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This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.

This research sought to propose a theoretical model that analyzes the factors associated with unlearning (individual and organizational) and contributes to generating and realizing ideas among young people at the beginning of their careers based on the predominant type of structure.

The study had a sample (n = 971) and used the multivariate data analysis partial least squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM regular) and multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) to identify significant differences between the estimates of the specific parameters of each group (a- Organic/b- Mechanistic).

All the direct relationships and formulated mediations were found to be supported, except for H6 (ET→EO) within the group that had a primarily mechanistic organizational structure. Thus, the more turbulent the environmental, the more initiative-taking, innovative and risk-taking a company tends to be. However, it remains to be seen whether the organizational structure plays a role in facilitating or hindering this relationship. H1 (IG→IR) indicates that predominantly organic organizations have a stronger and more consistent relationship with the knowledge developed through individual and organizational unlearning process. This knowledge contributes to the idea-generation process and ultimately leads to realizing those ideas.

The article contributes to literature by proposing an original and integrated theoretical model incorporating individual and organizational approaches to unlearning to understand the effect on idea generation and realization.

Technological innovations provide huge opportunities to expand and revolutionize the scope of products and services offered. This is particularly true for tourism, which is undergoing significant changes due to the development of new technologies. The level of technology diffusion depends on several factors like the exchange of information among peers, and the attitude and shared perception among the contributors. The aim of the study is to explore the diffusion of technology in tourism with a specific focus on the social media discourse around new technologies. Thus, the paper investigates the level of interest in these new technologies analysing the information exchange occurring between individuals on Twitter in order to explore the influence of reciprocal networking.

To capture the attitudes expressed in the industry, the study analyses the ongoing discourse on Twitter as a proxy for the participants “interest in new technologies. Through a social network analysis of the tweets and retweets conducted over a period of nine months, the research maps the level of information exchange about the diffusion of new technologies. Moreover, the sentiment analysis provides an interesting overview of the individuals” attitudes towards the awareness or the adoption of new technologies.

Our analysis has provided several insights: (1) the information network on blockchain in tourism consists of participants who change very quickly over time (high turnover of accounts); (2) some contributors have an extremely important role in influencing the flow of information in the system (information centralization), they can have a generalist (discussing several topics) or a specialist (focusing on a specific topic) behaviour and this strategic choice influences their network's structure; (3) these central nodes also have an impact on the definition of positive and negative sentiment towards a topic (sentiment influencer).

The paper contributes to the literature on technology diffusion, by focusing on one of the preconditions of diffusion that is the shared positive attitude towards technological innovation. More specifically, we adopt a network-based approach, which is useful to explain the level of information exchange and the public discourse that can impact the shared perception and attitude towards technological innovation. The study also highlights the role of knowledge brokers in influencing this public discourse. Future studies can deepen the association between positive perception, higher levels of information exchange and increasing usage of specific technologies. Our results also suggest further exploring the opportunity to combine social media data and other sources of information to shed more light on the technological innovation diffusion processes.

This paper shows how practitioners can benefit from the analysis of information exchange about new technologies in tourism adopting a network perspective with the aim of understanding the level of influence among contributors. Moreover, the increasing interest in blockchain technology and the potential combination between social media data and other sources of information can offer promising insights.

The present study explores the level of technology diffusion through the analysis of information exchange on social media (Twitter). Furthermore, the dynamics of individual user behaviour offers a better understanding about media effects.

While previous research is focused on the users' perception towards the development of new technologies in tourism, the aim of this study is to investigate the dynamics behind the level of diffusion of information and awareness about these new technologies, which still represents an unexplored area of research.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of relationship quality among team members in the project team on knowledge transfer effectiveness and analyze the role of organizational structure in the influencing process.

The hypotheses are verified by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis using Smart PLS 3 software with the data collected from 236 questionnaire samples in Chinese construction industry.

The results indicate that relationship quality has a direct impact on knowledge transfer in project teams and centralization has a negative impact on relationship quality. Moreover, relationship quality plays a mediating role between centralization and knowledge transfer effectiveness and formalization plays a negative moderating role in the effect of relationship quality on knowledge transfer effectiveness.

This paper studies intra-project knowledge transfer from the perspective of relationship quality of project teams and explores the antecedent and moderating role of organizational structure in the influence of relationship quality on knowledge transfer.

Along their journey to achieve exponential growth, startups must process a vast amount of information and make quick decisions, reevaluate and adjust strategies and simultaneously redesign their organization along with the venture lifecycle. This paper delineates the evolution of startups' organizational design and identifies the influencing factors in every phase of the lifecycle.

This study adopts an explorative qualitative approach using a multiple case study methodology for six Indonesian startups. Indonesia is chosen as an emerging country in Southeast Asia with tremendous growth in digital startup businesses.

The research findings suggest that, as they experience exponential growth, startups strive to manage the tension between being structured and being flexible and hence remain innovative by combining management-centric and employee-centric approaches. In particular, this study identified three main factors that potentially influence the evolution of startups' organizational design: founders, investors and the characteristics of business and market.

The present study focuses mainly on Indonesian digital startups and does not fully explain how the influencing factors work in each phase of the venture journey.

This study offers practical contributions for startups pursuing business growth by focusing on the importance of balancing the tension between structured and flexible organizational design and placing more attention on founders, investors and business-market characteristics.

This empirical study is among the first to delineate nuances of organizational design evolution during the startup lifecycle by adopting an explorative qualitative method.

In the digital age, the spread of online behavior and real-world information leads to social contagion. This study aims to investigate the contagion phenomenon of online physician choice and then discuss its potential influence on the sub-specialization process in the healthcare service industry. In specific, this study aims to propose the basic mechanism of infection and immunity as follows – exposure to antigen may lead to an immune response, and the success of the immune response may depend on the provision of appropriate immune signaling.

Data collected from haodf.com including 4 disease types and 247 physicians from 2008 to 2015 were used to test the proposed hypotheses. Panel vector autoregression method was utilized to analyze the panel data.

The obtained result shows that social contagion of physician choice over disease type is salient on e-consultation platforms, indicating that physicians associated with/on haodf.com are concentrating on an even narrower type of disease. Disclosing more simple signals (physician history orders) results in more disease concentration for that physician in the future. In contrast, disclosing more detailed signals (physician-contributed knowledge or physician reviews) leads to less disease concentration.

This finding implies that physician-contributed knowledge and physician reviews may act as immune signal which will tend to trigger a success immune response. This study not only suggests managers should be careful about the double-edged sword effect of online physician choice contagion but also provides the useful approaches to promote or restrain such a contagion in a flexible way.

This paper serves as a pilot study for the education of cultural landscape heritage conservation (CLHC) and review the preparedness of landscape architecture curricula in the Philippines for the CLHC specialization. It proposes the utilization of the “Geodesign” framework in formulating a developmental process and validation of the interrelationship and collaborative activity created by the thematic areas towards landscape heritage education and professionalization. The goal of the study is to create new possibilities for the profession through the study and professionalization of cultural landscapes, thus, raising awareness and significance of cultural heritage and heritage conservation in the lenses of the Philippine landscapes.

The research opted for literature reviews, comprehensive desktop reviews of the landscape architecture syllabi of higher education institutions (HEIs) and SWOT and PESTEL analyses as qualitative assessments, including stakeholder feedback discussions with the current four (4) HEIs, Philippine Association of Landscape Architects (PALA), Technical Committee for Landscape Architecture, Commission on Higher Education (TCLA CHED), Professional Regulation Commission–Board of Landscape Architecture (PRC–BOLA) and the ICOMOS IFLA International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes, National Philippine Committee (Philippine NSCCL). The data were complemented by a quantitative assessment using Leopold and Lohani and Thann assessment matrix on importance (without considering magnitude), and for this study, it is the level of preparedness and integration.

The paper brings forth to the conclusion that the landscape architecture curricula at the bachelor's degree level of the University of the Philippines – Diliman (UP – Diliman) in Quezon City and University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu are prepared to integrate and/or consider updating their respective curriculum in accordance to the CLHC specialization. The curricula of Bulacan State University (BulSU) in Malolos, Bulacan, and the University of San Agustin (USA) in Iloilo may need to consider introducing courses related to the thematic areas to be able to create an area of basis for integration.

The study is initiated as part of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Philippines Internship programme during a master degree study wherein the research is bounded within the limit of its duration. Therefore, the study was able to only identify and chose the possible thematic areas and course concentrations for the specialization of CLHC; select, review and propose courses related to CLHC; screen courses from the landscape architecture curricula of the universities based on its course title, course information (if provided) and cross–checked with Government syllabi; and allocation of units and time per identified course as well as required prerequisite from thematic areas was not covered in this study.

The paper can be used as a tool to engage discussions with the PRC–BOLA in its development of the specialization of CLHC currently being planned. Study topics and themes identified can be the starting point of training programmes that can benefit students of the current four universities in the study and landscape architecture professionals alike. This will eventually translate to benefits to society as heritage conservation methodologies are developed by practitioners who can apply such knowledge to places of cultural and natural significance and develop learnings to concrete heritage laws and policies protecting landscapes.

This paper serves as a pilot study for the education and professionalization of CLHC in the Philippines. Significantly, the development of CLHC specialization in the Philippines shall open various opportunities in developing Philippine cultural landscape heritage conservationists trained at the local context.

This study assesses how the transactive memory systems (TMS) framework extends to cross-organizational ties. This research also treats TMS dimensions (i.e. knowledge specialization, coordination and trust) as distinct variables, each with unique contributions toward innovation.

This study used a survey to collect data. Out of the 140 Fintech firms registered with OJK in Indonesia in 2021, 101 firms responded to the invitation to participate in the survey. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The authors find evidence that collaborating with partners displaying high knowledge specialization leads to radical innovation, while low knowledge specialization collaborations lead to incremental innovation. Both relationships are moderated by the level of coordination and trust between collaborating partners, underlining the impact of TMS on the cross-organizational collaboration aspect. Finally, while incremental innovation leads to higher performance, radical innovation does not enhance performance in the short term.

This study explains how Fintech peer-to-peer lending firms' proficiency in pursuing innovation depends on their liaison with the collaborative partners.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the effects of innovation, specialisation, qualifications and sectoral structure on the resilience of German regions (municipal level) facing the Great Recession in 2008/2009.

To calculate the effects of various variables on the resilience of German regions against the Great Recession, the authors use quantile regressions. To measure resilience, the authors create a number of indexes representing different parts of the economy: resistance performance index, recovery performance index, shift-share resistance index, shift-share recovery index, manufacturing resistance index, manufacturing recovery index, service resistance index and service recovery index.

The results of this study confirm that locations with employment growth before the crisis and with a good industry structure show better employment dynamics during and after the crisis. The authors find evidence for positive relationship between innovativeness, qualification, the share of the service sector, specialisation and resistance. The authors obtain positive results for related variety and both resistance and recovery. The share of the manufacturing sector only shows a positive relationship with recovery.

The authors expand the existing literature in three aspects: First, instead of using regions as observation units, the authors conduct the analyses on the basis of municipalities and their surroundings. By doing so, the authors reduce the modifiable area unit problem because the authors do not rely on regions defined for administrative reasons. Second, the authors apply quantile regressions to detect nonlinear effects. Third, in addition to the resilience of the whole economy, the authors also study the resilience of the manufacturing and service sectors separately and examine the resilience of the local shift effect.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the auditor's characteristics on bank's earnings management (EM) through loan loss provisions (LLP) for African banks.

This study is based on 360 bank-year observations from 14 African countries for the period 2011–2016, discretionary LLP is used as proxy for EM. Panel regressions have been conducted.

The authors' findings reveal that auditor's industry specialization and tenure exert a negative and significant influence on the extent of LLP-based EM. The results also show that total fees paid to the banks' auditors are positively related to the extent of EM. In a further analysis, the authors find that industry specialist auditors are more effective in reducing the incoming-increasing. Similarly, the positive relationship previously found between EM and total fees still holds only for income-increasing. Moreover, auditor tenure negatively impacts both income-increasing and income-decreasing EM. As for auditor change, results reveal differential effect on EM.

The current research extends prior literature and provides an understanding of an important external monitoring mechanism, the external audit, within African banks. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is a paucity of cross-country studies that has addressed the influence of auditors' attributes on banks' EM in Africa.