Search results

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the supply chain management literature by presenting the Australian practitioners’ perception of the role of relationship integration in developing supply chain agility and flexibility.

The research takes semi-structured, indepth interviews with ten operations and supply chain practitioners in the Australian manufacturing sector. A systematic qualitative data analysis approach grounded on cross-interview synthesis was used.

Findings contributed into understanding of the manufacturing companies’ implementation of relationship integration with respect to decision trade-offs involved in contract design. Moreover, the findings revealed the significant perceived importance and impact of relationship integration on supply chain agility and flexibility development. This was, however, found to be a function of things such as upstream or downstream focus and organisational size. These findings were expressed in terms of seven propositions.

Analysis of the interviews substantiates the criticality of informed allocation of resources to relationship-intensive activities and investments across the supply chain to develop agility and flexibility. International businesses can gain insights into Australian manufacturing businesses’ perception of relationship integration, which can be invaluable for strategic planning to develop agile and flexible supply chains with their Australian partners.

This paper takes an original approach to present operations and supply chain practitioners’ perception of manufacturing businesses’ use of relationship integration for supply chain agility and flexibility development.

This chapter describes the journey of four social entrepreneurs in the Malaysian landscape. The objectives of the case study are to provide a description of the social entrepreneurship development in Malaysia and to illustrate how social entrepreneurs start their ventures, and mobilise change within this landscape. Primary data was collected through a survey and indepth interviews. Four social entrepreneurs participated in this study. The findings show that the Malaysian social entrepreneurship landscape is thriving and supportive, giving many opportunities for individuals to establish social enterprises. The indepth interviews revealed that the social entrepreneurs were motivated to start their social enterprises after being exposed to various socio-economic problems of diverse communities. They leveraged on their strength, both technical and business to create social enterprises. Digitalisation is a major enabler for the social enterprises where ICT tools are used to create solutions to optimise socio-economic impact. Training, coaching and mentoring are also widely used to empower the target beneficiaries. All the social entrepreneurs are deeply aware of the sustainable developmental goals (SDGs) and have strategically incorporated the relevant SDGs into their business model to guide impact measurement. This case study contributes to the field by providing insights on the what drives the ‘selfless side’ of an individual to start a social enterprise, and how do social enterprises leverage on available resources to grow and sustain their ventures. It also provides insights on how to pilot and scale social enterprises.

In 2009, Lucha, a Mexican woman who had migrated to Chicago and worked at a candy factory described her work as ‘A slow assassination of your soul’. Her experience in the United States was transformative. The power she previously had as a community activist and college student in Mexico was eroded. Lucha's experience exemplifies a shift in her identity and how that changing identity fashioned the character of her economic activities. Race, ethnicity, and gender shift and change meaning through migration (Gilmartin, 2008, p. 1840) and shape ‘migrant women's multiple relations in the process of migration’ (Parreñas, 2009, p. 11). We are interested in the struggles, realities and contestations of immigrant women. We want to better understand how migrant women negotiate the dynamic intersections of race, gender and citizenship identities in new places in order to survive, prosper and exert influence in new places and economic environments. Based on indepth interviews with immigrant women in Chicago, Illinois, United States and in the Barcelona area of Spain, we demonstrate that issues of race, gender and citizenship influenced the kinds of jobs they obtained and the working conditions they experienced, as well as their ability to become accepted members of the community. In this chapter, we want to respond to the call made by Parreñas (2009) to contribute to the gender and migration literature by analysing structural gender inequalities beyond differences between men and women, and focusing on how gender inequalities are constructed as they intersect with other inequalities based on race and citizenship. The women we interviewed endured humiliation based on their intersecting identities at work; some questioned their belonging in their new countries while at the same time feeling that they did not belong in their home country, as other authors such as Parreñas (2001) have found. The challenge for planners and policymakers is to understand the intricacies of multiple identities across places and scales. Hearing their complex stories of work and perceptions of belonging in their country of origin and new country can help academics who are training future planners and professionals build more inclusive planning and policy theory and practice.

This article focuses on students' perspectives on various aspects of learning science at a distance, such as ‘expectations,’ ‘learning outcomes,’ and ‘satisfaction’. Two foundation science courses offered by the School of Science and Technology at the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) were selected for the study. A series of indepth interviews was carried out with students enrolled in these courses, followed by questionnaire surveys and field observations in order to validate and triangulate the interview data. The findings revealed that students placed a high value on practical work in science courses. Moreover, the more familiar with the course subject, the less difficulty they anticipate in learning science via distance education. Two significant correlations were also found, between the perception of practical work and satisfaction, and between the attendance rate and the perception of practical work with distance learning at OUHK. This research adds to knowledge of disciplinebased distance education research in terms of empirical data in both qualitative and quantitative forms. Further investigation on this issue may help instructional designers and developed of science courses in the decision on various aspects of course design and development.

The objective of this paper is to explore and determine a set of factors that are critical to the success of business‐to‐business (B2B) e‐markets in the aerospace and defence, healthcare, higher education and local government industry sectors, in order to advance our current understanding of what factors facilitate e‐market adoption and success. The paper examines critical success factors (CSFs) for e‐markets from a strategic fit perspective.

The study adopted a semi‐inductive qualitative approach based on a review of the literature, followed by a pilot study and 58 indepth semi‐structured interviews with senior level executives in buyer, supplier, e‐market and third‐party organisations. Qualitative data analysis software, QSR N6, was used to code and analyse the interview data for citations that corresponded with the candidate e‐market CSFs that had been identified either in the literature, pilot study or during the course of the interviews with respondents. The CSFs for e‐markets were ranked by the frequency of respondents citing a particular CSF.

The study found eight factors that are critical to e‐market success and four factors (critical mass, integration issues, value proposition, and leadership participation) were found to be conducive to e‐market success in all four industry sectors. Likewise, four factors (industry knowledge, revenue model, branding and reputation, and rich content) were found to be only conducive to e‐market success in three of the four industry sectors.

The paper can help academic researchers, managers, consultants, practitioners and other professionals better understand what factors are critical to the success of e‐markets and other online enterprises operating in the B2B marketspace.

There have been numerous calls for more empirical research on the dynamics of e‐market adoption for more than a decade. To date, research on the CSFs for e‐markets has been largely anecdotal and sporadic with a paucity of studies noting factors that are likely to be favourable to e‐market success. This study addresses the call for more research on e‐markets and imparts empirical evidence on factors that are perceived to be conducive to the success of e‐markets. It contributes to the base of knowledge on e‐markets by relating the concept of CSFs with the theory of strategic fit as, to date, no known study has examined CSFs for e‐markets from a strategic fit perspective. The study also presents the benefits capabilities‐industry participants’ needs fit conceptual model as a precursor for theory building in future studies on B2B e‐markets and informs stakeholders involved in developing e‐markets or other online B2B ventures to better comprehend the conditions and determinants of success.

The objective of this paper is to explore and determine a set of factors that are critical to the success of business-to-business (B2B) e-markets in the aerospace and defence, healthcare, higher education and local government industry sectors, in order to advance our current understanding of what factors facilitate e-market adoption and success. The paper examines critical success factors (CSFs) for e-markets from a strategic fit perspective.

The study adopted a semi-inductive qualitative approach based on a review of the literature, followed by a pilot study and 58 indepth semi-structured interviews with senior level executives in buyer, supplier, e-market and third-party organisations. Qualitative data analysis software, QSR N6, was used to code and analyse the interview data for citations that corresponded with the candidate e-market CSFs that had been identified either in the literature, pilot study or during the course of the interviews with respondents. The CSFs for e-markets were ranked by the frequency of respondents citing a particular CSF.

The study found eight factors that are critical to e-market success and four factors (critical mass, integration issues, value proposition, and leadership participation) were found to be conducive to e-market success in all four industry sectors. Likewise, four factors (industry knowledge, revenue model, branding and reputation, and rich content) were found to be only conducive to e-market success in three of the four industry sectors.

The paper can help academic researchers, managers, consultants, practitioners and other professionals better understand what factors are critical to the success of e-markets and other online enterprises operating in the B2B marketspace.

There have been numerous calls for more empirical research on the dynamics of e-market adoption for more than a decade. To date, research on the CSFs for e-markets has been largely anecdotal and sporadic with a paucity of studies noting factors that are likely to be favourable to e-market success. This study addresses the call for more research on e-markets and imparts empirical evidence on factors that are perceived to be conducive to the success of e-markets. It contributes to the base of knowledge on e-markets by relating the concept of CSFs with the theory of strategic fit as, to date, no known study has examined CSFs for e-markets from a strategic fit perspective. The study also presents the benefits capabilities-industry participants’ needs fit conceptual model as a precursor for theory building in future studies on B2B e-markets and informs stakeholders involved in developing e-markets or other online B2B ventures to better comprehend the conditions and determinants of success.

The purpose of this study is to look at the attitudes of the employees in terms of sharing knowledge during COVID-19 in an online environment and the various difficulties associated and to analyze knowledge sharing (KS) in a virtual office setting, using the conservation of resources theory.

A qualitative approach was used by conducting face-to-face interviews online through GoogleMeet, Skype and Zoom. A total of 34 interviews from 14 multinational companies (or their subsidiaries), in a supervisory role, were conducted for the study. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the responses.

During a crisis, the tendency of employees to share knowledge at the individual, team and organizational level increases and is interlinked. The results of this study suggest that during the initial phases of lockdown, the creativity levels among employees were high; however, as the work from the office got postponed because of extended lockdowns, the creativity level of employees saw a dip. Furthermore, the findings of this study also highlighted that KS in remotely located teams was found to be dependent on the extent to which the team members knew each other, such that known teams were in a better position to share knowledge than a newly formed team with unknown or less known members.

This study has 34 respondents which is an acceptable number for a qualitative inquiry. However, the number of industries could be increased for generalization purposes. Responses were collected from a group of knowledge workers who were willing to correspond digitally, using social media channels of the authors, such as Linkedin. Responses collected personally could provide different results.

This study provides insights into visible change in organizational processes. The conceptual model developed in this study has several implications which will help chief knowledge officers to understand why the various individual, team and organizational factors lead to KS, particularly with respect to COVID-19.

This study has explored a contemporary phenomenon – KS during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in an online environment. This study depicts the extant literature on knowledge management during a pandemic, thus bridging the scholarly gap. This study tried to bring in a broader perspective by selecting respondents across continents, domains and varied age groups. Fourth, most studies analyzing KS/knowledge hiding in the extant literature, especially during the pandemic, have followed a quantitative approach. This study followed a qualitative approach to gain insights into the KS of the firm and the thoughts and practicalities behind it.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a view of gender discrimination in Vietnam via the lens of thê diên – the Vietnamese face concept.

The paper reports on results of a PhD exploratory study of the Vietnamese face concept thê diên. Semi-structured indepth interviews were conducted with 15 Vietnamese college teachers about the notion of thê diên in relation with several areas including gender.

There are two ways in which gender discrimination is reflected in the participants’ perceptions of thê diên. First, there is discrimination in terms of the different language used for men and women in terms of face. Second, there are different social expectations for men and women in terms of thê diên. Specifically, in order to maintain thê diên, men are expected to prove themselves as sources of the family income and social status. Meanwhile, women are only supposed to maintain their men’s face.

While the gender situation in Vietnam has been examined via various social, economical, and political perspectives, it has never been filtered through the lens of face, a cultural concept that deeply reflects living and behaving principles of a cultural community in a certain time.

Purpose – This chapter examines place attachment and spatial mobility intentions among highly skilled professionals who are descendants of low-skilled migrants from Turkey. Having achieved considerable intergenerational mobility, these professionals work in prestigious international firms.

Research Design – The analysis in this chapter is based on 27 indepth interviews with descendants of migrants from Turkey, who now occupy leading positions within the corporate business sector in France, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

Findings – The study reveals that respondents feel attached to the city they live and work in, but feel less attached to the country at large. Along with this ambiguity towards their home country, they are open to spatial mobility and would move to another country based on their career aspirations. They display a feeling of ‘inbetweenness’, but they are able to turn this condition to their advantage by framing it as an inherent adaptability to the marketdriven requirement to be mobile.

Originality and Implications – The study provides an original contribution to the field by focussing on an understudied group: highly educated descendants of migrants from Turkey. The findings have practical and social implications, showing that, despite their steep upward mobility and success in the labour market, descendants of migrants continue to be the subject of integration and exclusion discourses that influence their sense of belonging to the countries where they were born and raised.

Having a successful brand that is integrated and coherent can provide a sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of this paper is to identify internal factors contributing to financial services brand success and ultimately to facilitate better‐informed branding activities, thereby growing brand equity.

A grounded theory approach is adopted and indepth interviews were carried out with 68 respondents amongst six financial services organisations.

The organisations with more successful brands were characterised by the following factors: a holistic, consistent and integrated approach to branding, a focus on excellent and personalised customer service, an ethos which challenges the norm, a responsiveness to change, a high degree of brand literacy, and a synergy between the brand and organisational culture.

The study was bound by the availability of respondents' time. The focus was to examine a relatively small sample of organisations in considerable depth. Moving forward, it is intended that a quantitative study will be undertaken to generalise and expand on these findings within the financial services market.

A number of significant managerial implications are drawn from this work, for example using the brand ethos model to enable employees to internalise their brand and the use of “brand jigsaw” workshops to facilitate brand consistency.

The results provide valuable insights into financial services brand management, encouraging the employment of more effective branding techniques within a sector that has traditionally had little interest in branding.