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This paper aims to investigate the antecedents of recombinant innovation from the perspective of ego–network dynamics, and further disentangle whether ego–network stability or ego–network expansion is more conducive to recombinant innovation under heterogeneous knowledge base.

This paper uses 1,801 patent data in China’s biotechnology field as a sample and adopts fixed effects regression model to examine the effects of ego–network dynamics on recombinant innovation and further uses the Wald tests to discern which ego–network dynamic is more conducive to recombinant innovation under heterogeneous knowledge base.

The empirical results indicate that ego–network dynamics have a positive impact on recombinant innovation. Specifically, for firms with high knowledge breadth and high knowledge depth as well as high knowledge breadth and low knowledge depth, ego–network stability is more conducive to recombinant innovation. By contrast, for firms with low knowledge breadth and high knowledge depth, recombinant innovation benefits more from ego–network expansion. As for firms with low knowledge breadth and low knowledge depth, both ego–network stability and ego–network expansion can promote recombinant innovation, while the effects are not significant.

This research may enlighten managers to choose suitable ego–network dynamics strategies for recombinant innovation based on their knowledge base.

This research not only contributes to the literature on recombinant innovation by revealing the impact of different ego–network dynamics on recombinant innovation but also contributes to network dynamics theory by exploring whether ego–network stability or ego–network expansion is more conducive to recombinant innovation under a heterogeneous knowledge base.

The purpose of this paper is to study the radio resource assignment problem in the context of a heterogeneous ad hoc network, composed of 1EEE802.15.4 sensor devices, their coordinators, mobile terminals conveying vldeo streams, and sinks. This scenario also fits to the paradigm of opportunistic networks.

In such hierarchical heterogeneous opportunistic networks, the focus is on cross‐layer scheduling of the video and sensor traffics toward the sink. The scheduling strategy proposed takes into account information coming from both physical and application layers. Evaluations are performed via simulations.

Results show that the proposed cross‐layer strategy significantly outperforms the maximum throughput scheduling, used as a benchmark, in case of video traffic, while preseruing the same performance for 802.15.4 traffic.

The architecture and the relevant algorithms proposed could be used in realistic emergency‐deployed networks composed by the kind of nodes considered in the paper.

The novelty introduced is related to the application of a crosslayer design strategy in a very peculiar hierarchical heterogeneous opportunistic ad hoc network. This paper is believed to be the first published combining traditional tratfic sources with sensor generated data flows.

For the past several decades, the field of global leadership has made noteworthy theoretical and empirical progress. The role of a global follower, however, has not been addressed to date. This chapter focuses on global followers and global followership as vital elements of a global leadership process supporting a traditional followership view that “leadership can only occur if there is followership” (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014, p. 83). Two assumptions ground the arguments: global leaders and global followers are engaged in a partnering process of global leadership, and followers and global followers have distinctive characteristics influenced by their specific environments. To explore those assumptions, we start by introducing the followership theory and relevant followership characteristics. Subsequently, we address the role of context in global leader–follower dynamics, extrapolate global followership characteristics from relevant multidisciplinary literature, and offer an example of a global leader–follower partnership. Next, we examine mentions of global followers and global followership in academic and nonacademic literature, and define a global followership construct. The conceptual framework, global followership model, research agenda, and practical implications conclude the manuscript.

In the last decade, web services have become a major technology to implement loosely coupled business processes and perform application integration. Through the use of context, a new generation of web services, namely context‐aware web services (CASs), is currently emerging as an important technology for building innovative context‐aware applications. Unfortunately, CASs are still difficult to build. Issues like lack of context provisioning management approach and lack of generic approach for formalizing the development process need to be solved in the first place for easy and effective development of CASs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the techniques on developing CASs.

The paper focuses on introducing a model‐driven platform, called ContextServ, and showcasing how to use this platform to rapidly develop a context‐aware web application, Smart Adelaide Guide. ContextServ adopts a model‐driven development (MDD) approach where a Unified Modeling Language (UML)‐based modeling language – ContextUML – is used to model web services and its context‐awareness features.

The paper presents novel techniques for efficient and effective development of CASs using a MDD approach. The ContextServ platform is the only one that provides a comprehensive software toolset that supports graphical modeling and automatic model transformation of CASs.

The proposed approach has been validated in practice by developing various CASs. The experimental study demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of the approach.

The paper presents a novel platform called ContextServ, which offers a set of visual editing and automation tools for easy and fast generating and deploying CASs.

The purpose of this paper was to design ontology for describing semantic context‐aware quality services, and to present a new web management tool that provides a great flexibility and enables automatic semantic adaptation and customization of mobile client services.

The tool is developed using ontology‐based approach. This ontology captures a shared conceptual schema common in the tourism domain and maintains semantic quality information in heterogeneous service providers for service model. The results of the tool will be compared to prior works from other quality and distributed based service selection methods for mobile‐based application.

The tool support is based in the ontology Context‐aware Quality Semantic Web Service called (CxQWS). At the first step, services are defined as a set of semantic metadata, reflecting service requirements and QoS parameters. At the second step, services with a semantic contextual metadata are elaborated. Such a procedure ensures that the selection decisions should be based on the semantic quality representation of the created services. The SELETOR tool results suggest that the level of intelligent method use continue to be high flexibility in World Tourism organisations.

The tourism services in a mobile environment have a critical role in creating tourist satisfaction. They are neither a uniform group, nor able to give consistently high service quality. Indeed they have significantly different platforms and a variety of heterogeneous service providers which make the management of service qualities complex.

A significant proposition is to integrate new tourism quality attributes of mobile‐based application, to provide a dynamic adaptation of selection services based on context metadata parameters (user, environment, device, and service provider context) and the management of the heterogeneity of service needs, of mobile devices capacities and their various communication protocols (GPRS, WIFI, Bluetooth, etc.) as well as the media variety (sound, video, text and image), possibly reflecting the decreased time responses and the increased visibility of standard services management methods.

The paper proposes SELECTOR, a dynamic service selection tool based on CxQWS ontology, defined as set of semantic metadata, which context and QoS parameters. The tool is based on semantic services and offer architecture, with three layers (semantic query, management and web services). The most innovative characteristic of the tool is that it profits from the potential of semantic representation techniques to express high level explicit constraints, while they may be useful to guide the selection and adaptation process. This tool provides low adaptation effort, e.g. takes into account all the heterogeneous services as its various communication protocols (GSM, 3G, Bluetooth, etc.) as consequences of self‐selection for dynamic context evolution guided by the adaptation policies.

The proposed definitional framework can be used to define housing typologies of cities in developing countries. It aims to define housing typologies in the capital city of Albania, Tirana, using the proposed hierarchical framework within the dynamics of four political periods: Ottoman, establishment, socialist and postsocialist.

This study proposes a new definitional approach for the housing typologies through a hierarchical framework that defines the typologies based on their political period and legality statuses departing from the case of Tirana, which is featured by a heterogeneous context. Such context is characterized by uncontrollable urban development, making typology definition problematic. Furthermore, beyond the form, spatial and functional features, it presents their exterior distinctiveness as an innovative element. The methodology used in the study includes archival research, image documentation, spatial, functional and exterior distinctiveness analysis of housing typologies and exploration of housing form features in different political periods.

The study identifies urban formal housing typologies in Tirana detached houses, apartments, mass housing, social housing, gated communities, informal detached houses and housing with in/formal additions.

This definitional approach can be used to define housing typologies for cities featured by heterogeneous urban context.

Observing across four comparative case organizations, the purpose of this paper is to identify two sources of contingency (i.e. construct and contextual contingency) for the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and innovation.

The contingencies was explored by conducting a comparative case analyses with rich qualitative data extracted and interpreted from four case companies.

First, the construct contingency is examined by refining knowledge heterogeneity into three dimensions: domain, process, and context heterogeneity. Specifically, the author proposed that knowledge heterogeneity in domain is associated with innovation in an inverted U-shape, while heterogeneity in process and context dimensions both negatively influence innovation. Second, contextual contingency is studied. The author proposed that: trust positively moderates the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and innovation; depending on the knowledge owner attributes, centralization positively or negatively moderates the relationship between heterogeneous knowledge and innovation; shared knowledge vision positively moderates the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and innovation.

The influences of knowledge heterogeneity on innovation have yet been inconsistent. The present study set to reconcile such inconsistency with a solution of contingencies that intervene the heterogeneity-innovation relationship. These results offer useful references for future large-scaled, quantitative studies.

This study builds on a first study by Macdonald and Birdi (2019) that argues the concept of neutrality within library and information science (LIS) demands a sensitivity to context often omitted in existing literature. This study aims to develop the conceptual architecture of LIS neutrality in a way that is more conducive to reconciling the contextual nuance found in within the first study.

The approach taken develops LIS neutrality through a Wittgensteinian lens. Two distinct ideas are explored. First, Wittgenstein's notion of a “grammatical investigation” is used to map the varied contexts in which neutrality is used within professional practice. Liberal neutrality is explored as an analogy to lend plausibility to the concept's heterogeneity. Second, Wittgenstein's “family resemblance” develops the concept in a way that facilitates greater contextual understanding.

Three features of liberal neutrality literature: conceptual heterogeneity, distinct justifications for specific conceptions and the possibility that neutrality may operate with limited scope are applied to LIS neutrality. All three features successfully translate, leaving “latent conceptual space” to understand LIS neutrality as nuanced and multifaceted. Second, “family resemblance” also translates successfully, bringing its own pedagogical benefits.

This study's originality lies in its development of LIS neutrality using a descriptive Wittgensteinian lens. Understanding the concept via this paradigm may facilitate a more productive discussion of LIS neutrality and pave the way for a new, less polarised, normative response to it.

This monograph summarises the key influences of leadership behaviour on the transformation process associated with creation of an effective and high performing team. It clarifies the key factors that are relevant to a team at each stage of the transformation process and the leadership roles that each team member can play. The role of an organisation's senior management is considered both in terms of the impact it has on the transformation process within specific teams and in terms of creating the necessary organisational environment to make effective teams the norm. Some reasons why senior management behaviour is often perceived as inconsistent and unhelpful are explored. Specific recommendations are made to help senior managers to adapt their behaviour, and in so doing become more context‐sensitive to the needs of the environment as it changes. Some tools and techniques are presented that have been found in practice to help senior managers adapt their behaviour to that most appropriate at a given time, and to create the organisational infrastructure needed to make effective teams the organisational norm rather than the exception. A case study is presented illustrating the networked nature of leadership and the culture change associated with making effective teams “the way we do things around here.”

Despite the critical role of the policy environment in facilitating the advancement of building information modeling (BIM) as a systemic innovation to reshape traditional facility design, construction and operation processes, scant scholarly attention has been paid to systematically investigating how and why complex BIM policies are concretely and gradually implemented in different regional contexts from a dynamic policy diffusion perspective. This study aims to empirically investigate how different types of BIM policy instruments are dynamically implemented in heterogeneous regions over time and how the diffusion of BIM policies across different regions is comprehensively impacted by both internal efficiency needs and external legitimacy pressures.

This study employed a positivist research paradigm in which BIM policy data from 182 prefecture-level and above cities in China during 2011–2022 were analyzed with quantitative approaches for theory verification. Based on the content analysis of the evolutionary characteristics of the adopted BIM policy instruments in heterogeneous regions over time, the event history analysis (EHA) method was then used to further examine the mechanisms underlying the diffusion of BIM policies across different regions.

The content analysis results show that while environmental instruments (such as technological integration and goal planning) are the primary policy instruments currently adopted in China, recent years have also witnessed increasing adoptions of supply-side instruments (such as fiscal support and information support) and demand-side instruments (such as demonstration projects and tax incentives). After controlling for the impacts of regional fiscal and technical resources, the EHA results illustrate that BIM policy adoption positively relates to regional construction industry scale but negatively relates to regional industry productivity and that compared with public pressures from industry participants, vertical pressures from the central government and horizontal pressures from neighboring regions are more substantial drivers for policy adoption.

As an exploratory effort of using a dynamic policy diffusion perspective to systematically investigate how BIM policies are adopted in heterogeneous regional contexts to facilitate BIM advancement, this study not only characterizes the complexity and dynamics of BIM policies but also provides deepened understandings of the mechanisms underlying policy adoption in the conservative construction industry. The findings hold implications for how multifarious policy instruments can be more effectively and dynamically adopted to facilitate the advancement of BIM and related technologies as innovative solutions in the construction domain.