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This research paper explores the roles of electronic texts in research projects in the humanities and seeks to deepen the understanding of the nature of scholars' engagement with e-texts. The study used qualitative methodology to explore engagement of scholars in literary and historical studies with primary materials in electronic form (i.e., e-texts). The study revealed a range of scholars' interactions with e-texts during the whole research process. It uncovered a particular pattern of information-seeking practices in electronic environments called netchaining and the main types of uses and contributions of e-texts to research projects. It was found that e-texts play support and substantive roles in the research process. A number of influences from electronic environment are identified as challenges and aids in working with e-texts. The study does not have statistical significance. It indicates a need for further research into scholarly practices, training requirements, and new forms of service provision. Study results are relevant for the development of digital collections, information services, educational programs, and other forms of support for the use of technology in research. The results can be also used to inform approaches to text encoding and development of electronic information systems and have implications for organizational and industry policies. The study found a range of scholars' interactions and forms of intellectual engagement with e-texts that were not documented and analyzed by earlier studies. It provides insights into disciplinary variations in the humanities and contributes to the understanding of scholarly change catalyzed by information technology.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate new robust measures of investors’ preference for the form of regular corporate payout. Then, the paper adds to the empirical evidence on catering theory by examining managers’ catering to such preference.

The authors use the matching method to control for firm characteristics. The authors apply two robustness tests to validate the measures. The authors use the rigorous multivariate analysis.

US investors’ preference for regular dividends vs regular stock repurchases, being different forms of corporate payout, varies over time. Managers cater to investors’ preference for payout form. The findings are consistent with the catering theory of Baker and Wurgler (2004a). The number of firms that pay cash dividends regularly continue to outnumber the ones that purchase their shares regularly.

The study only uses US data. It does not cover other countries.

The measures can be used in several future research endeavors, such as examining investors’ payout-form preferences in other countries (see Booth and Zhou, 2017) and exploring their determinants, the corporate governance characteristics of firms that cater to investors’ preference vs firms that do not, etc.

The study contributes to understanding investors’ preferences and corporate payout behavior which is prerequisite to efficient policy formulation.

The proxies for investors’ payout-form preference control for firm characteristics and are unrelated to investors’ time-varying risk preferences. Also, they are robust to measurement issues. Moreover, the study covers a period of 40 years.

This paper aims to examine the interplay among forms of entrepreneurship and the gendered entrepreneurial divide. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and the World Values Survey (WVS), the authors investigate the likelihood that females will venture in the commercial entrepreneurial ventures versus social entrepreneurial ventures. The authors draw on the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to explain gender variance in the organizational forms of commercial and social entrepreneurship. Specifically, the authors investigate whether pursuing an opportunity in a society that highly values ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity impacts the probability of venturing in either of these kinds of organizations.

To test the hypotheses, the authors use GEM data from 2009 (n = 14,399) for nascent entrepreneurs and baby businesses owners in 55 counties. They also use the WVS to measure the ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity at the country level. The authors estimate a logistic multilevel model to identify the drivers of social venturing over commercial venturing. Data are nested by countries, and the authors allow random intercepts by countries with a variance components covariance structure.

The findings demonstrate that there is a divide in entrepreneurial activity, as women entrepreneurs are more likely to start social ventures than commercial ventures. They also find that hegemonic masculinity decreases the incidence of social entrepreneurship, whereas emphasized femininity increases the incidence of social entrepreneurship. Moreover, the authors find evidence that women in societies with a strong view on hegemonic masculinity are less likely to pursue social organizational forms than male entrepreneurs are. Furthermore, in societies with strong views of emphasized femininity, the probability increases that female founders will pursue social organizational forms. The findings highlight the considerable impact of the gender ideologies on entrepreneurship.

Although the authors use the terms “gender” and “sex” in this paper interchangeably, they recognize that these two terms are not equivalent. For the purposes of this manuscript, the authors use a gender analysis approach activity based on biological sex to investigate empirical differences in entrepreneurial. The findings suggest that women ultimately, and unintentionally, are consenting to the practices and norms that reiterate the masculinity of entrepreneurship. In this way, the patriarchal ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and masculinization of entrepreneurship ultimately leave women unable to fully take up the identity of “woman” alongside that of “entrepreneur”. Future research can build upon our findings by applying a more nuanced view of gender via constructivist approaches.

The findings empirically demonstrate the gendered nature of entrepreneurial activity, leading to specific stereotypical female social organizational forms and male commercial organizational forms. Furthermore, the authors are able to provide theoretical explanations based on hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to understand why social entrepreneurship appeals to women.

A product communicates to consumers through its form and function, which may generate an effective response. Little is known, however, about the impact of the interaction of form and functional newness on consumers’ adoption preference. Drawing on uniqueness theory, this research aims to propose that the relative importance of form and functional newness to adoption preference could vary depending on the degree of consumers’ need for uniqueness (CNFU).

To mimic real consumption behavior as much as possible in these studies, the authors first choose a product that the respondents are familiar with and use on a daily basis. Second, the authors conduct a series of conjoint analysis in which respondents are presented with a set of options simultaneously and are asked to make a choice of adoption among those options. The authors conduct three conjoint studies using students and adult consumers.

Evidence from three conjoint studies using both student and adult consumer samples confirms the moderating role of CNFU. The results indicate that form and functional newness positively impact adoption preference, the positive effect of form newness is weakened in a compare-and-choose decision when functional newness is in place and this weakened interaction effect is mitigated with increasing CNFU.

This research makes several contributions to the extant literature. First, the authors investigate the moderating role of CNFU in the interplay between form and functional newness. By identifying a distinctive pattern between high- vs low-CNFU consumers, the authors propose a new aspect to explain the inconclusive results of the interaction effects in previous studies. Extending this line of research, the authors show that there is a dynamic component to the positive influence of form and functional newness on adoption preference. Consumers’ preference for form newness, relative to functional newness, is likely to be lessened with the decrease in their need for uniqueness. Second, this research goes beyond the survey or sales data approaches of prior studies to examine the interaction of form and function in a context that reflects actual decision processes. Assuming that consumers have access to a set of options before making an adoption decision, the authors are able to determine their priorities and preferences for new products. Using conjoint analysis, the authors observe consumers make a trade-off between form and functional newness. This approach allows us to investigate the relative importance of form and functional newness in affecting consumers’ adoption decision. Finally, the consistency of the results of these three studies enhances the robustness of this research.

While consumers appreciate improved and newer functionality in general, this may not be the case for a novel form. For consumers who desire to belong or to fit into social norms, adopting a product with an extreme atypical form could be risky and provoke a negative social response. For those with such conservative attitudes, learning costs are likely to overshadow the excitement of owning a radical product. Thus, a product with high functional newness and standard form would be the right choice for this group of consumers. On the other hand, consumers with high CNFU are more likely to overcome concerns regarding the risks and learning costs of a novel form due to their desire to use the unconventional product display to differentiate themselves and establish their uniqueness. Therefore, a product with high functional newness and novel form may be more favorable for them. With this insight, marketers can better define their market segment and position their product strengths. For example, in the competitive smart phone industry, some brands may try to focus on high form newness to capture high-CNFU consumers (e.g. LG Flex curved cell phone).

First, the authors propose the moderating role of CNFU to explain the gap in the literature. This new view provides product managers and marketers with a better understanding of how consumers in different consumer segments (e.g. high vs low degree of CNFU) behave distinctively in their response to form and functional newness. Second, most of the literature on consumer response to product form has focused on consumer opinion, attitude, perception or product evaluation. This study focuses on measuring consumers’ adoption preference through a conjoint approach. This distinction is important because a positive attitude does not necessarily translate to adoption when consumers make their final choice decision. Third, prior studies test the effects of form and function using sales data or between subject experiments where respondents only view a single product. This approach is less representative of real adoption behavior when the reality is consumers often compare a set of options simultaneously and make an adoption decision among a pool of available options.

Within standards for bibliographic description, common usage has served as a prominent design principle, guiding the choice and form of certain names and titles. In practice, however, the determination of common usage is difficult and lends itself to varying interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence and role of common usage in bibliographic description through an examination of previously unexplored connections between common usage and the concept of warrant.

A brief historical review of the concept of common usage was conducted, followed by a case study of the current bibliographic standard Resource Description and Access (RDA) employing qualitative content analysis to examine the appearances, delineations and functions of common usage. Findings were then compared to the existing literature on warrant in knowledge organization.

Multiple interpretations of common usage coexist within RDA and its predecessors, and the current prioritization of these interpretations tends to render user perspectives secondary to those of creators, scholars and publishers. These varying common usages and their overall reliance on concrete sources of evidence reveal a mixture of underlying warrants, with literary warrant playing a more prominent role in comparison to the also present scientific/philosophical, use and autonomous warrants.

This paper offers new understanding of the concept of common usage, and adds to the body of work examining warrant in knowledge organization practices beyond classification. It sheds light on the design of the influential standard RDA while revealing the implications of naming and labeling in widely shared bibliographic data.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interrelation of form and meaning in arts-based research and in academic writing.

It draws on two arts-based projects: one a study of Shakespeare undertaken with undergraduate students; the other a play written to convey a young boy's experiences of Second world War in an Australian country town. Both projects were arts-based research, aimed at extending knowledge of individual experiences, and the ways in which individuals bring knowledge and interpretation to their worlds.

It is hoped by examining the experiences of individuals the authors also learn about collective experiences and ways of building and communicating understanding. The paper proposes that intuitive ways of knowing are of equal value to other ways of knowing, and the Arts provide a space where intuition can be valued and explored.

The paper is also an experiment in form, seeking to find forms which reflect the nature of the research. Consequently it is constructed primarily from a piece of iambic pentameter, a play script and a sonnet. These three forms are used, in conjunction, to reflect upon and explore the nature of arts-based research for individuals and collectively.

The determination of feasible self-stress modes and grouping of elements for tensegrities with predefined geometry and multiple self-stress modes is very important, though difficult, in the design of these structures. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to the automated element grouping and self-stress identification of tensegrities.

A set of feasible solutions conforming to the unilateral behaviour of elements is obtained through an optimisation process, which is solved using a genetic algorithm. Each chromosome in the population having a negative fitness is a distinctive feasible solution with its own grouping characteristic, which is automatically determined throughout the evolution process.

The self-stress identification is formulated through an unconstrained minimisation problem. The objective function of this minimisation problem is defined in such a way that takes into account both the feasibility of a solution and grouping of elements. The method generates a set of feasible self-stress modes rather than a single one and automatically and simultaneously suggests a grouping of elements for every feasible self-stress mode. A self-stress mode with a minimal/subminimal grouping of elements is also obtained.

The method can efficiently generate sets of feasible solutions rather than a single one. The authors also address one of the challenging issues related to this identification, i.e., automated grouping of elements. These features makes the method very efficient since most of the state-of-the-art methods address the self-stress identification of tensegrities based on predefined groupings of elements whilst providing only a single corresponding solution.

The relationship between market orientation and innovation has been the subject of numerous studies. While some find positive effects, the others argue negative effects of market orientation (or its components). The majority of the critique regards mostly its potential to limit creativity and the technological breakthrough. Concerns over its benefits for commercialization of an innovation are less pronounced. The purpose of this paper is to address the implementation of market orientation in new product development activities and seek to find if they follow different patterns or whether the whole concept is applied equally in successful innovating firms.

The study relies on qualitative methodology. Findings are based on seven case studies. Cases are selected according to theoretical sampling. In order to collect the data the authors employ interviews.

The research findings support the assumption that the general principles of customer and competitor orientation are subject to different manifestations. However, no forms of interfunctional orientation have been identified.

The findings of the study can help us to understand how market oriented firms establish a suitable setting for creativity and innovation and enable innovation development.

This paper aims to explore the link between business model decisions and customer value creation for mobile services.

An empirical survey was conducted of 54 service provider professionals across six mobile services.

The paper reveals that there is a categorization of mobile services according to extrinsic and intrinsic effects on end‐user values. Mobile specificity is found to be the most influential business model option. The research model was found to be adequate for empirical studies.

This is an explorative study.

The findings of this study can be used by service providers of mobile services to choose options that improve the customer value of a service.

This paper is a new economic study of the link between a business model and performance based on end‐user values. It is of value for service providers and researchers.