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Article
Publication date: 11 December 2019

Cinthia Beccacece Satornino, Demetra Andrews, Rebeca Perren and Michael K. Brady

Previous research studies assume that influential consumers (“influentials”), who play a powerful role in the marketplace, are persuasive (or not) based on innate, static…

Abstract

Purpose

Previous research studies assume that influential consumers (“influentials”), who play a powerful role in the marketplace, are persuasive (or not) based on innate, static personality traits. By contrast, this paper proposes an emergence-based view of influentials. Grounded in dynamic self-concept theory, this research establishes that individuals possess an “influential” self-concept that can be activated by firm-originated communications. Specifically, the authors examine the impact of firm feedback on the three dimensions of influentials (and the corresponding traits and behaviors): who they are (propensity to connect with others), who they know (WOM) and what they know (expert power).

Design/methodology/approach

The study tests whether an influential self can be evoked by marketers using a longitudinal experimental test with data collected in three periods. The data are analyzed using a multi-mediation model and partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Findings

The results reveal that even after controlling for the extroversion trait, firm-originated positive feedback increases perceived expert power of participants, which increases word-of-mouth behavior in a subsequent period, both directly and indirectly via an enhanced propensity to connect with others.

Research limitations/implications

Cultivating the influential self-concept requires time to ensure that the self-concept is sufficiently realized to become an enduring self-concept.

Practical implications

By cultivating influentials, practitioners are able to leverage diffusion mechanics and reduce costs and inefficiencies associated with traditional customer relationship management marketing strategies focused on finding them.

Social implications

These findings have implications across all domains that rely on the diffusion and adoption of ideas or products via influentials, including but not limited to public policy, politics, public health and sustainability, in that influentials can be evoked and leveraged to diffuse ideas in these important social domains.

Originality/value

This paper provides empirical evidence that firms can evoke influential consumer behavior challenging existing views of influence as a static personality trait. It casts a line to connect influential consumers to the nascent study of social emergence.

Details

Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 37 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0736-3761

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 August 2021

Loic Pengtao Li, Julia A. Fehrer, Roderick J. Brodie and Biljana Juric

The purpose of this study is to diagnose the trajectory of influential conceptual articles in developing a research stream. The authors uncover the knowledge diffusion through…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to diagnose the trajectory of influential conceptual articles in developing a research stream. The authors uncover the knowledge diffusion through influential conceptual articles and identify characteristics that make conceptual articles influential in their field.

Design/methodology/approach

This study draws on scientometrics, specifically an integrated approach combining quantitative citation counts with qualitative citation practices analysis that offers a comprehensive understanding of the nature and context of citations. The authors use the case of customer engagement – a prominent contemporary marketing and service research stream – to explore the trajectory of influential articles in shaping a new research stream.

Findings

This research shows that influential articles contribute to the reciprocal knowledge diffusion within and outside their home discipline. They provide anchor points for conceptual framing, conceptual refining and conceptual reconciliation – three application patterns of citations that are pivotal to navigate theory discovery and theory justification in a research field.

Research limitations/implications

The study analyzes the early impact period of two influential customer engagement articles to understand the developments leading to the establishment of a new research stream. Future research drawing on automated citation and bibliometric methods may consider extended time periods.

Originality/value

This study traces the trajectory of influential articles in marketing and service research. The authors identify characteristics of influential conceptual articles, and recommend practices to develop a conceptual paper with the potential for an influential trajectory. It shows that while marketing and service research has a tradition of “borrowing” theories from other fields, seminal articles “lend” theories to other fields.

Details

Journal of Service Management, vol. 32 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-5818

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 March 2020

Bharat Arun Tidke, Rupa Mehta, Dipti Rana, Divyani Mittal and Pooja Suthar

In online social network analysis, the problem of identification and ranking of influential nodes based on their prominence has attracted immense attention from researchers and…

Abstract

Purpose

In online social network analysis, the problem of identification and ranking of influential nodes based on their prominence has attracted immense attention from researchers and practitioners. Identification and ranking of influential nodes is a challenging problem using Twitter, as data contains heterogeneous features such as tweets, likes, mentions and retweets. The purpose of this paper is to perform correlation between various features, evaluation metrics, approaches and results to validate selection of features as well as results. In addition, the paper uses well-known techniques to find topical authority and sentiments of influential nodes that help smart city governance and to make importance decisions while understanding the various perceptions of relevant influential nodes.

Design/methodology/approach

The tweets fetched using Twitter API are stored in Neo4j to generate graph-based relationships between various features of Twitter data such as followers, mentions and retweets. In this paper, consensus approach based on Twitter data using heterogeneous features has been proposed based on various features such as like, mentions and retweets to generate individual list of top-k influential nodes based on each features.

Findings

The heterogeneous features are meant for integrating to accomplish identification and ranking tasks with low computational complexity, i.e. O(n), which is suitable for large-scale online social network with better accuracy than baselines.

Originality/value

Identified influential nodes can act as source in making public decisions and their opinion give insights to urban governance bodies such as municipal corporation as well as similar organization responsible for smart urban governance and smart city development.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 50 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 November 2023

Marek Szwejczewski, Bob Lillis, Valeria Belvedere and Alberto Grando

Previous research has identified factors that enable lean change to be sustained. What remains unknown is how the interaction effects amongst these factors vary as lean change…

Abstract

Purpose

Previous research has identified factors that enable lean change to be sustained. What remains unknown is how the interaction effects amongst these factors vary as lean change programmes mature. When are particular factors at their most influential?

Design/methodology/approach

Using a data and investigator triangulated qualitative research strategy, this paper tests an a priori model of change sustainability factors. In phase one, the research reveals the influence and significance of the model's change sustainability factors within 13 manufacturers. In phase two, four factors (Leadership, Political, Individual and Managerial) were selected for in-depth case study analyses in three manufacturers.

Findings

These point to when in the lean change, certain factors have the most influence on its sustainability. The Leadership factor and political factor are essential at the beginning and remain influential throughout. Employees' individual commitment (Individual factor) is significant in sustaining the change but it is at its most influential in the later stages. The Managerial factor (management approach) is influential in the mature stages of the programme.

Practical implications

Recognising where to put maximum focus during a lean change programme as it matures is crucial for management.

Originality/value

Sustaining lean change has not been studied from the perspective of what factors need to be emphasised at different stages in the programme for successful maturity to occur. Through empirical validation, this study helps address this knowledge gap.

Quick value overview

Interesting because – Researchers have found that the majority of lean implementations fail – changes to structures and working practices are made only to see the gains dissipate. Previous research has suggested that multiple factors including leadership, culture and politics influence the change towards a lean organisation. While studies have shown that such factors play a role, what has not been studied is the time, that is, when the factors influence the change process. This study investigated when 11 factors have the most influence on lean implementation. Theoretical value – The study extends the state-of-the-art understanding of implementation of lean in organisations by adding a time element. It is found that in order to have a change that is sustainable, that is, lasting at least 18 months, factors that indicate the importance to the organisation are influential during the entire implementation process. This includes how central the change is to the organisation, the influence of leadership that sets vision and goals, and the implementation methods. Factors that can set things in motion such as the influence of important stakeholders are important at the beginning of the implementation process but then decline in influence over time. While factors that seem to have to do more with how companies operate have less influence at the start but become more influential over time. These include employees' commitment, the managerial style and approach, the organisational policies and structure, and the organisational culture. Practical value – Introducing lean into an organisation and gaining its sustained benefits is often not successful. While factors have previously been identified that influence the success of lean implementation, this study provides additional practical insight. It helps manufacturers be more effective by pinpointing which factors should be focused on during the various stages of the implementation process.

Details

Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, vol. 35 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-038X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 January 2018

Amin Mahmoudi, Mohd Ridzwan Yaakub and Azuraliza Abu Bakar

Users are the key players in an online social network (OSN), so the behavior of the OSN is strongly related to their behavior. User weight refers to the influence of the users on…

Abstract

Purpose

Users are the key players in an online social network (OSN), so the behavior of the OSN is strongly related to their behavior. User weight refers to the influence of the users on the OSN. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to identify the user weight based on a new metric for defining the time intervals.

Design/methodology/approach

The behavior of an OSN changes over time, thus the user weight in the OSN is different in each time frame. Therefore, a good metric for estimating the user weight in an OSN depends on the accuracy of the metric used to define the time interval. New metric for defining the time intervals is based on the standard deviation and identifies that the user weight is based on a simple exponential smoothing model.

Findings

The results show that the proposed method covers the maximum behavioral changes of the OSN and is able to identify the influential users in the OSN more accurately than existing methods.

Research limitations/implications

In event detection, when a terrorist attack occurs as an event, knowing the influential users help us to know the leader of the attack. Knowing the influential user in each time interval based on this study can help us to detect communities which formed around these people. Finally, in marketing, this issue helps us to have a targeted advertising.

Practical implications

User effect is a significant issue in many OSN domain problems, such as community detection, event detection and recommender systems.

Originality/value

Previous studies do not give priority to the recent time intervals in identifying the relative importance of users. Thus, defining a metric to compute a time interval that covers the maximum changes in the network is a major shortcoming of earlier studies. Some experiments were conducted on six different data sets to test the performance of the proposed model in terms of the computed time intervals and user weights.

Details

Data Technologies and Applications, vol. 52 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9288

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 26 February 2019

Patrick Schweighofer, Doris Weitlaner, Martin Ebner and Hannes Rothe

The literature includes several studies that define different critical success factors (CSF) which have to be considered to support the implementation of technology-enhanced…

4349

Abstract

Purpose

The literature includes several studies that define different critical success factors (CSF) which have to be considered to support the implementation of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) approaches. An analysis of such studies revealed that (1) regional differences seem to determine the CSF for TEL approaches, (2) certain CSF are relevant for TEL approaches in general, and (3) professionals in higher education determine which influential factors they consider when implementing TEL approaches. Thus, the question arises: in general, which influential factors do professionals in Austrian and German institutions of higher education actually consider when implementing TEL approaches?

Design/methodology/approach

The study is a quantitative research approach based on survey data.

Findings

The results show that certain influential factors seem to be generally important, such as the factors of respecting learning success or motivation. However, the outcome of the study also indicated that different moderating variables like experiences and personal relevance affect the professionals’ choices.

Originality/value

The originality and value are in the approach to identify generally important influential factors for the implementation of TEL approaches in Austrian and German institutions of higher education.

Article
Publication date: 4 September 2017

Sagar Sikder, Subhash Chandra Panja and Indrajit Mukherjee

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new easy-to-implement distribution-free integrated multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) approach with an ability to recognize…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new easy-to-implement distribution-free integrated multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) approach with an ability to recognize out-of-control points, identify the key influential variable for the out-of-control state, and determine necessary changes to achieve the state of statistical control.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed approach integrates the control chart technique, the Mahalanobis-Taguchi System concept, the Andrews function plot, and nonlinear optimization for multivariate process control. Mahalanobis distance, Taguchi’s orthogonal array, and the main effect plot concept are used to identify the key influential variable responsible for the out-of-control situation. The Andrews function plot and nonlinear optimization help to identify direction and necessary correction to regain the state of statistical control. Finally, two different real life case studies illustrate the suitability of the approach.

Findings

The case studies illustrate the potential of the proposed integrated multivariate process control approach for easy implementation in varied manufacturing and process industries. In addition, the case studies also reveal that the multivariate out-of-control state is primarily contributed by a single influential variable.

Research limitations/implications

The approach is limited to the situation in which a single influential variable contributes to out-of-control situation. The number and type of cases used are also limited and thus generalization may not be debated. Further research is necessary with varied case situations to refine the approach and prove its extensive applicability.

Practical implications

The proposed approach does not require multivariate normality assumption and thus provides greater flexibility for the industry practitioners. The approach is also easy to implement and requires minimal programming effort. A simple application Microsoft Excel is suitable for online implementation of this approach.

Originality/value

The key steps of the MSPC approach are identifying the out-of-control point, diagnosing the out-of-control point, identifying the “influential” variable responsible for the out-of-control state, and determining the necessary direction and the amount of adjustment required to achieve the state of control. Most of the approaches reported in open literature are focused only until identifying influencing variable, with many restrictive assumptions. This paper addresses all key steps in a single integrated distribution-free approach, which is easy to implement in real time.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 34 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Messy Data
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76230-303-8

Book part
Publication date: 19 August 2021

Kristin L. Cullen-Lester, Caitlin M. Porter, Hayley M. Trainer, Pol Solanelles and Dorothy R. Carter

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice…

Abstract

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.

Details

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-430-5

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 July 2022

Tatiana Ershova, Marina Zavertiaeva and Dmitry Kirpishchikov

This study examines the impact of influential shareholders, namely, state and influential businessmen, on the dividend policies of firms. A special focus is made on the causal…

Abstract

Purpose

This study examines the impact of influential shareholders, namely, state and influential businessmen, on the dividend policies of firms. A special focus is made on the causal effect of exogenous changes: general and personal economic sanctions leading to toughened state policies concerning dividends.

Design/methodology/approach

Russian firms included into the Moscow Stock Exchange Broad Market Index were examined for a period from 2009 to 2019 using a generalized method of moments and a tobit model. The effect of personal sanctions was elucidated with the use of difference-in-differences method with multiple time periods.

Findings

The analysis showed that government or businessmen's ownership does not affect dividend payments. However, after 2014, state-owned companies began to increase their payments. At the same time, owing to a series of changes triggered by general economic sanctions, businessmen-owned companies decrease their dividends payout ratio. Personal sanctions imposed do not have long-term effect on Russian companies' dividends.

Originality/value

This study estimates the effect of ownership structure on dividend payouts after an exogenous change. The results show that there is heterogeneity in influential owners' decisions regarding dividends and changes strengthening it.

Details

Journal of Economic Studies, vol. 50 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3585

Keywords

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