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Managers and academics alike focus on value creation in business relationships. This paper adds to existing literature by analyzing functions of business relationships and their impact on value perception. Applying a customer perspective, direct relationship functions are concerned about payment, quality, and volume. Indirect functions include innovation, access, and scouting. Furthermore, trust and number of alternative suppliers are included in the study. The empirical results illustrate the important role of direct and indirect functions for value creation. Understanding these functions is instrumental for driving customer value, both for the supplier and the seller. Direct functions do have a much stronger impact on value than indirect functions that still do have a significant impact. Thus, increasing direct function fulfillment is much more effective in order to gain key supplier status than relying only on indirect functions. But indirect functions may offer ample differentiation opportunities. Being a strong driver of relationship value, trust is also driven by function fulfillment. Thus, relationship value depends on rational elements (functions) and social elements (trust). Availability of alternative suppliers increases the importance of relationship function fulfillment on customer value and customer trust. In highly competitive markets, suppliers need clear understanding and communication of relationship value in order to succeed.

With the rapid development of paid online social question and answer (Q&A) communities, monetary social functions have been introduced and have potential benefits for both platforms and users. However, these functions' impact on knowledge contribution remains uncertain. This study proposes a conceptual model based on the stimulus–organism–response framework, according to which monetary and non-monetary social functions can help nurture short-term and long-term relationships among community users, and thereafter improves social identity and knowledge-sharing intentions.

This study selects Zhihu, a famous online social Q&A community in China, and conducts an online survey to collect data from its frequent users. A sample of 286 valid questionnaires was collected to test our research model by using a structural equation modeling method. In addition, a bootstrapping approach is used to test the mediation effect.

Results indicate that monetary social functions help nurture short-term and long-term relationships among community users. However, non-monetary social functions only affect short-term relationships directly. Short-term and long-term relationships both have a positive relationship with social identity and thereafter improve users' knowledge-sharing intentions.

This study focuses on users' knowledge-sharing intentions in Q&A communities from the perspective of social. Specifically, we separated social functions in Q&A platforms into monetary and non-monetary ones and explored their impact on the development of short-term and long-term relationships. Results demonstrate the importance of monetary social functions and explain how monetary and non-monetary social functions affect users' knowledge-sharing intentions in different approaches.

The purpose of this study is to present a newly proposed and developed sorting algorithm-based merging weighted fraction Monte Carlo (SAMWFMC) method for solving the population balance equation for the weighted fraction coagulation process in aerosol dynamics with high computational accuracy and efficiency.

In the new SAMWFMC method, the jump Markov process is constructed as the weighted fraction Monte Carlo (WFMC) method (Jiang and Chan, 2021) with a fraction function. Both adjustable and constant fraction functions are used to validate the computational accuracy and efficiency. A new merging scheme is also proposed to ensure a constant-number and constant-volume scheme.

The new SAMWFMC method is fully validated by comparing with existing analytical solutions for six benchmark test cases. The numerical results obtained from the SAMWFMC method with both adjustable and constant fraction functions show excellent agreement with the analytical solutions and low stochastic errors. Compared with the WFMC method (Jiang and Chan, 2021), the SAMWFMC method can significantly reduce the stochastic error in the total particle number concentration without increasing the stochastic errors in high-order moments of the particle size distribution at only slightly higher computational cost.

The WFMC method (Jiang and Chan, 2021) has a stringent restriction on the fraction functions, making few fraction functions applicable to the WFMC method except for several specifically selected adjustable fraction functions, while the stochastic error in the total particle number concentration is considerably large. The newly developed SAMWFMC method shows significant improvement and advantage in dealing with weighted fraction coagulation process in aerosol dynamics and provides an excellent potential to deal with various fraction functions with higher computational accuracy and efficiency.

The primary purpose of this study was to identify and conceptualize talent management (TM) functions by combining management and human resources functions, based on a rigorous, in-depth literature review. The secondary purpose was to identify the most common TM strategies and classify them in terms of TM functions to provide a more systematic foundation for the concept of TM.

A systematic literature review supported by qualitative content analysis was used to determine the main TM strategies in the current literature and to classify them under basic TM functions.

This study identified seven core TM functions that were previously addressed in the TM literature but not labeled and conceptualized as TM functions. These seven core functions (talent planning, talent identification, talent attraction, talent acquisition, talent development, talent deployment and talent retention) structure the TM system, influence each other and operate as a cycle through their respective strategies in identifying, formulating and achieving business objectives (e.g. enhanced firm performance and sustainable competitive advantage). The findings also indicate that talent retention strategies were the most discussed topic within this field between 2006 and July 2022, followed by talent planning and talent development strategies.

TM is still a young and developing field that needs more conceptual work for its development and recognition as a discipline. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this unique study is one of the first attempts to comprehensively define TM functions and offer a framework for the detailed and systematic classification of TM strategies under seven core TM functions. This framework makes clear the multidimensional concept and system of TM and reveals, through the notion of TM functions, the main lines and structural factors necessary to implement the strategies effectively. Based on the strategies presented in this study, TM is an important source of ideas for organizations that want to implement TM and provides a bench-marking tool for organizations that are currently implementing TM.

Consistent with current literature, which highlights the role of narration as a key tool for exploring the processes by which people construct the meaning of their critical experiences the authors propose a theoretical and methodological model to analyse the narratives of illness and identify any innovative aspects. The generative model of mind presented refers to a semiotic, narrative and socio-constructivist perspective according to which narration constitutes one of the possible processes by which the affective and pre-verbal sense of experience is transformed into a meaning that can be symbolized and shared.

The onset of an illness represents a critical event which interrupts a person's life narrative, shattering his/her biographical continuity and undermining any assumptions of him/herself and the world. In particular, the model proposes a method of analysis, currently absent in literature, of the narrative interview Narrative Function Coding System (NFC) in order to grasp the ways by which four main narrative functions, namely psychic functions, are classified: the search for meaning, the expression of emotions, the temporal organization and the orientation to action.

NFC appears to be able to capture the complexity of the narrative process of construction of illness' sense-meaning making process, identifying both representative modalities of good functioning, which express a gradual process of connection with the variability of the experience, and modalities that express moments of disorganization and rigidity, which can persist throughout the time of treatment. The NFC represents not only a method for analysing illness narratives but also a method for tracking and monitoring the process of clinical intervention and change.

The sense-meaning making process perspective within the narrative socio-constructivist and semiotic framework of analysis proposed by NFC is currently absent in the literature. NFC can be a device for analysing the narrative process of sense-meaning making both for its use for clinical and preventive purposes. In addition we believe that this method, which focuses on the “form” and “way” of narratively constructing the subjective experience, rather than on the specific thematic content, can be used with all types of illness narratives, in particular the longitudinal one to explore the changes in sense-meaning making process.

The purpose is to understand how the role of quality functions might evolve amidst digitalisation and an increased focus on services. This study focuses on customer feedback and how it can function as activation triggers for developing absorptive capacity, as well as how it relates to the value creation processes.

Following a qualitative research design, the authors gathered primary data from interviews with quality managers at 17 UK and Swedish firms and triangulated it with secondary information from the firms' web pages.

The findings show that customer feedback-based activation triggers can support development of absorptive capacity in the quality function if there are established processes for acting on customer feedback. This is often the case for codified feedback, which normally concerns products. However, digitalisation offers new opportunities of engaging in value co-creation, and firms need to develop digital capabilities to manage new technologies and data analytic tools. For personalised feedback (the main category of service-related feedback), established processes are missing.

This study work contributes to knowledge about how quality functions respond to customer feedback on both products and services. It clarifies why the quality function sometimes struggles to contribute to service quality as much as to product quality. From a theory development perspective, the authors contribute to understanding customer feedback-based activation triggers, how they lead to development of absorptive capacity and their relation to value co-creation on a functional level.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

We consider conditional distribution and conditional density functionals in the space of generalized functions. The approach follows Phillips (1985, 1991, 1995) who employed generalized functions to overcome non-differentiability in order to develop expansions. We obtain the limit of the kernel estimators for weakly dependent data, even under non-differentiability of the distribution function; the limit Gaussian process is characterized as a stochastic random functional (random generalized function) on the suitable function space. An alternative simple to compute estimator based on the empirical distribution function is proposed for the generalized random functional. For test statistics based on this estimator, limit properties are established. A Monte Carlo experiment demonstrates good finite sample performance of the statistics for testing logit and probit specification in binary choice models.

This paper gives a selective review on some recent developments of nonparametric methods in both continuous and discrete time finance, particularly in the areas of nonparametric estimation and testing of diffusion processes, nonparametric testing of parametric diffusion models, nonparametric pricing of derivatives, nonparametric estimation and hypothesis testing for nonlinear pricing kernel, and nonparametric predictability of asset returns. For each financial context, the paper discusses the suitable statistical concepts, models, and modeling procedures, as well as some of their applications to financial data. Their relative strengths and weaknesses are discussed. Much theoretical and empirical research is needed in this area, and more importantly, the paper points to several aspects that deserve further investigation.