Search results

The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model for examining how innovation speed mediates the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and performance and empirically tests the proposed model using data collected in the USA and China over three years.

To avoid common method bias and increase ability to draw causal effects of KM on performance, data were collected over three years. KM data were collected by survey; innovation speed data were collected in the following year; and sales growth and gross margin data were collected over the next three years. After merging the three data sets, the final empirical data used for this study contained data from 354 USA and 647 Chinese firms. Multiple regression analyses were used to test the research hypotheses. Sobel mediation tests were performed to test the mediating effects of innovation speed on the relationship between KM and performance.

Innovation speed has a U-shaped relationship with performance in both US and Chinese firms. Knowledge generation has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation speed in both US and Chinese firms. Knowledge dissemination increases innovation speed in US firms but not in Chinese firms. While knowledge application increases innovation speed in the US firms, it decreases innovation speed in Chinese firms.

This study is among the first to propose and empirically test the KM-innovation speed-performance relationship. This paper advances the KM literature by demonstrating that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge generation and innovation speed and that there is a U-shaped relationship between innovation speed and performance. In addition, this study contributed to the cross-national study of KM.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the environmental conditions (i.e. competitive intensity) under which a pure strategy or an ambidextrous strategy of implementing responsive market orientations (RMOs) and/or proactive market orientations (PMOs) is more advantageous for firm’s performance.

Drawing upon the market orientation (MO) and strategy literatures, the authors test the study’s model empirically using a sample of 308 US-based firms operating in industrial markets. All measurement items are taken from the widely used maturity scale which has been confirmed in the literature.

The empirical results suggest that when the competitive intensity is high, pursuing a purity strategy of RMO while decreasing PMO is the best course of action. On the other hand, balancing between RMO and PMO (implementing a strategy of ambidexterity) can increase firm’s performance in a low competitive intensity environment.

This study aims to contribute to the existing MO literature in several ways: first, this study advances the MO literature by emphasizing the moderating role of competitive intensity on the effects of different MO strategies (purity or ambidextrous MO strategy); second, this study focuses on the firms operating in industrial markets and informs managers on how to adopt RMO and PMO under different level of competitive intensity; third, this study is the extended research of the prior study published in this journal (Wang et al., 2013), which examined the environmental antecedents of adopting RMO and PMO.

First, firms operating in industrial markets should increase RMO, while at the same time decrease PMO, in a highly competitive intensity environment. Second, companies should pursue both RMO and PMO at the same time in a low competitive intensity environment. Balancing between RMO and PMO can improve firms’ performance in a low competitive intensity environment.

This study contributes to the industrial business and marketing literature by sharpening the theoretical understanding of the impact of RMOs and PMOs on firm’s performance. It also offers practical insights to managers of industrial firms on when to adopt RMOs and/or PMOs under different levels of competitive intensity.

While some studies have found that cognitive biases are detrimental to entrepreneurial performance, others have conjectured that cognitive biases may stimulate entrepreneurial action. This study uses a typology of availability and representative heuristics to examine how two patterns of biases affect entrepreneurial performance. Drawing on ideas from cognitive science, this study predicts that various levels of biases in each pattern stimulate entrepreneurial behavior and performance.

A profile-deviation approach was employed to analyze data from 253 entrepreneurs and zero-truncated Poisson regression and the zero-truncated negative binomial regression to test hypotheses.

This study finds some positive associations between a particular level of cognitive biases in each of the two patterns and entrepreneurial behavior and performance. Results show that the patterns of biases often stimulate and never hurt entrepreneurial behavior and performance. The opposite holds for a lack of cognitive biases, which hurts and never stimulates entrepreneurial behavior and performance.

This study examines patterns of cognitive biases of entrepreneurs instead of single biases. The study broadens the perspective on the heuristics and cognitive biases of entrepreneurs by examining patterns of biases emanating from the availability and the representativeness heuristic that make a difference for entrepreneurial behavior and performance. The study also brings the “great rationality debate” closer to the entrepreneurship field by showing that a normative rule based on statistics and probability theory does not benefit entrepreneurial behavior and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effects of market growth on the relationships between power distance and new venture performance and between market information utilization in new ventures and new venture performance in China.

This study uses content analyses and OLS regressions.

First, power distance and market information utilization have positive effects on Chinese new venture performance. Second, in a low market growth environment, increasing power distance increases Chinese new venture performance. Third, in a high market growth environment, increasing power distance decreases, not increases, Chinese new venture performance.

This study contributes to the market orientation literature by examining the moderating effects of market growth on the market information utilization-performance relationship in China. This study also adds to the existing understanding of power distance and market information utilization in contingency theoretical perspective.

Chinese new ventures operating in a high-growth market should reduce power distance. However, when operating in the low market growth industry, Chinese new ventures should increase power distance. While all Chinese new ventures should use market information to make decisions, the roles of market information are more important for Chinese new ventures operating in high market growth industries than for those operating in low market growth industries.

This study examines the moderating effects of market growth on the positive relationship between power distance and Chinese new venture performance and the positive relationship between market information utilization on Chinese new venture performance in the same model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a kind of novel and high‐performance rheological additive, an eco‐friendly composite of anatase nano‐TiO₂ particles and xanthan gum (NTX), for interior wall coatings.

NTX was prepared through heating and refluxing the mixture of TiO₂ hydrosol and xanthan gum, and five interior wall coating samples were fabricated with different NTX contents. The morphology of nano‐TiO₂ hydrosol and NTX were characterised with TEM, and the stability and rheological properties of these coating samples were studied.

TEM images showed a core‐shell structure of NTX, and that nano‐TiO₂ particles in it were encapsulated by xanthan gum, which was anticipated to weaken Van der Waals force among nano‐TiO₂ particles thus preventing the aggregation of nano‐particles. All of the five coating samples were found to be non‐Newtonian pseudo‐plastic fluid, and showed excellent stability and thixotropic property.

This paper focused on the preparation, the characterisation of NTX additive and the study of the rheological behaviours of the coating samples with NTX. Some other aspects, such as coating durability, photocatalytic ability and film properties, will be studied in the future.

It was proven that NTX was an effective eco‐friendly rheological additive for interior wall coatings. Consequently, this paper threw light on developing eco‐friendly interior wall coatings.

A kind of novel and effective rheological additive was developed for interior wall coatings in the study reported in the paper. A method was also developed to introduce functional nano‐particles into coating in a good dispersion state.

Many companies strengthen their interaction with consumers by establishing online communities and bring convenience to value co-creation with consumers. Some companies use economic and social strategies to stimulate consumer value creation. However, the way to increase the effectiveness of such corporate strategies remains unclear. To address this challenge, this study investigates the impact patterns of economic and social strategies that influence consumers' value co-creation behaviour in firm-hosted online communities (FOCs). Moreover, the effective conditions for the value co-creation of the two strategies are explored.

Data from an FOC were collected for electronic communications products. A total of 1,305 second-hand data records on value co-creation activities were obtained. Then, an econometric model was built and Stata14.0 software was used for data analysis.

The effect of economic interaction strategy on the value co-creation in online communities is an inverted U-shaped model, and that of social interaction strategy is relatively stable and is not an inverted U-shaped model. Value creation initiatives introduced by enterprise personnel adopt economic strategies to improve effectiveness. On the contrary, value co-creation activities initiated by consumers use social strategies for the same purpose. Economic strategies are effective for large teams, whereas social strategies may lead to a “free rider” mentality.

This study finds two important factors affecting the value co-creation in FOCs and their effective boundaries. However, other factors may also affect the online community value co-creation. Future research can further explore the intrinsic mechanisms of these strategies for value co-creation.

This article mainly discusses the influence of stimulation strategies on the value co-creation in an actual company community and exhibits good practical significance for the value co-creation activity and management in online communities. Firstly, corporate strategy is effective in communities, but this strategy requires proper control. Secondly, the company strategy must consider appropriate application conditions.

This study deepens the understanding of the impact of economic and social strategies on the value co-creation in FOCs and the effective boundaries of these impact patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to help enhance the scholarly conversation about the essential nature of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct, its dimensionality and measurement. The authors focus on how EO was defined and measured in various contexts, which is the basis for the proposed five-dimensional EO scale (FDEOS).

Survey was conducted in design industry in China. A pilot test was conducted with 20 Chinese firms. Questionnaires were sent to 1,200 firms. A total of 408 complete and valid questionnaires were received.

It was found that a behavior aspect of EO as a second-order reflective model had a greater degree of agreement among scholarly community. As a result, a new FDEOS was proposed from behavioral perspective. Data were collected from 408 firms of design industry in a big developing country.

While five-dimensional EO construct is a well-recognized concept in the literature on entrepreneurship, little is known about its measurement. The research reported in this paper provides support for this assertion and develops a new scale, FDEOS, that designed to be neutral with regard to industry context and type of organization.

The objective of this research is focused on the design of a new hybrid composite as well as to analyse the optimum turning conditions to minimise the surface roughness and work piece surface temperature, thereby increasing the productivity.

Mechanical properties such as hardness and tensile strength of Al-Si10Mg alloy reinforced with 3, 6 and 9 wt.% of alumina along with 3 wt.% of graphite prepared by stir casting method have been evaluated. The present study addresses the machinability parameter optimisation of Al alloy-9 per cent alumina-3 per centgraphite. Experiments were conducted based on the Taguchi parameter design by varying the feed (0.1, 0.15 and 0.2 mm/rev), cutting speed (200, 250 and 300 m/min) and depth of cut (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mm). The results were then analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Mechanical properties of the hybrid composite increases with reinforcement content. The surface roughness decreases with increasing cutting speed and conversely increases with increasing feed and depth of cut. The work piece surface temperature increases as cutting speed, feed and depth of cut increases. The ANOVA result reveals that feed plays a major role in minimising both surface roughness and surface temperature of work piece. The cutting speed and depth of cut follow feed in the order of importance, respectively.

The vibration of the machine tool is a factor which may contribute to poor quality characteristics. This factor has not taken been into account in this analysis since major vibrations in the machine are induced due to the machining process.

Design and development of new hybrid metal matrix composites (HMMCs) with a detailed analysis on machining conditions. The findings could help in the production of composite with a higher degree of surface finish. This will enable the adoption of HMMCs as industrial product for mass scale production.

Good quality characteristics were achieved using optimum machining conditions arrived using a statistical modelling.