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The present paper aims at understanding how horizontal network collaborations between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can be designed and implemented to take advantage of a supply chain finance (SCF) perspective.

This study presents an SCF literature background identifying four literature gaps, and in response to them it adopts an action research approach. The empirical analysis is developed on a network-case study: a horizontal collaboration project between small businesses of the Italian wine industry and their supply chains.

SMEs can play an active role in developing – in terms of design and implementation – their collaborative networks by taking advantage of an SCF perspective for themselves, and their customers, based on the reorganization of relationships interface processes. Taking this perspective can be a concrete and crucial way to sustain the development of SMEs and their supply chains in an actual competitive context.

The paper identifies the theoretical gaps in the literature, suggests new research areas that deserve to be more deeply investigated and connects case-related results to the key concepts. The empirical part presents a real case application that proposes a complete roadmap for managers and practitioners who wish to experience similar projects.

This network-case study storyline, presenting an overview of ten years of meetings, with related purposes, is suggesting a roadmap for design and implementation of horizontal network as managerial implications. These kinds of active research projects, with a collaborative mixed team of academics and practitioners, and involving a multilayer group of participants, are positive examples for closing the bridge between companies and academia, which enhance this network of small businesses active in trying to improve their competitiveness working together.

The value of the paper is to embrace a supply chain-oriented perspective for an SME, independent of the financial system and based on inventory flow management. Very little literature focuses on inventory-based research within the SCF framework, designed for real implementation in horizontal network collaboration by entrepreneurial ventures.

The aim of this research is to understand the relationship between cultural buildings, economic powers and social justice and equality in architecture and how this relationship has evolved over the last hundred years. This research seeks to identify architectural and urban elements that enhance social justice and equality to inform architectural and urban designs and public policies.

The author explores the relationship between case studies of museums, cultural centers and libraries, and economic powers between 1920 and 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden. The author conducts a historical analysis and combines it with statistical and geographically referenced information in a Geographic Information System, archival data and in situ observations of selected buildings in the city. The author leverages the median income of household data from Statistics Sweden, with the geographical location of main public buildings and the headquarters of main companies operating in Sweden.

This analysis presents a gradual commercialization of cultural buildings in terms of location, inner layout and management, and the parallel filtering and transforming of the role of users. The author assesses how these cultural buildings gradually conformed to a system in the city and engaged with the market from a more local and national level to global networks. Findings show a cluster of large public buildings in the center of Stockholm, the largest global companies' headquarters and high-income median households. Results show that large shares of the low-income population now live far away from these buildings and the increasing commercialization of cultural space and inequalities.

This research provides a novel image of urban inequalities in Stockholm focusing on cultural buildings and their relationship with economic powers over the last hundred years. Cultural buildings could be a tool to support equality and stronger democracy beyond their primary use. Public cultural buildings offer a compromise between generating revenue for the private sector while catering to the needs and interests of large numbers of people. Therefore, policymakers should consider emphasizing the construction of more engaging public cultural buildings in more distributed locations.

This study systematically explores the patterns and connections in the behavioural bias and investment decisions of the existing literature in the Scopus database published between 2007 and 2022. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

In the article it was determined which contributed documents were the most significant in this particular subject area along with the citations, publications and nations that were associated with them. The bibliographic coupling offered more in-depth insights into the papers by organizing them into distinct groups. The pattern of the publications has been brought to light, and the connection between different types of literature has provided insight into the path that future studies should take.

This study considered only articles from the Scopus database. Future studies can be based on papers that have been published in other databases.

The outcome of this study provides valuable insights into the intellectual structure and biases of investors and adds value to existing knowledge. This review provides a road map for the future trend of research on behavioural bias and investment decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of graduate recruitment in the professional socialisation and subjectification of Big Four professionals.

The paper draws on documentary data and interviews conducted at one British university. It adopts an interpretive perspective and is informed by Foucault’s work on technologies of power and technologies of the self.

The paper argues that the graduate recruitment practices of Big Four firms represent a series of examinations which produce the category of ideal recruits. It moreover suggests that this category serves as the ultimate objective of an ethical process whereby aspiring accountants consciously and deliberately seek to transform themselves into the type of subjects they aspire to be – ideal recruits.

The findings of the paper are primarily based on interviews conducted at one university. Future research could explore if students at other universities experience graduate recruitment in similar or different ways.

The paper highlights the constitutive role of graduate recruitment practices and shows that they can construct ideal recruits as much as they select them. It also shows that graduate recruitment is an important anticipatory socialisation mechanism that can compel aspiring accountants to learn how to look, sound and behave like Big Four professionals long before they join such organisations. Finally, the paper discusses its implications for the future of the profession, social mobility and the use of Foucault’s work on technologies of power and the self in studying subjectivity at elite professional service firms.

Blockchain is expected to impact reporting and auditing processes. Indeed, the increasing use of blockchain could affect the nature and extent of information available to auditors and how audits are performed. This paper aims to investigate how auditors are assessing the relevance of the current auditing standards in light of the emergent use of blockchain technology.

Based on qualitative content analysis, this paper analyzed semi-structured interviews with auditors to understand their shared perception of how the current auditing standards address blockchain’s emergence.

The findings reveal a growing demand for information technology (IT) auditing standards, as well as a mismatch in timing between the quickly changing IT environment and the regulators’ slowness in releasing new standards or updating standards.

The findings reflect the external auditors’ points of view and cannot be generalized to all countries, but future studies should address the development of specific IT-related auditing standards to better fit the fast-evolving technology environment in ways that consider the other stakeholders’ points of view, including those of the standard setters.

The results of this study show that auditors consider the current auditing standards for IT to be too vague, and they need more guidance on both auditing blockchain and using technologies as audit tools.

The original contribution of this study lies in the in-depth understanding it provides of the adequacy of the current auditing standards to audit companies using blockchain, which is an under-researched topic.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the teaching innovations that have been implemented in higher education institutions in Asia and the perspectives of educators on them.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 educators who were affiliated with 23 higher education institutions in ten Asian countries/regions. The interviews covered information about the teaching innovations of the participants’ institutions, the characteristics of the innovative practices and the participants’ views on them. The relationships between the characteristics of institutions and their teaching innovations were also examined.

The results showed that the teaching innovations included two main categories, namely, those which involved the use of advanced technologies and those which did not. The innovations that involved the use of advanced technologies were mainly from larger institutions, while the other category was mainly from smaller ones and had been practised for less than 1.5 years. Differences were also identified between the two categories in terms of the aims and importance of innovations, innovative features, the evaluation of innovations and improvements needed for them.

The results highlighted that technology is only one of the many aspects of teaching innovations, which is different from the view prevailing in the literature. They also suggested that differences in the scale of institutions (in terms of number of students) possibly influences the kind of teaching innovations adopted.

Global adoption of the internet and mobile usage results in a huge variation in the cultural backgrounds of consumers who generate and consume electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Unsurprisingly, a research trend on cross-cultural eWOM has emerged. However, there has not been an attempt to synthesize this research topic. This paper aims to bridge this gap.

This research paper conducts a systematic literature review of the current research findings on cross-cultural eWOM. Journal articles published from 2006 to 2021 are included. This study then presents the key issues in the extant literature and suggests potential future research.

The findings show that there has been an upward trend in the number of publications on cross-cultural eWOM since the early 2010s, with a relatively steeper increase toward 2020. The findings also synthesize cross-cultural eWOM research into four elements and suggest potential future research avenues.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is currently no exhaustive/integrated review of cross-cultural eWOM research. This research fills the need to summarize the current state of cross-cultural eWOM literature and identifies research questions to be addressed in the future.

El boca a boca electrónico cross-cultural: una revisión sistemática de la literatura

La adopción global de Internet y los móviles da lugar a una enorme diferencia en el origen cultural de los consumidores que generan y consumen el boca a boca electrónico (eWOM). No es de extrañar que haya surgido una tendencia de investigación sobre el eWOM transcultural. Sin embargo, no se ha intentado sintetizar este tema de investigación. El objetivo de este artículo es subsanar esta carencia.

Este trabajo de investigación realiza una revisión bibliográfica sistemática de las investigaciones realizadas sobre eWOM transcultural. Se incluyen artículos de revistas publicados desde 2006 hasta 2021. A continuación, el estudio presenta las cuestiones clave de la literatura existente y sugiere posibles investigaciones futuras.

Los resultados muestran que ha habido una tendencia al alza en el número de publicaciones sobre eWOM intercultural desde principios de la década de 2010, con un aumento relativamente creciente hacia 2020. Los resultados también sintetizan la investigación sobre eWOM intercultural en cuatro elementos y sugieren posibles vías de investigación futuras.

Actualmente no existe una revisión exhaustiva/integrada de la investigación sobre el eWOM cross-cultural. Esta investigación satisface la necesidad de resumir el estado actual de la literatura sobre eWOM cross-cultural e identifica las cuestiones de investigación que deben abordarse en el futuro.

跨文化电子口碑研究：系统性文献回顾

摘要

在互联网全球化以及移动手机的广泛使用的背景下, 不同文化背景的消费者都在贡献电子口碑（eWOM）。这使得电子口碑存在文化差异。然而, 还没有人试图对这个研究课题进行综合分析。本文的目的就是要弥补这一空白。

本研究论文对目前关于跨文化eWOM的研究成果进行了系统的文献回顾。包括2006年至2021年发表的期刊文章。然后, 本研究提出了现有文献中的关键问题, 并提出了潜在的未来研究。

研究结果显示, 自2010年初以来, 关于跨文化eWOM的出版物数量呈上升趋势, 到2020年时增幅相对较大。研究结果还总结了跨文化eWOM研究的四个要素, 并提出了潜在的未来研究途径。

目前还没有关于跨文化eWOM研究的详尽/综合的回顾。这项研究填补了总结跨文化电子WOM文献现状的需要, 并确定了未来要解决的研究问题。

This study presents and validates a theoretical model linking individual characteristics of the founding or lead innovative entrepreneur of a start-up venture – the entrepreneur's values, entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial self-efficacy – to the firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) and, ultimately, to firm performance.

We conducted a survey on a stratified random sample of founders of early-stage South Australian micro- and small enterprises with a response rate of 24% (N = 204). Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model.

The study found that there is a significant relationship between the individual lead entrepreneur and firm strategies developed in early-stage firms in explaining firm performance. It also found that internal values are positively related to entrepreneurial attitude. Entrepreneurial attitude is positively related to entrepreneurial self-efficacy and EO innovativeness. In turn, entrepreneurial self-efficacy is related to innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. The proactiveness dimension of EO and entrepreneurial attitude is related to MO. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy, innovativeness and MO are related to firm performance.

This research was limited to entrepreneurial ventures in South Australia and may lack generalisability in other states and countries.

The research contributes to the understanding of the heterogeneity within self-employed individuals, in particular among innovative entrepreneurs, by expanding insights regarding antecedents and consequences of the entrepreneurial process. It develops insights into the links of individual-level constructs with firm-level constructs to develop a more meaningful understanding of new venture creation and performance. It enhances our knowledge of the heterogeneity within the group of self-employed by exploring the individual entrepreneurial antecedents of performance in early-stage firms.

The purpose of this paper is to review and compare the implementation of “arts inclusion” policies (AIPs) by 14 different public administrative systems around the world. It aims to provide a consolidated source which informs further studies in this field, and to develop a framework to compare AIPs at a global level.

Using “arts inclusion policy” as the search term, academic journals from a wide spectrum of fields were reviewed. A data set was extracted from the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends’ online database which provided real-time information of national cultural policies. Another data set is from the United Nations’ Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, as the geographic scope of the review – largely focussing on UK, US, Australian, Scandinavian and Asian contexts. Using existing policy-making literature as benchmark, the authors designed and applied a comparative framework dedicated to AIPs which focussed on “policy-making structures” as the main ground of comparison.

An important finding is that the policy development and implementation of AIPs often underscore inter-sectoral involvement in many public administrations in this study. With policy leadership and financial incentives pivotal to effective AIPs, central governments should take a more concerted leadership role to include AIPs in national inter-sectoral policies, encourage evidence-based research, expand funding and advocate the recognition of the impacts of arts inclusion. It is concluded that AIPs in western countries remain more developed in targeted scopes and programme diversity compared to those of Asian countries and regions. Continued studies in this field are encouraged.

This review is the first of its kind to include a number of Asian and western countries within its research scope, allowing it to offer a more holistic outlook on the development and implementation of AIPs in different countries and regions. A common critique with all relevant existing literature was usually their lack of concrete comparative grounds, and the present study’s all-encompassing review of literature from across different levels and sectors of respective public administrative systems contribute to a unique and comprehensive perspective in the arts and health discourse.

This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.

The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.

The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.

The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.

The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.