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The purpose of this paper is to enlighten the intriguing process of industry asset consolidation. It is critical for firms to manage their business acquisitions strategically for survival in this industry life cycle process, which develops through multiple company mergers. The companies extensively acquiring industry assets have utilized acquisition programs consisting of both pre-acquisition strategizing and post-acquisition integration; however, the existing literature on acquisition programs focuses on post-acquisition integration activities. This study aims to bridge this gap.

This study focuses on pre-acquisition strategizing of acquisition programs and proposes a model in which an acquiring company could manage its acquisitions for industry asset consolidation over the industry evolution.

Empirically, in the multi-case study of telecommunications infrastructure companies, the authors collect an extensive set of archival records accumulated over the whole industry life-cycle, spanning more than 30 years, and they apply a qualitative data analysis to reveal strategic actions within the companies.

The discoveries elaborate on activities comprising the acquisition process model: social legitimacy, strategic alignment, resource fulfillment, consolidation pursuit and merging.

The counterintuitive findings are that the companies strived to ensure legitimacy early in the telecommunication infrastructure markets before they reached strategic alignment with their owners.

The results extend the understanding of industry asset consolidation as an organization-level phenomenon and show how contextual factors connected to industry life-cycle phases, such as regulatory regimes and financial cycles and industry evolution, influence the attributions of an acquisition program.

Over the last five decades, business to business (B2B) marketing has evolved from a transactional model to a behavioral model. This evolution is a consequence of the rise in thoughts of managing customer journeys, services marketing and acknowledging value co-creation amongst stakeholders. The contemporary B2B marketing strategies of relationship, innovation, sustainability and digital marketing that emerge through the literature review are discussed to demonstrate how they add value to the competitive advantage of firms and facilitate co-creation between business partners to help design the customer journey. The purpose of the paper is to discuss how the apparel industry could implement the B2B marketing strategies highlighted and further suggests a framework of value co-creation. The framework shows the journey between business partners followed by the value propositions as service exchange through resource integration within the service ecosystem.

Through a review of the literature, the evolution of B2B marketing unveils the importance of services marketing and how the marketing strategies discussed add value to the services marketing, this is further explored with propositions of value co-creation between business partners. The propositions are based on the theory of service dominant logic, whereby, the partners in the service ecosystem co-create value from value propositions offered by the business partners in collaboration with supply chain innovation.

A framework is suggested in the context of the apparel industry that demonstrates the value propositions as a part of the B2B marketing strategy. Through resource integration and collaboration between the business partners, the value propositions in the form of services, are exchanged resulting in value co-creation that leads to the ultimate offering to the end customer.

The service dominant logic theory and the supply chain innovation model are the basis of the framework, showing the value propositions made, are in collaboration between the firm and the supply chain partners. The value propositions in the form of services are exchanged as an outcome of resource integration amongst the business partners resulting in value co-creation which will aid apparel manufacturers differentiate their services and manage customer journeys better. The framework will be further researched through primary research to determine its rationality in the real-world context. The nature of the industry being fast paced, the literature will be outdated in a short span of time and with the vast growth, new strategies will need to be executed eventually.

The paper discusses how the apparel industry can move forward with the B2B marketing strategies highlighted through the literature review and further suggests a framework of value co-creation. This will aid apparel manufacturers to focus their marketing efforts in an era of services marketing and compete better globally with service offerings.

The competitive advantage strategies and other key emerging themes of co-creation, value co-creation and customer journeys are highlighted and shows increasing importance to the survival of businesses in an era of service orientation and relationship marketing.

Through a critical literature review of B2B marketing strategies and with the use of theoretical models of service dominant logic and supply chain innovation, the conceptual paper proposes a framework by the authors that allows future research to analyse value co-creation in B2B marketing strategies for the apparel industry.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of industry convergence and value innovation to understand the current research status; second, to provide a coherent theoretical research framework for future research.

This study adopts a two-step analysis approach by combining bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review to explore the research topic of industry convergence and value innovation. Besides, two bibliometric tools, HistCite and VOSviewer, were applied to this study.

This study found that Stefanie Bröring and Fredrik Hacklin are the top two most influential authors among all authors in the sample publications. Technological Forecasting and Social Change is one of the top-ranking journal that often publishes this topic of articles. Germany and the University of Munster are the most influential country and institutions, respectively. Besides, five core research themes were identified based on keywords co-occurrence map, theoretical lenses, factors promoting industry convergence, indicators of industry convergence, the impact of industry convergence and emerging research directions. Based on the above analysis, this paper constructed a theoretical research framework of industry convergence and value innovation.

This paper only draw data from one database – Web of Science – which cannot provide broad coverage of the research topic. Besides, the bibliometric method of this paper is based on high local citation score and high-frequency words, articles in the skirting subjects’ area may not be analyzed.

With the rapid development of technology, such as nanotechnology, radio - frequency identification (RFID), etc., the iterative upgrading of products also comes. As a result, the boundary between industries is gradually blurred, and the phenomenon of industry convergence appears. Therefore, managerial decision-makers are facing challenges of how to respond to the convergence phenomena. From the firm level, firms are facing the problem of value innovation of the existing product, new product development and core competence improvement. Industries are facing the problem of transformation and upgrading. This paper provides certain theoretical insights for both firms and industries to guide the practice accordingly.

This paper is the first to use a bibliometric method to examine the topic of industry convergence and value innovation. In addition, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of this topic and provides a comprehensive theoretical research framework for future study.

This study aims to explore UK Business Improvement Districts' (BIDs) responses and practices to the COVID crisis and evaluates how these influenced their organisational identity. The paper aims to highlight the possible shift in BIDs' operations that can lead to their positioning as integral facilitators of place management initiatives in their local areas.

The authors stress the confused nature of BID identity and highlight how BID activities and business plans correspond to subsequent crises through the lens of crisis management and disaster management frameworks. A mixed-methods, exploratory, sequential approach was taken, incorporating interviews and survey responses from UK BID managers in two distinct phases between October and December 2020.

The findings of the study suggest a greater emphasis on communication strategies and the formation of partnerships during the lockdown periods, along with a renewed understanding of a BID's role towards place leadership, resilience and public safety.

The practical implications of this work show a shift in BID business practices, programmes and services and highlight the need to establish a set of industry standards and best practices with enhanced place leadership responsibilities.

The research provides a detailed snapshot of the UK BID industry during the COVID crisis and shows the possibility for BIDs to reframe their identity as locally bound, place-based organisations that have a more direct role in place management.

Recent technological turbulence stemming from Industry 4.0 provides managerial opportunities and challenges simultaneously. In this context, the purpose of this study is to explore the role of technological opportunism on innovativeness and discover the impact of innovativeness on new products performance in international markets.

To empirically test the hypotheses, the authors have collected survey data from 237 Korean exporting firms and applied structural equation modeling.

Empirical results indicate that technological opportunism, which represents technology sensing and responding capability, has a positive and significant influence on both exploratory and exploitative innovativeness. Also, explorative and exploitative innovativeness have positive and significant effects on new product performance in international markets.

This study highlighted the importance of technology sensing and responding capabilities to capture emerging opportunities, which may arise from Industry 4.0 technologies. In addition, sensing and responding capabilities will help a firm create a culture that values innovative proclivity, and in turn, will lead to superior new product performance in international markets.

Despite extensive scholarly interest in Industry 4.0, previous studies have neglected to address the potential impact of Industry 4.0 within the domain of new product development and its performance. Also, there have been several calls from the literature to address the managerial and strategic issues surrounding the Industry 4.0 phenomenon. In this study, the authors attempted to fill the research gaps in Industry 4.0 research studies through empirical examination.

The implementation of BIM in the construction industry requires the coevolution of the various aspects of the BIM ecosystem. The human dimension is a very important dimension of the ecosystem necessary for BIM implementation. It is imperative to study this aspect of the BIM ecosystem both from the employer perspective and employee availability to provide insights for stakeholders (job seekers, employers, students, researchers, policymakers, higher education institutions, career advisors and curriculum developers) interested in the labour market dynamics.

To understand the BIM actor roles through the employer lens and the actual BIM actors in the construction industry, this study employed data mining of job adverts from LinkedIn and Mncjobs website. Content analysis was employed to gain insights into the data collected. Also, through a quantitative approach, the existing BIM actor roles were identified.

The study identified the employers' expectations of BIM actors; however, it is noted that the BIM actor recruitment space is still a loose one as recruiters put out open advertisements to get a large pool of applicants. From the data analysed, it is concluded that the BIM actor role is not an entirely new profession. However, it simply exists as construction industry professionals with BIM tool skills. Also, the professional development route is not well defined yet.

This study presents a realistic angle to BIM actor roles hence enhancing BIM implementation from the human perspective. The findings present an insight into the preferred against the actual.

Adopting the theory of planned behavior, this study attempts to investigate how subjective norms in the supply chain influence a firm's green innovation and how such influences are contingent upon the firm's internal and external factors (i.e. flexibility orientation and environmental dynamism). Two types of subjective norms are examined, i.e. injunctive norms (what supply chain partners say) and descriptive norms (what supply chain partners do).

Using survey data of 178 Chinese small and medium-sized manufacturers, we employ hierarchical linear regression to test the proposed hypotheses.

Our results indicate that both injunctive and descriptive norms are instrumental in stimulating firms to take actions on green innovation. Moreover, the flexibility orientation of a firm can strengthen the effect of descriptive norms. It is also observed that environmental dynamism weakens the efficacy of injunctive norms but strengthens that of descriptive norms on green innovation.

This study is among the first to apply the theory of planned behavior to explain the microfoundations of focal firm's green innovation and distinguish two types of subjective norms in the supply chain. In addition, it extends the theory of planned behavior by revealing internal and external contingent factors (i.e. flexibility orientation and environmental dynamism) of the relationship between subjective norms and firm behaviors.

This study aims at advancing the understanding of University-Industry Collaboration (UIC) by proposing an adapted conceptual model for comprehensive contextual analysis taking industry perspective and identifying effective mechanisms for stimulating UIC in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This study was designed as a multicase qualitative study. Data were collected through interviews of focus groups representing 26 agro-processing companies operating in Rwanda. The process consisted of two sessions evaluating the current collaboration patterns, and two sessions identifying the desired future and the mechanisms to realize it. Data were analyzed using ATLAS.ti software with the grounded theory techniques.

Findings indicate that current interactions are unidirectional and focus on educational collaboration. Results are short-term and do not yield sufficient benefit for the companies involved. Industry aspirations for future collaboration were identified, along with linkages between inputs, activities and outcomes.

This study has two noteworthy limitations. First, this study did not consider the capacity of firms to collaborate. Second, for simplification purposes, this study did not integrate other complementary sources of knowledge for firms. To overcome these omissions, a short introduction of University–Industry Collaboration (UIC) was presented to participants highlighting and justifying the scope of the study. As research implications, this paper presents a new integrated conceptual framework, which can be useful for studies focusing on a comprehensive analysis of the UIC context and identifying effective mechanisms for improvement in the future. A construct of policies that stimulate UIC is proposed, thereby facilitating further operationalization and testing of context-specific hypotheses on policy stimuli.

In practice, the identified conceptual framework allows to holistically capture and reflect on the interrelationships between UIC factors and outcomes for a specific context, hence, informing better UIC decision-making. In this way, this paper advances the operationalization of the argument for reconciling organizational theories with their practices.

This paper presents a systemic means for organizational theories to perform their adaptive role in society. Indeed, as demonstrated by the empirical results, the proposed framework is effective not only in systematically assessing the current situation, but also in predicting the desired state in the future. In other words, the proposed framework facilitates prescience theorizing, which is a mechanism for ensuring that organizational theories adapt to future requirements of the society.

This study develops a new integrative conceptual framework to accommodate the interaction between UIC’s institutional decision-making and existing macrolevel frameworks of innovation ecosystems. In terms of methodology, the value of this study lies in its adoption of an ex ante approach to the development of mechanisms to stimulate UIC. This use of prescience theory (Corley and Gioia, 2011) constitutes an important – but long-neglected – approach to UIC and its adaptive role in society.

The digital economy has become a key force supporting the high-quality development of tourism. This paper discusses the coupling coordination relationship and spatiotemporal evolution path of digital economy and tourism in China's provinces.

This paper uses the entropy method to measure the development level of digital economy and tourism, and establishes coupling coordination model and spatial autocorrelation model to study the interaction between the two industries.

Results show that the development levels of the two industries are rising, which spatially show a progressively decreasing pattern of east-middle-northeast-west. The coupling coordination degrees of the two industries have increased steadily, but the overall level is still near maladjusted. Spatially, the positive correlation is increasing, but the incongruity of spatial agglomeration is still significant. The coupling coordination evolution path in the provinces shows differentiated characteristics. The migration path is mainly concentrated in Zones I and II. The eastern region has an obvious trend of extending to Zone III, where the tourism industry was the most affected by the pandemic.

The study helps clarify the industrial coupling and coordination relationship in various regions and formulate regional tourism digital transformation strategies to promote the high-quality development of China's tourism industry.

This paper enriches the research on the relationship between digital economy and tourism from the perspective of industrial integration. The development commonality of China's tourism digital transformation summarized provides theoretical reference and demonstration for the coordinated development of China's tourism.

Relationship management evolves with dynamic and complex environments of megaprojects. However, studies on the longitudinal measurement of relationship management performance for each stakeholder in dynamic and complex project environments are lacking. The purpose of this research is to propose an NK-network evolution model to evaluate stakeholder performance on relationship management in the development of megaprojects.

The model input includes the stakeholder-associated issues and stakeholders' relational strategies, the co-effects of which determine the internal effects of relationship management in megaprojects. The model processing simulates the stakeholder performance of relationship management under the dynamic and complex nature of megaprojects. The NK model shows the dynamic stakeholder interactions on relationship management, whereas the network model presents the complex stakeholder structures of the relationships between stakeholders and relevant issues. The model output is the evolution graph to reveal the weak stakeholder performance on relationship management in the timeline of the project duration.

The research finding reveals that all stakeholders experience the plunge of stakeholder performance of relationship management at the decision-making moment of the planning stage. Construction, environmental and pressure groups may experience the hardship of relationship management at the start of the construction stage. The government is likely to suffer difficulties in relationship management in the late construction stage. Local industry groups would face challenges in relationship management in the middle of the construction stage and handover stage.

The research provides a useful approach to measuring weak moments of relationship management for each stakeholder in various project phases, considering the dynamic and complex environments of megaprojects. The proposed model extends the current knowledge body on how to make project stakeholder analysis by modelling dynamic and complex environments of megaprojects, with bridging the knowledge domains of evolution modeling techniques and network methods.