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This study explores the profound influence of social and cultural factors on the financial conduct of indigenous tribes and groups. Anchored in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, the analysis delves into the intricate interplay between cultural elements, such as bricolage, and the immediate availability of financial resources, illuminating their collective impact on the tribes' financial behaviour. Typically residing in proximity, these communities exhibit homogeneity by forming groups exclusive to their clans, lacking access to conventional financial services and tangible assets that dissuade banks from extending loans. Crucially, the social capital embedded within the group dynamics, often referred to as the peer mechanism, emerges as a pivotal conduit for members to secure capital and bank credit. The synergy of bricolage, representing the adept use of available social capital, facilitates access to finance and credit. Despite the existence of social capital and financial literacy programmes, a stark reality persists – a significant proportion of indigenous people remain financially excluded. This chapter endeavours to scrutinise the ramifications of these factors on tribal financial behaviour, employing the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) method. Proposing a paradigm shift in financial attitudes, the research underscores the imperative of fostering financial inclusion within indigenous tribes and communities.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and decision making in the development of AI-related capabilities. We investigate if and how AI-driven decision making has an impact on firm performance. We also investigate the role played by environmental dynamism in the development of AI capabilities and AI-driven decision making.

We surveyed 346 managers in the United States using established scales from the literature and leveraged p modelling to analyse the data.

Results indicate that AI-driven decision making is positively related to firm performance and that big data-powered AI positively influences AI-driven decision making. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between big data-powered AI and the development of AI capability within a firm. It is also found that the control variables of firm size and age do not significantly affect firm performance. Finally, environmental dynamism does not have a positive and significant moderating effect on the path connecting big data-powered AI and AI-driven decision making, while it exerts a positive moderating effect on the development of AI capability to strengthen AI-driven decision making.

These findings extend the resource-based view by highlighting the capabilities developed within the firm to manage big data-powered AI. This research also provides theoretically grounded guidance to managers wanting to align their AI-driven decision making with superior firm performance.

Organic coatings are widely used for protecting metal equipment and structures from corrosion. Accurate detection and evaluation of the protective performance and service life of coatings are of great importance. This paper aims to review the research progress on performance evaluation and lifetime prediction of organic coatings.

First, the failure forms and aging testing methods of organic coatings are briefly introduced. Then, the technical status and the progress in the detection and evaluation of coating protective performance and the prediction of service life are mainly reviewed.

There are some key challenges and difficulties in this field, which are described in the end.

The progress is summarized from a variety of technical perspectives. Performance evaluation and lifetime prediction include both single-parameter and multi-parameter methods.

The research applied service-dominant logic of marketing theory, a customer-centered and relational that principally grounded in service relationships and actor networks. In actor networks, salespeople provide their skills and knowledge, such as expertise, service quality, ethics and shared value to cocreate value for buyers. Therefore, this study explores the attributes of salespeople that influence the quality of the relationship (trust and satisfaction) and, as a result, loyalty in the context of the business-to-business (B2B) relationship in the Taiwan market.

A causal relationship and survey research design are applied. The study collected 266 valid responses from B2B account managers representing various companies and industries. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that salespeople’s expertise demonstrated the most significant influence on both trust and satisfaction, followed by ethics, service quality and share value, in a descending order of impact. Consequently, trust and satisfaction had a significant impact on customer loyalty.

The four attributes of salespeople play a pivotal role in establishing lasting relationships and maximizing the customer lifetime value. To achieve long-term success in customer interactions and relationships, a well-rounded salesperson should diligently strive to excel in all these attributes.

The novelty and contribution of this study are twofold. First, investigating the quality of the relationship in the context of Taiwanese manufacturers in a B2B setting is still rare, and this is the study first to explore the Taiwanese B2B relationship with its global customers. As Taiwanese manufacturers play a pivotal role in the global supply chain, the research findings have symbolic meaning and practical implications for global business partners. Second, drawing from service-dominant logic theory, this research takes an integrative view by examining the attributes (expertise, service quality, shared value and ethics) that influence and establish a quality trusting relationship and consumer loyalty in the B2B context.

This paper aims to examine the direct impacts of marketing resources and marketing activities on several business performance indicators in the banking industry and the indirect effects through customer-based brand equity.

We use a holistic empirical approach based on resource-based view and marketing productivity chain. The main study consists of a secondary analysis using quarterly data of fourteen banks over four years. We analyze the data using fixed-effect panel data regression, namely seemingly unrelated regressions.

We find that customer-based brand equity is one of the most influential factors on business performance. Moreover, the indirect effect through customer-based brand equity should be considered in improving business performance. Marketing-related financial resources positively impact customer-based brand equity and business performance. Regarding marketing activities, pricing strategies affect the bank preferences of customers, which in turn affect the growth of deposit volumes and churn rates. Additionally, the number of bank branches positively impacts business performance. Advertising spending on different media has differentiated impacts on the performance indicators; thus, the allocation of advertising budget and advertising planning are critical.

This study examines the inter-relationships among marketing resources, marketing activities, consumer response through brand equity and marketing performance. This study contributes to the literature by integrating the resource-based view and the marketing productivity chain to analyze the inter-relationships using panel data and several sector-related metrics. This study provides valuable insights to decision-makers in the banking industry.

Competition in the modern, knowledge-based economy is utterly pendant on innovation, rendering it indispensable in virtually every organisation. Knowledge workers, therefore, must remain vigilant, spanning novel ways to innovate. Given the relevance of innovation orientation (IO) in knowledge work, it is imperative to possess an extensive understanding of the concept. Therefore, this study aims to develop and validate a measurement scale to gauge employees’ IO.

Considering that the instruments now in existence exhibit insufficiency for measuring knowledge workers’ IO in its entirety, the mixed-method approach used in this study draws on both qualitative and quantitative findings across various studies, to address this problem. This study has been organised into five stages: item generation, scale purification, scale refinement, nomological validation and generalizability.

This study establishes and verifies a second-order, reflective–reflective IO measure founded on multiple samples, encompassing the dimensions of creative orientation, learning orientation, first-mover orientation, trust orientation and agility orientation. The resultant IO scale serves as a robust and reliable tool that is capable of being leveraged to explain, assess and enhance IO for knowledge workers.

The rigorous methodology used in this scale development procedure serves as a benchmark for prospective scale development methodologists. From a managerial stance, this study serves managers/leaders concerning how to foster an innovation-oriented work environment to uncover employees’ hidden innovators. Organisations can leverage this study to discover, cultivate and capitalise on knowledge workers’ IO.

Although there exists an abundance of research on IO viewed from an institutional standpoint, research centred on the IO of knowledge workers is scarce. To bridge this gap, this study has developed and validated a scale for measuring knowledge workers’ IO.

In 2017, it was a challenge to assess the future of global trade. It was an open question whether the US financial crisis and the recession that it triggered would mark a turning point for the liberal post–World War II world order. If one looked toward Europe, China, Latin America, and Japan, there was a flurry of activity. New trade agreements were being completed and pursued. In Washington, DC, on the other hand, President Donald Trump seemed set on ripping apart and/or renegotiating any trade deal the United States was ever part of.

This case explores Trump's opinions and emerging policy stance on trade, bilateralism, and the global economy, among others. It also gives an overview of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and asks whether the Trump presidency would constitute a major challenge to the WTO and what it stood for in 2017.

This study aims to empirically analyse the influence mechanism of perceived interactivity in real estate APP which affects consumers' psychological well-being. With the growing application of human–machine interaction in real estate APP, it is crucial to utilize human–machine interaction to stimulate perceived interactivity between humans and machines to positively impact consumers' psychological well-being and sustainable development of real estate APP. However, it is unclear whether perceived interactivity improves consumers' psychological well-being.

This study proposes and examines a theoretical model grounded in the perceived interactivity theory, considers the relationship between perceived interactivity and consumers' psychological well-being and explores the mediating effect of perceived value and the moderating role of privacy concerns. It takes real estate APP as the research object, analyses the data of 568 consumer samples collected through questionnaires and then employs structural equation modelling to explore and examine the proposed theoretical model of this study.

The findings are that perceived interactivity (i.e. human–human interaction and human–information interaction) positively influences perceived value, which in turn affects psychological well-being, and that perceived value partially mediates the effect of perceived interaction on psychological well-being. More important findings are that privacy concerns not only negatively moderate human–information interaction on perceived value, but also negatively moderate the indirect effects of human–information interaction on users' psychological well-being through perceived value.

This study expands the context on perceived interaction and psychological well-being in the field of real estate APP, validating the mediating role and boundary conditions of perceived interactivity created by human–machine interaction on consumers' psychological well-being, and suggesting positive implications for practitioners exploring human–machine interaction technologies to improve the perceived interaction between humans and machines and thus enhance consumer psychological well-being and span sustainable development of real estate APP.