in HIE is stronger for individuals who perceive lower levels of privacy and security concerns.

The authors validate the proposed model explaining patients' perceptions about their characteristics and the healthcare system significantly influence their attitude toward engaging in their care. This study also suggests that patients' favorable attitude toward engagement can bring patient-centric HIE efforts onto a path to success. The authors’ research attempts to shed light on the importance of patients' roles in adopting patient-centric HIE initiatives. Theoretical and practical contributions of this study are noticeable since they could result in a deeper understanding of the concept of patient engagement and how it may affect healthcare services in an evolving digital world. The authors’ findings can help healthcare organizations provide public citizen-centric services by introducing user-oriented approaches in healthcare delivery systems.

This research investigates the role of customer forgiveness as the result of online service recovery transparency in predicting customer engagement. It also examines the moderating roles of timeliness and personalization in this proposed model.

An online survey study using retrospective experience sampling and a scenario-based experimental study were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Customer forgiveness positively influences customer engagement and plays a mediating role in the relationship between service recovery transparency and customer engagement. Additionally, timeliness and personalization moderate the positive influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness. The positive influence of service recovery transparency on customer forgiveness is more apparent when levels of timeliness and personalization decrease.

To retain focal customers' engagement after a service failure, firms must obtain their forgiveness. One of the firm's online complaint handling strategies to increase the forgiveness level of focal customers is to provide a high level of service recovery transparency (i.e. responding to their complaints in a public channel), especially when the firm is unable to respond to online complaints quickly or provide highly personalized responses.

This research provides new insights into the underlying mechanism of customer engagement by applying the concept of customer forgiveness. It also contributes to the social influence theory by applying the essence of the theory to explain how other customers' virtual presence during the online complaint handling influences the forgiveness of focal customers in order to gain their engagement. Additionally, it provides insight into the conditions under which the role of service recovery transparency can be very effective in dealing with online complaints.

Emergence is a key concept in service-dominant (SD) logic; however, the literature is neonatal on the underlying mechanisms that lead to emergence within service ecosystems. This study aims to address the call by Vargo et al. (2022) for understanding the role of actor engagement in emergence of novel outcomes, by identifying a process of how various actor roles in entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) emerge as resource through the actor engagement.

Following a longitudinal design, this study conduct interviews from 20 respondents over eight months in three phases (group interviews, post-training, post-funding). This study analyzes the respondents’ engagement in an entrepreneurial service context. This study uses qualitative inductive approach and thematic analysis.

Results show that actor roles emerge as role expectations from essential provider and beneficiary position in a service ecosystem through actor role readiness, manifested as engagement properties in the actor engagement process. This study identifies five actor roles and their corresponding role readiness dimensions that emerge. Based on these propositions through which the authors position generic actor roles emergence within the actor engagement process in a service ecosystem.

This paper advances the understanding of micro-level process in emergence literature in SD logic by providing a conceptual understanding of emergence of actor roles as a resource through actor engagement. By grounding the study in EE, this study provides empirical evidence to the underlying mechanisms at the micro level of resource emergence process in a service ecosystem.

This study explored the role of market mavens for young tourists and existential authenticity for young tourist co-creation experience. It determines intentions to revisit and intentions to recommend tourism service providers. The theoretical foundation of this study is based upon the macro-micro theory approach of service-dominant (S-D) logic and customer engagement, which explains the idea of tourist co-creation interactivity and value creation between the service provider and tourist.

The positivist deductive approach, survey-based methodology was followed for this study. Data was collected from 349 young tourists who have traveled and contributed to travel services through collaboration and interaction with the service provider. The data were analyzed in SmartPLS, and structured equation modeling technique was used for hypothesis testing.

It was found that market mavens have a positive impact on young tourist's co-creation process, hence depicting intention to revisit and recommend the tourism service provider. Existential authenticity was also found having positive impact on tourist co-creation and intention to revisit and recommend the service provider. The results show that young tourists plan domestic trips in Pakistan and co-create with service providers.

This study theoretically and practically contributed in the literature and enhanced the literature concerning mainly the young tourists co-creation. It has also enhanced the knowledge about intentions to revisit and recommend with special focus on market mavens. Also, existential authenticity of the tourist spots was keenly considered in the underlying research.

This study highlights value-creation phenomenon in tourism for younger tourists. Their input is important in the form of creativity and innovation and by incorporating these young tourists in decision-making process. They ensure their ability to participate and design, resulting in loyalty towards service provider.